So What Does "being Christian" Actually Mean To You>?

Did you read what I put? I said I doubt the Rabbis were interested in the fat content of the respective meats. Purely co-incidental that pork scores low on the health scale. In fact they had no real way to asses such things.

Personally, I think a veggie diet is good. That said, I do eat a little bit of meat about twice a month. Organic, outdoor raised from a local farm.
People's dietary requirements vary from one individual to another, and even within the life span of the individual, some diets may be more appropriate at some times. If you're a young person doing hard physical stuff, meat is probably good. If like me you're not so active, and slowly sliding downhill towards the end, you simply don't need more than a very small amount to ensure a balance in the diet.

I think it's a health issue though and has little to do with spirituality.

 

mmmmmm....BACON...

 

If anyone wants to truly explore Christianity to the core then one must explore Gnosticism and the Gospel of Thomas. Modern Christianity isn't original Christianity, in other words.

 

Please explain some of it.

 

Please explain some of it.

 

I hadn't realized post could echo.

 

We have to look at what was before Christianity.

There were beliefs in gods of all types not just focused on one particular entity.

Our ancestors survived on that knowledge, what made Jesus and Christianity any more real or better then an opposing god to every whim of lifes issues? Look at Hinduism, there is up to 1 million different gods. Each Hindu is allowed to pray to the god of their choice, why does Christianity only claim one?

 

Hinduism sees the different gods as aspects or forms of One underlying Brahman or God.

It allows for many different types of human temperament, orientation, level of development etc. Hence the variety of different forms of yogas and so on. IMO it's more open that Christianity which tends towards exclusivity and a 'one-size-fits-all' kind of approach.

As to the question: why did our ancestors go for Christianity? I think there are many different reasons. Once Christianity had become the established religion of Rome and later the ruling class during the dark ages, it was pretty much enforced on people in a ruthless manner. And other than their old pagan beliefs, which were probably no better if not worse that Christianity, people in those days had no way to explain to themselves the universe other than what was given by the church. This was centuries before any kind of secular ideas had arisen. They had very little in the way of alternatives.

 

There are several kinds of modern christianity. Some of the organized orthodox middle eastern ones are pretty old and original (of course they went through several developments as well). I think there may be several cores of christianity. It depends to which one a person is attracted to, what they should explore. I guess what I am trying to say is that gnosticism is not the sole and only original aspect of christianity

 

Lost in the mists of time I'd say.

I doubt we'll ever know for certain what the original Christianity was like - and you could well be right that there were several versions of it.

An interesting side issue I came across the other day, which does refer to the early Christians. In Rome as we know are the famous catacombs where early Christians were buried, along with members of other religions. Each had their own sections of catacomb. Some of the art in the Mithraic tombs shows Mithras with a halo. Since these depictions are contemporary with early Christian art showing the same, it isn't clear whether the halo was something the Christians invented themselves or if they borrowed it from the followers of Mithras. Not a critical point, but interesting in that it shows the difficulty in gaining any real insight or knowledge about the early Christians.
If they did borrow it, it was only one among a number of pagan elements that got incorporated into the religion at an early date.

 

I agree and find it Ironic that Rome incorporated Christianity; yet are the ones who persecuted and hung Jesus up on the cross for all to see.

Was it their fear of change of peoples ideas towards this unknown Messiah?

This seems a sudden change from the days of their own belief in what we call Mythological Gods to which by most accounts, where a direct correlation to the Gods of Greece.

I guess the question is if Christianity was essentially a 'forced religion' upon its people, why is it deemed such a peaceful belief system? Why the sudden change from Mythology beliefs to a one 'God' system?

I guess theories is all we will ever perceive.

 

As memes go, its very successful, tapping into very natal emotions of guilt, abandonment, parental love, forgiveness, and punishment/reward.

 

Of course, another possibility is that the followers of Mithra borrowed it from the Christians.

 

That's probably true. Bart Ehrman's Lost Christianities informs us that before the Third Century Christians disagreed about how many gods there were (one, two, thirty, or 356), whether Yahweh was the true god or an inferior demiurge whom Jesus came to save us from; whether Jesus was only human, only divine, or both; whether His mission was to enlighten us or die for our sins, etc. Until the fifties, there were no scriptures, and even after that, different factions used different gospels. Needless to say, what follows is my own take, based on Ehrman’s and hotly disputed by many traditional Christians. The early Christians fell into three broad categories: (1) “Jewish Christians”, who thought that in order to be a Christian, a person had to become a Jew and adhere to Jewish law; (3) the Paulists, who thought that Christ died for our sins, and salvation depended on faith in His sacrifice and resurrection; and (3) proto-gnosticsGnostics, who thought that Christ came to enlighten us as to the true nature of reality.

