Spring 2008

February 20

On the way to New Orleans, but I've got some things to say about Genesis. Did I tell you about Biallas' interpretation? I'd forgotten it, all this time, or had forgotten to let it affect me. A lot of what I learned in my religion courses in college I've continued to apply to all religions BUT Christianity. Hmm – fair treatment, huh?

Biallas points out, much in line with my insights in Dec/Jan, that the "fruit of the Tree of Knowledge" and the Serpent's tempation are gifts – boons to humankind. When we analyze that story, of course it is obvious that if God is omnipotent and omniscient, then he put the Tree there, He created humans with a thirst for knowledge, and he had to know what would happen. Hard to argue with.

The problem is with interpretation and how we see the serpent. Christians – building largely but not wholly on Jewish tradition, have chosen to see the Serpent as an evil being, and the temptation as a test that we fail. So we need to be punished. This is an archetype – we keep acting out this story; it tells us our nature and our relationship with God.

What if instead you read the story as one in which God, knowing humans as he does, knows the best way to get them to do something is to forbid them it? So He sets up the whole situation to entice us into a world of intellectual stimulation, moral responsibility and choice, instead of just sitting on our butts enjoying the good life? The result isn't punishment – its growth. Yahweh isn't vengeful; he's an Intelligent Designer, pushing us toward our greater consciousness.

OK, so I read and thought all of that over break. Now I want to report some new stuff.

I'm reading The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million by Daniel Mendelsohn. Wonderful! Will fill in plot later. He discusses two rabbinic commentaries on the creation story (and others) in Genesis; That of Rashi and of a modern scholar, Friedman.

Two points. One, his own excellent question as a child – why does knowledge come on a tree? Why not a river? A flower? A stone? He ends up concluding it has to be a gowing, living, developing thing, like learning itself. Still, why a tree and not a flower? Tree has longevity and statliness I guess, is not frivolous. But there are an awful lot of flowers that one could hardly accuse of frivolity.

Two – All rabbinic commentators apparently accept that it was a fig tree, because Adam and Eve wrapped themselves with fig leaves! That flummoxes me. Where is the logic? Rabbis are supposed to have laid the groundwork for symbolic logic, logical reasoning in general in the West. And maybe Mendelsohn is overstating. But Rashi, widely considered one of the greatest, wisest, most important commentators, he says about the fig leaves: "By the very thing with which they were ruined, they were corrected." Since God made clothes for them. But maybe the Tree of Knowledge had tiny leaves, so they had to use a different tree . . . right? Geez! Else why would one be called "fig" and the other "Tree of Knowledge"?

Earlier, Mendelsohn points out something super important in the whole "origins" arguments. The Hebrew text of the beginning of the Torah is not "In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth" What it says is:

Bereishit bara Elohim et-hashamayim v'et ha'aretz.

"In the beginning of God's creation of the heavens and the earth . . ." That little change in emphasis is just gigantic.

March 1

I've just finished Lost. Last night and many times while reading it I had to put the book aside and weep. Mendlesohn's story is interspersed with his musings on the Torah. More correctly, on the parashah, the weekly readings of Genesis. Thinking about what happens, even just from the Creation through the birth of Jacob, I do not see how one can conclude that Yahweh is a "good" God.

Clearly the stories are meant to tell his people, his followers, who He is and what He expects of them. Let them know what kind of God they've got themselves mixed up with. And it is the story of a very specific relationship; this one god watches and chooses this one man, and tests him, and decides he has the right qualities. The qualities this particular god is looking for. So he makes a covenant with him. Forevermore, Yahweh and Abraham will be bound together, along with all of Abraham's decendents.

The Torah is a record, and an explanation, and maybe like a manual. Like a book you would leave for your successor about how to get along with a cranky and persnickety boss. And for a very long time, neither the Jews nor anyone else claimed it was anything more. You have your gods; we have ours. You have your ways; we have ours. No claims to universal truths and righteousness. Just deep intimacy and relatedness, trust and interdependency. Why will we get the land of Canaan? Not because it is the "just," the "right" thing to happen, but because Yahweh is our champion and is more powerful.

