Did Jesus come to start a sectarian, exclusivist religion?

NOTE: This is an excerpt from the book, Beyond Religious Conflict.

Introduction

We probably all had certain defining issues that followed us throughout our childhood and impacted us in profound ways. For me, one such issue was religious conflict. My parents were not religious, so we hardly ever went to church. Yet I had Bible study in school, and I still remember the utter shock of learning how and by whom Christ was killed. Even at the tender age of 8, it was clear to me that Christ was killed by closed-minded religious people. I was stunned by the fact that these people believed in the Old Testament, which states, “Thou shalt not kill.”
I was equally shocked when I later learned about the Crusades. How could two groups of religious people kill each other in the name of the same God? I didn’t know much about Islam, but I knew enough about Christianity to wonder how Christians could have used the teachings of Christ to justify such killing. An even greater shock was learning about the Inquisition. How could a Christian church use such measures to torture and kill its members?

Although I had no one to talk to about these questions, they kept haunting me throughout my childhood and teenage years. In my late teens I realized that I am a deeply spiritual person, and the study and practice of spirituality became the main focus of my life. As I studied a variety of spiritual teachings, I began to realize that religious conflict and warfare is one of the main factors behind all human conflict. Almost any war involves a clash between belief systems—even if they are not religious in nature. Obviously, the topic of religious warfare has become even more poignant after the 2001 terrorist attacks and the war in Iraq. One sometimes wonder if we are seeing the beginning of a process that will eventually lead to a re-enactment of the Crusades, causing a large-scale war between Christian and Muslim nations?

After pondering this question, I realized that there are virtually no books that deal directly and openly with the topic of religious conflict. I also realized why, namely that many people are afraid to tackle the issue. They feel intimidated by the prospect of having to challenge people with very strong beliefs in the superiority and infallibility of their particular religion.

In pondering the long history of religious conflict, and the intensity of the emotions involved, I realized that it was impossible to say anything that would not offend someone. My conclusion was that we human beings seem utterly incapable of dealing with the topic of religious conflict in a way that doesn’t generate more conflict. It became clear to me that writing a “normal” book about religious conflict had little chance of making a difference. I saw an obvious need for an entirely different approach to the problem. If we human beings have not been able to resolve the issue of religious conflict on our own, we truly need help from above. So why not consider what a spiritual master might contribute to the debate?

Given that Christianity has generated a fair share of conflicts, Jesus was an obvious choice. Therefore, this book is a conversation between myself and Jesus, where I ask questions and he answers. I am fully aware that some readers will instantly reject this approach. Yet I am hoping that others will see it as an innovative way to tackle an age-old problem. Incidentally, the very people who are open to the approach taken in this book just might be the only people who have the potential to remove religious conflict from this planet. So let us move into an unusual conversation and see what happens.

Chapter 1
Who Would Start a Religious War?

Kim: Jesus, I don’t mean any offense, but the statistics don’t look very good. We have a long list of major religious wars or atrocities involving Christians, such as the Crusades, the massacre of the Cathars, the Inquisition and several wars between Catholics and Protestants, one of them lasting a hundred years. We also have a lot of ongoing conflicts that have led to the killing of many people in the name of Christ. If you listen to those who don’t like Christianity, as many as 17 million people have been killed by Christians, and even Christians will admit that it is a substantial number. How do you feel about people being killed in your name?

Jesus: Are you implying that I should feel worse about people being killed in the name of Christianity than I should feel about people being killed for other reasons?

Well, yes. Isn’t it logical that as the founder of the Christian religion you would feel worse about someone being killed in your name?

Why?

Why? Well, I assume that since you told us to turn the other cheek, you would feel badly about someone killing people in your name. I assume you might feel somewhat responsible for having started a religion that has turned out to be one of the most violent religions in recorded history. And I assume you would feel badly about people being killed in the name of Christianity because it seems so unnecessary.

That was a lot of assumptions. You assume I founded the religion of Christianity. You assume I started a fear-based religion, which found it necessary to use violence in a desperate attempt to kill the fear. You assume I feel responsible for the actions of human beings and that I feel especially responsible for the actions of those who use my name yet don’t internalize my teachings. And you assume that people have been killed in my name and have been killed by true Christians. Your assumptions are understandable from a human viewpoint, but I hope I can help you see that they are not logical.

Now wait a minute, these are perfectly reasonable assumptions, shared by an awful lot of people including many Christians. I don’t think you can just push them aside by saying they are not logical.

I have no intention of pushing them aside. My intention is to help you reach a higher understanding of the cause of religious conflict, and if you are willing to open your mind to this higher understanding, you will see why your assumptions are not logical. I realize they seem logical with your present level of understanding, but that is why the Bible stresses the need for a higher understanding, “With all thy getting, get understanding” (Proverbs 4:7).

