Vern Schanilec
March 4, 2018
About every 500 years something
significant happens within religion. There’s always a give or take of 50 to 150
years so don’t set your fitbit by it, but let’s keep with the interval theme.
I will start with the time of
Abraham around 2000 BC, give or take 100 years. You could ask why I don’t start
with the mythic time of Adam and Eve. I don’t see their existence in the
framework of religion because no formal institution was in place. God was still
the boss.
Abram (whose name was lengthened
to Abraham) is asked by God to walk with his family 1000 miles from today’s
Persian Gulf, the land of Ur, northward up the Fertile Crescent of today’s Iraq
as bordered by the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers unto what was known then as
Canaan. At the top of the Crescent his brother Haran was left behind along with
his beautiful daughters Rebekah and Rachel who would later be courted by their
cousins Isaac and Jacob. This was the origins of the Semitic group of Hebrews
that institutionalized what later came to be known as Judaism.
Around 1500 BC, give or take 150
years, a famine strikes the Promised Land. Jacob is in charge and decides to go
to Egypt for relief. He was not to leave the Promised Land, he was to trust
that God would provide, yet, he and his family of 70 members left to be
reunited with his politically powerful son Joseph. They prospered in Egypt’s
Land of Goshen in the next three centuries, give or take 100 years, till a new
Pharaoh came along and drove them to slavery, a period officially known as The
Exile. Three centuries later, depending on whose calendar you reference, God
tapped Moses to plead with the Pharaoh to let his people go and the Exodus
unfolded.
Around 1000 BC, give or take a
mere handful of years, David coalesced the Israeli Tribes into a confederacy,
defeated the Philistines, and proclaimed a theocratic monarchy upon his famous
march into Jerusalem. That lasted only as long as David’s heirs were able to
mess it up “royally” (pun intended) and were back to being enslaved, this time
in Bondage, being marched to Babylonia around 600 BC.
Around 500 BC, give or take 50
years, King Cyrus of Persia defeated the Babylonians, and upon discovering this
large group of ragtag enslaved Jews, sent them back to Jerusalem to start over.
Around the time of Jesus’ birth
the Jews were enslaved for the third and last time, this time in their own land
by the occupying Romans and by 135 AD, give 135 years from Jesus’ birth (though
the timeline for his birth is in question,) there were no longer any Jews in
Jerusalem. The situation persisted until 1948 when they were foisted upon the
Palestinians as recompense for the Holocaust. The bad news is they were
foisted, the good news, there is a democracy amidst the Arabian madness in the
Near East.
Around 500 AD, give or take 100
years, Pope Gregory I (also known as “The Great”) looked around, assayed the
threads of the abandoned Roman Empire as a result of sloth, accompanied by
raids by Goths and Visigoths, and stitched the Church back together in such a
way that Constantine’s dream of a Christian Monarchy was ultimately realized
within the Vatican, ultimately under the title of Holy Roman Empire.
Depending on your point of view
for good or bad, holy or unholy, the Empire engaged in forced proselytization
of the populace to Christianity to where the Bishop of Rome declared he was the
superior bishop of the Empire, ultimately leading to the papacy. The Byzantine
Bishop of Constantinople objected, bolted, and the Great Schism occurred,
unhealed to this day, forming the Eastern Orthodox Church of which there are
Greek, Russian and other divisions.
Around 1000 AD, give or take 50
years, the Empire began engaging in the Crusades to further their
proselytization, and in an effort to retake Jerusalem from the resident Arabs.
The Jews are potentially back in the middle of things even though, as of 165
AD, they were dispersed among the nations known as the Diaspora. The attempts
failed. I wonder if they had consulted God.
Around 1500 AD, give or take 50
years, the Great Reformation coalesced as spearheaded by Martin Luther; along
with Calvin, Zwingli, and others. Another schism occurred, splitting
Christianity down the middle just as the curtain of the Temple was torn when
Jesus died, the Gospel reports. The movement occurred due to the hegemony put
upon the populace by the Vatican and it blew up in their face with little hope,
again, of healing the schism.
2000 AD has come and gone. If you
look around, have you witnessed a significant event occurring in the last 18
years in the area of religion? In retrospect, those who have acted in the name
of religion have proffered: faith, lack of faith and oppression of the faithful
by despots, ever encouraging revolution from without. If we agree we’re past
due for a tumultuous religious experience perhaps we need give 50-150 years for
such an event to occur and might make one wonder who or what would be behind
the benevolence of second and third chances.
