Blind Faith, Everyone Follow the Leader.

Seeing that it is Sunday night and I'm doing laundry again, let's rap about something controversial. It seems Sunday's draw out the controversy in me, or maybe its laundry. I think I'll chat about something that I don't talk about much on the blog. Let's talk about theology. In specific, I'm going to talk about Christianity and the life of Jesus Christ. I'm going to keep this as impartial as possible. If there is one thing I absolutely hate it's people who try to force their beliefs down your throat. I always felt that anybody can believe in anything they want. For the most part, most religions are based on the same morals and ideals anyways. Damn...Here comes the car bomb. One thing I'm not going to do (or at least try) is to not attack any religion. I could write for pages on the "foibles" of various religions, but I'm not going to go down that path...yet.

I've always found theology fascinating, and in particular, the premise of Jesus particularly interesting. I like the story, and I think there is a great point in there, but it's the application that I'm going to chat about. Here's a little background for those of you who either aren't into Christianity, or big on theology. The life of Jesus is outlined for the most part in the Gospels. There are four Gospels in the most widely accepted version of the Bible. These have always been accepted as the life story of Jesus. Here's the neat part. According to most scientific accounts, there are around twenty Gospels about his life. Hmmm. Interesting. So, there are twenty stories about the life and death of Christ, and only four are taught. Does this seem a little strange to anyone other than me? You'd think that in something as important as belief and faith you should be able to decide for yourself what is important, and not what some guy in ancient times decided should be included.

Now, here's a little bit of history to add into the mix. The four Gospels in the bible are considered to be the earliest telling, but by most accounts it has been accepted that the earliest one (Gospel of Mark BTW) was recorded around 66 years after the crucifixion. Let's put this in perspective. 66 years of telling a story over and over. I remember playing the telephone game and after 10 minutes the sentence was completely screwed up.

There are a few of Gospels which have been recently discovered in the Middle East. These were ordered to be destroyed by the powers that were around 200 AD. Luckily they were stashed away by some of the translators to be found later. I highly recommend giving them a read. One is the Gospel of Judas which shows an interesting take on Judas role, not as a betrayer, but that he was acting under an order given from Jesus. A couple of other highlights are the idea that God is inside all of us, and it needs to be freed in order for you to go to the next life, and it is the only Gospel which describes Christ laughing. The other two that are worth reading are The Gospel of Thomas , which is interesting as it is portrayed as sayings that Christ said to his apostles, and the Gospel of Mary Magdalene , which is interesting in itself as it was written by a women, and thus not allowed into the bible as it was a male-concentric sect when the books to the bible were chosen. Since it is now widely acclaimed that Mary Magdalene was only portrayed as a prostitute by the church, and not actually one, it creates some nasty implications. If you really get into this kind of stuff, I'd recommend attacking the Nag Hammadi Library , but be warned, this is not easy reading material. You have to really enjoy theology in order to get into this stuff.

Enough of the history lesson. Here's the point of all this dry theology shit. People are taught to believe and base their faith on the bible, but it is entirely possible (if not probable) that they aren't hearing the whole story. Doesn't it seem logical that we should be able to hear all of the bits and draw our own conclusion. Without getting into what I do or do not believe, it would really suck to dedicate your life to a faith that is wrong because someone decided that a couple of the books of the bible should be left out because they aren't popular, or because they were written by a women. Worse yet, if hell exists, wouldn't it suck to be thrown there because everyone missed the important bit?

This all comes back to what I've said many, many times. How can anyone make a decision about something if they don't have all the facts? How can people put there faith in something without doing there own research? I whole heartedly believe in freedom of religion, and I think it's wonderful that we all live on a planet where there is so much diversity in faith, but when you blindly accept what you are being told, you are a sheep. If you are going to make such an important decision, make it wisely. Always check the depth of the water before you dive in.

Jesus said, "If a blind person leads a blind person, both of them will fall into a hole."
Verse 34
The Gospel of Thomas