The dominant faction in the first decades of the first century were the Jewish Christians, the Jerusalem Church, headed by Jesus' brother, James, and supported by the so-called "Pillars", Peter and John. These followers of Jesus thought He was God's adopted son, the Jewish Messiah, who came to deliver Israel and usher in the Kingdom of God. These people, who called themselves Nazerenes, Ebionites, or "the Way", not Christians, thought of themselves as a sect of Judaism--the real Jews--out to challenge the Judaism of the Temple, which they saw as in league with the Romans, King Herod, and his successors. They believed that Jewish followers of Jesus must keep kosher, circumcision, and the rest of the Law of Moses. James, who came into the movement after Jesus' death, was a strict observer of Jewish law and was respected by the Pharisees who had problems with Jesus for drinking and eating too much and hanging out with lowlifes. They seemed also to be well-connected with the Essenes, associated with the Dead Sea scrolls and the militant zealots who called for direct action against the Romans and their Jewish collaborators. Aslan's book Zealot suggests that the scene was much like the U.S. during the sixties, and that the Jerusalem Church may have been more political than the New Testament makes out.

Enter Paul, who by his own account was a Pharisee who persecuted Christians before he had the remarkable vision that turned him around. Outside of his letters and Acts, we know little about his early life. He knew Jesus only from his visions, which he placed on a par with the first-hand knowledge of Jesus' own brother and disciples. In his letter to the Galatians, he stresses that he had no contact with the Jerusalem Church for three years after his conversion, when he had already been preaching the word. He says that his relatives Andronicus and Junia were Christians before he was. He was born a Jew in Tarsus, in Cilicia, a Hellenized Roman province, and he inherited Roman citizenship from his father, a Benjamite Jew. Roman citizenship wasn't given out readily to non-Romans, although we don't know what his father did to deserve it. So Paul brought to Christianity the perspectives of the Hellenized Jews of the Diaspora (Jews living outside Palestine) and Roman-friendly attitudes. He seems to have been quite familiar with Roman stoicism, and presumably not unfamiliar with mystery religions like Roman Mithraism (which originated in Cilicia). His distinctive messages were: (1) Jesus was sent by God to be sacrificed for our sins; (2) a person didn't have to keep the Jewish law to be justified in God's eyes; salvation comes only through faith in Jesus; (3) we must submit to government (i.e.,Roman) authority. Paul reached an agreement with the Jerusalem church to bring Christ's message to the Gentiles. But after he began setting up churches and news of his teachings reached Jerusalem, James sent out "minders" to check up on him. The group Paul called the "circumcision faction" began undoing his work in such places as Corinth and Galatia, and the breach between Paul and Jerusalem became evident. When Paul returned to Jerusalem to give James the money he'd been collecting for the Jerusalem Church, James told him that many of the members there had concerns that Paul was speaking against the law of Moses, and suggested that Paul show otherwise by performing a purification ceremony at the Temple. While Paul was there, he was set upon by a mob (which Acts is at pains to say was the Jewish Jews, not the Jewish Christians) and had to be rescued by the Romans, after which he spent two years in prison (protective custody?) until he was sent to Rome for trial. When Jewish revolt against the Romans was put down in 70 AD, the Jerusalem Church was decimated, making Paul's version the official version of the movement known as "Christianity".

Then there were the Gnostics. Who they were and when they began is debated, the answer depending on whether the term is defined narrowly or broadly. Broadly speaking, “gnosticism” refers to the notion that there is a more perfect “reality” beyond the world of our senses, and that we can gain access to this realm through insight or esoteric knowledge. This point of view in Christianity is most fully elaborated in the collection of second to fourth century writings unearthed at Nag Hammadi , Egypt, in 1945, but elements are found among Christian sects that pre-dated Paul: the Simmonians, Ophites, Naassenes and Cerinthians. And some scholars find pre-Chrisitan pre-cursors among the Jewish Essenes, of Dead Sea Scrolls fame, influenced by Greek Pythagorian, Persian and possibly Buddhist thought. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the scholar who became Pope Benedict VI, thinks that the earliest Christian communities were Essenes. Some scholars think that the communities founded by Thomas in India were also source of Buddhist and Indian influence on Gnostic Christianity. In the second century, the gnostic thinker Cerdo taught gnostic beliefs to a wealthy shipowner, Marcion, who combined them with Paul’s writings, purged of their Jewish elements, to form a purely Gentile variant called Marcionism. (whether or not Marcion was a gnostic is the subject of debate, most scholars saying no; but he was definitely influenced by gnosticism. Marcion taught that there were two Gods, that the Jewish God who created the world was an evil demiurge, that we are trapped in his world of delusion and that the true God sent Jesus to disclose our true glorious natures and destinies to those capable of understanding Him. Under withering attack from Paulist heresy hunters, Gnosticism lost ground, probably because of the superior organization of the Catholic Church, its less other-worldly views, and eventually the support of the Roman Empire.But Gnosticism has made a comeback since the Nag Hammadi discovery in 1945 and the rise of the New Age movement. I can’t put myself into one of the three boxes I’ve identified, but I’m somewhere between the Paulists and the Gnostics.