I don’t see how any higher understanding can explain away the fact that millions of people have been killed by Christians!

Again, I don’t intend to explain away anything. But why are we having this conversation? Are you talking to me because you want me to confirm your present opinions, or are you open to the possibility that I could give you a higher understanding that might cause you to revise those opinions?
If you only want to have your present opinions confirmed – as most people do – then I simply cannot help you. I am a spiritual teacher, and I have an uncompromising allegiance to truth—which is a diplomatic way of saying that I will not compromise truth in order to conform to human opinions. So do you want confirmation or do you want understanding?

Okay, I will come down from my soapbox, because I am really curious to see what you have up your sleeve. So please help me understand the cause of religious conflict.

I would like to begin by asking you to consider the following statement:

And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. (Matthew 25:40)

This statement was meant to illustrate how I feel when one human being hurts another. In other words, if you hurt any other human being, I will feel their pain and suffering. Therefore, what you do to another human being, you are truly doing to me. What do you think this means?

I don’t know, I can’t even imagine how you could possibly feel the pain and suffering of every human being on this planet. That must be a rather unpleasant experience.

Pleasant or unpleasant, the important point here is that you cannot imagine being able to feel that what is being done to other people is also being done to yourself. Obviously, this is one of the major causes of all conflict, but let us put that aside for now.

I would like to focus on the question of what it would take for a human being to be able to feel the suffering of others? What would it take for you to realize that when you hurt others, you are hurting yourself?

Well, I would obviously have to have a different sense of awareness than I have right now.

That is an honest – and correct – answer. Almost every religion on this planet talks about the possibility that human souls can ascend to a higher realm and reach a state of immortality. Most religions also state that there are a number of immortal beings in this higher realm—however they choose to describe this realm. Now, could you see beings in a higher realm engage in the same kinds of conflicts and petty squabbles in which human beings engage?

No. I have always thought that in Heaven there couldn’t be wars and other human atrocities.

So you would agree that there are no religious wars in Heaven?

That sounds reasonable.

Good, so before a soul can ascend to Heaven, it somehow has to rise above human conflict, including religious conflict. Does that sound reasonable?

It does.

So how did we, who have already ascended to Heaven, rise above human conflict?

I have no idea.

That’s an honest answer, and it answers the question. In your current state of consciousness, in your current sense of awareness, you cannot see how to overcome conflict. The reason is that you do not feel a sense of oneness with other people; you feel separated from others. Do you agree?

I had never thought about it that way, but I have to say it sounds reasonable.

Does that mean you agree, or are you just making an excuse for not really thinking about what I am saying?

Okay, I do agree that my current state of consciousness has not allowed me to escape all human conflict and that I do feel separated from most other people.

So wouldn’t it follow logically that before you can ascend to Heaven, you have to transcend your current state of consciousness, meaning that you have to overcome the sense of separation? You need to rise to a state of consciousness in which you feel one with all life, and therefore you realize that what is done to other human beings is also done to you. In other words, when you harm another human being, you are actually harming yourself, and that is the real reason you should do unto others what you want them to do to you. My point being that this statement of mine was not some imperial command given by a hellfire and brimstone preacher. I was simply pointing out what is enlightened self-interest—enlightened being the operative word.

Well, yes, that’s a very clever argument. What’s that got to do with my original question concerning how you feel about people being killed in your name?

My reason for taking you on what seems like a detour is to show you that, as an ascended being, I have attained a sense of oneness with all life. Therefore, any time a human being is killed, I consider it a tragedy. Every human being is one of my brothers or sisters. The person was alive because God wanted that soul to have the opportunity to be in embodiment on Earth. When a person is killed, the opportunity is wasted, and that is a loss, not only for the individual but for the whole. And because I see myself as one with that whole, it is also a loss for me. My point being that it is always a loss for me when a person is killed. It makes no difference whether the person was killed for this or that reason. The loss is always immeasurable because each soul is a unique individual and each life represents a unique opportunity.

I wanted to show you this because I am hoping to help you see that all killing is wrong in the eyes of God. That is why virtually every spiritual teaching on this planet denounces killing. I am also hoping to help you see that, as a spiritual being, I do not discriminate based on human opinions and judgments. In reality, by assuming that I would feel differently based on why someone was killed, you are implying that some forms of killing are worse than others. The logical consequence of that line of reasoning is that some forms of killing are not as bad. And when you reason like that, it is only a matter of degree before you start believing that under certain circumstances killing is acceptable. The brutal fact is that the very moment you believe that under certain circumstances killing is an acceptable way to resolve human conflict, at that moment you have set the stage for religious war—and any other type of war for that matter. Do you see my point?

