Few look at the history of our global societies. Fewer look at the history of the church. Reading and accepting the Bible without any knowledge of both societal and church history creates a sort of empty following. It is similar to the times when Priests could only read the Bible in Latin because the lay people were not literate and had to blindly shuffle along. Today we have a vast resource within the Internet and there is no excuse.
Having separated myself from what some might reference a cult church, my search into those histories brought about a multitude of questions. But when I began to ask those questions I was told I was divisive and challenging authority. Essentially I was banished and the members of the church were instructed to abandon me.
Why?
I am the same person now vs. then, so why would the Church suddenly find me to be not of the flock? Why did I become a threat?
The largest nagging query was quite inadvertently conveyed to me when a friend asked me to accompany him to a Catholic Church and I hesitated being an evangelical. His response was, “what’s the problem, He’s the same God?”
And, of course, my friend was right.
In creating a babel of churches, in essence, the Church has destroyed religion.
Each sect or religion states that they are the only true religion and all other religions are false. Many even assert that because their nuance is the only correct translation only those who follow this nuance will be saved and go to Heaven. Everyone else is bound for Hell.
Even though – He is the same God.
There are hundreds of translations of the Bible. Each translation has been conveyed by mortal men. They are called ‘Versions’. And while each version claims to serve a particular purpose, by definition a version is a person’s point of view. And thus, religion was usurped by The Church as a point of view.
The Bible cannot be ‘a point of view’ it must be the Word. But like Adam, mortal man believes he is greater than God and must insert his personal translation and liken it above all others.
Even that wasn’t enough. Words have been implanted into the Bible that didn’t even exist at the time of the writings. The words created legalistic power in order for the Church to hold rule over Monarchs and thus all peasants. For example:
Marriage.
The word marriage was created sometime in 1100 AD. And it was thus determined that the Pope must officiate all marriages in order for them to be legal. Prior to that time, men and women had loose relationships that involved their father’s permission, a dowry, and sharing a house. When the Bible was written, marriage by our standards didn’t even exist. The binding of a man and woman was a commitment amidst a necessary Biblical calling to procreate. God called on Adam and Eve to multiply and prosper. There was no calling for them to love or marry. Thousands of years later, Kings married to enhance their position and held formal celebrations to announce this union. Peasants were required to attend in order to signify the union was politically good.
Over time, the Bible and Biblical teachings were altered to incorporate the new concept of marriage as created by the Catholic church. Centuries later, a babel of evangelical churches began to develop all embracing these man-made concepts and precepts, while still holding to the premise that they, each of them, were the only true religion and all others were false.
These Babels fractured the Church as they sought to refine and redefine religion outside of its core truth.
Homosexuality:
The term was coined in the late 1800’s and didn’t exist in the Bible until 1946. A German psychologist, Karoly Maria Benkert, created the word while researching sexuality.
The original Greek words were arsenokoitai and malakos. A more literal meaning of these words would describe a person participating in exploitative sex typically associated with money, and a man taking the social and sexual position of a woman, respectively.
During the many infamous journey’s of Paul, Pompeii citizens notoriously engaged in brothels, prostitution, and exploitive sex. Some believe that the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and the subsequent destruction of Pompeii was God’s vengeance on a corrupt city.
Sexuality was far different. Incest was common. Homosexual behavior existed as an accepted norm. There simply wasn’t the attitude and judgment that prevails today.
The Roman Emperor Nero had five spouses, three women, one man and one boy before dying at the age of 30. His death is referenced as ‘suicide’ although several accounts claim Nero went into hiding given his entire court had stated they were going to torture and execute him.
Paul was placed in house arrest and released two years later in 62AD. His arrest was made as a result of being accused of dissension by Jews. Paul was ‘divisive’ because he was challenging behaviors and ideas that were the norm. While it is not factually known, it is believed that Paul’s second imprisonment and ultimate death occurred in 68AD, the same year Nero died. But Nero had lost control of his realm at that point so the account that Nero had Paul beheaded is quite unlikely.
