The Christian Home Manual and Gnosticism and History As The Only Difference In Religion

( Name Analysis )

I found this Christian Home Manual online yesterday, and read through it with a mixture of terror and odd amusement.

( Some Highlights )

As Kristina said, "I didn't know there was an eleventh commandment we missed: 'Thou Shalt Beat Thy Children Into Submission.'" O.o . . .

Apologies if anyone really does live like that, or believe firmly that is their personal route to salvation, etc . . . I mean, it's a religion and a viable lifestyle. However, I would argue one should choose it willingly, and not shelter one's children so that they only embrace it simply because it's all they know. Honestly, that sort of all-encompassing religious-rearing strikes me as a bizarre sort of child abuse. Can you abuse a child philosophically? I would think one can-- just as one can physical or emotionally neglect-- by denying a child their right to their own existential search for truth. It gets so complicated, though, because if one did believe this, they would also believe in its own all-encompassing objectivity and feel they are doing their kids a favor.

So I'm some crazy-ass lost soul trying to corrupt them; I need to be kept out of their saved home. Or beaten into submission. Whatever :-P

(Plus, I totally understand that not all Christians live like that. Read on-- I make more sense when the rest of my philosophy is made more obvious . . . Besides, considering how brutally I make fun of my own dearly beloved Harry Potter, Romeo and Juliet-- you should have seen me watching it today-- Les Miserables, Wicked, and even the entire country of Japan, just know it follows that I make fun of what I love ^_^ in fact, I only feel safe teasing people I feel close and comfortable with! Lol . . . )

Continuing on the subject of religion, I was reading the National Geographic article on the Gospel of Judas (aka the Judas=Snape theory :-P HARRY POTTER IS A GNOSTIC ALLEGORY!!! Heh, that probably makes it even more controversial to many already-skeptical Christian groups . . . ).

( I have come to the conclusion that pretty much every time Christianity has faced a fork in the road in its historical progress, it chooses dominantly to take the side I like least. )

So I think I'm really feeling the Gnosticism thing, as far as Christianity goes.

Though, pssh, like this is even anything close to claiming a religion. I'm a hodgepodge, what can I say? I'm a really fervent, seeking hodgepodge, but I'm a hodgepodge. I'm spiritual. I'm agnostic. I pick and choose what I like and find organized religion for the most part suppressing and confining. I'm always going to have a little Buddhist and Shinto and even sometimes Daoist in me, not to mention a rather traditionally Islamic fondness for study over action (ironic, now, eh, that they're renowned as jihadists?) and I've always respected the openness of Judaism to interpretation of texts; from what I've seen they're traditionally into studying and understanding rather than just being inculcated without really getting it.

Actually, a better perspective would be that I have a set of beliefs, and it's just that certain periods in history have better connected to them. We all have our views on Islam and Judaism and Christianity and such today, but, apart from differing views on the Messiah and the last prophet, they're all exactly the same-- and I do mean that. They're only different because they're in different phases. They all started out as struggling religions, at their most open-minded point, with diverse followers with diverse opinions. Then, for social reasons, they got strict-- and this strictness became embracable amongst suffering populations looking for the answers. Then, they relaxed, as they grew, all went through a phase of growth, where texts were studied and encouraged to be interpreted. Then, as soon as they became dominant, politics took over and they went strict again, suddenly cutting out all but one strain of the plethora of ideas that had previously branched off. They split into sects-- some more destined to survive than others-- and mostly based off of the same basic conflicts: conversion, elitism of the religious group itself (connected, in part, to conversion), the route to salvation (this applies even beyond Christianity; I once did a report on how the the various rites attached to chanting of Buddha's name in certain sects parallels salvation: some say it once, with feeling, and are Enlightened like born-again Christians are saved for eternity and guaranteed a place in Heaven; others must repeat it over and over in the style of the ever-repenting and renewing-peace-with-God Catholics), the necessity of rites, the personal connection to God, the subjectivity of religious texts. Every religion goes through these periods of change, it's just each one is at a certain more-or-less fundamental point in time than the religions around it, and so it's just a gamble left up to history. Hence, I'm by no means a modern Christian, but I might have been a pretty hard-core one if I had lived sometime from 33 to 300 A.D.

Hmm, it's been a while since I've really done a long, thoughtful rant . . . ^_^ feels good!

Tune in next week when I attempt to write a Gnostic parody of the modern Christian Home Manual.

