March 14, 2009, 2:44 pm by dc-agape.

Image by b8b8ng via Flickr

The Gospel of Luke has a different approach to the relationship between Jesus and the outcasts.  While the Gospel of Matthew depicted Jesus as loving the “outcasts”, the Gospel of Luke starts with how the “righteous” looked down on those less fortunate than themselves.  But it ends with how Jesus and even YHWH look upon the difference between the righteous and the sinner.  So I want to point out that the verses from the Gospel of Luke that relate to the outcasts are also responsible for my de-conversion.  I will finish the series on Becoming an Atheist: The Outcasts next week with two very special verses from the NT that basically put the “nail in the coffin”, so to speak, of why this topic is related to me becoming an Atheist.

The first two verse of the Gospel of Luke are related.  Both show how the “righteous” looked down upon Jesus because of his relation with the outcasts.

Luke 7:39 When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is – that she is a sinner.”

Here is the story of a Pharisee looking down upon a “sinner” that Jesus has accepted.  What the woman has done to “touch Jesus” was to wash Jesus’ feet with her tears and then pour expensive perfume on Jesus’ feet.   Here Jesus accepted what the woman did without judgment, something that he Pharisee could not do.  It is also something that the Christian Right in the US cannot and does not do. 

Another example of this same concept is here:

Luke 15:1-2 Now the tax collectors and “sinners” were all gathering around to hear him.  But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eat with them.”

This is not the same event where Jesus calls Matthew to follow him.  So Jesus does this numerous times (it happens again in a verse I will use below).  So taking both the Gospels of Matthew and the Luke together, it was obvious to me, when I was a Christian, that something was terribly wrong with Christianity.  No “christian” I knew was behaving like Jesus.  How could they call themselves followers of Jesus and not act like him, not imitate his care and loving for the “sinner”?  These stories made me begin to realize that most “Christians” were fakes; that they did not “practice what they preached”.  I knew then that I had to search for not just TrueChristians™, but I had to search for disciples of Jesus.  As of this post, I have not found any in existence.  If anyone reading this finds even one disciple; let me know.

Later in the Gospel the same concept reappears:

Luke 19:7 All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a ‘sinner’.

So this repetitive theme through both Gospels cannot be overlooked.  The Jesus that is described in these events did two things that “Christians” today will not do.  First, he was not concerned about what the “righteous” thought about him.  This concern for image is something that today is devastating to the Christian cause.  The NT clearly makes references to the evil of this act (topics for later posts).  Yet it seems from the outside, as a gay Atheist (or even the edge, when I was more susceptible) that image is the all-powerful driving force of Christianity.  This “righteous” indignation goes completely against the teachings of Jesus.  Hence I was driven away from Christianity by the false teaching of men.  But if no Church teaches and practices the correct teachings of Jesus, is there any point to Christianity?  Is there a YHWH related to this religion?  Is there a Holy Spirit belonging to this religion?  Is Jesus anything more than just a man?  The answers to these questions are a simple answer – No. 

The Gospel of Luke even has something to say about this “righteous” attitude:

Luke 18:14 “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God.  For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Jesus even warns directly about being overly “righteous”!  This is the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector.  Jesus tells his followers that to be a pompous ass is stupid, yet that is exactly what the Christian Right does!  And over and over again they are made humble.  Even recently Rev James Dobson (Washington Post) was humbled by his inability to sway the Republicans to support John McCain.  His group is also suffering from the lack of funds and support from the younger generation.  The Catholic church is still being humbled by their lack of concern over pedophile priests.  And we all remember both Ted Haggard (MSNBC) and Mark Foley (Washington Post).  Worse is this website devoted to keeping track of the Right-wingers who are also pedophiles (armchairsubversives.org).  When will the “righteous” recognize that not only are they fakes, not only are they hypocrites, but that they are living proof that being “righteous” and attempting to have earthly power and image are totally in opposition to the teachings of Jesus?

I will end this on how Jesus, and in theory YHWH, felt about those who repent (the outcasts):

Luke 15:7 I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.

This brings up another topic that I want to post on in the future “persons who do not need to repent”.  But for this post the important topic is how the “heavenly hosts” respond to the “outcasts”.  If those “heavenly hosts” responds with such celebration, why do the Christians today have such low standards?  They celebrate over a child’s baptism (who is sinless) and they celebrate a family member’s “return to the fold” as if it was some great victory.  But that is not what Jesus taught!  He taught to struggle to bring the outcast into salvation.  Not by guilt or by controlling the minds and actions of those people.  No, it was by spending time with the outcasts, celebrating with the outcasts, eating with them, and even just giving them a simple smile.  Yet there is not a single “Christian” and definitively not a TrueChristian™ that can, will, or has done these very acts that Jesus did on numerous occasions.  How can they be followers of Jesus if they do not follow Jesus?

The very attitude “TrueChristians™ have towards my community, both the gay community and the Atheist community, tells us more about the corruption in the Church than anything else.  From a gay Atheist interpretation, there is no point in “becoming” a Christian.  The salvation, the Good News, that is so important to Christians, does not exist.  Without following Jesus completely, which no Church does, the entire religion collapses on empty words.

