A History Lesson: Where are the “Good Christians” today?

 

Among practicing Christians the most commonly or unanimously understood declaration is Roman Catholicism’s claim as the original and only true Christian religion on the face of the earth. The Roman claim to exclusivity is based on the bible verse in which Jesus verbally anoints Apostle Peter as the rock upon which he - Jesus - will found the one true church.

The original Roman Catholic position of being the church founded by Jesus and extended through history by apostolic succession has been an unconscious assumption on the part of Catholic families worldwide for more than 2000 years.

One worldwide film celebrity, Mel Gibson, gave us a typical demonstration of how his own absolute and literal thinking are reflected in his entire perception of life. Gibson openly declared during interviews involving his film, The Passion of the Christ, that his wife - an Episcopal and certainly a better person than Mel himself - is still included with all non-Catholics who are going to hell.

Such thinking diminished the magnificence and power of his current film portrayal, reducing it in effect to Mel’s own public worship of Jesus Christ from his traditional and intense fundamentalist/literalist perspective.

Non-Catholics moved to re-think their lives and spiritual attitude seem then to be relegated to mere moral and ethical improvement since, according to Roman church literalists – apparently including Pope Benedict - the ultimate achievement of the Christ – universal salvation - remains exclusively in the proprietary purview of the Roman Catholic Church. This is something the current pope has also be re-asserting.

Protestant literalists have no claim on being a superior form of faith-based belief however. These Christian literalists dispute the Roman claim to authoritarian exclusivity although they make no challenges to the Roman literalism regarding ultimate spiritual truth as contained in an inerrant Bible. Such thinking captures all literalist Christians within a proprietary dispute over whose literal interpretation of scripture authorizes the absolute claims of either/or inclusion or exclusion.

These literalists have been engaged for centuries in a continuing conflict with liberal-minded Christians who have advocated, in addition to scripture, prayer and tradition, the practice of reason.

This historical debate over authority and who God loves the most continues today …

Part of that history includes torture and torment administered by historical religious authorities who made no bones about doing it all literally in the name of Christ. That particular silliness of thought that was manifested most recently by the blustering “Blow them away in the name of the Lord,” exhortation of one of Evangelical Christianity’s more prominent celebrities – the late Reverend Jerry Falwell.

Yet there is very little difference Falwell’s incredible stretch of pretended Christian compassion and the exclusivist view of folks like Franklin Graham.

The literalist Christian, seems guided by explicit and direct biblical verbiage that supposedly commands and instructs every aspect of human morality and behavior. And such a believer remains the Christian practitioner most blinded by assumption.

A literalist Christian - consciously or otherwise - bases his thinking and action on his and others’ assumptions of who God is, what God is like, who Jesus is and what Jesus meant in his messages.

Quick to criticize those who openly recognize and admit that they are reluctant to make absolute bricks out of strawed-down assumptions, literalists assume a God and Christ neither attractive nor benevolent - merely judgmental to a fault and obsessed with every nuance of human intimacy.

Those strawed-down assumptions were used to create evil bricks of arrogant authority upon which dungeons of coercion, persecution, torture and bonfires of outright murder and war were the terrible consequence.

Professed Christians carried out the most egregious crimes conceivable in the name of a Christ who would have repudiated every moment of every crusade and inquisitive interrogation.

I suggest that the “entertainment”  most needed in this country in these fateful years of Christian apathy and blind conformity is another “Passion of the Christ” sort of capture of the imagination of church-going minions sitting with a Bible in one hand and a box of Junior Mints in the other. We need those creative gifts of film-makers who were recognized and honored for films on the Holocaust, the Passion of Christ, even the Alamo.

What every Christian needs to become more aware of is a visual and visceral literality of actual suffering of those “other” Christian martyrs murdered by a victorious Christian sub-group whose principal authorization was that granted by the 4th Century might of the Roman Empire.

This extremely lucky group of believers who were chosen by Constantine to become a state religion backed by military might found itself the Roman-approved-and-designated true church; subject of course to periodic eligibility reviews by the emperor himself.

These “winners” ultimately focused on the literalist legend propagated by Constantine and Nicene clerics terrified of big C’s every violent whim.

Once empowered, they then turned on their fellow Christians - all those who refused to buy into the literalist legend born out of political expediency of a desperate dying military hegemony.

What happened next was the murder of Good Christians by other Christians who - by their own fruits - were ultimately revealed as the legitimate enemies of God and no friends of Christ. With that terrible Inquisition they revealed themselves as savage and ruthless self-interested verbal equivocators who worshipped earthly power and security far more than seeking treasures in heaven.

These were clerical cowards had no faith in God.

For had there been faith, the robe-wearing inquisitors would never have had doubts that God could manage his kingdom and - if God were so inclined - deal with heretics without the interference of arrogant defenders of the faith who would not have recognized a revealed or resurrected face of Christ Himself.

Southern France during the Crusades ...

Home of Bons Chretians - Good Christians - who made no claim to exclusivity nor paraded any kind of costumed pontificating arrogance designed to awe the ignorant and enhance personal power over the individual lives of believers.

They considered themselves practicing “Good Christians,” not a politburo of religious thugs dominated by a self-interested Pope who was empowered to launch Crusade after Crusade and who spoke words of condemnation and death all the while pretending they came from God.