The Christian Home Manual and Gnosticism and History As The Only Difference In Religion

( Name Analysis )

I found this Christian Home Manual online yesterday, and read through it with a mixture of terror and odd amusement.

( Some Highlights )

As Kristina said, "I didn't know there was an eleventh commandment we missed: 'Thou Shalt Beat Thy Children Into Submission.'" O.o . . .

Apologies if anyone really does live like that, or believe firmly that is their personal route to salvation, etc . . . I mean, it's a religion and a viable lifestyle. However, I would argue one should choose it willingly, and not shelter one's children so that they only embrace it simply because it's all they know. Honestly, that sort of all-encompassing religious-rearing strikes me as a bizarre sort of child abuse. Can you abuse a child philosophically? I would think one can-- just as one can physical or emotionally neglect-- by denying a child their right to their own existential search for truth. It gets so complicated, though, because if one did believe this, they would also believe in its own all-encompassing objectivity and feel they are doing their kids a favor.

So I'm some crazy-ass lost soul trying to corrupt them; I need to be kept out of their saved home. Or beaten into submission. Whatever :-P

(Plus, I totally understand that not all Christians live like that. Read on-- I make more sense when the rest of my philosophy is made more obvious . . . Besides, considering how brutally I make fun of my own dearly beloved Harry Potter, Romeo and Juliet-- you should have seen me watching it today-- Les Miserables, Wicked, and even the entire country of Japan, just know it follows that I make fun of what I love ^_^ in fact, I only feel safe teasing people I feel close and comfortable with! Lol . . . )

Continuing on the subject of religion, I was reading the National Geographic article on the Gospel of Judas (aka the Judas=Snape theory :-P HARRY POTTER IS A GNOSTIC ALLEGORY!!! Heh, that probably makes it even more controversial to many already-skeptical Christian groups . . . ).

( I have come to the conclusion that pretty much every time Christianity has faced a fork in the road in its historical progress, it chooses dominantly to take the side I like least. )

So I think I'm really feeling the Gnosticism thing, as far as Christianity goes.

Though, pssh, like this is even anything close to claiming a religion. I'm a hodgepodge, what can I say? I'm a really fervent, seeking hodgepodge, but I'm a hodgepodge. I'm spiritual. I'm agnostic. I pick and choose what I like and find organized religion for the most part suppressing and confining. I'm always going to have a little Buddhist and Shinto and even sometimes Daoist in me, not to mention a rather traditionally Islamic fondness for study over action (ironic, now, eh, that they're renowned as jihadists?) and I've always respected the openness of Judaism to interpretation of texts; from what I've seen they're traditionally into studying and understanding rather than just being inculcated without really getting it.

Actually, a better perspective would be that I have a set of beliefs, and it's just that certain periods in history have better connected to them. We all have our views on Islam and Judaism and Christianity and such today, but, apart from differing views on the Messiah and the last prophet, they're all exactly the same-- and I do mean that. They're only different because they're in different phases. They all started out as struggling religions, at their most open-minded point, with diverse followers with diverse opinions. Then, for social reasons, they got strict-- and this strictness became embracable amongst suffering populations looking for the answers. Then, they relaxed, as they grew, all went through a phase of growth, where texts were studied and encouraged to be interpreted. Then, as soon as they became dominant, politics took over and they went strict again, suddenly cutting out all but one strain of the plethora of ideas that had previously branched off. They split into sects-- some more destined to survive than others-- and mostly based off of the same basic conflicts: conversion, elitism of the religious group itself (connected, in part, to conversion), the route to salvation (this applies even beyond Christianity; I once did a report on how the the various rites attached to chanting of Buddha's name in certain sects parallels salvation: some say it once, with feeling, and are Enlightened like born-again Christians are saved for eternity and guaranteed a place in Heaven; others must repeat it over and over in the style of the ever-repenting and renewing-peace-with-God Catholics), the necessity of rites, the personal connection to God, the subjectivity of religious texts. Every religion goes through these periods of change, it's just each one is at a certain more-or-less fundamental point in time than the religions around it, and so it's just a gamble left up to history. Hence, I'm by no means a modern Christian, but I might have been a pretty hard-core one if I had lived sometime from 33 to 300 A.D.

Hmm, it's been a while since I've really done a long, thoughtful rant . . . ^_^ feels good!

Tune in next week when I attempt to write a Gnostic parody of the modern Christian Home Manual.