When I was a young teenager I carried with me a strong sense of spiritual superiority. It wasn't because I was more spiritual; it was because I considered my religion to be superior than others, especially my particular doctrines. Those who held different beliefs than me were not as close to God as I was, I truly believed. As I would discover in later years, what I considered spiritual superiority was actually primitive spirituality.
When my older brother went to college his mind began to expand beyond our childhood spiritual understandings. I remember when he came home one weekend he started to describe certain Eastern philosophies to me, concepts I never heard of before, and he came to the conclusion that all religions were connected at the mystical level. Hearing this I had an immediate negative reaction. My first instinct was fear, fearing my brother was falling away from the faith of our childhood, and as a result was falling away from God. This caused me a great deal of stress, because I didn't want him to be left behind for the horrible tribulation that I believed was about to take place (I was a premillennialist). Little did I expect that years later I would come to a similar internal awareness where I likewise could see that same mystical connection.
When I went to college I learned that Christianity was a much more diverse and inclusionary faith than I assumed growing up. This gave me immense security to move beyond the restricted faith of my childhood and embrace a wide range of Christian beliefs. In the process, I became more tolerant of other pathways to God. In 2008 I did my first study-abroad trip to Spain. Our focus during our whole trip was studying the lives of the great Spanish mystics, St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross. I discovered in these two giants of inner spirituality a connection to God I always knew existed but a connection that doctrine was unable to represent. When I came home I told my brother about my fascination with St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross. He surprised me when he told me he already knew who they were and studied them himself! From that point forward I realized there was something real about the experiences of the mystics, and I longed to dig further into that truth. This began my mystical journey.
In 2010 I experienced my great spiritual breakthrough, what I today consider my official salvation. After going through a period of extensive suffering, I came to a place where I had to let go of all attachments to my suffering ego. This release caused me to die to my former self, leading me into the "Dark Night of the Soul," where I would come to experience a cosmic shift of my consciousness centered on God alone. Religion was no longer sufficient for me, as I saw it was created and directed by man. With this realization I began to open myself to the studies of the mystics of other religious traditions, learning how to separate the mystic from their tradition. I studied the likes of Rumi and the Buddha and found that these mystics were talking about the same Divine Mystery that St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross were in the 16th century. The realization my brother had years earlier I now understood.
As Christian mystic Meister Eckhart accurately described this awareness, "Theologians may quarrel, but the mystics of the world speak the same language."
The Ancient Drive of Segregation
Throughout most of its history, Christianity has promoted a fear-based perspective of other people and other religions. This fear of others has created very intolerant, egoic people and resulted in neverending war and genocide. The origins of this perspective go back to the ancient Hebrews, who intended to keep the purity of their Jewish bloodline within the ever-changing mixture of cultures and spiritualities of the Near East. The Jewish Scriptures promote this intentional segregation, with many recorded anti-miscegenation laws that would have long-term effects on future societies. With Judaism as its ancestor, Christianity adopted this drive of separation, and it still persists to this day. As I hope to communicate in this post, neither Judaism nor Christianity have been truly pure and have a long history of adoption of other cultures.
The Continuous Evolution of Christianity
Christianity has never been a stagnant religion; it has continously evolved with the changing times. God never changes, but cultures, people, and people's views do. Many of the understandings Judeo-Christians once deemed absolute are debated or have been discarded altogether (such as the taboo of uttering Yahweh's name). Likewise, many of the understandings we hold absolutely true today will become obsolete in the future. This reality shouldn't freak us out; it should make us more tolerable people.
Looking back at Jewish and Christian history, we see a story of the constant movement of people and cultures adding their contributions to the Judeo-Christian religious identity. As we will see, we've been blending with and pulling from other cultural and religious views all along. I think its essential for the Christian to study the roots of his or her religion, becoming aware of its evolution over time. By doing so, perhaps the Christian will become more open-minded and see that they indeed are connected to all people.
Let me present to you a brief history of the evolution of Judaism and Christianity, starting from their early Canaanite roots in polytheism and ending in the postmodern perennialism. All the information below was discovered through my own studies. Do your own research to verify the information below (and don't just read from Christian sources!).