Related articles by Zemanta

• What is strange about Christianity? (msatheists.org)
• The Lord’s Prayer Examined (protestantism.suite101.com)
• What does the Bible say about the prosperity gospel? (searching4god.blogspot.com)

Posted in Becoming an atheist | Print | 3 Comments »

March 14, 2009, 12:10 pm by dc-agape.

Image via Wikipedia

Codex 1 Tractate 1

The entire Nag Hammadi Library can be read at the Gnostic Society Library.  Any future posts that I do with these Codices will have the link at the bottom of the post.  But I am giving you the link to the Gnostic Society Library in this post right now.  Enjoy!

The first Tractate of the First Codex is called the “The Prayer of the Apostle Paul”.  But unless he was the original Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, he was not the author of this “Prayer”.  There a number of reasons for me to say this.  The Editor of “The Nag Hammadi Library: The Definitive Translation of the Gnostic Scriptures”, James M Robinson, describes a number of similarities between this “Prayer” and the Gnostic doctrines. Which I will describe below.  And reading Paul in the NT compared to this “Apostle Paul” it is obviously not the same person.

In James M Robinson’s introduction he makes no bones about the date of writing was certainly past Paul’s lifetime (150 – 299 CE).  He also writes in the introduction that this Tractate is related to Valentinian doctrine (also from the Gnostic Society).  And yes, this is the same man as Saint Valentine (Wikipedia) that Valentine’s Day is named after.  The Catholic Online has a shorter less direct assumption that this Saint and this Gnostic was the same person.  Recently an Esoteric Christian actually blogged on the topic of this Saint (Katie’s Esoteric Christianity Blog).

The Editor also mentions “striking resemblance” of this “Prayer” to “The Three Steles of Seth” and “The Gospel of Philip”.  Both of these Texts are tractates in the Nag Hammadi Library.  And both of these Texts are Gnostic.  I will get to posting on them at later dates.

Personally, as a gay Atheist, I can read the NT and read this Prayer, and I can know that if this had anything to do with the Apostle Paul he was the original Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  I can easily say this because of the language used in this Tractate.  As with the Dead Sea Scrolls, these Tractates are the originals, and as a result, when reading them I can feel the author’s emotions.  The NT and OT have been copied so many times and I have been exposed to them so much that the original author’s emotions have been erased from the documents.

In “The Prayer of the Apostle Paul” the author uses a “whine” that is just not the Paul that is in the NT.  The author begs:

A.I.5-10 [I am] yours; the one who has come forth from you.  You are [my] mind; bring me forth!  You are my treasure house; open for me! You [are] my fullness; take me to you! You are (my) repose; give me [the] perfect thing that cannot be grasped!

In reading this, first I should explain the [ ] and the ( ).  The [ ] indicate were the translation is rough at best, due to damage to the original document.  The ( ) is material directly supplied by the editor of the translation.  In the above quote these marks are there specifically to make the reading more similar to the English language. 

From this quote, it is quite obvious that this is not Paul from the NT.  Take a look at this passage:

Philippians 1:20 I eagerly expect and hope that I will not be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in by body, whether in life or by death.

Warning: Having read this “Prayer” and looking back on Paul’s writings I do see his “whining”. But it is still different from the whining in this “Prayer”. When looking at Philippians it is obvious that Paul is not 100% confident about his own actions. But he confident that the Gospel will be spread and glorified by whatever happens to him.

The writer of this “Prayer” continues to use phrases that just do not belong to Paul.  Words like the “Paraclete of [truth]” and “First-born of the Pleroma of grace” just do not fit Paul’s style.  Paraclete is defined as the “Holy Spirit”.  And Pleroma is defined as “abundance, plenty” (both definitions are from Dictionary.com).  Phrases like these are just too flowery for Paul.  In the NT he was simple and to the point, these “over the top” adjectives were just not his way of talking or writing.  Why should we even believe that this is how he prayed?

What I find most humorous, to a gay Atheist, is the last closing words of the “Prayer”:

B.I.3-6 [for] yours is the power [and] the glory and the praise and the greatness for ever and ever. [Amen.]

Wow, that is almost exactly how the Lord’s Prayer ends:

For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Gnostics influence of Christianity is very evident from this prayer’s ending and from the practice of Valentine’s Day.  So even if this was a pseudonymous written Holy Text, even if all the Hag Hammadi is the same, it tells us something about Christianity in general.  BTW, pseudonymous writing was also used in the NT: read the controversy over the Gospel of Matthew (Wikipedia) and 2^nd Peter (Bible.org). 

I will end with this thought:  the New Testament was not canonized until the Council of Carthage (397 CE).  Any document written before this time would have been used by certain Christians as Holy Documents.  What can be told of the date the Nag Hammadi were collected indicate that it was in the years around 341, 346, and 348 CE.  This is the collection date, not the original “publishing” date.  So, in the end, the Nag Hammadi are just as likely to be Books of the New Testament as the actual Books that were chosen at the Council of Carthage.

Posted in The Nag Hammadi | Print | No Comments »