Do They Understand What Christianity Is? (part II)

I know I have made great advances in my knowledge of early Christianity when I see how some people look at the tradition. Yes, to be certain there is something of a 'comic book' aspect to the religion. Here is Jesus healing the sick. Here is Jesus turning the water into wine. Here is Jesus at the Passion, now on the Cross, now coming resurrected out of the tomb.

The difficulty is that the religion was always smart enough to speak to two audiences at the same time. Pagels totally misapplies this twofold division to just 'the heretical gnostic community' yet it is actually the way all the ancient monastic communities function including the Catholic Church.

There are simple people who only know the picture book version of the religion and then there are the people who understand the psychic architecture, the structure which holds it all together. Indeed I love Bill Maher but when it was only when I saw his Religilous movie that I realized what a simplistic notion of religion he really has.

You can't allow yourself to just see Christianity as a jumbled picture book story. The stain glass windows are actually held together by a complex structure of scriptural references and theological understandings that only a handful of Christians in the world at this present time really understand.

Christianity isn't paganism. It is a Jewish messianic religion EXPRESSED to some through pictures but nevertheless held together with a deep logic even if you encounter millions of idiots along the way unable to articulate what it is ...


Stephan Huller's Observations by stephanhuller.blogspot.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at stephanhuller.blogspot.com.