Canaanite Polytheism (1200-930 BCE)
Archaeological evidence suggests that the Israelites didn't conquer Canaan by force, as portrayed in the book of Joshua, but instead emerged out of the various indigenous Canaanite peoples that were already inhabiting the area. The Canaanites were polytheistic, worshiping many gods such as El, Baal, Asherah, Dagon, Chemosh, Moloch, and Mot. El was the supreme god of the Canaanite pantheon. El (or El Shaddai, El Elyon, Eloah, or Elohim) appears 217 times in the Masoretic Text of the Old Testament, primarily in the books of Psalms and Job. El was in all likelihood the god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The very name Israel comes from the root El (El contended or wrestling with El). The Islamic name for God, Allah, is also descended from the name El. What may be surprising is El in his earliest form had a consort named Asherah (the Mother Goddess).
The origins of Yahweh are a little more vague. Although historians believe the Hebrews were Canaanites, Yahweh is not a Canaanite god. Sadly, the original meaning of Yahweh has been lost in time. The oldest record of Yahweh's name was discovered in an Egyptian inscription from the time of Amenhotep III describing the land of the Shasu people. The Shasu were cattle nomads who worshipped the god Yahu (Yhw), what many scholars believe to be the beginnings of Yahweh. Another interesting fact was that the Shasu lived in Midian, the same place Moses encountered God in the burning bush. Some historians believe that through the caravans of the Shasu between Egypt and Canaan, Yahweh eventually found himself in the land of Canaan. Groups of displaced Canaanites clung to the new god Yahweh and made him their patron god, differentiating themselves as Hebrews from the surrounding Canaanite tribes. The Hebrews continued to worship the other Canaanite gods.
In the period of the Judges and the first part of the monarchy, El merged with Yahweh. El became the generic name for god, while Yahweh became the head god of the Hebrews. Yahweh headed the Hebrew pantheon of lesser gods along with his consort, Asherah. Other Canaanite gods were similarly absorbed into Yahweh, such as Baal and his identification as a storm god (Exodus 15:1-18). Yahweh began to be worshipped solely, forming a unique feature in the kingdoms of Israel and Judah.
Monarchic Yahwism (930-586 BCE)
The elites in the kingdom of Israel endorsed a monolatristic religion, the belief in many gods but the worship of only one. This ancient religion is called Yahwism. Other neighboring kingdoms had their own national gods, such as Chemosh of Moab, Moloch of the Ammonites, and Qaus of the Edomites. While the elites in Israel adopted Yahwism, the general population was still fairly polytheistic.
In 722 BCE the Kingdom of Israel rebelled against the Assyrian Empire and was subsequently destroyed. Refugees from Israel fled to Judah, where Yahweh was much revered. With them they brought with them the tradition of Yahwism. The landowning elites in Judah soon adopted this view. In the 7th century BCE, the elites placed eight-year -old Josiah on the throne. During his reign, the Assyrian empire collapsed and an independence movement took place within Judah. King Josiah launched a full-scale reform of Yahweh-alone worship and banned the worship of any other god. The Hebrews were on the path from a transition from monolatristicism to monotheism.
In 586 BCE, Judah was overthrown by the Neo-Babylonian empire, ruled by Nebuchadnezzar II.
Babylonian Exile (605-538 BCE)
While archaeological evidence suggests that the majority of the population remained in Judah and kept their customs, the Judean elites were taken as captives to Babylon. The trauma of the exile experience led to the development of a strong sense of Hebrew identity within the elites and the eventual developement of a strict monotheistic theology. This theology would become the source of significant portions of the Hebrew Bible and laid the foundation of Second Temple Judaism. By the end of the Babylonian exile, the existence of any other gods was denied and Yahweh became the only true God of the world.
