Writing about Christianity is difficult - the topic is vast, controversial, and for many it is also very painful. Therefore, you have to carefully choose your words and soften certain points that should have been said more harshly.
Please do not take this article as criticism for the sake of criticism. The purpose of the article is to set some milestones by which it will be possible to navigate in search of personal happiness and peace of mind. Christianity has had a profound impact on our culture, and so many of the mental problems we all face are caused by it - that's what we'll talk about.
Let's start with the fact that Christianity, like any religion, has nothing to do with God. Christianity speaks about God, but has no direct connection with him. This is just the case when it should be reminded that only the one who ate them has the right to talk about the taste of oysters. So, the creators of Christianity did not eat oysters.
Christianity, as a systematized teaching, did not arise spontaneously or suddenly, it was created, and not just like that, but with very specific practical goals. As Nietzsche says, there was only one real Christian - Jesus. Jesus embodied Christianity - he was a Christian. And everyone who later stood under the banner of the new religion only believed in Christianity.
Remember the main motive of the Tao Te Ching - the Tao that has a name is not the real Tao. Likewise, Christianity - being expressed in words, it loses all meaning. No words and signs can convey the inner state of Jesus - he simply lived and showed himself an example of the salvation of the soul. And Christianity is “faith in Jesus”, not invented by him, but put into his mouth.
In psychology, this problem constantly becomes a stumbling block - people often do not see the difference between faith and knowledge. Taking other people's words and principles as an immutable truth, people give up the need to get their own experience and wander into such a jungle, from which they themselves then cannot get out. The more a person relies on other people's opinions and ideals, the sooner he loses his footing and finds himself in limbo - life becomes a complete abstraction, devoid of taste and color.
Christianity, as it was formed, is just a collection of legends and traditions about the life of holy people. There is no power in him - only tales about her. Any documents testifying to ancient great achievements are impressions recorded from hearsay, many times altered in accordance with the requirements of the moment. Behind each text are living people who followed their goals and the current situation.
And yet, on the basis of these stories and retellings, a huge philosophical and ontological concept has been built, with the claim that it was received from the hands of God himself. However, nothing can change the fact that the foundation of religion is faith, not knowledge. Religion is created and implanted by people who, at best, believe in God, however, who do not have any knowledge of their own about what God is and where to look for him.
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Here it is necessary to make a reservation that at all times truly holy people met in the bosom of the Christian church. The saints not because they clearly and selflessly followed all the postulates of religion, but because they made the transition from faith to knowledge of God. They don't believe anymore, now they Know. And the fact that, talking about their experiences, they use Christian terminology is a matter of habit and the need to find at least some words for indescribable revelations.
The attainment of such a state is not a merit of Christian teaching or the result of a righteous life. People reached the same state without any mediation of religious teachings. Enlightenment, restoration of connection with God is the result of honesty with oneself and finding support within, in one's own psychological experience, and not in external teachings and rules. Christianity claims that only those obedient to it will be saved, and all others will be punished.
So, between the salvation of the soul and the actual values of the religious institution that we know Christianity today, there is a huge gap. And if in its best intentions religion really wants to help overcome this abyss, then in practice it turns out quite the opposite - it only hinders the salvation of the soul.
Early christianity
Christianity has not always been a religion - in the early stages of its existence it was a sect. Not in the negative sense in which it is customary to use this word today, but in its original meaning, as a brotherhood that has adopted its own separate doctrine of faith. Having broken away from Judaism, early Christianity was a Mystery - a teaching about the awakening of spiritual forces and the achievement of a higher state of the soul.
Like all other Mysteries, early Christianity was a practical teaching. Not by faith for the sake of faith, but by a system of practical knowledge with its own language and its own techniques for awakening the soul from sleep. And only those who were prepared and worthy were allowed to this mystical knowledge. Revealing the subtleties of spiritual truths to the profane was considered dangerous, which is wonderfully illustrated by the story of Jesus himself.