I do, and I am embarrassed that I didn’t see that before.

There is no need to be embarrassed when you realize that you had a limited understanding. On the contrary, admitting that you have a limited understanding opens your mind to a higher understanding, and that is the driving force behind all human progress. What is truly embarrassing – and tragic – is when human beings refuse to admit that they have a limited understanding, and therefore they refuse to reach for a higher understanding. As I hope to show you later, this is another major cause of religious conflict.

Now let us move on to your next assumption. You were assuming that people have actually been killed by Christians and that they have been killed in my name...

Now, hold it one minute! I was just beginning to believe that you made sense, and then you pull this one on me. This is not an assumption—it is simply historical fact!

Is it? So how do you define a Christian?

How do I define a Christian? Well, obviously it is a person who is a member of a Christian church.

I thought that was the problem. You are resorting to the common human tendency of defending one assumption by using another assumption—which easily leads people to build an entire belief system that is based exclusively on assumptions and has no bearing in truth.

You are making the assumption that by becoming a member of a church that bears my name, a person will automatically become one of my followers.

And you are saying that is not true?

Most certainly! This is one of the most common mistakes made by both religious and nonreligious people. Religious people think that by obtaining membership in a particular religion, they have bought their salvation. And nonreligious people think they can blame the actions of the so-called followers on the founder of the religion. So everything done by so-called Christians is supposedly my fault, and if only I had stayed away from this planet, humankind would have been engaged in a group hug for the past 2,000 years.

Well, I will agree that even if you had not come to Earth, people would have found plenty of other things to fight about.

They would, but that obviously is no excuse for killing someone in the name of Christianity. So let us consider how a religion based on the principle of turning the other cheek became violent. Let me begin by pointing out that there are several thousand individual Christian churches and sects. They have vastly different doctrines and interpretations of the spiritual teachings they believe I gave. In many cases, these doctrines and interpretations are mutually exclusive, and many of the people you call Christians seriously believe that all other so-called Christians are not true believers and will go to Hell. I assume you have observed this phenomenon?

I have, and it always shocked me a bit. I can understand some atheists or agnostics who reason that since so many Christian churches have opposing doctrines, they couldn’t all be right, so maybe none of them are right.

And that is not necessarily an unworkable hypothesis, as long as you don’t make the assumption that there is no higher truth that could take you beyond the conflicts between Christian churches. My point is that when you look at the conflicts between Christian churches, you realize that it isn’t quite that simple to define what it means to be a Christian. You can’t simply say that any member of any Christian church is a Christian.

Sounds reasonable, so how would you define a Christian?

Well, you could reason that there can be only one true way to interpret the teachings I gave, so therefore there must be one true church. All the other churches are wrong and their members will go to Hell. Yet which church do you pick as the only true one and how do you convince everybody else that your pick is the only right one? People have been taking this exclusivist approach for 2,000 years, and it hasn’t resolved the conflicts. In fact, it has led to virtually all of the wars you mentioned earlier. So maybe we should look for a better approach?

Maybe there is a higher understanding of what it means to be a Christian? Maybe becoming a member of an outer church isn’t enough to make you a true Christian? Maybe we could say that a true Christian is a person who is on the way to fully understanding and internalizing the true teachings of Christ, even to the point of living those teachings in every aspect of his or her life. In other words, the person is not just a Christian on Sunday mornings, but the person is living my true teachings 24/7/365.

Well, that sounds reasonable, and I assume you are now going to say that, according to your definition, no true Christian has ever killed another human being?

Not necessarily. Planet Earth is a rather treacherous environment, and even true Christians can sometimes find themselves in situations where accidents happen. What I am saying is that no true Christian ever killed another human being and felt that the killing was justified by my teachings. No true Christian ever killed someone in the name of Jesus Christ or in the name of God.

That sounds like a sensible definition. So you are saying that if a person has truly embodied your teachings, that person would never use your teachings to justify killing another human being?

That is correct. How could they? Look at just a few of my statements:

38 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:
39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.

43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.
44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in Heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
46 For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?
47 And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? Do not even the publicans so?
48 Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect. (Matthew, Chapter 5)

And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself. (Luke 10:27)

21 Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times?
22 Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven. (Matthew, Chapter 18)

Can’t you see that these few statements present an approach to life that is completely nonviolent? Yet how can you possibly love your neighbor as yourself? You can do so only when you realize that your neighbor is not separated from you. Your neighbor is part of a larger whole, namely the Body of God on Earth, and you are also part of that whole. So if you kill your neighbor, you are actually hurting yourself, as hurting a finger will affect the entire body.