On the other hand, perhaps an
event is actually in-progress. It may have started in 1850 with Lord Farrington
teaching his students at the Royal Military Academy regarding the activity of
invisible electromagnetic waves. In 1859 Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species,
which is
controversial yet today, as it mapped evolution, to which scientists are in hot
pursuit. In the 1890s men such as Julius Wellhausen began looking at the
authorship and accuracy of the Bible, deducing that the Earth could not be just
6000 years old as it proposes; and that many hands were in its composition
instead of, or along with such persons as Moses, or those whose name appears in
its titles. That apple-cart is in full tipping mode today and will not be
reconciled soon.
What this movement signaled is,
that which heretofore was taken for granted as Biblical historical truth, is
now being questioned by science. What has also heretofore taken for granted is
that science is Godless, a point to which I take great opposition because,
strange as it may seem, the godless scientists are now accompanied by scientist
believers and those experienced of God. Their experience encumbers quite a
different perspective, one of awe and reality, and free of institutional
religion. And, as they pursue space, will ironically reveal to us how God is in
fact the Great Scientist and guides humankind and the cosmos accordingly.
Religion took a sharp right-turn
in 1959 when Pope John 23 announced his calling of the Second Vatican
Ecumenical Council, known as Vatican II, an event incidentally, strongly
opposed by his cohorts in the Vatican. He said he was told by God to begin a
new Pentecost, a term I have not mentioned to this point but is nothing new since
it jump-started the Church 2000 years ago, give or take 30 years. Pentecost had
been abandoned and ignored since around 800 AD and I’ve already itemized the
mayhem incurred by the empire-builders-that-be since that point in time, and
what happens when the Pentecostal Holy Spirit is thus callously treated.
The Charismatic movement was
born of the Council which encompasses all of Christianity and those who may
inquire. Others will claim it was born in the 1800s due to the efforts of
Joseph Smith, Aimee Semple McPherson and others. For believers and those who
have experienced God, the lesson all along this sordid 2000-year history of
Christianity is that unless you listen to God’s direction, crap will happen.
Non-believers may demure. They and others could say, “Well, it’s the evil
within the human condition that propels religious leaders to behave badly and
God has nothing to do with it.” Perhaps. In which direction do you think the
evidence points?
The Charismatic movement is
composed of both the charlatans who use its properties for personal gain, and
the faithful who look to God for guidance and healing. Side by side, the two
forces pursue their goals. There are those concerned whether or not God will
win the tug of war.
Will we know by the signs if something
religiously significant is occurring among us? Look around, the signs are
there. Governments are engaged in their corruption, the culture is steeped in
violence and abuse, people are starving, despots oppress and murder their
people and religious leaders practice their exclusivity. Are those issues (or
signs) any different than what the 4000 year religious history demonstrates?
Not in principle has anything changed but the magnitude has increased with the
nuclear threat, the enlarged egos of despotic leaders who would conquer the
world’s population if they could, and are trying, inside and outside of
religion.
A march away from God is in
progress of unprecedented volumes. Much is religiously self-inflicted due to
the division and exclusivity practiced within Christianity, with which it seems
quite comfortable. “Believe what you will, just leave me in my comfort zone.”
Is the divide and ensuing exclusivity (therefore lacking inclusivity) in
Christianity what Jesus taught and would see as compatible with what God wants
for us? Another tug of war.
It’s déjà vu all over again,
century after century, despot after despot, religious or secular. Our leaders
apparently cannot and will not learn from history. It is believed by many that
God stepped in to create change every 500 years, give or take. If so, then
apparently we should be looking for that kind of spiritual guidance in our
time, guidance so desperately needed and to which might awaken the world.
There is an enigma wrapped in an
irony at work. First, one need consider if there in fact is a God. If no, we
can still discuss the conundrum of, if there is a God who has taken great pains
to set up a faith system, why do humans continue to operate as if in a vacuum
apart from God, ignoring the perils of religious history? There seems to be a
separation of levels between what God offers and the path humans pursue,
ironically, in the name of God. What, if anything, can be done if our leaders
will not change their ways?
“Vanities of vanities,” says the
Preacher, “vanity of vanities! All is vanity”, so proclaimed the biblical
teacher Ecclesiastes. Apparently the religious leaders of history are not aware
of their own teaching.
Comments
Post a Comment