Later, when Christianity began to spread more and more, they began to forcibly etch out its main component from it. As a Mystery, Christian teaching had as its goal the attainment of the same state of mind in which Jesus was. But already several centuries after the death of Jesus, only an emasculated faith in the forgiveness and salvation promised to the righteous remained of the original Christianity.
"Christ - like Buddha - was different from other people in his actions, and Christians from the very beginning differed from others only in faith." Karl Jaspers
Instead of teaching how to achieve the kingdom of the Lord in this life, the new Christianity offered to relax and trust the church - in order to save your soul, it was now enough just to believe in God. Christianity offered free cheese to those who, in the Mysteries, would not have been allowed close to sacred knowledge. Not surprisingly, such a convenient religion gained popularity very quickly.
Celsus: … The screamers calling people to other Mysteries say: "Let the one, whose hands are clean and the words are wise, draw near." Others say: "Let the one who is clean, and whose soul is free from defilement, and who leads a righteous life, draw near."
These things are said by those who promise cleansing from mistakes. Now let us listen to those who call to the Christian Mysteries; Whom do they call there? - and sinners, and fools, and beggars, everyone is called into the kingdom of God, all the poor will be accepted there. Shouldn't they be called sinners, thieves, robbers, blasphemers, grave-diggers?
Celsus did not attack the early Christian mystics, but the false forms of Christianity that already existed then.
The ideals of early Christianity were based on the high moral standards of the pagan Mysteries, and the first Christians to meet in Rome did so in the underground temples of Mithras, from whose cult the modern church borrowed a system of government that emphasized the role of the clergy. Manley P. Hall
The original mystical side of Christianity was preserved in the Gnostic teachings, which were the link between early Christianity and the more ancient Mysteries. But Gnosticism was soon declared heresy and the church made great efforts to destroy it. Almost all documentary evidence was destroyed, and only in 1945 were Gnostic texts discovered in Egypt, opening an esoteric view of Christian teaching.
In other world religions, a similar situation is also observed. Buddhism and Hinduism are the same social and state institutions as Christianity. But, unlike the latter, in the Eastern religions the practical side of achieving an enlightened state was not rejected, but stood out as independent esoteric teachings - Zen and Advaita. Christianity has finally become an exoteric profane belief system.
Christianity in the hands of the state
The history of Christianity as a full-fledged religion begins from the fourth century AD. The Roman emperor Constantine recognized Christianity on an equal footing with other religions widespread at that time. He himself, however, remained a pagan almost until his death and, according to some reports, led a lifestyle not worthy of even an emperor, let alone a Christian.
By the end of the same century, Emperor Theodosius I finally established the status of the state religion of Rome for Christianity. A little later, paganism was officially banned, and the history of mass and violent conversion of pagans to a new religion began.
It is quite obvious that Christianity received state support not for its truthfulness and not for the fact that the Roman emperors found in it consonance with their spiritual quests. From the very beginning it was a socio-political issue.
The masses had to be controlled, and Christianity was perfect for this. In addition, it has already received widespread popular recognition. The state could only take the reins of government into its own hands and send the chariot in the right direction. The advantage of Christianity was also the fact that it implied a clear hierarchy, allowing you to keep the entire religious institution under strict control.
It is also necessary to say about the origin of the Bible - the main document of the Christian religion. By the time of Constantine, the Bible had already taken the form of two covenants known to us, and Constantine helped to strengthen and spread the canonical Christian teaching by ordering the production of 50 copies of the Bible.
Like Christianity, the Bible did not come into being overnight. The text of the Holy Scripture took shape over many centuries, but it also took its final form somewhere in the third or fourth centuries of our era.
Nobody wrote the Bible. The thick book familiar to us is a collection of disparate stories arranged in a historical and semantic sequence. The authors of these legends are unknown to anyone - one told, the other conveyed, the third wrote it down. But the last one had the greatest influence - the one who included this story in the text of the Testament.
The formation of the canonical text of the Bible took place not by a Divine decree, but by the will of specific living people who made a decision what to recognize as Divine truth and what to consider as a dangerous heresy. The Bible is the result of a conscious and deliberate selection of texts that would please the nascent church, and the exclusion of those that put the very need for a church into question.