Second Temple Judaism (538 BCE-70 CE)
In 539 BCE, the Persian army conquered Babylon under the leadership of Cyrus the Great. A year later, Cyrus made a public declaration that allowed the exiled Jews to return to their homeland. When the exiled Jews returned to Jerusalem, they once again became the ruling elite, this time implementing monotheism. This was the beginnings of Second Temple Judaism. Much of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) was assembled during this time, including the Torah, the histories, and the prophetic and wisdom literature. The new scriptures were revised and edited from previous polytheistic and monolatristic sources to advocate for a stricter monotheism. New concepts of priesthood, a new emphasis on the sacredness of the written law, the prohibition of uttering Yahweh's sacred name (instead translated to Adonai or Lord), and the banning of intermarriage with non-Jews was established. Various schools developed within Second Temple Judaism, including the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Samaritanism, and smaller messianic movements.
It has been hypothesized that the Hebrew transition from monolatristicism to monotheism was strongly influenced by the Persian religion of Zoroastrianism. Zoroastrianism is arguably the world's first monotheistic religion. Several concepts in Second Temple Judaism are identical in Zoroastrianism that weren't evident before the Babylonian exile. One of these was the eschatology of the last judgment. Zoroastrians believed in the final renovation of the universe, where Angra Mainyu will be destroyed by Ahura Mazda (God), an event Zoroastrians called Frashokereti. The story of Satan's defeat by God in the last days and the restoration of the world is an obvious adoption from the Zoroastrian story. In so doing, Satan gained an expanded role in the Jewish narrative. The genre of apocalyptic literature became extremely popular afterwards, setting the stage for the expectation of the future Messiah that would become King of the renovated world and reclaim Israel's dominance. Jesus was the Messiah many Jews were hoping for.
Apostolic Age (30-100 CE)
After Jesus death, the claims that he was the Messiah spread amongst the Jewish population thanks to the work of his apostles. The earliest converts were apocalyptic Jewish Christians who had strong ties to Second Temple Judaism. Saul of Tarsus, a Roman and a Jew, didn't believe Jesus was the Messiah, and he persecuted these Jewish Christians quite harshly. After his mystical Christian conversion on the road to Damascus, however, he came to know the Spirit of Jesus, who was the Christ. He stopped persecuting the Jewish Christians and began his own ministry to the Gentiles (non-Jews), becoming the first major Judeo-Christian inclusionist. This presented a major problem for the Jewish-Christian leaders, because the Gentiles weren't Jews and didn't observe the Jewish law. Paul argued that a Christian didn't have to be a Jew to be a Christian, and that faith in Christ alone is enough. Paul's view spread like wildfire, while the propagation of law-driven Christianity was minuscule. Pauline Christianity broke away from their Jewish roots and became the recognizable Christian identity.
Ante-Nicene Period and Late Antiquity (100-476 CE)
The Ante-Nicene Period covered the period between the Apostolic Age and the First Council of Nicea. It was a time of great diversity within Christianity. There were a vast number of Christian sects spread throughout the world, each emphasizing different theologies and practices. Church leaders struggled to find unifying features within these sects, and this soon got the attention of the Roman Emperor who intended to keep a unified empire.
In 313 CE, Roman Emperor Constantine I issued the Edict of Milan, which officially legalized Christian worship after the intense persecutions of Christians by the Roman emperors in the first few centuries. He knew that Christians made up a good portion of his empire and their numbers were growing. To gain their support and keep a unified empire, he himself converted to Christianity and began to support the church financially, built churches and basillicas, granted special priviledges to clergymen, and promoted Christians to high political offices. His next goal was to bring together the top church leaders of the world and come up with a unified theology. In the First Council of Nicaea in 325, Constantine helped formulate the first unified doctrines of the Church, specifically the doctrine that Jesus was both 100% human and 100% God. 55 years later, Emperor Theodosius issued the Edict of Thessalonica, which made Christianity the state religion of Rome. Subsequent Church Councils established further unifying doctrines and declared any other doctrines as heresy.
In 476, Rome fell to the Germanic tribes.
The Middle Ages (5th-16th centuries)
Despite the breakup of the Christianized Roman Empire, Christianity continued to expand globally, evolving into new forms with every culture it encountered. In the 5th century, leaders of all the churches came together to canonize the Bible, centered on the letters of Paul. The majority of Christians were illiterate, however, and they relied heavily on learned church leaders to guide them in Christian living.
