The things discussed in the bible in the four gospels happened inside Judaism. Judaism was everywhere, but when Jesus of Nazareth came, he had to "call people out" of it in order to get anything done. The religious practice around him was all very religious, it was all very traditional and orthodox, but it simply didn't work, had lost touch with what it had once been, and didn't lead anywhere. It was perpetually looking back and analyzing itself without connecting God and man. When people spoke of God or of the Old Testament scriptures in Jesus' time, they became more and more abstracted, more and more apt to share what the traditional views and teachings on interpreting these things were, and what some alternatives might be. Each teacher shared what had been handed down, respectfully, from generation to generation.
The original work was about God dealing with people. Added to it were more and more layers of interpretation, extrapolation and speculation, until the original was more or less buried. Learning about God or the bible in that day was learning what scholars and religious men thought.
Jesus taught under his own authority, rather than addressing interpretations at all. He took scriptures and raised questions with them instead of giving all answers, and what these scriptures might encourage people to DO, a second component altogether more troubling and interesting for anyone approaching the scriptures.
So Jesus was dealing with Jewish people, but he was calling them out from the orthodoxy, the assumptions, the interpretations and traditions. He didn't generally speak in synagogues or places set aside for endless religious discussion. He gave love a new importance in spirituality. He encouraged his disciples to forgive people, told them that the measure by which they were forgiving of others was the measure by which God was forgiving of them, and encouraged people to remember that God doesn't owe us things, and we don't earn favours from Him. We ask Him for things because we think of Him as our Father, and fathers give children things. It's not about a paycheck or a black belt, earned after hard work. It's about His generosity (what can also be called His grace).
Jesus instructs Jews and a few gentiles about how the "kingdom of heaven" works. He wasn't talking about a place called Heaven, he was talking about what we might today term "God's system of running things and living." Many of his sentences started with "the kingdom of heaven is like" and he was saying "God's system of running things and way for people to live works like this" rather than "Up in heaven, it's like this."
God's system involved an end to selfish, jealous, judgmental greedy meanness and spite. Humans at their worst are frightened, arrogant grabby creatures, thoughtlessly living lives characterized by all of these vices. Humans who are in touch with God, and who grasp that they were created (designed, formed) in God's own image show His generosity, His unshakeable convictions about people He loves, His forthrightness, His unending creativity, His unwillingness to judge, and His ability to forgive.
Jesus was here to remind humans what God was like, Who He was, and what a human being living according to God's way of doing things would be like to live around. Every time Jesus encountered judgmental religious figures, purported to speak for God, he'd have to say "No. Not like those guys. These guys aren't helping. They're fake. They're transparently jealous, spiteful and vindictive. The kingdom of heaven is like THIS:" and then he'd probably give an example in the form of a story or analogy. He quoted old testament scripture not so people would think he was right (correct, traditional, orthodox, scriptural) but rather, because he knew those scriptures had worth in them, and points of their own worth pondering. He mined them for these points, rather than using them to support his own.
When Jesus has left the earth and gone to "prepare a place for" his people down here, a system is set up. It involves human beings using him as a way to become reconciled with God, to be accepted and adopted by God under the umbrella of the acceptance that Jesus, as a human being, had won the hard way. It involves human beings doing things the "kingdom of Heaven" way, rather than the traditional, orthodox, flawed, all-too-human way. Mainly, it was to be characterized by deference, unity, sincerity, helpfulness, grace, love and peace. Because the world needs that. It always has.
It wasn't easy. The apostles wrote things, trying to help the growing groups of Christians not fall into merely creating a "Christian" system of men which was just as ineffectual as the traditional Jewish one had been. Great care was taken to try to stop these new Jewish Christians from becoming religiously oppressive and intolerant of others, to keep them from repeatedly turning their backs on each other and splitting into warring factions competing for power and followers. Many letters were written telling these people that, if they hated their fellow man, they couldn't claim to be Christians, that they were to defer, to submit, to tolerate, to be considerate of and long-suffering to their brothers, that they were to be united. Jesus had audibly prayed to His Father that these people would be one in exactly the same way he and his Father were.
The apostles set up leaders to shepherd people, to kindly help new converts not think Christianity was about rules, about lifestyle or dietary abstinence, not about Jewish traditions like circumcision or not eating pork, not about competitive piety. The Christians were to defer to one another and to these figures as well.
But things went very wrong. Eventually, the leaders were no longer shepherding new converts into paths of unity, tolerance, long-suffering grace and generosity. Eventually, factions and divisions and spiteful religious spats were happening. Leaders were fighting each other and demanding supporters. Paul the apostle wrote of the people getting pulled into this (often by their own zealotry about what was "correct" or "scriptural," yet ironically acting horribly and unscripturally in trying to fix things they felt horrible or unscriptural). Some said "I am on Paul's side in this argument" and others said "I am with Apollos. I think he's right." Others said "I am on Jesus' side. What we're doing is what he wants and the rest of you are wrong."
These people were missing the point. Christianity is about unity and tolerance. It remains unspotted by incorrect teaching because its teaching is strong and has a clear sense and identity so long as no one is watering it down or subverting it in order to pursue their own agenda. The teaching says not to be judgmental. Too many Christians did things like judge someone to be judgmental, and then decide to punish the judgmental person and anyone who sided with her, demanding that everyone be obedient to their power and right to judge judgmental people to be judgmental and punish them once sentence had been handed down. Nonsense had been made of sense. Stupidity was being used to defend against it ever taking hold again.
As we go through history, we find the Christian community increasingly divided up into groups which not only are not united, but who, at various points in time, have had members of other Christian groups punished, tortured and killed. We had the Inquisition. We find people who call themselves Christians going off "in the name of God" to kill every Jew and Muslim they can find, seeking to send them to Hell, rather than teach them about Jesus. There was no longer any Christian teaching which had seductive power, which worked, which people wanted to try. Now there were traditions, interpretations and systems which threatened anyone who wasn't orthodox.
Every year nowadays, some Christian church or other at some point on the globe has a "split." We know that there are Methodist churches, and Free Methodist ones. We know there are Presbyterian churches, and Reformed Presbyterian ones. The groups divide and redivide and subdivide, like little after-explosions popping all over the globe. The point of Christianity (tolerance, acceptance, love, unity, long-suffering spirit, grace, forgiveness and so on) seems lost. Men stand up and preach that the government, or the President, or the church down the road, or a character on TV, anyone, really, is The Enemy and to be feared and opposed. Christians stand for nothing besides taking stands against people and things. They'll stop at nothing, so they certainly aren't stopping just because of anything Jesus said.
This is a mess. I'm often accused of "just being negative," and "generalizing my own experience of a divided group until I think that all of Western Christianity is like that." I think I'm seeing something real, though. Something problematic. I see traditions, interpretations and questions of who should be the religious authority figures, how much power should they have, and the like, taking up all the head-time and heart-time of the Christians I meet. Each time someone finds out I'm a Christian, they always ask "What church do you go to?" to establish what my allegiance is, what stand I take and who I side with in this ceaseless global display of disagreement and disunity.
I tell them I don't go to a church. Atheists, Satanist, pagans and Christians alike agree: you can't be a Christian and just not go to a church! What is the defining characteristic of a Christian? Why, church attendance, of course! And which church one picks, and which ones one doesn't is of vital importance. Otherwise, the brainwashing will wear off.
I grew up going to a church. I was taught to obey the authority there. Not only obey them, but in a very Winston Smith way, to try never to think, feel or want anything the authority system wouldn't understand or approve of. The word "brainwashing" refers to the process of taking a person with a presumably "normal" mind and doing things with it to manipulate the person and break or reshape his will. There aren't as many, or as good, words to describe being born into a system designed to break and shape wills, to grow up with a brain which was never allowed to grow normally, tearing itself apart inside from the strain of trying to fit into that unnatural shape, and then finally breaking free of its moorings to lurch drunkenly into the world, a stunted, misshapen dwarf of a psyche trying to stand upright on crippled feet, not knowing how to do anything other than judge everyone and everything as a sole means of interaction.