My mission and teachings were meant to demonstrate that the true key to salvation is to move out of a state of consciousness that is dominated by a sense of separation and fear and move into a state of consciousness that is entirely based on a sense of oneness and love. In other words, I was telling people to stop responding to life with fear and to start responding with love. It is fear that makes people kill one another. And love is the only thing that can stop killing, because perfect love casts out all fear (1John 4:18).

Okay, so we have now cleverly established that the millions of people who were killed by so-called Christians over the past 2,000 years were not killed by true Christians. So how do we stop religious wars? I mean, a lot of wars were started by people who believed it was their holy duty to turn everyone into Christians, but I assume you are not going to say that we just have to turn everyone into true Christians?

Not necessarily, although that certainly would stop religious wars. Yet a more realistic goal would be to help people become true followers of any true religion. A true Buddhist would never kill another human being, and neither would a true Hindu or Muslim.

So are you saying that the cause of religious conflict is that people don’t internalize the teachings of their particular religion?

Not exactly, although you are close. There are millions of people who count themselves as Christians and who have not fully internalized my teachings. Yet they are striving to do so, and they have internalized enough of my teachings that they would never kill somebody in my name. So these people have actually internalized a part of my teachings, and therefore they deserve to be called true followers. However, they are still following, meaning that they have not yet arrived at the destination of fully internalizing my teachings. In contrast, the people who start and reinforce religious conflicts have these characteristics:

• They firmly believe they have completely understood the teachings of their particular religion, and they are unwilling to consider any evidence to the contrary.
• They base this self-image on the fact that they believe the letter of their scriptures and follow the outer rules defined by their religion.
• Based on their interpretation of the outer letter, they firmly believe it is necessary and justified to use force to expand their religion. They believe their religion must replace all other religions. The more moderate people would not necessarily kill nonbelievers, but the more extremist people have no compunctions about killing in the name of God. Yet all of these people believe that the greater purpose of doing God’s work can justify a violation of God’s laws, including my command to turn the other cheek or God’s command not to kill.

My point is that such people believe they know better than anyone else how their religious teachings should be interpreted. In reality, some of them even believe they know better than God. This is nothing but pride, and such intellectual and spiritual pride has the effect of making people blind. Therefore, neither God nor man can reach through these people’s prideful beliefs and help these souls see that they are trapped behind a wall of illusions. These people have set themselves outside the reach of truth and reason.

If you read the scriptures, you will see that I constantly challenged such people, and there was one particular word I used to characterize their approach to religion. There are over a dozen passages in the gospels in which I address the scribes and Pharisees and call them hypocrites. I also made the following statement:

For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers. (Matthew 23:4)

Most of the people who start religious conflicts sit in their temples of power and incite the general population to violence. Yet they themselves avoid getting their hands dirty or running any risk of being killed.

So are you saying that all those who start religious conflicts are hypocrites?

That is right, but what is the one thing that causes a person to act as a hypocrite? It is that the person believes in a lie and refuses to admit that it is a lie.

Virtually every religion known to man has scriptures that clearly and unconditionally denounce killing. Take for example the commandment, “Thou shalt not kill” (Exodus 20:13). Do you see any qualifications in that commandment? Do you see the scriptures define any conditions under which killing becomes acceptable?

No, but many people interpret other scriptural passages to mean that killing is acceptable.

Sure they do, but that is because they are imposing an interpretation that allows them so set aside the unconditional command that clearly says, “Thou shalt not kill!”

Look at the irony. We have three major religions that all honor the Old Testament, yet these three religions are among the most violent religions the world has seen. How can this be? If the followers of these religions had truly internalized and lived by the ten commandments, how could those followers have gone to war with each other? How could you have had the Crusades, where Christians and Muslims killed each other and felt the killing was justified by the same God?

There can be only one reason, namely that people have found a way to neutralize, to nullify, the unconditional nature of the commandment not to kill. They have imposed a human interpretation upon the Word of God that makes God’s word conditional and relative to the situation of human beings. In other words, when they have a neighbor who is too different, it suddenly becomes acceptable in the eyes of the priesthood to kill that neighbor.

This is the essence of hypocrisy, and it violates the first two commandments. The first one is, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3), and the meaning is clear. You cannot allow any man-made “god,” any man-made idol, to stand between you and the real God. The real God is a God of love, not a God of war. So when you interpret God’s words to justify killing, or when you ignore God’s words, you are violating the second commandment, “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image” (Exodus 20:4). When you take the unconditional statement “Thou shalt not kill” and cover it over with human conditions, then you have created a graven image. And you are dancing around that golden calf instead of worshiping the true God who defined killing as unconditionally wrong.

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Copyright © 2005 by Kim Michaels