A Pastor’s Christmas Epistle Clarified
A Christmas Epistle to David from Pastor John was received referring to disasters and the coronavirus pandemic. The Epistle, damaged in transit, seemed to imply that non-Christians are more prone to disasters than Christians. Wherefore I was moved to ask John for Clarification.
DAVID
It appears that you have doomed all non-Christians to disaster in your Christmas Epistle, Is not that judgment contrary to the Christian faith in Love?
PASTOR JOHN
I made it clear that I do not make judgment. I do not preach hell and brimstone. I do not assume because someone does not believe as I do they are doomed. Destruction comes as a result of cause and effect and it is completely out of my hands. When it is written that salvation is only through Jesus the Christ, that doesn't mean only the people who stand on the corner shouting they believe they will be saved, but what it means is that Jesus made the breakthrough that opened God to accepting humans even if they have never heard of Jesus or attended a church.
DAVID
Excuse me, you may not have intended that meaning but I do not recall that and I have a pretty good memory. Would you mind exactly quoting that sentence or paragraph wherein you write the word "disaster"?
PASTOR JOHN
I don't think so, it's gone far enough. What I said is that the rain falls on the just as well as the unjust.
DAVID
John, I am just trying to ascertain the fact. There is a crease running down the center of that section of your Christmas Epistle. Silence is an affirmation as you may recall from a famous question over religion in England. I guess it's fire and brimstone for me then. Therefore I'm living in the moment and having a whiskey and grapefruit flavored soda with a twist of lemon. The simple question is, did you or did you not say that non-Christians are subject to more disasters? Please quote the paragraph with the word disaster in it. To repeat, I have a crease running through part of one sentence. I am only asking you to repeat the words you sent out.
PASTOR JOHN
Reading meanings into other people's confessions is reminiscent of both CNN and FOX. The conclusion always amounts to Fake News. There are many Christians who think basically about the essentials as I do. That does not mean we agree on every detail, but in the things that matter we do agree. That is the beauty of being a Christian in faith as opposed to an institutional Christian. I know you do not understand. I've spent many years in both the Orient and the Mid East. I know from experience people reared in certain cultures find it almost impossible to change.
The American Indian is a classic example. While men took their children and put them in mission schools to learn how to be a Christian, the resistance to Christianity has been almost universal among the tribes.
As you said in your "If I Were A Christian" writing, "I am happy for them as long as they do not try to save me." Well, I don't try to convert people -- only God and an internal desire on the part of the individual can convert. And I don't condemn people who resist conversion either. I am an ordained pastor of the church, but converting people is not my vocation. I have Muslim friends, I have LDS friends, I have Hindu friends, and atheist friends. They know where I stand but I respect them and feel we can live peacefully and with respect to each other upon the same planet, even in the same neighborhood. I know history disagrees with me, but in the same token I disagree with the way history has considered the Christian faith.
DAVID
That's what you are apparently doing, John, reading a meaning into your disaster statement other than what it means while refusing to quote it, perhaps to evade correcting it. That is the habit of those who say no wrong, are better than thous, and justify themselves with hearsay from centuries ago. Please write out those lines again, because they have a crease in them. They do seem to impute greater disasters on those who do not believe in your religion. That would be a moderation of the “burn in hell if you don't agree” argument by force.
By the way, it seems to me that you are a Christian of one. That brings to mind Kierkegaard's discursus on the Category of One, and the notion is good one, in my opinion, true to the notion of individual salvation advanced by Christianity and its origin in the ancient mystery cults and the reversion of private clubs to scandalous rebellion against totalitarian mores. I have only known one man who professed to be a Christian of One, a man whom I recall you scorned when I first mentioned him—he was a disc jockey and window washer who made a lot of money on high-rises and lived illegally in a cave on the side of the mountain above the University of Hawaii's Manoa campus. Yet you have confessed that you are not a Christian of one, meaning that you are not unique and your perspectival complex fashioned from your social experience although perhaps everyone including even your own wife disagrees with you in some respect. It appears that you have contradicted yourself, which is a sometimes most fortunate habit of our kind and not only philosophers engaged in dialectics for the sake of progress, so I congratulate you on that.