Other accounts state that Paul’s death occurred ‘sometime between 62 and 67AD’. Obviously, the historical evidence does not exist or there would not be a five year possible span of time. In other words, we don’t know.
History surrounding Nero and Paul has been rewritten. Versions were created hundreds of years after the fact by men who had an – agenda. Paul’s execution has little historical context. The first account that stated that Paul was beheaded by Nero was made by Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea who lived between 275 and 339 AD, over 200 years after Paul died. Bishop Caesarea was a nontrinitarian whose beliefs today would be most closely aligned with Mormons and Jehovah Witness.
It is likely that Paul’s reference to arsenokoitai and malakoswere rebuttals against the given moral norm of the time which included; prostitution, incest, bestiality and brothels. While Paul further describes what is natural and unnatural according to God’s creation and command – that command was to multiply, and same sex relations does not accomplish that end. The concern was not sexual immorality but more importantly the fact that procreation was at risk, which was God’s first command to Adam and Eve. Man had become consumed with ‘passions’ instead of furthering the creed of growing the herd.
Leviticus is commonly referenced as the one Biblical context that prohibits a male from lying with another male. It is said to be inspired by Moses who died in the 13thcentury BC. Written sometime between 500 and 350 BC, Leviticus is a compilation of many authors, none of whom are known. It is believed to have been written by ‘the law of priests; as its laws relate to priests’. It is a calling for absolute purity and holiness within the priesthood so as to establish a perfect bloodline. The passage most often decried is; “You shall not lie with a male, as with a woman; it is an abomination”.
But Leviticus has many other Laws: Childbirth is considered ‘unclean’, menstruation is unclean, and a laundry list rambles on commanding a person to wear garments of a single weave, plant fields of a single seed, and instructs them to refrain from mating two different kinds of animals. Any of the multitude of laws that are not adhered to require the immediate consequence of – death or being severed from the body of priests. Yet, those penalties are not sanctified by The Church. Instead, they are upheld in Islam.
So why is 18:22 the only passage the target of The Church despite every other passage being ignored? Why has Leviticus been pronounced as applying to the common people when it was specifically written for priestly holiness? Why do we take certain commands and say they are not applicable and others are? Do members of the church wear garments made of one weave? Does your garden have more than one seed? Why is Leviticus even in the Bible if it is a memorandum to Priests? Why is it even acknowledged at all when no one has any idea who wrote it? And how is it that its laws and penalties are so closely aligned with Sharia Law?
Why has this one obscure passage, written by unknown men, to be applied specifically for Priests gained such weight and obsessive commentary as a societal immorality?
It is estimated that the population of the total Roman Empire declined drastically between 1 AD and 350 AD. Wars were constant. And without procreation there was concern that the Roman civilization might not survive.
Prostitutes routinely utilized methods of contraception and abortion. In ancient Greece an herb, Silphium, was customarily used for these purposes. Its use is recorded as far back as 700 BC. Men had become consumed with their passion for other men, boys and prostitutes thereby jeopardizing their duty to have children.
So why did the Church ultimately focus their wrath on homosexuality in the 1950’s and their power over marriage in the 12thcentury?
It is believed that the best way to corral the sheep is through the creation of a common enemy. The Church is no different than our political class. Power, control, wealth, prosperity, these goals authored what was and is The Church and redefined religion. In so doing, they have essentially corrupted ‘religion’, they have plagiarized, rewritten history, omit history, and wholly attempted to indoctrinate masses. And in the Babel, Christ is lost, God is lost, and deception is the Holy meme.
I may Stand by Religion… But I cannot stand by The Church.
I find it amazing that God made everything in this Universe yet didn’t figure out how to keep His Word intact and without various interpretations. This seems a ridiculous possibility for one who literally has the power to give Life, yet didn’t provide an ironclad copyright.
How can this be unless by choice?
(This is a legit question not sarcasm.)
So you know I’ve Faith Christ is God. My sense of Him ( him…for a better word) differs on many matters than ” the organization’s ” hence I keep to myself after my multiple abandonments by the
” loving believers “. I consider the Fear instilled in them from childhood propaganda as reason for their abuse.