If you read the Torah in this way and in this way only, can you remain untroubled. Because if you are looking for Yahweh to be just, kind, fair or good – forget it. Even to be consistent. The only way in which he is consistent is that he demands obedience and loyalty. He is always a jealous god. But he is absolutely horrified that Cain killed his brother Abel. One human murdering another is such a terrible abomination. Then just a little while later he's commanding Abraham to murder his own son. Of course he prevents that, but inbetween, Yahweh himself has annihilated all of humankind except Noah and his family (even babies, even children), and has killed every living being in Sodom and Gomorrah. Again, there had to have been innocent infants and children in those cities.

So if these stories are myths to teach us the nature of God, I think they teach that Yahweh is/was a partisan of the family of Abraham, who insisted on loyalty and defined goodness as obedience to himself – much as people generally did define things at the time. In other words, a God of the time and place. A god created for and by the people. A god that should never have been taken out of that context and made universal. Not without a serious makeover.

Then we come to the horrors of the Holocaust. No. I do not believe a living Yahweh, who had really Chosen these people, would stand by and allow that to happen. If he would, he's not good. A god who intervenes in history – Egypt, Canaan, Jericho, Jerusalem, etc. – choosing NOT to intervene in Germany? There is no possible sin big enough for a good god. These were children. All of them. Even the elderly. They were innocent as infants in comparison to what was done to them. No one with even half a tiny bit of goodness would allow it, who had the power to stop it.

So if there is no Yahweh, there is no Jesus. Not as Savior. Which I already believed. But its amazing how deeply rooted the habit of such belief is. And I guess its that no matter how much I want to just walk away from monotheism altogether and stop thinking about it, I can't. I live in a culture in which there is no escape. One is constantly and incessantly bombarded with it.

Jesus in Context – April 6, 2007

Things are moving along slowly here – it is bitter cold, but we haven't had much more accumulation. I have been spending most of my time typing up these old journals; my I used to write an awful lot every day! How did I find so much time? I suppose now I just waste that same time each morning. Anyway, this next installment is missing several pages of its beginning – I've looked all over and can't figure out what I could possible have written on. Sorry! The next journal begins with a statement that I'd already been writing for 4 hours that morning, and then I still went on and on . . . well, you'll see.

April 6, 2007

[First part missing, as I had to switch to new journal]

What context was Jesus born into? If he was one of many wise souls that for whatever reason – perhaps living many lives, perhaps never having fully parted from the Source, whatever – he was born wiser than other men. But instead of being born into a context of shamanism – where he would have believed himself able to communicate with spirits – or Hinduism – where he would have believed himself at the end of many lives full of learning, or Buddhism – where he would have believed himself less attached, or Taoism – where he would have felt himself in closer harmony with the Tao, he was born into the context of Judaism. And Judaism would have – did – provide him with a history of prophets who spoke for Yahweh, who had come to be understood as the One God, one that had a special relationship with the Jews. And he would have been taught the tradition of the Messiah, one who would come and save the people.

And so when he came to understand himself as different, when he saw answers to dilemmas so clearly, when he felt his close tie to the Source, the Infinite Absolute, he would have interpreted that through the tools given him by his culture.

The compassion he felt for others was surely the loving God he'd been taught to adore. Being a wise soul, close to the Source, he knew the same things Sidhartha, Lao-tzu, Patanjali and the other Hindus knew. He had the same vision of what people were and what they needed to do, how they needed to feel. They all say the same things because they are all right. They are just seeing it through different filters, and they are only able, or they choose, to communicate that same message in culturally appropriate ways.

To bring this rambling discussion home to where it started, the text (Tao te Ching, 72) says "Therefore the Master steps back so that people won't be confused. He teaches without a teaching so that people will have nothing to learn." So there may be many other people born close to the Source, but they lived their lives and were examples to those they met, but they never collected a following, never had their sayings recorded, because they didn't say anything. They knew not to provide the people with anything to learn.

Jesus, in addition to being born into a time that sorely needed some direction (maybe – but there were other times that were worse) was born into a tradition in which those who spoke to god
said they did. Where god's talking or connecting to someone was interpreted as a lesson. There must be a reason for such a person to exist. So Jesus would "naturally" have understood his closeness to God as a reason for him to speak to people.

I also think this fits with my image of Jesus from the gospels as someone searching for his identity. Why was he so close to God? Why did God's love pour through him and out to others so easily? When he asks "Who do you say that I am?" I believe he's trying to understand himself, not teach a lesson.