You may cavil like any good Christian or lawyer on every point ad infinitum to justify whatever you say or do. I have always perceived you as relatively independent, that is, until you seemed to wish a disaster, that is, a more likely Doom or Disaster, by virtue of your faith, on those who disagree with Christian dogma. That is contrary to the professed principle of its faith, namely, Love, although that love often appears in practice as fear-based group love with a wish to see all enemies of that motive burn in hell forever. That is to say, your Christmas greeting seemed to implicitly convey one of the most reprehensible of all logical fallacies of relevance, that is, an argumentum ad baculum: you would have the hell beat out of everyone with a stick who disagrees with it. But I may have misunderstood your coronavirus Christmas epistle because it arrived in the mail with a crease that destroyed some of the wording. Perhaps you will quote the threat of “disaster” to nonbelievers in its original form.
PASTOR JOHN
After rereading my Christmas letter I assume your concerns were aroused from the middle paragraph. Burning in hell is a modern theological exegesis derived from Dante’s “Divine Comedy” and not from Christian Scripture.
When I wrote “Should you or another ignore this Christmas proclamation your future is more susceptible to disaster,” disaster does not necessarily mean what contemporary evangelicalism might dictate. Rather, I would consider that rejecting the simple Christmas proclamation of “Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace, goodwill toward men!" will eventually result in rebellion, street terrorism, and all the rest. It is not limited to bad men, black men, or evil women. It is the history of Christianity from the earliest years through and to today. Not only Christianity, but most ideologies that men harbor as more important than living in peace are susceptible to this kind of disaster.
It’s often like reading history and assuming those ancient people looked at the world in the same way we do today. When in reality the only way to understand history is to first put oneself in the shoes of the people who lived in that century and look at the events with their point of view.
I am a Christian and each Christmas I attempt to send out a letter summarizing the events of the year with the hope of Christmas communicating a statement of faith and experience. I apologize if my wording causes anyone misunderstanding or anxiety.
No, I am not a “Christian of one.” Even my wife, who is more at one with me than anyone else, disagrees with me on some religious issues. Over the years many people have influenced me, and in turn I have influenced many others. No, they don’t all think as I do on every issue. As I have told many, if they did I would have to change my thinking about some things. In all that it is not the fringe things that matter, but the core imperatives.
Going back to the Enlightenment, I have studied many of the enlightenment philosophers. From them I have learned much, but that does not mean I agree with all their conclusions. I worked for many years as an investigator/inspector for a government agency. At another time I was an Administrative law judge with statutory authority. My training makes it necessary to examine the facts before I write a disposition. In other words I don’t take anything at face value, but want empirical evidence to substantiate every conclusion. That is not just testimony of other people, but factual data to support their testimony.
I know all that seems contradictory to my acceptance of any faith in the New Testament narratives about the life of Jesus any others. Yet, that is the very heart of the issue. I realize it is problematic for Matthew 1:20 to be a reality. I can’t prove that one way of the other. But, when I examine the pure-unaltered-teaching of Jesus, free from later corruptions by Latter Day Interpreters, I consider the alternative an unacceptable world view of life.
From Scripture, the letter to the Hebrews reads, “Without faith it is impossible to please [God]” (Heb 11:6). Many things are problematic and difficult to swallow. We have to acquire a taste for the uncertain flavor of faith. Even atheist have faith in what they chew on.
Referring back to something you said, that “Beck maintains that the real meaning of Kant’s theory is idealism; that knowledge of objects outside the domain of consciousness is impossible, and hence that nothing positive remains when we have removed the subjective element. . . . the idea of God is a symbolic representation of the voice of conscience guiding from within.”
