Some wag suggested recently that if I wanted a huge church, invite the pollies, create “with it” music, tell folk their prayers would be answered and because they were born sinners, Jesus would rescue them, save them and admit them to heaven. I could also cease getting my hair cut; that would be a big plus!!
Some wag suggested recently that if I wanted a huge church, invite the pollies, create "with it" music, tell folk their prayers would be answered and because they were born sinners, Jesus would rescue them, save them and admit them to heaven. I could also cease getting my hair cut; that would be a big plus!!
I laughed. To do all that would make me an intellectual fraud. Long ago I left behind the traditional Christian schema of two perfect, sinless people in a garden who ate forbidden fruit and introduced human suffering and misery and offended God. Think about that. Does it sound plausible to you?
Upon this ancient myth, two major world religions are constructed; Judaism and Christianity. Each has used it to control its devotees. The Christians controlled whole populations with it, waged wars and persecuted men, women and children to death in its name, banishing them to Hell and the fires of eternity.
Two doctrines in Christianity even today rest on the garden myth: the Atonement and the Trinity. The first says God relented of His garden curse and sent his son as a rescue package. For this to be effective the son had to die a ritual death at the hands of sinners. Only then did God lift the garden curse.
The Trinity doctrine seeks to explain how the divine became human, died, then became the son of the divine and was an active spirit; three in one. It too rests on the garden myth as the Atonement doctrine does.
Many Christians in the modern world are leaving the garden behind to become overgrown with the weeds of time. Others can’t get enough of it – it fills the seats each Sunday and assures them God up there is watching over and guiding every moment of their lives.
I belong to the Christians who don’t see Jesus as the divine rescuer who had to be slaughtered in order to satisfy God that the ancient garden debt was now paid. There are still Christians who sing lustily of being "washed in the blood" and "He died to save us all". These expressions can all be traced back to the fruit tree in the garden.
Who then is the real Jesus? The unique person revealed in history whose life was enfolded in God. He pointed to a new way of understanding God, a God who understood the creature he had made and would never stop loving it.
So what replaces the myth? I don’t deny evil. I see it every day but I don’t attribute it to an ancient fall from perfection. Rather it rises from the incompleteness of the evolutionary process. We are incomplete creatures.
We need to face the trauma of self-consciousness, the self-centredness of that hysterical struggle for our survival that only creatures like us can understand. What we have done is erect security systems that are capable of destroying us all.
Have a nice day in the garden.