So is it a bad thing to have a teaching? Looked at objectively, I think you have to conclude "yes." Look at what's happened as a result of Jesus' teaching. So much blood shed. So much hatred spewed. So much knowledge lost. Of course Christians will say that is highly regrettable, and some will say "but Jesus words must be followed!" And of course, each are referring to a different set of words. And don't forget, there will be rewards in heaven for those who were mistreated or faithful despite their spilled blood. Does the good done in Jesus' name make up for it? I kind of doubt it, because, as Lao-tzu says, if you just leave people alone, they'll mostly be good. People would have had these generous, kind and loving impulses anyway.

To be fair, Jesus may have ralized that. He didn't write a book, after all. He didn't give people verses to memorize. Or even rules to follow! Wow. No, he left a group of people that he had taght. And in fact, he tells people that others will convert because of your example, not your words. He said he left himself in the people, as they would now love one another and be close the Source themselves.

And it seems like the apostles really tried. They did live in communes, sharing equally. Their love for one another and their peaceful co-existence drew converts. They taught without a teaching.

Who was it who decided to travel around spreading the word? The very first was probably some one else, because a lot didn't want to just live quietly; it was Good News and they wanted to share it. But there is no argument that it was Paul who did most of the spreading. He is the one who wrote letters, who made it a "teaching." And his friend then wrote more of the history. Paul, who never met Jesus. Paul, who was hungry for the Truth, but perhaps never really knew it. If this is even remotely true, it is really sad.

Another thing, though sages are supposed to be silent, some in each tradition haven't been, or we wouldn't have any of their sayings. But – I think because of the tradition within which it was interpreted, not what Jesus actually said – the teachings of Jesus have inspired more hatred and diviseviness than any other holy text. That's partly because of scale – more people have read or heard the Bible than, say the texts of Zoroaster, which I haven't read but I get the impression might inspire quite a lot of division.

But think of the Pali Canon, the Tao te Ching and the I Ching. The Ramayana, the Bhagavad Gita and the other Gitas, the Upanishads. Except for the story parts, all of these texts say "See for yourself." It is only the Semitic texts that claim they represent the ONLY truth, that you must believe them on faith alone, and that if you don't, you are utterly outcast. And only the Christian interpretation says that the punishment is for everyone and will be eternal.

The teachings of all the other close-to-the-Source people say or imply that there are other paths to the center, but this one works. How do you know it works? Because you try it. This is why I believe Jesus' words have been changed. Even when I consider his context, and the fact that he, like Buddha Gotama, may have considered himself the only one close to God/It. Even so, I think Jesus believed the others could become like him. I believe that from the words we have, reputed to be his, from the texts. If he hadn't believed in them, and in the power of his message, why would he bother trying to teach them anything?

So with a verse like, "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life . . . "I believe Jesus meant the above. By that point he was a bridge. But he wanted them to BE like him in the important ways, and he wasn't saying there were NO other ways. He might actually have said "there is no other way to the Father but by me," and meant there is no quick way, no short cuts, because he knew human nature, and knew we would want something easy.

The translator's notes [for the Tao te Ching] say: "Therefore the Master steps back"; he doesn't act as guru or Messiah, because he doesn't want to keep people dependent on him, and thus spiritually immature. When people start to treat him like a holy man, he nips their adoration in the bud and points them to their inner messiah.

Ha! I'm so smart! I'd have to check the gospels, but it seems to me that some of the things Jesus said might be interpreted that way, if you can strip away the interpretation in which they have been embedded which assume he's a Messiah.

I mean, if a different group of people, non-Jews, were told the exact same things and treated the exact same way by Jesus, would they have come up with the idea that he was a savior? Or would they have seen him as a teacher like the Buddha or one of the Hindu gurus? I had that feeling this summer when I was studying the gospels. But I felt like I was trying to reach through smoky glass. Like there is a really different Jesus in there, but I couldn't reach him to pull him out.