In the 8th and 9th centuries, Charles Charlemagne established schools to address the problems of illiteracy amongst his clergy. The Carolingian Renaissance brought an intellectual and cultural revival in literature and the arts to the West. About four centuries later, the Italian Renaissance reintroduced the classical literature of Ancient Greece and Rome and saw it merge with Christianity. Medieval culture continued to change, and in the 16th century the Protestant Reformation led to a vast reformation in Christianity. Accompanied by Johannes Gutenberg's invention of the printing press and the rising literacy rates, the Protestant Reformation led many Christians to distance themselves from the 1500 year-old Church and rely solely on the Bible as the ultimate authority for Christian living.
Modern Christianity (16th Century- 20th Century)
Modern Christianity saw a similar diversity of theologies as that of early Christian sects. With the rise of new reformist groups evolved new denominations, each with their own doctrines and interpretations of the Bible. At the same time, new breakthroughs in science, such as Galileo's reintroduction of Copernicus' theory of a heliocentric universe, caused quite a stir within Christianity. In response to the changing perspectives, the Catholic Church initiated major reforms aimed at expanding their influence and being more relevant in the modern era. These included anti-corruption measures and the establishment of seminaries and new religious orders. Catholic nations soon got ahead and led the charge in the Age of Exploration in the 15th to 17th centuries, bringing with them a mission to spread their version of Christianity to the native populations throughout the world. Protestants also joined in the Age of Exploration. Colonialism made Christianity a global religion.
From the 17th century onward, capitalism and science dominated the Western mind. With these newfound values, Christianity started to grow stale. In response to the receding faith, men like Jonathan Edwards and George Whitfield led what would become a new religious revival called the Great Awakening. Concepts such as all people are born sinners and without salvation one will go to Hell led many people back to pious living, albeit being fear-driven. A new emphasis on personal connection with God became a lead message, with obvious implementation of modern individualism. Demoninations such as Congregationalist, Presbyterian, Baptist, and Methodist arose. Subsequent Great Awakenings and revivals inspired new denominations and new movements, including the Holiness Movement and the Restoration Movement.
The 19th century saw the publication of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, the ending of slavery, and the introduction of Eastern religions and philosophies. In the 20th century the Civil Rights Movement dominated cultural reform, and Christianity evolved along with it. New liberal denominations also emerged. In the 19th and 20th centuries, mainstream Christianity's influence waned in the West due to its inability to adapt to and evolve with the changing cultures of America and Europe leading into the 21st century.
Post-Modern Christianity (21st Century)
Today, we live in an era of globalization. The sharing of ideas has expanded significantly thanks to the invention of the Internet. It's now much easier to share ideas and connect to a variety of people from a variety of cultures. New spiritual conversations are happening between the various religious traditions, and Christianity is at a crossroads.
The Calling of the Great Commission
Most Christians will agree that Jesus called us to spread his message:
"Then Jesus came to them and said, 'All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.'"
Matthew 28:18-20
What exactly did Jesus command his followers to do? Jesus summed it up for us in an earlier passage:
"'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.
Matthew 22:36-40
All the law hangs on love. Thus, the Great Commission is to make disciples of love.
Unlike the perspectives of many authors in the Bible, Jesus was inclusionary in his teachings. He understood diversity. He was tolerant of people not like himself, people such as the Samaritans, the Greeks, the taxcollectors, the prostitutes, the disabled, the Romans, and women. He refused to curse nonbelievers when asked by his religious followers (Luke 9:52-56), declaring that whoever was not against him was for him. He believed his message applied to all humans, no matter their religion or culture. Jesus introduced us to the Christ be became, a Christ who was before all time and within all of creation, including us.
"Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body- whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free- and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.
Now if the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. And if the ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body."
1 Corinthians 12
God has placed the parts of the body just as he wanted them to be. The body of Christ is not just the Christian body; it's the body of humanity. How beautiful it would be for a Christian to gather at the table in love with a Buddhist, a Hindu, or a Muslim! How awesome it would be to explore the different human expressions of God together, putting our egos aside. How awesome it would be to delve into the Christ consciousness of love that is within each of us and make others aware of this same Christ consciousness that's within themselves. This is the Great Commission. Some will choose Christianity. Great! Some will choose Islam. Ok! Others will choose the Eastern religions of Hinduism and Buddhism. No problemo. Some of these religious traditions are older than Christianity, yet Christ is eternal. Our responsibility as Christians is to lead the way to Christ through love.
