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Can you really blame them, Christianity as an institution has been speedrunning blasphemies upon blasphemies with a straight face for centuries, from the absorption of the Trinitanism cult nonsense (god being three beings yet one), the constant Idolatry (Icons, Crosses, holy trinkets, holly sites) the base and mundane nonsense (The Pope says trans rights). It's all so tiresome.
I know people NEED a certain flare of the mystical made physically manifest, even if just to have something to do during communal rituals, but this doesn't ameliorate how stupidly worldly and mundane it all is.
Yeah, this is why I have gone straight for Orthodoxy. Although Icons are definitely not heretical, they were used in the early church, you can look it up blah blah.
Wait the Trinity is a cult? Huh. You mind unpacking your beliefs more I'm curious what you think the true Gospel is?
In my admittedly pedestrian view the trinity thing is the church trying to twist itself into pretzels to explain why it worships Jesus(nominally a prophet/son of god and marry) while still trying to maintain it's a monotheistic religion status /not a type of polytheistic pantheon. Admittedly they are doing the same thing to a lesser degree with the canonization of saints, you're supposed to pray to them and have them advocate for your desires/wants to big G.
Yeah this is a pretty pedestrian view, lol. You could take this line of reasoning with literally any complex argument ever. Just because something isn't simple and immediately obvious doesn't make it wrong.
If you read the arguments for the Trinity from the early Church Fathers, they are incredibly well thought out and use lots of argumentation. That being said, I'm not a theologian so I am not bothered much. I'm fine to let it be a Holy Mystery.
It's just that for me the whole papering over the other Elohim when Judaism went from worshiping El to YHWH and the purging of the other gods is fishy as hell, we're supposed to ignore the history of the religion? It just never sat right with me, same with the focus on Jesus himself.
Eh modern Christianity whitewashes a lot of it, Orthodoxy generally doesn't. We keep all the weird stuff and believe the other gods exist they just may or may not be evil, etc.
I tend to agree that the modern presentation of most Christianity is watered down as heck and papers over a lot. I like to embrace the weirdness and contradiction - I think any true mystical / religious scheme must embrace paradox.
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Not to mention that YHWH clearly changes character over time. YHWH in a lot of Genesis is an insecure and jealous dick, but by the New Testament, and perhaps even before, he's become a much more mature and wise figure. I like Jung's explanation of this (if we are built in the image of God, it makes sense for God to also have integrate his own shadow, which he does in part by incarnating and being killed as Jesus, but also through his various covenants with Noah/Abraham/David/Job). But of course this violates the omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent axioms, so it's heresy in pretty much any church.
Perhaps the resistance to this kind of textual/historical analysis (or even openness to debate) is why I haven't been to church for a couple months. Once you start to poke holes in this stuff and are met with hostility rather than answers, it's pretty hard to not see what a house of cards it all is. "No matter how tender, how exquisite... A lie will remain a lie..."
Jung goes a lot farther than that, arguing Satan needs to be raised to the Trinity in order for the Church to fully embrace the shadow. I liked Jung but idk reading more of his theology makes me realize he uhh well let's just say I disagree strongly. Also finding out about his personal ethics was a bit of a shock.
I mean Jung is no saint either. He had sex with his patients for "therapeutic purposes".
Where does Jung say that Satan needs to be raised into the trinity? I remember reading something about how we need to embrace the divine feminine, but don't remember the Satan part.
But speaking of Satan, the whole idea of Satan has always been a little weird to me, especially from a historical literary perspective. The first time we see Satan (apart from the Garden of Eden retcon) is in the book of Job, where he isn't a fallen angel, but in fact one of God's strongest soldiers. Before this the false pagan idols of the Canaanites, Babylonians, and Egyptians provide enemies enough for YHWH. Then he's not mentioned again in the New Testament where he's this unseen dark mirror of Jesus. It's not until the Renaissance with Paradise Lost that we get the "traditional" rebellion and fall from heaven story from Milton.
Then there's also the teleology. Why did God create a being such as Satan that he knew would rebel/sin/become evil? Of course you can pull the free will argument here, but I find that much less convincing than in the case of humans. Even if it is Satan's "choice" to be evil, it seems pretty cruel (or pretty non-omnipotent) to allow Satan to continue to causing suffering to himself and others with no possibility of redemption. Some Christian universalists believe that this isn't the case, that in the end, even Satan will be redeemed and bow down before Jesus. This could be one interpretation of Jung (that Satan needs to be redeemed and raised to the trinity).
The other possibility, which I think Jung actually probably meant, is that Satan, like Jesus is a part of who God is. This throws out the omnibenevolence part of YHWH, but fits in a lot better with the text of the Bible and also the world that we actually inhabit. Evil and suffering are necessary parts of creation, and at least it seems to me that they are their own ontological thing, rather than just the absence or inversion of good like many Christians claim (I think Schopenhauer has a good simple argument about this that I found convincing. Think about the pain of stubbing your toe, a minor but all too common evil. Is this pain an absence of good? No, as the pain is clearly a positive sensation. Is this pain an inversion of good? Maybe, but it's not like you often have a really good feeling in your toe). For Jung this process (the integration of the shadow into the church in the same way that God integrated Satan into himself) was vital. Now in practice, like you, I'm not sure I agree (seems like a great excuse to do terrible things), but it sounds nice in theory.
What?
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%204%3A1-11&version=NKJV
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