Oh brother. That sounds like I'm trying be, or think I am Jesus' savior. If that were true, would that be one of those sins against the Spirit? I just mean that as I read the gospels I get the feeling that almost no one around him gets what he's saying. And like the Buddha, he gets a little frustrated because they just don't listen, or listening, they just don't hear. And I wonder if that's because he was saying a lot of things completely out of their experience, and since he was killed so early in his teaching career, he never really had time to explain it to them in a way they could understand. They just had to do the best they could, filtering what he said through their own knowledge and experience, their Jewish tradition and context.

Old Testament Families

Following up on what I said in my last post, I am getting bored with my old journals, and have decided to get pickier about what I post. I am mainly going to follow the path I set out on when I began a letter to my mother a few years ago – to try to explain what I believe and why I believe it and how I came to believe it. Those things that are particulary relevant to that path, I'll go ahead and type up. And if there are other things – like this book review and the thoughts it spurred, or other major things, I'll add those as well.

March 24

I have to talk some more about religion. Last night I finished Rachel and Leah, and saw that he was unable to tell the whole story so there will be a fourth book, Wives of Israel. I felt like this book was not as good at evoking and explaining early Hebrew culture as the last ones, but maybe he felt he'd already set up the context. I kept having the feeling that he was more interested in explaining how polygyny might work, and there was a note of justification. I ended up feeling this was less about Hebrews than Mormons. Some examples – the entire relationship between Jacob and all the relevant women except Rachel centers on the reading of the Holy Word, the writen scriptures. Now that is likely supposed to be the foundation of family life for Mormons, but we are talking about the grandson of Abraham. He is thought to have lived c. 2100 BCE. So call it 2000-1900, generously allowing the Biblical reports of Abraham's age at Isaac's birth.

I believe this is about when Egyptians are developing their heiroglyphics – I'd have to check about all those languages (Sumerian cuneiform, etc.). What is importat is that even the dogged believers in Moses having written the Penteteuch personally don't put the date any earlier than 1400 BCE. He might have used earlier sources, they say, but come on, Hebrews writing their own distinct language (not pictographic, by the way, but phonetic) in 1900 BCE? And they are already ancient, according to Card. How ancient could they be, if Abraham was the first Patriarch, first one to make people realize they needed any history, and you are only one generation between you and that Patriarch? It just doesn't make any sense.

It wouldn't be such a problem for the book if it was just an occasional reference to a few holy writings. But the story doesn't work without it. Jacob and Rachel's relationship develops through their common interest in herding. Leah, though, would have had no reason to even see him except Card makes the "birthright" of Abraham this large collection of holy books. Lean and one of her future concubines, Bilhah, come to Jacob to learn the scriptures, and they learn to read and write and Bilhah becomes a scribe, copying all the texts.

He, Card, uses these books as a way to explain what happens in the Biblical story such that the people involved are all essentially good. I re-read the relevant part of Genesis last night and it is as I recalled – full of trickery, deceit, betrayal, jealousy, bickering, competition and exploitation. Hard to tell it in such a way that the people are good and their behaviors justified.

I recall being troubled with the story in childhood, but I don't recall what my parents said, if anything, to help me understand it. It is hard to explain away. Jacob makes a deal with Laban for Rachel's hand. He works 7 years for her in brideservice, and then Laban tricks Jacob into marrying Leah, the older sister with weak eyes. Then Laban says he'll give him Rachel, too, if Jacob does another 7 years. And after that, Laban continues to change the terms of the deals he makes with Jacob – Jacob says "10 times"!!!

As a child, I of course would have been unfamiliar with polygyny and bridewealth to begin with, making it harder to get a grasp on this story, to tease apart what is cultural and what is people behaving badly. But as an anthropologist, I am very familiar with many different societies who practice either or both, and with pastoralist cultures in general. Pastoralist, patrilineal cultures wherein sororal polygyny is practiced and either bridewealth or brideservice is paid also generally have an economic system of balanced reciprocity. The idea of balance in exchanges permeates the entire ideology (in fact, that is at base what bridewealth is – compensation for removing the valuable bride and her future labor and children from her household) and makes possible all kinds of other ideological and symbolic exchanges like sacrifice. But the point is – you DON'T TRICK PEOPLE OR GO BACK ON YOUR WORD!!!!! Not if you care about your family's good name. Not if you ever want to do business or marry any one else in your family or graze your sheep or water your cattle, etc. I mean, this is an absolutely unheard of, terrible, wrong, evil thing to do. Ask anyone living in a pastoralist society.

So Laban is a sneaky, lying, exploitative man. But Jacob is no better – he lied and deceived his own father in order to steal his elder brother's birthright and inheritance. One might think he's gotten what he deserves.

But what about the sisters? What did they do to be punished this way? Poor Leah, who is unwanted but forced to marry a man who is in love with her sister. Poor Rachel, who was expecting to be the sole or at least first wife of her beloved, who loves her in return. Now she is second wife, and then Leah gets all the first babies as her consolation. The two sisters get into a pissing (well, birthing) match to see who can have most sons and therefore their husband's love. They throw their handmaidens at him and claim their children as their own, in a way. Rachel has to wait and wait for her first child, and then her second one kills her in childbirth.

Leah has lots of sons, and more through her servant, and yet as soon as Rachel has one, she gets special treatment, as does her son. All those sons grow up to be pretty nasty characters, infected with the terrible jealousy, bitterness and pain of ther mothers' competition. All but the youngest, Joseph, who is spoiled by his father (Rachel's child, after all), but becomes a decent human being.

This is a terrible story in so many ways. When looking at it from the sisters' point of view, one has to ask, why did this happen to them? In Judaism there is only ever one answer to that question: because God wanted it to. Humans have free will, but God, knowing their (our) personalities, sets things up in such a way that he knows or can guess, which way a person will choose.

Either: 1. People make absolutely free choices and God then works with that choice, or; 2. God arranges things such that they will happen a certain way. Either way, isn't God still interfering? Still guiding people's choices, and thus removing one's free will? If you want to defy the will of God, the Semetic religions say you can't, because God can turn ALL things to His purpose. Right?

What I am trying to establish is that no matter how you think of it, even to add a third choice, that people will attempt to discern God's will for them and will thus do it – Jacob married both Leah and Rachel because that is how God wanted it. Why? Why did God want this so badly that he was willing to destroy all these lives (or let them be destroyed), let terrible deeds go unpunished, etc.?

Well, look what happens next, what comes out of it. Ah, the sons of Jacob are the origins of the Twelve Tribes of Israel.

Wonderful. God uses those tribes as a way to organzie his people all the way through history, even up to today. And they figure somehow in the End Times, as seen in John's revelation. I can't remember the details. Priests of one of the tribes must be in silent prayer at the temple, or something like that.

Is that supposed to console Leah? Comfort Rachel? Maybe it does, so that might be fine. But when one steps back a bit, and asks questions such as, "What does this teach us about the nature of God?" "About the human condition?" "About what God expects of us?" then I feel like some very serious issues are at stake.

First, one common lesson Christians take from tales like this are that God uses even bad people and bad behavior to achieve His ultimate purpose. God turns all things to good. But that ignores the fact, or at least the implication, that god in fact set things up SO that people would behave badly. It is an echo of the Garden of Eden story. God tells people to be good, but then arranges things, playing on his knowledge of our weakneses (which He gave us), to elicit that bad behavior that He needs in order to further the story, or make His larger point. I just keep seeing Yahweh set people up and knock them down.

Why? Perhaps his ultimate purpose is so wonderful that it justifies this interference, this manipulation of his creatures so they do what he told them not to. I mean, what if Adam and Even had just obeyed him? No story, period.

I've asked many times what the Ultimate Purpose is. And maybe that's presumptuous. Maybe we puny humans aren't qualified to know that. But we have brains, so let's use them. The Old Testament is really the story of one family. Starting with Adam it tells the story of him and his descendents. In the New Testament, it's important to the writers to establish the link, to show that "Hey! This is the same family."

All the other people in the OT are just props, bit players. So God's ultimate purpose must have something to do with this family. For Jews, who are all part of this family, that's great. God started the world with this family and will end it with this family. For them, they can find much meaning – God's purpose is related to them going through all these struggles in order for . . . what? For them to finally learn to submit wholy to God's will? Mightn't they have done that sooner if god hadn't kept creating tempting situations? OK, so he's training them to never give in, no matter the temptation, so that they will one day be a holy people who usher in the Messianic Age, in which life is great for everyone and they are all obedient to God's will. Well, couldn't he have just created them that way to start with?