13th and 14th century theologian and mystic philosopher Meister Eckhart once said, "Theologians may quarrel, but the mystics of the world speak the same language." That language is within all of us.
We are a Human Ecosystem
We are all part of the human ecosystem. In the human ecosystem are various trees, shrubs, and grasses, each planted into the Ground of Being. From the Ground of Being comes life (Christ). When a plant is separated from the Ground, it loses its lifeforce and dies. The plants that remain rooted in the Ground remain alive and grow. Few of us are trees, whose roots grow deep into the Ground. We can consider trees as the teachers and the founders of the major world religions with massive followings. Just as there are various trees, there are various teachers. When a tree is uprooted and placed on a pedestal to only be worshipped, it loses its life force. The same happens if a tree is cut down to be used for selfish ambition. The tree is meant to be rooted into the Ground, being constantly provided by it. Under each tree grows an ecosystem of smaller trees, shrubs and grasses. The smaller trees are the mystics who have understood the messages of the great founders and rooted themselves deeply in the Ground surrounding that tree. Most of us are shrubs and grasses. We have narrow roots and can easily be uprooted by storms or invaders. It takes many storms to grow our roots deeper into the Ground.
The beauty and health of the entire human ecosystem lies in the diversity of its plants. As Christians, we live in an ecosystem under the tree of Jesus. Some of us understand his teaching and live his teaching, establishing ourselves as smaller trees in the system of Christianity. The vast majority of us are shrubs and grasses, relying on the shade of Jesus to protect us from the struggles of life. Yet, the tree of Jesus lives amongst other great trees, each with their own ecosystem, each benefitting one another. Each tree arises from the same Ground.
It's time for Christians to once again evolve their consciousness and begin to accept other religions and philosophies as potential ways for people to connect to the Divine.
Converting others isn't the Great Commission of Jesus. Jesus left us with the instruction to simply love and spread that love. As former president John F. Kennedy once said, "Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one's own beliefs. Rather, it condemns the oppression or persecution of others."
Tolerance doesn't mean you have to lose your Christian faith. Embrace your faith! Embrace the tree you're under. Tolerance is being able to see all people in their unique expressions as part of the human story to understand God. If we adapt as Christians and transcend our egoic theologies, the outside world will be more open to listen to our version of the Divine.
From its origins in Canaanite polytheism to its continuous evolution in the postmodern world, Christianity is a melting pot of a vast number of cultures and spiritualities. We are part of this same story, and we now get to add to it. May we choose to evolve and grow in the ever-manifesting Christ.
Quotes:
"We all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand thta all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter what their color."
Maya Angelou
"We can learn a lot from crayons; some are sharp, some are pretty, some are dull, while others are bright, some have weird names, but they all have learned to live together in the same box."
Robert Fulghum
"Of all religions, the Christian should of course inspire the most tolerance, but until now Christians have been the most intolerant of all men."
Voltaire
"All religions try to benefit people, with the same basic message of the need for love and compassion, for justice and honesty, for contentment."
Dalai Lama
"All religions must be tolerated...for every man must get to heaven in his own way."
Epictetus
"All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree."
Albert Einstein
"All churches and all religions contain aspects of the truth, but only God is truth."
Pat Buckley
"The highest result of education is tolerance."
Helen Keller
"Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one's own beliefs. Rather, it condemns the oppression or persecution of others."
John F. Kennedy
"Unity is strength, division is weakness."
Swahili Proverb
"There is more power in unity than division."
Emanuel Cleaver
"Every individual is a unique manifestation of the Whole, as every branch is a particular outreaching of the tree."
Alan Watts
"Oneness is the absolute truth; duality is an illusion."
Shradha Shukla
"Consider your own place in the universal oneness of which we are all a part, from which we all arise, and to which we all return."
David Fontana
"The name of this infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of all being is God."
Paul Tillich