Watching that kind of revelatory film in an air-conditioned comfort, oh that  we could all drink our Pepsi’s and munch our peanuts while falling under the hypnotic spell of Hollywood’s greatest tale-weavers.

A movie if you please about Roman Catholic Christianity‘s declaration of war upon its own kindred.

I refer to the Albigensian Crusade that did not take place in the Middle East where devout cross-wearing professional killers slaughtered mercilessly men, women and children while trying to take back cities and relics in the name of someone who never did nor ever would authorize violence in His name.:

Albigensian is one word used to describe Christian believers and the so-called heretics who ministered to them. They were also known as Cathari (Cathars).

In a very short time, they had transformed most of Southern France into something more resembling the ideals preached in Catholic churches, monasteries and cathedrals all over Europe.

A Cathar priest was known as a “Perfect” (in French, Parfait) and these priests were quite obviously much more effective in building communities of faith than was the Roman Catholic empire. That was the empire with the thousand-year head start and whose principal tools of teaching the common people about Jesus involved the use of fear, shame, guilt and extortion . .. this included a base manipulations using a bible withheld from all but the priesthood.

The crime of the Cathari?

A spiritual alternative of substance; one that more closely resembled the stories about the wonder and wisdom of Jesus many of which the Catholic clerics themselves shared with the peasants.

It was Christianity, only a version that did not exploit the people nor tax them nor play upon their fears of a mindless and judgmental God who had somehow forced them into subservience to an openly arrogant and greedy priesthood.

It was a Christianity of trust without spiritual extortion.

It was …. well, read for yourself.

"The Albigensian Crusade and the Inquisition in Languedoc
had established one dark, immutable axiom: To dedicate one’s life to a Christian creed outside the bounds of medieval orthodoxy was a capital crime.

Only those who renounced the Cathar creed would be spared the flames of ecclesiastical justice.

"Bertrand Marty and his 200 companions had a fortnight to think
over their stark choice: recant or burn. Not one of the Perfect came forward to beg mercy of Archbishop Amiel. They parceled out their meager belongings among their neighbors on the mountaintop and comforted their weeping relatives.

"As their time left on Earth dwindled each passing day, the men and
women of the dualist faith steeled themselves for an awful death.

From atop the walls of Montsegur, the archbishop’s men could be seen at work in a field far below, stacking a large enclosure with dry wood scavenged from the surrounding forests.

"On Sunday, March 13, ten days into the two-week wait,
twenty-one credentes approached the Perfect and asked to be given the
consolamentum. They too were willing to brave the fire. It was the most eloquent moment in the whole sad saga of Catharism, a testament to the devotion inspired by the holy men and women whose preaching had convulsed an era.

"Now, as they were on the threshold of death, twenty-one people stepped forward to join them. It was an act of defiance, solidarity, courage, and, in the end, faith.

These companions of the last hour came from all stations of feudal society.
Raymond of Pereille’s wife, Corba, and daughter, Esclarmonde, decided to leave their noble families for the timeless embrace of the Good.

With them went four knights, six soldiers (two with their wives), two messengers, one squire, one crossbowman, one merchant, one peasant woman, and one lady.

"The Perfect of Montsegur administered the consolamentum to all of them and welcomed them into their ranks.

They had three days of life remaining.

"The lugubrious procession of March 16, 1244, began in the early morning. It wound down the sinuous track leading from the summit to a clearing at the base of the hill.

The 220 or so condemned walked past the last patches of snow on the brown winter grass until they reached a palisade of logs.

Friend and enemy looked on.

"The leaders of the Cathar faith, barefoot and clad only in coarse robes, climbed the ladders propped up against the wooden walls. Groups of them
were lashed together, their backs to the tall stakes sticking up from the
colossal bier.

At a sign from the archbishop, his men threw burning brands into
the enclosure.

"The low murmur of prayers was overtaken by the crackling
sound of flame, spreading underfoot, curing the first of the fiery twigs and
setting the hems of garments alight. Within minutes, the crackling had become one great oceanic roar.

"By midmorning, a choking black nimbus billowed through the ravines and valleys leading from Montsegur.

Shepherds on nearby hills would have seen it rise slowly, heavy with the stench of fear and pain and man’s inhumanity to God.

The wind took the cloud and, as it had done so long ago at Beziers, lifted it high into the skies of Languedoc. The particles of smoke drifted and dispersed, then disappeared."

Stephen O’Shea- The Perfect Heresy

"Amaury responded to the question: ‘How shall we tell who are the
heretics?’ with his now infamous answer that undoubtedly expressed the spirit of the Albigensian Crusade.

‘Kill them all, the Lord will know his own.’"

Tobias Churton- The Gnostics

It is time to more seriously and openly question the authenticity of literalist Christian historical accounts. If we do not, we will never move to what the Cathari and others demonstrated as the real practice of a spirituality of love and compassion.

Literal thinking and a dogmatic insistence on an inerrant Bible never has and will never serve this generation and those to come in an efficacious way.

The greatest handicap of literal fundamentalists is their obstinate insistence on continuing to revere history at the cost of a diminished future – in effect attempting to drive forward while looking out the rear window.