Inspired by a story that a neighbor and friend, Sandra Kuolt, placed on Facebook about the conversion of an aetheist man to become a priest in the Orthodox Church of which Sandra is a bona fide member, I am going to discuss a topic that I used as a basis for a paper in a philosophy class years ago at Kent State University. I may have mentioned that class already here, and if so, forgive me for I do forget sometimes what I have posted and have not posted.
First, of all, I believe in Jesus Christ, as most anyone can tell if they read well enough most of my articles. I do not need to recite the apostle's creed or the nicean creed as I learned to do years ago in the Lutheran church, the church in which I was first baptized in third grade in Ohio.
My first introduction to religion was at the Baptist Church in Van Wert, and I attended many various church groups to hear the same stories told repeatedly about Jesus so it is easy to say that I was indoctrinated in the faith early. My grandmother was a member of the fundamentalist Pentecostal group and I attended servidces there, where I learned about evil practices in other Christian churches and to listen to rantings and ravings, as preachers pranced back and forth, screaming at the top of their lungs, trying to impress upon us how we must all behave in order to get to Heaven to avoid the threats of long term punishment in Hell. Shouts of Amen and Hallelujah go up all the time in church groups of this particular denomination. I was frankly not very comfortable in that atmosphere of give em hell and damnation if they don't come forward and accept Jesus into their lives, and my mother who had a running feud with my grandmother then had us baptized in the Lutheran church to irritate my grandmother who could not stand the Catholics at that time. Catholics had done evil things in the past and the preachers would never let their congregations forget it. So the Lutheran church is as close to Catholic as you can get without being down right Catholic. I guess the Anglican and Greek Orthodox are also in the same line of liturgy and rite and ritual practices.
So I learned the Lutheran Cathecism, knew it all by heart, knew the difference between transubstantiation and consubstantiation, and all the other petty differences that distinguish each faith from one another. In the end, it is pretty silly that the simple law of a sacrament can become divisive and argumentative, but these religious beliefs have been separating each other from one another for years because of such things as does Jesus become real before or after he is in your mouth since the term this is your body is used so literally. Did the disciples at the time of the institution truly believe as Jesus sat there with them and tell them that this is my body and this is my blood that it was really his physical body and blood or did they realize that this is a metaphor symbolizing that physical body?
Believe me, these are important issues to discuss in each of these church bodies which for me makes all this life of Jesus become pretty down right strange. I do not for one minute taste blood or flesh whenever I do an act of communion, and I know very well what Jesus meant when he instituted that particular sacrament.
So yes, I grew up believing in Jesus as told by many different preacher men, and eventually even by priests. I have no doubt in Jesus at all as I have also gone back in time to see him in ways that are not even mentioned in the Bible. So for me, there is no dispute. I just don't listen to everything that each preacherman or priest says any longer.
Catholics know a book called The Imitation of Christ. It is a special book, and as I took some of the imitation of Christ very seriously years ago in California when I was teaching, I likened myself and other teachers to Jesus and our students as disciples.
Each student carries on the work of his instructor believe it or not, and so it is that just as each follower of Christ carries on his work, so then do our students carry on our work, whether by example or imitation.
So I am a believer in Jesus's teachings today, even more so since I have had the supreme luxury of learning of times past when my soul inhabited the flesh of other identities. I can deal with the fact that before Christ life was different for many men, and I do see the way in which the teachings of Jesus, his life, his example, has managed to change life on the planet. However, do not think for one minute that because I believe in Jesus Christ as I do that I do not also understand the meaning of the life of the soldier, the military man, as that appears to be the cause of my soul for all these enduring lifeitmes spent on this planet.
Yes, I really believe in myself as my memories and visions have led me to know myself in times past as someone other than who I am today. Can I explain why I am who I am today? Only that I have to accept life as it is, not as I wish it would be, or that it could have been. Many things affect us as we become who we are, and as I said, in California, Iwas teaching by example the life of Jesus to my students in a manner that is unusual. I was for the time being a kind of Jesus then,which is why when Richard Nixon imitated me, he said that he was taking the way of the cross as I had done also. Jesus did not fight back. Jesus surrendered to the will of the Father to do his will.
People will sooner or later learn that this is what I and Nixon both did, as we both surrendered to the inevitable without fighting back. Some said that I should have fought back, some still probably think so. There is a time when not fighting is a better way.
to be continued...long, long story
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