I can forgive that.
Nevertheless, my question remains…now yours to answer. 🙂
G
And if the Babel of faiths was his sovereign will then it would follow that those who babel are to be feared…
A thought provoking article, thanks.
Keep on keeping on….
I feel you are delving too deep. Most people in the West pay little attention to the Church yet their societies have been shaped by its precepts. I can’t speak about peoples in the US but in the UK the vast majority have only paid lip service to the Church for quite a few generations. I don’t think it is the Church that has destroyed religion but the war which has been waged on it – since the advent of communism in particular – an atheistic ideology. Just consider Russia as an example. Under communist rule Christianity was made taboo, with nearly all churches being destroyed. Since the collapse of communism Orthodox Christianity has made a huge comeback. Take into account communism hasn’t really been destroyed as cultural Marxism is itself an offshoot of it – aspects of which pervade the West – where Christianity / Church has been undermined every which way possible by it and by those who despise Christianity itself. A means of demoralising a nation is by constantly causing chaos. There is no better way than to always pander to minority groups – homosexuality comes under this heading. Cultural Marxism pushes this division as it emphasises the oppressed vs the privileged and so on. To try and understand the erosion of the power of the Church and the rise of the importance of minority groups I tend to question who gains from all this? Seems out of the 3 Abrahamic Religions (Judaism – Christianity – Islam) it is only Christianity which has suffered such huge change in recent years. I find this highly suspicious myself and a good a place as any to wonder why this is so.
While I don’t disagree with anything you have said, that wasn’t really my point. Certainly, there has been a fearsome attempt to wipe out Christianity, but the reasoning today is mainly simple control. As long as people have a united faith, they can not be conquered, as in ‘divide and conquer’. My point is much different. It is about how the Church has misaligned religion via a Babel of religions all claiming to be the only one truth. How can the Word be inerrant when man continually alters it’s meaning for political, societal, or power purposes?
What do mean by a ‘babel’? Do you mean lots of versions of Christianity? Bit of a contradiction as they are all under the umbrella of the one faith. Aspects of the faith no-doubt are different within each group, but should any be asked which faith they follow they would still consider themselves Christians one way or another. Take the Jewish faith – Judaism. There are various versions, Orthodox, Conservative, Reconstructionist, and Reform movement to name just a few, but they are all considered followers of Judaism. Same goes for Islam.
I can see your point with regard to these 3 monotheistic religions all being followers of the same God yet being very different from one another. All boils down to who is speaking the truth I suppose? Touchy subject. With both Judaism and Islam there is less fracturing owing to the strongly held notion the written words are immutable (seems Jews are a little more free with regard to their interpretations than Islamists are – less harsh a punishment), whereas with Christianity there is much more flexibility. Seems this is a Christian weakness if you ask me. Without some sort of enforced rigidity with regard to what is right or wrong you end up with bickering and separation. Could say the same with regard to liberalism, in that too much freedom of thought or action leads to destruction eventually, caused by people not knowing when to draw the line . I think we all need some sort of guiding discipline to keep us on the straight and narrow.
I’m not absolutely sure what Orthodox Christianity is but is seems to be one many are following, including many Russian citizens. It would be better one version of Christianity becomes the accepted Christian religion to follow as unity of purpose (or identity) could well be of vital importance soon the way nations are changing.
This is exactly my point! You can not have an inerrant Word and then change it, modify it, insert into it, and still claim it is inerrant. Babel more readily defines these variations on The Word – as opposed to simply language. When all faiths can come together, then Babel will disappear. Christianity in its Evangelical context has been morphed to conform to Lutherism or Calvinism – both of which were mortal men who simply altered the ‘version’ to align with their ‘version’. Further whitewashing the Truth. Speak the Truth. Let it be. Instead power and control dictate and in this – religion dies.
