Current Problems in Christian Doctrine (4 Apr 09)

Early this morning (4 Apr 09) I had a dream about a very sincere lady who had recieved this news from her Christian cult that “Jesus Christ didn’t have all the answers.” She had accepted this intellectually, but emotionally she was in an uproar about it.

Setting aside, for the nonce, how Christian problems can wind up inside my mind, the explanation of which is part of that book called “Great Love” that someone really needs to write someday, let’s look at why this could suddenly be the tenor of Christian doctrine.

Christ never was supposed to be the be-all and end-all. He is essentially part of a Triumvirate, called the Holy Trinity; Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The Christ, being the Son, could not really be expected to have all the answers in the presence of His own Father. So where did the implicit expectation come from that the Christ would have all the answers?

It came out of the reaction from, and rebellion against, that part of the Christian Church that is most closely allied to the Father energy, i. e., the Catholic Church. By this time it has become clear to everybody with any relationship to Christianity, however ephemeral, that the level of the Catholic Church’s corruption has simply killed it as a viable representation of any Person in the Holy Trinity.

And what has happened within Christianity as a result, is that in order to survive at all, the real Church, the real Body of Christ, has become a collection of extremist Pentecostal and Charismatic splinter groups. I’ve been involved with members of this cohort almost from its inception, and I really like their practice, because they’ve revived an actual relationship with a Devine Person called Jesus Christ as the basis of their practice. This is real Christianity.

But now what descends on these groups is the absolute necessity to fill the doctrinal gap which has been created by the fall of the Catholic Church, in terms of its influence on Christians. In other words, the right shift that becomes the responsibility of any successful revolution has now become the responsibility of these groups. In this stage, it would behoove their members, particularly those who happen to have Catholic backgrounds, to stage a return to Catholic doctrine, not for the purpose of regurgitating its dead forms, please, but for the purpose of understanding and reinstating what doctrine of value got lost in the very necessary rejection of a thoroughly corrupt Catholic Church.

In general, the doctrine of a living religion is itself alive. It always changes through time, to provide what is necessary in a world of change. Doctrine is like a serpent built out of solid light, which twists and snakes its way down from the Throne of God, in the Christian case, or the Dharmakaya in the Buddhist case, all the way down through innumerable degrees of manifested Light, right down to the very evident light of our altars and our congregations. At every level of manifestation, the Angels and Guardians are there, guiding the streams of Divine Light, down, ever down, all the way down to the place below in which we live.

So we should not be having emotional problems, whether Christian or Buddhist, about the fact that the doctrine of our lineage can change out from under our limited presumptions about what it should be, at the drop of any given hat. If it did not do that, it would not be real. God, and the Buddha, loved us before our birth here. By His love were we brought forth. We should not be questioning His love in the face of unlove by so many others, even perhaps our own parents. We should know that we absolutely CAN source ourselves back to Him; if that were not true, we would not be. We should keep our Commandments and our Precepts, and pray for guidance about lineage. Not every person can belong to any given lineage. God (the Buddha) wants us to make mature choices about that.

For us here initially, Light is where we find it. But increasingly with experience, and with grey and white hair, Light is where we conduct it, and where we place it. Therefore, Christians, please understand your doctrine, and your personal relationship to doctrine in general, from the Light of God which is its source, and not from the limited conceptions of human beings, including your own.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping