Monday, March 1, 2010

God comes along for the ride as we evolve

God comes along for the ride as we evolve
March 1 2010

To Jeff:

Generally speaking, I concur with your affirmative statement that Jesus Christ, if he ever existed historically in the first century,
1. was a Jewish rabbi whose Hebrew name was Yeshua or Yehoshua.
2. taught in his entire life only the Jewish laws and never abandoned his Jewish belief.
3. neither started a new religion nor was he the founder of Christianity.

Obviously, above facts would suffice to give most of Christian fools the shocking food for thought about their religious devotion on Jesus Christ.
1. Jesus (Savior) Christ (Messiah) was, posthumously and involuntarily, recruited as an ‘Anchor Baby’** in the Judaic community by the Hellenized Jew, Apostle Paul in Asia Minor.
2. As he allegedly stated in ipsissima verba, Matthew 5: 17: “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy but to fulfill”, he only taught the Jewish laws to his people and he was a devout Jew as his 12 disciples, not Christians at all.
3. He was no less a tribal cult leader in Judaism than Rev. Sun Myung Moon is a sectarian preacher in Christianity. He died on the Cross without knowing that he was a Christian God.

In addition, I would like to remind you that we, the 21st Century people, were not the ‘target audience’ for the Bible’s authors, but the people who believed in theories like earth is flat, a unicorn exists, or the celestial teapot revolving around the sun, etc.

And also I would like to remind you that we often forget the fact that we have constantly been evolving, in the course of our lives, in choosing, interpreting, and defining the meanings and paradigms of our political, social, cultural, and religious sensibilities...in other words, from primitive polytheism to the current monotheism, Gods that we worship were chosen, shaped, discarded, abandoned, defined, re-interpreted and re-created according to changes in human dynamics, and Jesus Christ was not an exception...he simply comes along for the ride as we evolve.

For example, Christianity now thrives in the US and South Korea dressed in the garment of ‘prosperity gospel’ that believes in God who wants His children to enjoy health, happiness and wealth NOW and not as an eternal reward after their death in Heaven.
They have a vision of the Gospel in which sanctifies the human desire for wealth by declaring that “money printed the Bible, money builds our churches, money sends your missionaries, or money pays your preachers, etc.”

In other words, the things you possess can also be a measure of your godliness.
Reading the verses of Bible in a fashion that the rich man has less chance to get into the Heaven than an Elephant passing through the hole in the needle makes no more sense any more than a homeless beggar was blessed by Jesus Christ.
The Christian Gospels have been contextualized** within various world cultures by the Evangelical Movement, in which process makes the verses of Scripture often marginalized depending on who you asked about.

When these cultural setting is prioritized, God’s meaning is syncretized** fitting into categories relevant to the particular cultural context, for example in case of the South Korean Christianity that is specifically designed for the South Korean people; not by transplanting in the pot of Western culture but by planning it in the South Korean cultural soil so it can take root, flourish, and grow into a tapestry of beliefs, rites, and values of their indigenous shamanistic religion.
In the South Korean cultural setting in the North America, what is worthwhile is to have more—always more—even at the cost of others having less or having nothing.
For them, to be is to have and to be the class of “the haves”.

Therefore, the South Korean Churches cater to what people want. It is more a vendor of goods and services than a community of the Kingdom of God.
When the idea of a God formed in one generation by one set of human beings becomes to be meaningless and powerless in another generation, it is quietly discarded and replaced by a new God as the primitive shamanism was removed from the community to accommodate more powerful and adorned deity.
Each generation has to create the image of god that works for it.
That is why modern Christians have decaffeinated, defanged, laundered, purified, and universalized the tribal Yahweh God of Old Testament into a modern, responsive, refined, peace-loving and fast food type of a contextualized** and syncretized** God.

**anchor baby is a term also called a jackpot baby used to refer to a child born in the US to illegal immigrants or non-citizens. The term refers to the role of an illegal alien’s child as a US citizen, in facilitating immigration under the birthright clauses in the immigration act. The anchor baby is a pejorative term that most Americans despise them because these babies exhaust the national revenues and burden the educational institution while they do not contribute any expenses as taxpayers.
As about 5,000 late-term pregnant women of South Koreans annually travel to the US to deliver the same numbers or more babies in the US Hospital for the US citizenship, I boldly suggest that Apostle Paul needed Jesus to propagate his syncretized** version of Judaism to the Jewish community. Some say Christianity should be called Paulianity.

**contextualization is a term used in the study of Bible in relation to their relevant cultural settings in order to communicate the Christian teachings in cultures which had not previously experienced them.
Contextualization is broadly used by secular, religious and political groups to render their message into different settings by adjusting or accommodating words, phrases or meanings into understandable contexts in respondent cultures.

**syncretism refers to the attempt to bring together beliefs from several different and often contradictory schools of thought. Many modern theologians lay claim that most religions have either now or in the past practiced a certain degree of syncretism.
Mainstream Christianity for instance, has incorporated much Judaic thought, and also picked up practices along the way that were not a part of early Christianity.
When we celebrate Christmas with Christmas trees, and feasts, we hearken back to Pagan rituals that were swept up and incorporated into Christianity in an effort to convert non-Christians.
If you hunt Easter eggs at Easter, you’re not only celebrating the resurrection of Christ but also adding Greek and Roman pagan ritual to your beliefs as a Christian.
Syncretism cannot be defined without an understanding of contextualization since two processes are interrelated.