In essence he is asserting that the concept of God is subjective with no external evidence to substantiate God’s existence.
Is that absolutely true? I think not!
I have studied many of the enlightenment philosophers and they have never proven anything beyond the shadow of questioning. Their theories are no more than speculative reasoning in the long run. Much like the Swedish chemist Svante A. Arrhenius who suggested that “life on Earth arose from “panspermia,” microscopic spores that wafted through space from planet to planet or solar system to solar system by radiation pressure.
I don’t deny the probability that billions of years elapsed in the process of evolving mutations and all that. But the beginning appears to have intelligent design and not a result of some random explosion called the “Big Bang”. How it was done I don’t know, neither does anyone else, scientist or theologian. Any who claim they do are just full of “crap”.
Without faith life is untenable. On page 133 of Kant’s 'Theoretical Philosophy' you sent me, I read, “But I am certain that the being, whose existence we have just proved, is precisely the Divine Being, whose differentiating characteristics will be reduced, in one way or another, to the most concise formula.”
In short “supreme being.”
Well, in the woods a grizzly bear is a supreme being to most other animals. In the 12-step system a “higher power” is whatever a man or woman wishes to place his or her trust in to overcome certain tendencies of addiction. But neither a higher power nor a supreme being is God. If God was that simple to define He could not be God, and I would not be interested in considering him.
In retrospect should it turn out that there is no God, I would lose nothing. I have worked with “derelicts” on the street and realize the depravity of some human nature. Yet, I have found the only plausible alternative to human nature’s deficiencies to be the simple teachings of:
A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another (John 13:34).
Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them (Matt 7:12).
Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others (Phil 2:3-4). I
It beats hatred, revenge, and ulcers from constant anxiety. Peace to you.
DAVID
I bid you Happy New Year today although Time in itself was said by Kant not to exist except as subjective category rendering our knowledge of the Thing-In-Itself or Reality, and, ultimately, the Supreme Being, impossible by placing it before empirical experience A PRIORI, although many are those who claim to experience hence know God—perception is judgment on sensation, hence experience as such is knowledge—the intuitionists believe they commune transcendentally with God ideally beyond experience. Is that where you are getting your “pure gospel”?
I have taken your advice to inquire into the “pure” gospel you mentioned as the justification the faith you believe I do not understand; to wit: "The pure unaltered teaching of Jesus free from corruptions by Latter-Day interpreters. If you want a clear picture of the first church, you would have to consult the teachings of the Nasuaya (Nazarenes). Not the current denomination of Nazarenes, but those Jewish believers who pretty much died out by about the 4th century. The earliest church was 100% Jewish, and by the second century the church was 90% Gentile. The corruption which tainted church doctrine stems from about the second and third centuries.”
Thus far my research indicates there are no such pure, immaculate, unaltered, or uncorrupted sources, so I am hoping you will reference specific extant documents. It seems that whatever original sources there were if any may have destroyed as anathema or obsolete by the evolving theology or were just lost for lack of propagation.
As for the “Nazarenes,” so named after the Jesus of Nazareth, my superficial research indicates that it is a mere name given by latter day interpreters to a hypothetical Roman-Palestinian group fabricated without concrete evidence by Church Fathers, especially Jerome and Origen, as a source of non-canonical i.e. heretical Jewish-Christian gospels to the extent they were Jewish due to adherence to Mosaic law, a supposed doctrine ostensibly derived and redacted from extant Hebrew and/or Matthew Gospels originally published in Hebrew and Aramaic.
