Christians? If only.

WAS JESUS A CHRISTIAN?

Christianity has been taken over by their tithe-masters. Jesus Christ would not recognize the monster parading as "christian religion" today. The teachings of Jesus Christ come down to us through "copies" and hearsay, but regardless of the provenance -- which is moot on this point -- the heuristic body of teachings are closer to Manichean Buddhism and the Dalai Lama, than to the "Trinitarian" polydeism taught today in Churches. Most Churches today are not "fundamentalist" at all.

The revenant Gospels of Jesus Christ repeat and repeat and repeat a message of love. The fresh and vital core of the Christian gospel is inclusion, empathy, unity, and grace. There is no suggestion that greed is good. No parable of salvic vengence. Above all, from swaddled babe in a manger to crucified savior, Jesus is completely silent on the subjects of Homosexuality and Abortion. Both were as widely practiced then as today.

In fact, in the descriptions of Jesus and his disciple John "the beloved", it is clear that Christ was a practicing homosexual. He never married and never had children. He never mentions tithing. He does not urge his followers to give money to rich evangelists; he repeatedly suggests giving money to poor people, NOT to rich people. Wealth is an express disqualification to the Kingdom of Heaven.

WAS ST. PAUL A CHRISTIAN?

With St. Paul, we do not even have an issue with provenance. We have authentic letters written by a documented historical figure. In his letters, he does not pretend to have ever been attracted to people of the female persuasion, he repeatedly introduces his male traveling companion as "my beloved". He never married and never had children.

St. Paul preached a redemptive message of love and inclusion. He risked his life to take this message to people who were hostile -- walking and talking among them without weapons or threats.

WAS ST. AUGUSTINE A CHRISTIAN?

In his Confessions, the Berber St. Augustine writes of "The Mysterious Force of Memory", and its tie to Guilt, which keeps us from Grace. Augustine speaks of PRIDE as the most sinful of all temptations. None worse.

Augustine wrote a lot, and we have his entire library -- it was preserved from barbarian depredations "as if by miracle" -- according to his surviving lover. Augustine develops the Creation story and the Trinity as forms of analogy; not "literal" but logical. Foremost in his analysis is the use of Reason--which he can only conclude is "God-given". He elevates the role of Mary in the salvation of human kind, recognizes the pastoral authority of women, and rejects millenarianism.

As important as Augustine is to Christian orthodoxy, curiously, he is of no help in explaining the current obsession with (1) homosexuality, and (2) abortion.

(1) HOMOSEXUALITY. Augustine was gay. When his mother pressured him to marry, the only honorable solution available to him was to become a monk. His active homosexuality (there is really no question he was plagued his entire life with carnal desires) was succored and forgiven behind the cloistered walls with the privity of his friends. The outside world was as hostile to homosexuality then (in Africa) as it is today.

(2) ABORTION. Augustine did not believe abortion was murder, or that human life begins with conception. The fetus was not "en-souled", and therefore was not human. He preached the salvic importance of baptism, and yet he did not advocate baptism for fetuses.

CONCLUSION

Today's professed Christians have been taken over by tyrants. These tyrants live on tithe-taking, that is, by filling the sheep with fears and then extorting them for money.

The present Church preaches almost NOTHING about the terrible terrible damning SIN, which is PRIDE. Worse, the Church actively preaches two divisive heretical errors about Life. The BIBLICAL TRUTH as construed by Jesus Christ, St. Paul, and St. Augustine is:

Homosexuality is sexuality, it is not sin;
Abortion is death, it is not murder.