A while back I started a series about Sunday worship vs the Sabbath: see Sunday Church--To Go or Not to Go, How Sunday and the Sabbath Became Intertwined, and The Sabbath, The Mark of God, and Still Debating Where Sunday Fits In. It was during this period that someone showed me a video that I'm pretty sure has convinced many people not to believe in anything. They kept repeating "Christianity is stolen; it's all false." In a way it made me laugh, because with all the things said in the video, I expected that particular person to have a lot more to say. On the other hand, it reminded me why I went about my explanation the way I did... Throwing all the information out there is a touch overwhelming.
After talking to this person I was at a loss for which direction to go and how to present the point. Should I keep going as is? Should I skip to the end and back track? I've been debating this for a while, which is why I left the topic dangling. I've decided to jump to the conclusion.
My friend's quote is partially true. Christianity is a plagiarized religion. However plagiarism is not equivalent to false. Just because I stole a saying or story from someone doesn't make it false; it just makes it stolen. Of course, it's likely I would change parts of what I've stolen in an effort to make it look original. This is where it gets overwhelming. If you're a believer, the easy thing to do is put on your blinders and deny everything. If you're a non-believer or on the fence, the easiest thing to do is to say "ah ha! I told you it was all false." The natural tendency for people is to take the path of least resistance. For me, this is what I believe enables the real God (and His message) to be hidden. This false ideology acts as substitute, splitting the population into essentially people following a counterfeit religion and people who let the counterfeit religion turn them away from God altogether.
Falsification
Let's jump back to the beginning of Christianity. The typical assumption is that Christianity started during Jesus Christ's ministry, then expanded through the Roman Catholic Church. If you check historical sources, however, the disciples and other original followers of Christ still considered themselves Jews (there are various passages in the Bible where they differentiate themselves as Jews in comparison to the the gentiles, too). "Christianity," as it is structured today, actually started with the Roman Catholic Church around 321 AD, when Constantine declared it to be the official religion of Rome (this also marks the beginning of Sunday being declared the official day of rest). Growing up this was the main source of my desire to know more; I kept coming back to the same question--"If the Romans were so scared of Jesus that they arrested and eventually allowed the crucifixion of Jesus, why would they be the ones to spread the religion?" How did Christianity go from dangerous--to the point of execution--to the "it" thing?
The story given, is that Constantine had some dream about a cross or something, woke up a believer, and decided to convert the Roman empire to Christianity. What actually happened was the fusing of several "pagan" religions and Judaism. They then took the traditions of sun worship, which includes the festival celebrating the winter solstice and the rebirth of the sun on December 25, and the original Easter celebration (also of pagan origin but conveniently celebrated close to the time the passover), fused it with the idea of the Jewish Messiah and Jesus, to create modern Christianity. It always struck me as odd that Christianity has not a single holiday/tradition/etc. that doesn't coincide with something pagan. The video I mentioned early uses this to say that the Jesus Christian's worship is actually a deity in sun worship and that Jesus Christ the Messiah doesn't exist. Of course even after many re-translations of the Bible, if you read the Bible and match it with history you can distinguish that the Jesus described in the Bible was not born on December 25. This was set as Jesus' birthday for Roman (and thus man's) convenience. I conclude that the Messiah was not born on the 25th of December, but that doesn't mean He wasn't born (as I said, stolen doesn't mean false and blending of stolen material requires taking bits and pieces to create the "new").
Why
For most people, there's only one punishment worse than jail, and that's death. The reason a religion with a belief in an afterlife was dangerous to the Roman Empire is that it takes away the fear of death. Where you would have been a fool dying for no reason, now you could be a martyr and have the promise of another life--one even better than the one you were leaving behind. How was Rome supposed to reign in someone who believed that death wasn't the worse punishment they could have? This ideology, if left to spread, would have overturned Rome's control over the Jews.
Unfortunately, religion is a double edged sword. It had the possibility of giving the population hope, but in the same swoop, it gave Rome the perfect fear tactic to cancel out that hope. They put a quantifier on the promise of afterlife; it was there if you followed the pope's decrees, if you did what the priests wanted, if you gave them your money, if you didn't rebel. Under this guise they could over tax the population, discourage education, and keep the population completely dependent on the church which was faithful to Rome not Jerusalem. During the dark ages, the Roman Catholic Church was the most powerful entity in the world; the pope even had power over the kings and queens of Europe. Anyone who spoke against them was excommunicated and thus "denied" entry in to heaven. Those who chose education and posed questions or ideals that threatened this power where killed. Writings such as the dead sea scrolls, and the Gospel of Thomas, were hidden away in fear. In short, they restructured the religion to manipulate hope into fear, which enabled them to create a very powerful kingdom (well, a kingdom that was over kingdoms which is quite unique actually...).
What You Should Know
The biggest irony to me, is that under Constantine, there was the Council of Laodicea which determined what books would be included in the bible, deeming certain accounts of Jesus unacceptable (the beginning of killing people over forbidden knowledge and the term heresy), but they left in the book of Revelation and most references to the end times from the old testament. These are some of the hardest passages in the Bible to understand and often seem far-fetched and outlandish. I'm guessing that they didn't fully understand the prophecy and simply wanted something scary and intimidating to hang over the congregation's head.
Earlier on the blog I discussed why mark of the beast from Revelation is a false or counterfeit religion. I'd like to point out that Revelation says that in the end times, if people don't take the mark of the beast, they would not be able to participate in society and would be persecuted by the Antichrist. Well, the Inquisition, backed by the Roman Catholic Church murdered people in scores throughout the dark ages for "heresy" and not agreeing with the church. While the protestant church may have disassociated with the Catholic Church, it has retain many of the Catholic Church's practices, even adopting some of the same customs and practices (which sounds a lot like the daughters of the "Whore of Babylon"--Revelation 17--especially since the church is always referred to as a woman, i.e. the Bride of Christ). So even without knowing why or how, it becomes apparent that something is off with modern day Christianity and because they were sloppy with the book of Revelation, you can still figure out why (for me this the one of the signs that God does have a message He is trying to relay, but that's possibly a post for another day).
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Fear not, just because something is off, does not mean everything is false. If you do the research, you will find many stories from the Bible are duplicated across cultures. In some cases, it is quite possible that someone inserted those ideas into Christianity (particularly the sun worship ideas that Constantine merged into Christianity), but in other cases, such as the great flood, the story spans continents and it is unlikely the two cultures ever interacted. Some Biblical stories have possible scientific verification as well.
So where does that leave us?
I have little faith in religious practices, especially anything that could possible give man power over you. The basic ideas however, I think are real. Any time you have multiple people witness an event, they will recount it differently. Sometimes it will be small differences; perhaps person A and B agree that something has happened, but A thinks it happened on a Monday and person B thinks it happened on a Wednesday. Or maybe its something inconsequential; maybe A thinks it was raining and B thinks it was sunny out. Often, unfortunately, the difference is signifcant. Even in my family, my mom and I may recount a conversation to my dad where she'll say some one said or did something and I'll disagree, insisting they did not do or say whatever has been attributed to that person. Imagine that all these cultures have been shown the same things, not only will they process what they've seen and heard differently, but they'll have a language barrier trying to communicate the ideas as well. Now here we are 2000+ years later trying to piece it together. Some of it makes sense, some of it doesn't... It's the ultimate depiction of the gossip game.
It would take me 1000's of blog posts and years of writing to step through what I think is true vs false and why I think it. Some, you may agree with me, some you may not---you'd probably get sick of reading them, and I'd probably get tired of writing them. I've found that some things you have to find for yourself (like the existence of God); you have to figure out if you believe in Him on your own. No one can conclusively prove or disprove His existence. The only way to know what you believe is to study it all. One of the reasons it was so easy to manipulate people is that it was considered ungodly, unholy, etc. to read about other religions, to study history and science, etc. The truth is, you'd be amazed how much lines up and falls apart just by studying sources outside of what the preacher (or priest) gives you. I just watched a documentary where they believe they've found evidence of an asteroid collision to the earth that would have produced the exact conditions described in the story of Sodom & Gomorrah (and around the time it was supposed to happen).
My suggestion would be to read, to study, to question, and to seek answers. Don't just do it because that's how they've always done it. Don't just believe it because your pastor said it. Find the answer for yourself.
"1 And he said, "Whoever discovers the interpretation of these sayings will not taste death."2 Jesus said, "Those who seek should not stop seeking until they find. When they find, they will be disturbed. When they are disturbed, they will marvel, and will rule over all."3 Jesus said, "If your leaders say to you, 'Look, the (Father's) imperial rule is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the (Father's) imperial rule is inside you and outside you. When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living Father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you live in poverty, and you are the poverty." -Gospel of Thomas