Maybe it is important to have a bunch of creatures come to be good and obedient of their own choice. Why? Back to the idea of a battle to fight with an Other, and God needs an army. I don't know. But if you stick with just the Jews, then what was the purpose of there being people with whom Jews would never have contact and some who would never even hear of them?

I mean, this whole universe created so one family can play out this story in which one (or two) creatures become many. Are given free will, make a lot of good and bad choices, but ultimately learn to be good. One family. Does that feel remotely true? Not to me. Of course, Jews also see their story as one that is meant to be an example to all humanity of God's existence, his love, his will, his plan. But what IS that plan?

I mean, the Hebrews and then Jews were never recruiters. They didn't try to convert people, they didn't and really still don't go out of their way to welcome those who want to join them, and they never tried really to prove that theirs was the only God to others. So they are just being a quiet example.

Christians are the ones who decided that the God of the Jews is the only god for all people. They were the first to have the idea that God's plan was to extend his relationship to others outside the one family. It is important to them to demonstrate that Jesus is a member of that family, that he is the heir to the kingdom the family has become. And he is the door that allows all humankind to be adopted by the family and his subjects in the kingdom.

So Rachel and Leah's suffering becomes meaningful in that it produced this kingdom and the heir to it so that all creatures might be saved, in a Christian interpretation.

For me, I've come to a place where this story just doesn't make sense in those ways. If god wanted all people to be a part of this family, why didn't he do it from the start?

But it's not as if all those other people out there don't have their own stories!!! They have stories about their own families, their own gods, and their own importance in the universe.

All the small societies in Africa, Asia, Europe, Australia, the Americas, the islands (the 'Nesias, as I always think of them), they have had their experiences with God. They have developed or been given by god their own rules. Maybe not written down as the Decalogue of the Jews, but Hammurabi had his codes, Egyptians, various groups of Chinese, Indians, Maya, Aztec, Inca, Medes, Sumerians, Babylonians, Akkadians, and many, many, many others DID have holy scriptures, messages and lessons and morality plays and poetry. And all of those thousands of cultures without writing nevertheless have and have had extremely sophisticated and complex religions.

More, they had their own experiences of God or Ultimate Source or wahtever they called it. God spoke to them, too. Told them THEY were the special ones. Walked them through difficulties, comforted them, punished them, all the same things that Jews had.

And then in some places people came to understand Absolute Reality in a different way. As NOT a person. And they did their work, and they devoted themsleves, and they had their own experiences of the Divine, or Absolute, which were earth-shattering, every bit as much as the voice of God was to the Hebrew prophes, as ecstatic as the followers of Jesus. And they had their own saints and wise men. Their own martyrs, too. People who were so good the world couldn't bear their example. These wise men (and women) created their own holy books full of wisdom.

I could go on and on. But the question I want to ask is this: Are we really to believe that all the wisdom of the world is nothing, because it isn't the same as the message to the Jews? Can anyone believe that God created the world, and the huge variety of people, and either left them entirely alone, or spoke to them differently, just so, at the end, everyone would chuck the beliefs that God either allowed to grow into complex philosophies that give hope and wisdom and comfort to billions of individuals, or that God helped them create these alternate philosophies by guiding and interfering to teach them lessons . . . . All of that just so at the end, everyone would throw it all away and adopt the philosphy and faith of the Christians? Would decide that actually it was the fate of one Jewish family that mattered? Would decide to abandon their own ancestors, their own rich traditions and history just because Christians have so generously opened the doors and allowed them into the Jewish family?

I cannot believe it. And so I can no longer believe that Yahwe is THE god. I can't believe that by following a different path I will be damned to hell. And yet I still feel pain as I write these words. The Bible says that Jesus spoke of one unforgivable sin, and that is to deny the Spirit. To reject the Spirit of God. I don't know what that verse means. And for the longest time, my inability to correctly decode it has kept me in fear of being damned to hell for eternity.

Even though I don't believe I am or have ever truly rejected any Spirit of God. So why am I still afraid to commit on paper to a stance that is outside what Christians would accept? I'm still afriad of going to hell, even though I haven't believed in its existence for a good 20 years! It is such a deep-rooted fear. Christianity has done such a good job of detailing it and making sure people know that's likely where they are going. Hegemonic discursive power, indeed.