I obeyed this system until I was an adult. I didn't have a TV. I didn't go to the movies, swear, smoke cigarettes, dance or embrace popular music. I was told I had to attend the street address the church occupied, and that five times a week, plus youth group activities. I did all of this. I was told that it wasn't right to attend any other Christian group's functions, because they weren't correct or pleasing God the way we were.
Then there was a split in my group. Suddenly half of the people who'd been telling me where I had to attend, and that I had to attend stopped attending there and went somewhere else and wanted me to go "have to attend" there with them in their new place of disobedience to the authority figures in the place I was in. I decided to obey the ones who said I had to stay, rather than the ones who said I had to go with them. Eventually, my thinking became so unorthodox (this happened, the more I took an interest in what Jesus said and did, and talked to a broader and broader circle of people about that stuff) that they decided to kick me out, and they did.
Now I am told that, as a Christian, the "problem" people have with me is that I am "not integrated into the Christian Community," and that I am "not under the authority of any church system." Well, I can tell you that going to one segregated church does not integrate one into our divided, shattered Christian Community. It doesn't even necessarily integrate you into that individual church, especially if you're judged to be growing steadily unorthodox. So, I meet up with Christians in groups of two or three of us. We talk and I see how much connection and openness can ensue. I find that people tend to reserve connection and openness for their immediate families only, though they tend to claim to connect with others at their church. And then they marvel over how much warmer, more sincere, and connected they feel to people they are typing to on an Internet forum or something. I find that Christians in general grow up holding themselves back, keeping themselves in reserve, not connecting wholly, trying to show a pure image which they've concocted, or at the very least a "censored" version of their heart to others. This is a judgment, yeah. It's also just me voicing frustration about not being able to connect. That's real. I wish I knew who all the Christians around here were, and had some sort of passing acquaintanceship with them all. We're not like that, though. We separate so we can avoid dealing with people who are different from us, especially in matters of professed doctrine or styles of worship. I don't think that's going to cut it when God asks "Why didn't you all hang out and get along?" I don't think we can just say "Well, I wasn't too into these guys' worship style, so I never spoke to them or bothered introducing myself" or "Well, they didn't come to our church, so what else could we do....?" We gotta pull our heads out of our churches and see the light of day.
I have no idea how to "put myself under the authority" of "Christian leaders" in my "area." They all disagree and would give contradictory orders, particularly about the main point of where I should even show up to hear what my orders are. No matter what I do in terms of meeting up with Christians and talking with them about Christ, no matter what I do, the message is the same a) that doesn't count because b) it's not what we think of when we think "church"
I don't think what goes on in churches is anything like what went on when the apostles were writing. I know that the apostles never wrote separate letters to warring factions, accepting schism as a means of dealing with Christians you disagreed with, nor did they write to one faction to show their support for one side over the other. I know that apostles did not divide among themselves and take followers away from each other. I know that apostles did not ever teach Christians to cut other Christians off and stop having dealings with them. I know that apostles did not appoint elders in one church, and also separate ones in an unaffiliated one down the street, and tell the local Christians to "just pick one and be subject to it, unless you think it's unorthodox and unscriptural, in which case ignore their authority and go somewhere else and be subject there until you catch them being unscriptural as well." That's all nonsense. What's going on is nonsensical. I can taste it.
So, I find a gulf between me and many other Christians. When asked "Are you doing what the apostle Paul said to do?" most will say "Yeah." I will say "I don't know how one does it anymore. I do what I can, and it doesn't involve church membership, because I'm certain that's nothing he'd have had anything to do with." That's not good enough for most. And the more like Jesus I try to act, the more tempted Christian people are to nail me to something.
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