It appears that Jerome associated the Nazarene gospel with the Ebonites so-called. Epiphanius said he discovered the Gospel of Ebionites, and he named Cyris as one of its original sources. The Ebionites believed, or so we hear from Irenaeus and other second century fathers, for instance, Justin Martyr, that Jesus "was the son of Joseph and Mary according to the ordinary course of human generation." The Ebionite gospel, written in Aramaic, omitted, like Mark, the birth stories of Jesus, and the Ebionites or Nazarenes allegedly continued for centuries to repudiate them as fables and unworthy of the messiah. In fact, the Ebionite portions allegedly excluded mention of the virgin birth, was silent on the divination of Jesus as the god's son and sacrifices as well, yet did mention vegetarianism.
The fathers of the catholic, that is, the universal church, supposed from their research that, besides the Ebionite gospel, a Hebrew gospel of Matthew was extant. Indeed, I believe it has even been lately claimed, by what authority I cannot say, that no less than Matthew penned the gospel of Hebrews, his objective being to emphasize the Jewishness of Jesus. Clement and Origin of Alexandria may have used the Hebrew book towards the end of the second century, but the language suggests it was written for Jews in Syria and Palestine. Experts on this subject may have cause to believe that the Matthew, Hebrew, and Ebionite gospels are synonymous or one and the same.
In any event, all that seems to remain of teachings antithetical to evolving theology are the inimical refutations of church fathers to evidence they did not preserve. The search for the pure, unadulterated teachings and authentic biography of Jesus identified as the Christ seems to lead to a dead end in the dead sea. I wish I had the originals, since they would be worth at least a billion dollars, funds I would put to good use.
I am hoping you may have access to the pure teachings you have advised me to search for, or at least that you have a good and honest story to support your faith, a faith that I certainly do not deny you have although I suspect it is unique to you in its coincidence of qualities, which is what I mean when I refer to a “religion of one.”
PASTOR JOHN
You have sent me nothing I have not reviewed before. There are no facts here, just a circular argument that has continued unresolved for centuries. As for Marcion of Sinope, I have walked the streets of Sinope, Turkey on the southern coast of the Black Sea. The city has great historic value. The problem with Marcion of Sinope is that he preached that the god who sent Jesus into the world was a different, higher deity than the creator God of Judaism. He considered himself a follower of Paul the Apostle, whom he believed to have been the only true apostle of Jesus. Thus rejecting all other books of the New Testament. That put him outside from the teachings of Jesus and the earliest church oracles. If you want a clear picture of the first church, you would have to consult the teachings of the Nasuaya (Nazarenes). Not the current denomination of Nazarenes, but those Jewish believers who pretty much died out by about the 4th century. The earliest church was 100% Jewish, and by the second century the church was 90% Gentile. The corruption which tainted church doctrine stems from about the second and third centuries.
DAVID
I'm glad you know everything there is to know on this subject already or have reviewed everything even before I have said it. You have made it perfectly clear who your god is. You have said you would not engage in a “circular” disquisition. I suppose by that you mean an endless rationalizing of your own faith, which I suspect is innate, mysterious even to yourself, and wanting elaboration and a definite creed. They say that a line extended towards infinity meets itself hence is a circle. It is there that the cat realizes it is chasing its tail, and is saved from the vicious process.
You mentioned that you were a fact finder for the government, and that you studied the Enlightenment, the principle of which was applying reason to the facts to arrive at logical conclusions, yet at the same time you have faith without facts in an alternative means of enlightenment, call it intuition if you will, relating it to what Matthew said about what you presume to be the Virgin birth.
"Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit."
You admit that the conclusions arrived at by alternative means, say, pregnancy without intercourse or with a god or from sitting on a toilet are problematic or contradictory to what we know about reality. Yet you consider the dogma acceptable after studying what you call "the pure unaltered teaching of Jesus free from corruptions by Latter-Day interpreters," for which there is no evidence produced except what you and others of like mind imagine. I have not heard of any pure unaltered teachings of Jesus, and hope you will reveal them. The current canon of scripture is known to be not only hearsay long after the death of Jesus but altered by the transcribers. Extant evidence does indicate that the Virgin birth and Divinity of Jesus are the product of a synod convened centuries after the fact.