And that makes Christianity unique of the major religions. None of the others suggest that the majority of individuals are going to hell. That fear of hell and how it is used was one of the first, if not the first, thing that made me question my childhood faith. How could a loving God use threats of eternal damnation to get people to behave? Even half-way decent parents know better.

Jews don't even have a concept of hell, and it is them God mostly talked to. Muslims believe all will eventually make it to heaven. Christians really are alone in this hell-and-punishment obsession.

I am not going to let fear stop me this time. I do not believe that Yahweh, as depiced in the Bible, is the one and only God. Or if He is, then Jews and their descendent religions have got it all wrong.

I don't believe in the exclusivity of it. I believe there is an Absolute Reality. I believe that the early Hebrews had contact with it, and that their story reflects their understanding of that contact. I'm certain some of their prophets were close to that Reality, touched it, and were filled by it.

And I believe Jesus also was filled with and close to it, and that Jesus and the prophets before him were trying to show people how they, too, could be close to it. And the Hebrews I think better understood that this was their contact with the Infinite. They could and did accept that without making any statement that other peoples couldn't have their own contact. I believe that other peoples did and do have contact with that same Entity/Presense/Thing/No-Thing, and that each of them interpreted that contact in their own way, according to their own history and cultural context.

I don't know exactly how it came about that Christianity took on such an exclusive and singular quality. I guess it began that way, in that Jews, Jesus' Jewish followers, all believed he was the Jewish messiah. They never suggested Jesus was there for all. In fact, I think that would (and did) freak some people out. How could their messiah be there for everyone? He's supposed to kick Roman butt, not save it!

Jesus' message was inclusive, except when he says, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father but by me." But what did he really mean by that? Many (most?) Christians use that quote to justify the conversion of the rest of the world. "You must convert in order to save yourself from eternal damnation."

Is that what he meant? What if he really meant, "You need to follow my directions?" Like the Buddha saying "You must follow the same path I did in order to find enlightenment. There is no other way but the way I did it." I find this entirely possible.

So if Jesus was inclusive, who wasn't? The early Roman church. Peter and his entire group didn't think Jesus message was for the gentiles, so why bother telling them? Again a reflection of the fact that Jews believed their relgion was their own. Their messiah their own. Their God their own. Everyone else could have their own gods. So the early Jewish Christians are exclusive, but not because they believe their religion is the only one in the world; the opposite, in fact.

Oh. Weird. So the exclusivity of Jewish Christians in Rome led them to . . . well, do it the other way. It is Paul, of course. He's the one who believes this message, this gospel, is for everyone. It is his inclusivity that leads to the Church's later exclusive position. Paul believes all the world should follow Jesus. Not because he thinks everyone else is going to some future hell, but because he believes Jesus' gift of Life, his good news, is a gift for all. He wants to share it. He does believe Jesus is coming again, he does believe there will be a heaven, a utopia, a messianic age, and he wants all people to share it.

He clearly believes that theGreeks and Romans with their pantheons are wrong, and he does try to convince people of this, but still his prosletizing feels more like someone offering a gift, being as inclusive as he possibly can.

But over time that message changed. I think it had to do first with the conversion of the European tribes after Rome had adopted Christianity. Because then it was a question of the powerful, civilized, clearly "more advanced" people – the Romans – moving into, conquering and ruling over diverse peoples with their own tribal and band-level religions. Non-Christian meant non-Roman and thus backward, disempowered, and clearly wrong about everything.

Once that association was made, it became easier for Christians to believe their way was the only way, and having people convert to your religion was also to have them convert to your culture, your economy, your political system. Those seeds of exclusivity and superiority grew through the "dark" ages, and by the time of European expansion were in full bloom. What fertile ground these twin attitudes found when the first indigenous peoples of Africa and the Americas were contacted. To the Europeans who met them, these natives were clearly backward, lawless, and amoral; clearly in need of saving. And they frightened them into conversion with gruesome depictions of hell. Not to mention all the carrots.

It might only have been in that lonely time, the thousand years after the fall of Rome, when Europeans were cut off from people of other religions, that the idea of only ONE religion having any truth or relevance could have been born and survived.

And so, why should I let irrational fear stop me from fully embracing the faith I do have? Why should I not follow my own path to the center with no guilt and no fear? There is no good reason.