Marriage: The questions asked of Christ about marriage by the Saducees, who didn’t believe in the Resurrection (so says the word of God), and Christ’s answers, make it very clear that marriage then is very similar to the idea that most Christians have when they use the word “marriage”. It’s true that almost all marriages were common-law until “the (generic) State” seized on the concept and arrogated itself authority over marriage.
Evangelicals from my memory commit a horrible sin when they say “by the power vested in me by the state of New York” I pronounce you, blah blah. Government has no business in the business of marriage. If they didn’t, then sodomites and their fellows among cross-dressers and genital mutilation advocates would have no incentive to use the aggressive force monopoly against the rest of us for support. Blatant loud bloggers would have no case, like saying there are 10,000 benefits that married couples enjoy that “gays” cannot (at the time he said that the courts had not upended the laws on homosexuality yet).
No matter when somebody first coined the word “homosexuality”, it was a known practice in some places. And there were plenty of words for it. NOBODY can say it isn’t mentioned in the Bible, everybody always knew what SODOMY meant. Paul was very clear in the description of it in Romans 1, when he talked about men burning in lust:
“And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.” Romans 1:27.
What existed in the King James Bible is the word “sodomy”. Changing that to “homosexuality” sounds like some academic like the pedophile researcher Kinsey, who writes about babies being sexually stimulated to the point of convulsions. Who tilted the numbers in favor of “gays” by adding a lot of interviews done in gay bars.
Everybody also knows that in places where sexual intercourse is mentioned, “know” is used as a euphemism for SEX. So-and-so “knew her, and she bore a son”. When a gang of men gathered outside Lot’s house in Sodom, and insisted on having them come out so they could “know” them, they weren’t talking about going somewhere for a beer. We all know that.
That the word wasn’t known is a copout. The word “dinosaur” isn’t in the King James Bible either. That’s because they had no clue how to translate the word for them they came across in the book of Job. But they refused to do what the liars and DECEIVERS of today’s modern “translations” have done, and make up animals it might have been according to their Darwinian doctrines. The KJB translators TRANSLITERATED the word, and then went on to faithfully translate the description. The KJB scholars probably even realized this was an animal outside their experience. Look up the description Job of “Behemoth”. But you can’t trust even the descriptions from 20th and 21st century translations.
As to marriage, the Saducees asked Jesus about who was the husband in heaven of the seven-times widowed and remarried woman and Jesus responded wisely, but this –and other passages– show very clearly what was expected of married couples here on earth. whatever words they used.
They had “betrothals” of couples then, but usually it was what is still called “common-law” marriage today. The rules are very clear in both the Torah and Tanuch and in the New Testament. The word “adultery” and “fornication” get frequent use in the Bible and their definition depends on what is natural marriage, man and woman. Modern translators mostly refuse to use the words. Somebody wrote once that Pastor Cole (a call-in program for Bible questions on Moody Radio) one time could not find anywhere in the Bible where it condemned adultery.
Of course sex is not as Puritan as the Puritans considered it, even though their modern reputation is not fair to them at all.
Just wanted to clarify a couple of things.
This is what happens when graduates of modern divinity schools take charge of translations of the Bible. Lots of filthy lucre to be had in copyright laws by changing a percentage of the Bible’s words, heaping God’s condemnations and judgments upon themselves as warned about in Revelation and in Jesus’ teachings. He even rebuked the Pharisees for not knowing the scriptures, despite the fact that most of them had the complete Torah perfectly memorized and much of the Tanukh.
In the Bible Sodomy referred to forcible sex – rape. That is not synonymous with homosexuality. Once again, historical references conjoined with Biblical references do interlope, sometimes… and sometimes they do not. It is the false testimony of ‘versions’ that I specifically address. NO – Adama and Eve did not ‘marry’ – because marriage in the sense it is today did not exist, the word did not exist, and the concept did not exist. It may have evolved, but my point is – by whom – by whose definition – and for what gain? Historical reference must include non biblical as well as Biblical to be evidentiary.
If you are honest in your historical context, the Bible is obsessive with ‘nonoconsensual sex’, rape. Whether it be between men or women or any variation therein, that is the focus. Nonconsensual.