The Bible, with the status of Divine truth assigned to it, finally put an end to the ideals and values of early Christianity and completed the transition from direct knowledge of God, to faith in him.
Slave psychology
Remember the fable about the fox and green grapes? It illustrates very well the formation and nature of Christian values. This is a well-known psychological effect that occurs at every step - when a person cannot get what he wants, he is faced with a choice - to admit his failure or to make an intellectual somersault and devalue what he wants completely. And since it's very unpleasant to face the truth, it's always easier to call grapes green.
[Christian sermon] is a whole methodology, a real school of seduction into faith: fundamental contempt and humiliation of those spheres from which resistance could come (reason, philosophy and wisdom, doubt and caution); shameless self-glorification and exaltation of the doctrine, constantly reminding us that it was given to us by God himself … that nothing in it can be criticized, but everything must be taken on faith … and must not be accepted somehow, but in a state of deepest humility and gratitude … Nietzsche
Christianity spread as the religion of the weak. It promised an introduction to the world of spiritual values, requiring no effort or preliminary preparation. All comers were “taken” into Christianity, while creating in them a sense of their own chosenness.
In other words, Christianity has become a means of psychological defense for the masses in the face of their own insignificance. When a person cannot rely on himself and his own opinion, he is forced to come up with artificial rules and follow them. This is the basis of Christian black and white morality - its task is to put those who are incapable of self-determination in a stable.
If you watched the second part of "Dogville" by Lars von Trier, then it had an excellent illustration of this. There, the slaves themselves came up with a code according to which their masters then ruled them. First, the viewer is shown the cruelty of this set of rules, and it all ends with the fact that in freedom, without rules, former slaves lose their heads and drive their lives into a dead end. And it turns out that the code, with all its severity, is really necessary where it comes to the psychology of the slave.
So, Christianity is the slave code. It can streamline the existence of a community without causing any special psychological harm, but on one condition - if it is a community of weak infantile souls who fall into lawlessness without the Law.
They [the Jews] have perverted values by inventing moral ideals that - as long as they are believed in - turn their weakness into power and their insignificance into value. Karl Jaspers
For a weak soul, Christianity is attractive from two sides. Firstly, contrary to its own rules, it flatters pride, creating a sense of belonging to the world of the divine - a kind of fairground spirituality. Secondly, the world of material values, unattainable for the slave, Christianity declares vicious and sinful - devalues it.
Then a feeling of own exclusiveness, sweet for any neurotic, arises - “I am weak and poor only because I stand above material values. I am spiritual! It turns out that freedom, strength and faith in oneself are completely devalued, and the qualities of the infantile psyche come to the fore - humility, doubt, irresponsibility, self-pity, disguised as high spirituality.
If everyone around you is brought down to your level, then you can become strong among the weak - this is the goal and logic of Christian social morality.
The Ten Commandments and Christian Morality
It is believed that Moses received these commandments directly from God. Even if we do not take it literally and assume that we are talking about "ordinary" mystical insight, then still one fundamental question remains - what do the words recorded in the modern Bible have to do with what Moses really received from God?
The commandments that have come down to us have gone through a whole meat grinder of distorting factors. First, the very nature of words is such that they cannot express any deep insight. Secondly, retellings, translations and re-translations are the mechanism of a broken telephone, when the narrator places accents as he pleases, leaving little of the original information. Thirdly, the political factor - in the final text of the Bible, the commandments were formulated in such a way as to maintain the general socio-political line of the new religion.
Can you trust the Christian commandments after that? Do they really sound the voice of God, or are they only the "good" intentions of the Christian clergy? I refer you to the text of the commandments, so as not to duplicate them here: Ten Commandments.
Look, at least half of the commandments are purely social attitudes. Rules for comfortable living in a community. And the other half is defending the interests of religion itself and playing on maintaining existing traditions.
