More Positive but Less Harvestable

[Tenet Nosce]

I think it's because a lot of them listen to their church rather than Jesus. The church, for the most part, is a result of Orion impressions. Elite, hierarchy, someone leading you to believe that their interpretation of God is more correct than your's or anyone else's. So much comes from a place of non-acceptance rather than acceptance.

Yes! Most Christians don't even know about the Gospel of Thomas (a collection of Jesus' sayings) much less would they even consider reading it as it is has not been canonized. As a Catholic child, I hardly ever remember hearing the words of Jesus in church. I remember a lot of Paul.

I think that Paul's writings were an attempt to shoehorn Jesus' message back into the Jewish apocalyptic dogma found in the Book of Daniel. By the time of Paul, several generations had passed and Jesus had still not returned. In order to explain this, Paul invokes the so-called Christian duty to proselytize, and tries to use guilt to manipulate various Christian groups into preaching the gospel. Except now, the gospel has little to do with the words of Jesus, but is substituted with the messianic message of accepting Jesus as one's personal savior. So Paul is insinuating that Jesus hasn't returned yet because he wants his followers to go and convert others to Christianity! For if Jesus were to come back to fulfill the prophecy (of Daniel) those souls would be lost to God forever. So good Christians, Jesus needs you to take up your swords and march for God's glory... and the rest, well we know where that leads.

Pretty much every Christian- Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Protestant, Mormon and Baptist, uses the language of Paul to perpetuate certain ideas that were never spoken of by Jesus. One would presume if Jesus felt it were so important to live according certain unattainable ideals of virtue, he would have spoken of them. Instead, he offers a very simple and practical approach, which was by his time certainly nothing new: The Golden Rule.

The two testaments are bound together because of all the references that JC, being a Jew, made to the old one. Unfortunately, followers think that anything in that combined publication is good enough to site and use as justification for bad behavior and, worse, confusing the new pacifistic covenant with the old.

Paul attempts to elaborate a system of ethics that is "Christian" in name, but actually reincorporates several ideas from Hebrew doctrine that are demonstrably absent from Jesus' words. Maybe he felt this was the only way to ensure that the Gospels didn't become utterly lost to time, by reaffixing them to Old Testament dogma. The tradeoff is that Jesus' message gets mixed back up with the fire and brimstone, eternal damnation, and apocalyptic ruin.

With Paul, Jesus is transformed from an example for what man may himself become, to an unattainable ideal of a man imbued with a divine energy that is not accessible to ordinary man, and never will be. This is almost totally a reversal of doctrine, and yet it gets preached from the pulpits every Sunday and nobody suspects a thing. I think this one twist pretty much depolarizes the whole mission of Jesus. It really is a genius move, I must admit!

Not to mention how Mass has been rigged in various ways to distort the true magical nature of the ritual. That needs a whole new thread.