The Heart of Church History

Church History as an academic pursuit is mostly a matter of grasping the politics of organized religion. It’s sheer idiocy to assume politics have no place in the church; our biggest problem is that people have rejected the political structure God designed for His people. When you understand that we as humans are hard-wired to benefit most from Eastern feudal organization, it’s not hard to see where the Church went wrong. A history of flawed practice and theology arises mostly from closing off the heart-mind awareness.

I’ve noted in my discussion of The Cult that a primary objective of the Judaizers was just that — destroying heart-led religion. The reliance on heart-mind awareness was simply a fundamental assumption in most of the cultural background of the entire Ancient Near East. This faculty is what lies behind the academic term “mysticism” that describes the non-rational approach of ancient Hebrew wisdom and scholarship. The rabbinical colleges didn’t simply go Greek, but they allowed the influence of Aristotle’s epistemology to turn their Hebrew religion into legalism. The fundamental element of legalism is making a god of the written record or revelation. Following this to its logical conclusion, you can find today Talmudic quotations that insist God is obliged to adhere to Scripture as if it took away His divine prerogatives to have it recorded. (Worse, the Talmud claims precedence over the Old Testament as Scripture.) This was an idea carried over from Medo-Persian imperial policy (the earliest recorded incidence of such thinking) and wholly foreign to a more ancient Hebrew approach. In the end, Jehovah is no longer the living God, but a weak caricature of Jewish imagination.

Being able to trace such influences is a fundamental element in History in general, and Church History in particular. The only problem is that we are constrained by the evidence, mostly written records. Against that we are weighed down by a massive burden of popular speculation that arises from some distinct agenda. Noting this is in itself a matter for Church History, too. Don’t let my blather here give the impression that I have some overwhelming expertise that you are not permitted to question. I’m quite willing to explain where my ideas come from because I don’t take myself that seriously; I don’t view my ideas and teaching as somehow the purest manifestation of God’s revelation. By the same token, don’t be offended if I happen to associate your contrasting ideas with something you might not like. Few of us are so completely original as to claim all our ideas as somehow born first in our imaginations. We choose what works best in seeking to obey God; that’s what religion means.

In my religion, if you indicate an affinity for subjecting your reason to the convictions of your heart, I have no fear that you will somehow develop a religion that threatens mine. In my religion, convictions are planted in your soul by God. You spend the whole of your earthly existence trying to make sense of those convictions so that you can obey them. That’s what it means to be heart-led. That shouldn’t be a threat to other religions, but you and I know that the majority of organized religion won’t tolerate that approach. That’s because most mainstream religion is about control, not setting you free from false moral constraints.

So you can see in my article on The Cult that a primary element in the collapse of genuine New Testament religion is the political impulses of the Pharisees who killed our Savior. While there was certainly some measure of vengeance and hatred behind their determination to stamp out genuine discipleship in following Christ, the impulse is wired into all fallen souls. We drag it out into the light so we can seek to understand it and avoid it. Most of humanity simply assumes it’s natural in a good sense and never questions the impulse. So we see the Judaizers and their sly efforts to lead new converts back into slavery to the Talmud. Part of that effort was smothering the heart-led faith before it really got rolling, and chaining the Christian religion to the same legalism that ruled Judaism.

That influence took deep root in organized Christian religion. Once religion was dependent on reason, there was nothing to protect the mission. The gospel rests entirely on awakening the awareness and moving consciousness into the heart. We look back across the ruined landscape of Church History and see the claw marks left by this beast. For example, who doesn’t recognize the stamp of The Cult on the Jesuits? Why does the Roman Church need their own FBI-CIA agency like that? What the hell are they protecting? There’s nothing heavenly about that. But somewhere along the path, the Roman Church concluded that whatever “the Fall” means, the human intellect is not fallen. Thus, the heart is replaced by reason once again, taking us right back to the Fall itself in Eden. So all you to worry about is bunch of bad habits that the Church hierarchy will gladly correct for you with their magisterial powers.

I’m not saying that the Roman Church is wholly evil and useless. I won’t tell you that your heart cannot possibly lead you to hang out in that system. What would happen if all the good people left the Church? Better that we have some heart-led folk infiltrate every part of the human world, not in secrecy, but wrapped in the mystery of God’s ineffable truth. We need that glorious witness everywhere, like salt and light.