If there is one thing Christians are good at it is ignoring Christ. No, I don’t mean we pretend that the Bible doesn’t exist or that Jesus didn’t say this or that thing. Rather, we do everything to explain away what Jesus said, to tell ourselves and others that despite what it sounds like, Jesus didn’t really mean what He said. That way, other than giving some faint lip service to some vaguely humanistic and definitively idolatrous concept of “being nice” we can still get away with doing whatever it is we want to do. But in doing so we lose not only the power of Christianity but the heart of it as well – we lose Jesus. I see it and experience it all the time. It is the very problem that I have dedicated my life to resisting and changing, the very purpose for which this site was created. This article is about why we ignore Jesus and what we can do to change this inclination so that we can more truly follow Him.
Tag: the Golden Rule
Nonviolence In Christianity And The Apostasy From Peace: The Complete Series
In the series of articles gathered herein I accomplished three things.
First, I demonstrated the historic fact of Christian nonviolence by examining the writings of a variety of Christian leaders over a period of 300 years. In all that time not a single Christian leader whose works have survived ever taught anything other than the complete renunciation of violence and war as a central tenet of Christianity, a commandment given by Jesus Christ.
Secondly, for my Latter-day Saint readers I showed similar teachings as taught in our modern beliefs and church leaders. The teaching of early Christian leaders on this subject are not simply applicable to our lives today, they directly relate to what we believe in such a way that our modern teaching echo and are elucidated by these ancient writings.
Thirdly, and finally, I wrote a short explanation of the loss of the truths as Christianity, in a moment of Great Apostasy, abandoned centuries of Christian truth and teaching in order to construct a false and heretical doctrine that would justify the pursuit of power, prestige, and wealth by those who claimed to be Christian but who were in fact heretics and apostates corrupting Christianity into a tool of the state.
If we hope to use the full power of Christianity to help solve the problems of the world we must reject the foundation upon which all injustice is based, violence, and return to truths that made Christianity so powerful to start with, Christ-like love, service, forgiveness, and peace.
The Apostasy From Peace
Having just spent the last month demonstrating the historical fact that Christians practiced a form of what we would today call nonviolence, rejected being in the military, and taught the importance of loyalty to the universal church of Christ over and beyond all worldly political authorities and powers all as part of fulfilling Christ’s commandments to love and serve our enemies and to do nothing but good, even to those who evil to us, we are still left with a singular, important question.
What happened?
How did we get from that to where we are today? How did we get from a faith focused on self-sacrifice, love, and service to one that justifies violence, war, and subservience to the powers of the world in all their evils? How did we go form Christians being literally kicked out of church for joining the military to Christians treating the military as some sort of sacred calling?
This article not only explains how this occurred, but also how this process robbed Christianity of one of its most radically Christ-like and powerful truths and how reclaiming that truth is essential to transforming the Earth and establishing the Zion of Christ.
Nonviolence in Early Christianity, Part 3
In the Fourth Century we continue to see the doctrine of Christ that teaches us to abandon all violence and war is carried forward as Christian leaders continue to preach against paganism and prove the superiority of Christianity through its embrace of nonviolence. Martin of Tours provides a marvelous example of exactly what a Christian should do if ever he (or she) is forced into military service. Athanasius teaches that the way you can tell the difference between a true Christian and an idolater is how they approach violence and war, accurately pointing out the true source of all ideologies that promote contention and conflict. Likewise, the great Christian orator John Chrysostom draws the dividing line between Christian sheep and the savage wolves of the world. And no less than the Council of Nicaea and the Christian manual The Testament of Our Lord both outline the exact punishments to be levied against Christians who engage in military violence or who willfully join the military. Along the way the Latter-day Saint can find direct relationships between the teachings of these ancient Christians and the modern teachings of our church.