If you dig deep, you can guess about the esoteric basis of individual commandments, but few people do it. Usually, the commandments are understood head-on, literally. More advanced believers go further and understand the commandments more broadly, but this also does not change anything. The essence remains the same: the commandments are a lubricant for the social machine, not a tool for saving the soul.
By the way, an interesting point. The commandments are a system of prohibitions. They don't tell you what to do, but only what not to do. This is a parental mandate left to children who, otherwise, will turn everything upside down. Such prohibitions are needed when there is no trust in people - and this again brings us back to the old logic - a slave, left unattended, begins to rampage. Therefore, we need a club from the commandments and God's wrath, which would always hang in a conspicuous place.
This is how the main instrument of social pressure is formed and strengthened - conscience. Only Christianity goes beyond ordinary psychology. Conscience, it says, requires an answer not to itself, not to parents, but to God. But it is not the Self that is meant, which would be quite reasonable. Christianity requires the observance of those covenants it deems important in its own right.
Feelings of guilt and a conflict of conscience are the gift of Christianity to humanity.
Here, too, a well-known trap works. If you observe an enlightened person for a long time, then you can track down some characteristic response patterns. For example, you can notice that he does not want to kill anyone, that he does not seek to commit adultery, does not steal, does not envy, does not lie … - in general, he leads a righteous life.
Then we can conclude that the point is precisely in observing these simple rules. Do not kill, do not lie, do not steal - and everything will be fine, you will become the same spiritual and happy. But that would be a very big mistake, because the causes and effects are reversed here.
The first place is always the level of spiritual development - it is he who shapes behavior. It is impossible to turn this mechanism in the opposite direction. No matter how much you pretend to be an enlightened one, spirituality will not increase from this, but rather even decrease.
An enlightened person does not look like a righteous person because he has enough firmness and willpower to follow all conceivable commandments. And a sinner does not become less a sinner because, by clenching his teeth, he does not allow himself to violate the established law.
A real righteous man lives without rules at all - he no longer has the motivation that gives rise to sinful actions, therefore he looks like a righteous man. But at the same time, he can perform such actions that are completely inconsistent with the Christian commandments, and this still will not be a sin for him, because God Himself stands behind his every act.
Well, and a sinner is a sinner because he lives only by the rules, and cannot independently decide for himself what is evil and what is good. No matter how hard he tries, no matter what he pretends to be, as long as he follows other people's commandments, he will remain a sinner. In the words of the Apostle Paul - “Where there is no law, there is no crime (Rom. 4:15) … For even before the law, sin was in the world; but sin is not imputed when there is no law (Rom. 5:13)."
Verdict
It is easy to criticize Christianity in general, but it should not be underestimated. The problems described here arise in large part due to the fact that the bulk of believers are profane - people who take everything too literally and look in religion for answers to questions that should be asked to themselves.
Christianity often becomes a refuge for weak infantile souls, and that is why it compromises itself at every step. It promises to give spiritual benefits to all who join the ranks of believers. And those who are still very far from the enlightened state believe in the salvation of the soul without any effort and, in general, in the "freebie".
Spiritual growth at all times demanded tremendous courage and exorbitant efforts, which few people can handle. To really take a step in the direction of spirituality, you need to go crazy in a sense - how many are ready for this? But many people want to join spirituality …
Despite the fact that we know Christianity only in a very distorted form, it is still possible to discern in it traces of that eternal wisdom that was revealed to initiates in the ancient Mysteries.
The classic myth of the birth of a hero, presented in the Christian tradition in the same symbols and images as in many other cultures and religions, teaches the awakening of the soul from sleep. The life path of Jesus, so colorfully described in the Bible, is a symbolic reflection of the battle between light and darkness that is going on in each of us.
Christianity is most dangerous for its categorical attitude and subordination to the interests of society. Whatever one may say, but enlightenment and social values have always been and will be on opposite sides of the barricades. In this conflict of interests, modern Christianity changes its mission and chooses the side of society - it betrays itself and those people who trusted it.
Christianity no longer leads people to their salvation; it is too busy saving itself.
Oleg Satov, psychologist