Marcion's original canon, now lost but reconstructed from the indictments of his enemies is known to have characterized the god of the Old Testament as a Devil provoking natural disasters, and the god of the New Testament as only good and of one spirit, namely, the Monad. It is likely that this is the “Holy Spirit” said to visit Mary, and that her pregnancy was metaphorical in reference to her enlightenment, the allusion otherwise being a defamatory suggestion of adultery making an immaculate conception necessary to save her reputation.
However that may be, we do know from surviving text that Marcion learned from persons who actually knew Paul when Paul was in Rome, and he considered Paul to be the predominant authority. We also know that during the first two centuries of the Christian era no birth date of Jesus was touted and his birth was not celebrated. Christmas is a vestige of the Pagan celebration of solstice.
The most primitive Christians were Marcionites whose leading or holy spirit was Love, in contradiction to the hatred they perceived in the wrath of the Hebrew gods. The Marcion church nearly overwhelmed the Roman Church before it was persecuted and extinguished by the catholics (universals or univocals). This seems to be a possible explanation for the hateful aspect of the later Christian religion with its two contradictory, inexplicable principles forged absurdly into one.
Hopefully, you will consider this reasonable hypothesis as having a bearing on your unwitting yet normal tendency to logical confusion, which, fortunately, appears to be transcended by the Monad aka the god Love, duly opposed until the end of the cycle by the Demon whom too many bigots unwittingly serve.
DAVID
Do you believe the Christian God caused the 1918 Influenza disaster to punish the world for the Great War? Or were both the War and the Pandemic punishment for being bad?
On the other hand, if God does not punish humans, then what good is God to anyone except as an excuse justifying doing whatever one wants in God's name according to whatever seems to be good or desirable according to the time and circumstances?
PASTOR JOHN
You wrote asking “What good is God...?”
In order to understand the good of God one must look at the overall revelation of God. Even in most non-Judeo/Christian religious beginnings there is a vague identity of God and human origin. In the Jewish/Christian as well as Islamic texts Scripture begins with Genesis. Chapters one through three give the background. The creation all culminates with human life. The initial revelation identifies Adam (whether one man and woman or the character of all men and women everywhere may be a matter interpretation – all were given free will and were not designed to be robots and function as programed.) These, whether 2 or 2 thousand, ended up in rebellion and God proposed a plan to bring about reconciliation.
He (use of the male gender is simply a literary contrivance of Jewish cultural as God is not to be confused with human gender). He established a system for teaching the difference between good and evil. This system was essentially spelled out in the decalogue. The first part of these ten commandments is directed at mankind’s responsibility to God (commandments 1 through 4). The second part is directed at mankind’s responsibility to each other, (commandments 5 through 10).
The Jews got carried away and came up with an additional 600 commandments that made it impossible for anyone to be reconciled to God
Yeshua ben Joseph (Jesus) reduced that myriad of rules and laws down to two:
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments (Matt 22:37-40).”
The thing God desires is that individuals look into their own lives and find a path that satisfies their needs. Should individuals choose to reconcile with God – their future is to be united with God. (What that means I do not know, and neither does anyone else – regardless of what religious gurus claim). If they fail to reconcile with God there is NO burning torment in Hell, as that is a human invention. The only thing that can be verified from Scripture is that they will be separated from God in the second death.
God is not a vindictive tyrant imposing holy punishment and natural disasters to discipline humanity. This concept was amplified upon by such as Dante and other manipulative Machiavellians attempting to somehow build their influence of power over the people they wished to control.
The philosophy of human desire to control God is ancient. Long before the Greeks, and going back even further than history can record. My uncle Frank (who died at the age of 100) was raised among the Lakota Indians, his father owned a trading post in Northwest Nebraska prior to the Dakota’s becoming states. He, a Christian, said that he felt the Native American concept of God was familiar and seemed a connection to the foundations of the Christian God.
xYx