Christianity was warped twice at its roots — once by inheritance, once by design.

The first blunder came from where Christianity began — inside a much older idea of who God is.

The first blunder

Ancient civilizations acknowledged and worshipped many gods. The evolutionary idea of one god and a unique god is generally attributed to Egypt, with worship of the sun.

Eventually, the idea of a unique god replacing the many pagan gods spread within many ancient religions. One of them was Judaism, the first and oldest of what became the three major monotheistic religions — Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Judaic scriptures describe a god of rewards and punishments, more easily feared than loved. This god has many human attributes — a god prone to human emotions, including violence against Its creation.

The god of Christianity and then of Islam was inspired by the god of Judaism. As a result, all three religions share the notion of a god with human traits — an anthropomorphic god.

 

A god with human traits is not God

Like humanity, the anthropomorphic god can both perpetrate evil and struggle with it in its many forms.

In contrast, Jesus of Nazareth offers an elevated understanding of God’s nature: a god of unconditional Love and Forgiveness.

In my article,

A Different Perspective on the Most Challenging Christian Question,

I outline the principle of Divine Purity:

“God’s Creation is an emanation of Spirit. God’s Creation is the very essence of the Divine. That Essence is God-like in all aspects. It contains nothing ungodlike because — just as light does not include darkness — God does not create anything contrary to Its spiritual nature of pure love and light.

God is a perpetual state of Oneness. Such a state of Oneness prevents the activity of duality that would be required to entertain any form of evil. The Divine Consciousness of Oneness cannot and does not include or conceive any ungodly thoughts or actions.”

In short, evil is not on God’s radar! Evil is found only in human consciousness and where the anthropomorphic god prevails.

 

The God of unconditional Love

The criterion that ultimately defines a religion is the kind of god it worships.

The God of Jesus is the God of unconditional Love. It should also be the God of all the followers of Christ.

Absolute Purity is an essential aspect of Divine Consciousness. None of the gods of the three monotheistic religions meets this fundamental requirement.

In the United States of America, now is a time when and where many Christians have taken a stance against the God of Jesus. They feel that Jesus’ doctrine is impractical and leads to weakness, both at the personal and national levels.

This split within Christianity is attributable to the false understanding of our anthropomorphic god capable of perpetrating evil.

 

The second blunder

The second blunder was no accident. It resulted from a purposeful decision made largely for political reasons.

Christianity’s exponential growth was due to Constantine, the Roman Emperor, in the fourth century A.D., who wanted to make it the official religion of his realm. That bonanza came with strings attached. Most bishops were willing to compromise.

The quid pro quo required portraying Jesus as a divinity to be acceptable to the emperor. That is how we ended up with the preposterous idea of the Trinity — the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

The emperor could bow to a divine Jesus, but not to Jesus the man. In the process, we lost Jesus’ core message: the man who rose to the Christ-level of consciousness.

The mixed message — the idea that Jesus was divine — we owe to Paul almost 300 years earlier. Although James and Peter opposed that vision, it did not stop a majority of pro-Roman bishops from conveniently agreeing with Paul.

As a man, Jesus was our way-shower who rose in consciousness and transcended the material constraints of “this world.” However, as a member of the Trinity, divine before physical birth, no human man could emulate Jesus, “the one and only son of God.”

Jesus had a plan for humanity. His playbook was our ability to rise in consciousness, as the logical extension of one who was fully dedicated to the God of Love — a God that loves loving.

The fourth-century bishops hid the playbook from us. Their reward was the power they inherited as Christianity spread through the Roman Empire.

Greed warped the message of Jesus.

Christ Spirit

From his seminal Sermon on the Mount (Mat. 5) to his declaration of Love and Forgiveness while on the Cross (Luke 23–34), Jesus taught the necessity of rising in consciousness. His miracles demonstrated the power of his beliefs. The key to his doctrine was that it was within range of human possibility.

Salvation was accessible to all.

But declaring that Jesus was uniquely the divine Son of God erased the hopefulness that Jesus had instilled in the rest of humanity.

The bishops made sure that Christ’s Spirit was limited to Jesus Christ and that Jesus Christ was enshrined in the Trinity.

Humanity was left at the door.

Jesus had received a long and strict spiritual education during his first 30 years. He dedicated the remaining three years of his life to his teaching of the Christ Spirit. He was trying to open our eyes and hearts to the possibilities available to human beings willing to focus on rising in consciousness.

Christ is not a person or a religious icon. It is not a unique attribute of Jesus.

Christ Spirit is the unconditionally loving Spirit of God within all of us. That Spirit is dormant in most humans, despite being our true spiritual identity.

Christ Spirit needs to be individually acknowledged and acted upon. It is a state of consciousness in action. A state imbued with the awareness of the words of Jesus when he said, “Whatever you did to the least of my brothers, you did it to me” (Mat.25:40).

Christhood is the highest level of consciousness that a human can reach. Over the years, in all major religions, others than Jesus of Nazareth have reached or approached the Christ level.

Rising in consciousness

I frequently mention rising in consciousness in my articles. It starts with increased self-awareness and a heightened respect for other human beings, as Jesus pointed out in the Sermon on the Mount.

Rising in consciousness is the process through which we spiritualize our consciousness. We fill our consciousness with spiritual truth and act upon that truth.

Are we aware of how we come across to others? Are we expressing kindness, cooperation, compassion, respect? Or are we so self-absorbed that we cannot be bothered?

If we embrace the God of Love, we must act accordingly by expressing our love for others.

Our self-centeredness is an obstacle that prevents us from acting as the sons and daughters of the God of Jesus.

It is easier to love the God of Love than the God of rewards and punishments. But expressing, acting, and living accordingly is far from easy.

The theology of God’s unconditionally loving nature is not simply a mental exercise. It inspires and justifies Jesus’ playbook for humanity. When we recognize this truth, our path as a Christian becomes clear, because it focuses our attention on how we behave toward ourselves and others, not only on what we believe.

Twice, Christianity was warped at its roots when it embraced the wrong god and then blunted the essence of the message of Jesus, the man who rose in consciousness to the high level of Christhood.

Thankfully, the truth is simple when we base everything on Love. Then, we can live as a true Christian every hour of the day without collapsing on theology.

 

In summary

Two major blunders were committed in the early evolution of Christianity:

One was inherited from Judaism, the other from political bishops.

One was cultural, the other purposeful.

One concerned divine nature; the other, Christ’s nature.

Some two thousand years later, mainstream Christianity still treats these blunders as gospel, despite the turmoil they create.