 

Christianity gained ground during the third century, when the Roman Empire was shaken by a series of calamities--civil war, foreign invasion, economic crises of runaway inflation, and widespread plague-- and people were searching for meaning and solace in what seemed to be a world of hurt. What accounts for Christianity's ability to beat out its competitors and be a serious contender for Constantine's favor? :

1. Missionary zeal: Christianity differed from both Judaism and pagan mystery religions in its drive to proselytize, pursuant to the Great Commission (Mat.28:16-20);
2. The Jewish diaspora network: Christianity began its initial spread using the network of the Jewish communities across the urban centers of the Roman world, and especially attracting the so-called “God fearers”, Gentile Jewish-wannabees who attended synagogue services but were kept from full-fledged membership by barriers of circumcision and Jewish dietary laws;
3. Flexibility toward the Torah: Paul, a diaspora Jew, realizing that the greatest market for Christian converts lay with gentiles, relaxed Jewish dietary laws, the requirement of circumcision, and the emphasis on keeping the Law (works) instead of simply accepting Jesus (faith). He also preached a more universal message of love than the Jewish version.
4. A Sacred book. Unlike the pagan mysteries, the Christians claimed the authority of a prestigious sacred book said to be divinely inspired, the Jewish Old Testament, and by the mid-100s Christians were well along in developing their own sacred canon;
5. Revealed moralism and the love ethic. Pagan philosophers had highly developed ethics, but they were known mainly to philosophers, and were not generally demanded nor practiced by the gods. Aristotle taught that the gods could not love humans. Christians adopted Judaism’s loving God and extended it to a universalistic level;
6. A realistic hero god portrayed as having walked the earth as a human in recent times, unlike the more remote mythical-gods of the mystery religions ;
7. Hell. Christianity accepted and extended the belief in hell, not universally accepted by Jews (except for the Essenes and Pharisees) and foreign to most pagans (except Persian Zoroastrians, from whom the Jews probably got it.) The terror of eternal punishment for rejection of Christ’s message was a powerful incentive for conversion;
8. Doctrine. Mystery religions were not doctrinaire. Christians provided a set of beliefs purporting to explain reality and mandating adherence to certain beliefs;
9. Exclusiveness of membership. Like the Jews, Christians did not allow membership in more than one religion, nor worship of more than one god. Pagans could belong to any number of mystery religions, which, according to Stark, tended to dilute attachments to any one of them;
10. Broad appeal to different socio-economic strata: While Christianity began in Jerusalem as a lower-class movement of peasants and slaves, it soon acquired a following of middle class artisans and traders, and some upper class support; in that sense, it followed the pattern of cults instead of sects;
11. Special appeal to women.: Because Christianity condemned divorce and infanticide, emphasized a duty of marital fidelity, and treated women as equals in the early church, it attracted a large number of female members, including some of high status; These eventually often brought in their spouses and/or sons. Constantine's mother was a Christian;
12. Social services. As a practical matter, Christianity offered a variety of social benefits and services for members, including support of widows and orphans, and burials;
13. Reputation for courage and caregiving. Although persecutions of Christians were relatively sporadic in the Roman empire, they did occur, especially under Nero, Decius, Domitian, Diocletian/Galerius, Maximin, Aurelian ,and Valerian. For the most part, Christians comported themselves with dignity and courage under such pressure—a fact that greatly impressed the pagan citizenry, the example of such martyrs as Perpetua being an outstanding example. Also, during the great plagues of the second century, when over a quarter of the population died, Christians distinguished themselves in caring for their won sick and even the pagan sick.
14. Christianity was less exotic and secretive than the other mystery religions. Much has been made of the fact that Christians were suspect for impiety toward the imperial cult in refusing to sacrifice to Caesar and the traditional gods of Rome, and that they met in catacombs. Yet,with the exception of some Gnostic groups, they did not have secret messages known only to initiates, and they outperformed pagans in observing the traditional Roman virtues.
15. Hybrid. Christianity succeeded because it was the most adaptive hybrid, forging an effective synthesis of the two great cultural traditions of Western civilization: the Helenistic and the Hebraic.
16. Openness. It was open to anyone. Mithraism was open only to men.
17. Organization. it was better organized than others. Even Paul felt it necessary to get his message approved by the Church leaders in Jerusalem, implying a central hierarchy lacking in other mystery religions.
18. Constantine: The Emperor's embrace of Christianity sealed the deal. The legend arose that he saw the sign of the cross in the sky and credited the Christian god for victory in battle. Actually, he credited other gods for help in the past, and continued his devotion to Apollo until he was baptized near the end of his life, but he was a practical man and saw advantages in gaining support from Christians (think Trump, Cruz and Rubio in Iowa.
19. Establishment as the Official Religion of the Empire under Theodosus in 379. For the most part, pagans were still tolerated but just barely.

 

That. too.

 

With that, does it not seem to be purely a marketing strategy to the masses; to which then the Bible must be a fabrication?

 

I wouldn't say "marketing strategy". That sounds very calculated. Instead, the history suggests a fortuitous evolution of characteristics that proved effective--like the chordate Pikia surviving the Burgess extinction and making the rise of vertebrates possible.

 

Absolutely. We can't tell which way around it was. I perhaps should have made that more explicit in my post.

 

Forget being Christian. It has become too retarded from its original essence. Focusing simply on the Christ energy is much more valuable than being a modern Christian.