I would say you were mistaken.
This is obviously not the case or the meaning of Jesus’ life. We know Jesus attended Sabbath services in the synagogues of his day. We know he celebrated the Passover meal. In John’s Gospel he is in the religious center of the religion of Judaism three times during Passover. These are religious actions. In Mark 12: 41-44, Jesus points out the widow giving her two mites to the temple as a model of Discipleship. In Matthew 5: 17-18, Jesus says that he has not come to abolish the Law but fulfill it and that not the smallest part of a letter will pass away until all things have taken place. He goes on to say that whoever breaks a commandment or teaches others the same will be least in the Kingdom of Heaven. It's interesting to note here, as well, that he doesn't say they won't be in the Kingdom of Heaven at all.
Also, and I owe part of this insight to Bad Catholic on Patheos.com, Jesus, in a sense, instituted a religion. He formed a community with a code of ethics and a ritual, namely the Eucharist, to bind them. Community + Ethical code + Ritual = Religion. Also, according to Acts, the early followers of “The Way,” what Christianity was called before being called Christianity, continued to worship in the Temple and synagogue until the temple was destroyed in 70 CE and they were driven from the synagogues in the following years.
Now, granted, religions aren’t all they are cracked up to be. Jesus was definitely critical of the religious establishment of his day. They have good times and bad times; times when they are closer to their own truths and times they are further away. You can see it in Christianity. At the Council of Trent in the mid 16th century, Catholics closed their doors to the world. It wasn’t until almost exactly 400 years later, to the day that Vatican II opened the windows of the Church and that she, the Church, was even able to say that other followers of Christ were indeed followers of Christ and try to repair ties with her separated brethren. (We don’t use ‘heretic’ anymore.)
So… just the first sentence of a poem and I’ve written a whole article. I’ll keep it up. Let me know what you think about this first part. I always hope to hear from you.
Peace and Good
David
(All images come from Wiki Commons.)
I am really glad you are picking this apart. Religion and Spirituality are very hard to navigate for many people. I haven't watched the video, though I've seen it on Facebook, because the title irked me. I think also because I wasn't sure how to respond to it, and because I wasn't sure why the title got under my skin. I look forward to the rest of your posts on this!
ReplyDeleteThanks Annie. :)
ReplyDeleteDavid, what a good writer you turned out to be. :) I look forward to future installments. It makes no sense to me that one would love Jesus but hate the community of believers. I mean both current believers and those who have gone before. I would tend to go the other direction, I love Jesus and all religions. I would gladly travel the Way with all fellows of good cheer and kindness regardless of their vision of God, or not-God than exclude any based on their religion. Our religions are
ReplyDeletetestimates to out awakenings. Like temples and cathedrals, religion is how one generation passes its knowledge of the sacred to the next generation.
Thank you. :)
ReplyDeleteAnd I like your image there at the end, Randy. Religion is about the handing on, the "traditioning" of future generations.
ReplyDeleteDavid -- A few thoughts. There were things I liked both about the poem and your post. There were also things I disagreed with in both. I'm not going to type about all those things here, but if you wanted to talk about it in a different format that would be cool.
ReplyDeleteMy biggest issue though is that both the spoken word video and your post seem to take the category of religion for granted in a serious way. Current definitions and associations with the word religion for many in our part of the world often come out of a 19th century construct. I think this is really important if we're going to deal with issues about the bifurcation between Jesus and "Religion" as well as the issue of if Jesus founded a "Religion." It's not too hard to see that the category of "Religion" we inherited automatically assumes that religion can be a damaging force if its power isn't kept in check (usually by the state). This is problematic for me. Also problematic is the idea that Jesus founded a "Religion" if we're employing the European, Nineteenth century definition. It might be more helpful to talk about exactly what he founded without attempting to fit that into the category of "Religion."
Just some initial thoughts. As I said before, both the video and your post were interesting to me, and I would like to continue the conversation if you wish.
On another note -- youtube video was well-produced -- who's the money behind this dude?
We might just have to do that.
ReplyDelete