A Rupture in the Rapture

The Book of Revelations as A Blueprint for Fear

If I were asked for a one-sentence sound bite on religion, I would say I was against it.

---Salman Rushdie

You remember Rushdie, writer of “The Satanic Verses,” a volume that so upset the Muslim world that his life was threatened for years.  He was virtually in exile as a result.  The notoriety of his experience shut the mouths of others who might have stepped up to point out the obvious in a more direct and succinct way: That the vast majority of all religion is designed to do the exact opposite of what it pretends.

Having studied religion for some time, this conclusion is something that I see as obvious.  When one with an open mind looks even briefly at the history of the Catholic Church, the virtual center of Christianity, the deduction of complete corruption is inescapable.   The problem is that so many who are tied to their religion are pre-disposed to defend it regardless of the evidence, regardless of the past, regardless of what it is doing right up to the present day.

There are certainly some worthy religions, ones that do what any true religion does: unite, empower and spiritually inspire its followers.  None of the major religions do this.  Instead, they promote the opposite: They divide us, weaken us and stir up fear.   The only reason that any of the big religions have survived is that people fear the percieved possible consequences of disengaging: the promise of eternal damnation and pain.

This article is all about fundamentalist religious silliness.   As we get closer to the “end times” date of December 21, 2012, the rhetoric and baseless fear-mongering seems to find new limits in the stupidity department.

Christians are asked to swallow the double-speak of an all-loving God who would eternally damn to a fiery pit those who would break His rules.  Muslims and Christians alike have been  told by this God that they earn extra points in the quest to avoid this hell if they kill non-believers.  The Christians over the last few hundred years have gotten mostly past the murder part but still insist on creating ministries to convert people all over the planet who never asked them for their guidance.  So much for love.

Again, from Rushdie: “Doubt, it seems to me, is the central condition of a human being in the twentieth century.

This, I offer for your consideration, is the central purpose of the big religions.  Their intent, their very purpose, is to fan the flames of fear and doubt.  Their kind words and their acts of mercy and charity are smokescreens for their core intent: to weaken and disempower people.  Part of this goal is met as their leadership and their followers fight each other about how they all should define or worship God.

The vast majority of all the wars fought in our history have been about differences people have had over how we should see God, what name we should use to address him, and what rules “He” wants us to live by.  All the rules and so-called holy scriptures have been written by men, not penned by some Almighty.  Over the course of two centuries, the empowering content of some of the early Christian holy texts has been gutted: too empowering.  If you take a look at what books have been expunged from the Bible as we know it today, you will see that it has been emptied of its most empowering content.  See the Gospel of Saint Thomas, discovered a half-century ago with the Dead Sea Scrolls and the amazing Gospel of Judas.

The Church hierarchy does not want its flock to be anything other than “sheeple.”

Now, as we approach 2012, more and more people are talking about apocalypse, the End Times.  They are quoting the Book of Revelations, probably the most perverted, fear-loaded “holy book” ever penned.  The consensus of Biblical scholars tells us that the bible was written in the latter part of the first century.  This means that, for over a thousand years, countless generations of Christians have been worried that maybe theirs was to be the generation that suffered the pain of apocalypse.

Consider the strong possibility, as I see it, that the Book of Revelations was written as a blueprint for the disempowerment of the Christian flock.  It was not written as a book of wisdom or truth or God’s word; it was written with the purpose of dividing, weakening and frightening.  If you look at how the world is responding to this book today, it seems clear that, so far, it seems to be fulfilling that purpose.

What we are being asked to do now is to see the foolishness of participation in divisive religion.  If we intend to live in a free world, that means that we speak freely.  It means also that we feel fully free to be completely aware of what we are experiencing and how we are interpreting it.  It means that some will be offended as one speaks her or his truth.  So be it!

We are being asked with more and more directness to drop the old, divisive, judging ways of being.  In doing this we embrace our commonalities, our spiritual connection with each other and our divine nature.  Part of the schizophrenic nature of much of Christianity is betrayed in these contradicting sets of dogma:  First, it is said, that God is in everyone and everything.  But wait, the clergyman says, you are separate.  You are unworthy.  You must follow these special God rules if you hope to get to heaven and avoid the fiery pits of eternal suffering.

This is but a single example of the contradictory nature of the Christian scriptures.  Do you buy that stuff?  If so, isn’t it time to wake up?  The leadership of the big religions want us weak and fighting with each other.  They do not want us to understand that we have immense power, worthiness, and capacities for happiness, calm and abundance.