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Have you investigated Gnostic Christianity?

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Gnostic Bishop
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Have you investigated Gnostic Christianity?

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Have you investigated Gnostic Christianity?

The Gnostic wing of Christianity, if it can even be called that today, has quite a few differences to Christianity and Catholicism. If the old Gnostic Christians were here, they would hardly recognize what has happened to the original Orthodox Catholic Church or its various offshoots in Protestantism and Islam. The Gnostic Christian Jesus would have a fit and would be quite disappointed I think. I know that this Gnostic Christian is.

Please suffer through a bit of history.

The main differences that moved the old Christians to decimate Gnostic Christians and burn their scriptures was literalism in reading scriptures. They were also more patriarchal and were not about to grant equality to women. Much later, gays would also lose the equality that they enjoyed.

The Gnostic version of Jesus and his Father was that they were Universalist.That communistic view of the demographics of heaven did not go over well with those who had a more pyramidal view of what they wanted God to be. War was declared and my side lost.That is why we think literalism to be quite evil. Proof is shown by the fact that it led to the Dark Ages, the Inquisition and all the other affronts to humanity that the Abrahamic cults have collectively done and continue to do to civilized society. Not too civilized but the Abrahamic cultists were what they were. If they were not sinners they would not be seeking a God to forgive them. My cult has no such need. We do not see us as ever condemned.

The Gnostic Christian Jesus, and the Gnostic Christians of that flavor, see a spark of God in all people including women and gays. That fact, to me, makes Gnostic Christianity a more desirable denomination of Christianity than all the rest. After all, if a religion cannot accept equality of humans as a starting place, then it cannot be a good religion. All souls are equal. That is scripture. That is why we connect equality to righteousness. If a religion cannot abide with equality of the sexes then to my mind it is not a just religion and is not worthy of the support of moral people.

Inequality is an immoral position and most of the Abrahamic cults are of that immoral persuasion. They take, --- he shall rule over you, --- to an immoral institutionalized position.

As the superior Catholic theology, it is my hope that Gnostic Christianity will eventually absorb the non-egalitarian and immoral Christian cults. I hope their members recognize that equality is the right moral system for all to live under, and that as religionists, to not actively support equality for all, would make any denomination of the Abrahamic cults more of a satanic cult than a God loving one.

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DL
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Re: Have you investigated Gnostic Christianity?

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oR02cia ... =PLCBF574D

The thinking shown below is the Gnostic Christian’s goal as taught by Jesus but know that any belief can be internalized.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alRNbes ... r_embedded

This method and mind set is how you become I am and brethren to Jesus, in the esoteric sense.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdSVl_HOo8Y

When you can name your God, I am, and mean yourself, you will begin to know the only God you will ever find. Becoming a God is to become more fully human.

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DL
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Re: Have you investigated Gnostic Christianity?

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I read The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels a long time ago and thought it was one of the best books I'd ever read. However that was back when I was still a theist, doubt I'd enjoy it as much now, but who knows? Several other BookTalkers have recommended that book.
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Re: Have you investigated Gnostic Christianity?

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yeah i'm an old gnostic from way back (on wednesdays), not those queer weirdo pseudo-gnostics you get, i mean more the "gospel of thomas" type of thing.

eg.

(113) His disciples said to him, "When is the kingdom going to come?" <Jesus said>, "It is not by being waited for that it is going to come. They are not going to say, 'Here it is' or 'There it is.' Rather, the kingdom of the father is spread out over the earth, and people do not see it."

i'm not really a gnostic at all in another sense but just the other day i heard someone describing an essential gnostic and i recognised a mirror image, i said to myself damn! i'm way more gnostic than i care to admit.

but again i stress, not that Nickelback Gnosticism, i mean old school, way way way back.

i believe if more people knew the old gnostic doctrine they would finally "get" the bible, it's metaphor not history.

there are few things that annoy me more than a fake gnostic

and of course you dont have to be a "gnostic" to be a gnostic... i knew a truck driver once, he didn't know his basilides from his valentinus but if you ever tried any BS on him he would look through you like glass, damn he knew :)
Last edited by youkrst on Sat Nov 29, 2014 12:36 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Have you investigated Gnostic Christianity?

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furthermore :-D

i'm always delighted to find gnosis in pop culture, for example in say... jethro tull lyrics

beastie (they stab it with their steely knives but they just can't kill the.... beast)

minstrel in the gallery (bloody marvellous lyric) (and a way better tune, musically beastie sux)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_lQ0H4zZEA

and so on

wherever you go there you are :-D

god i love this tune
"Minstrel In The Gallery"

The minstrel in the gallery looked down upon the
smiling faces.
He met the gazes --- observed the spaces between the
old men's cackle.
He brewed a song of love and hatred --- oblique
suggestions --- and he waited.
He polarized the pumpkin-eaters --- static-humming
panel-beaters --- freshly day-glow'd factory cheaters
(salaried and collar-scrubbing).
He titillated men-of-action --- belly warming, hands
still rubbing on the parts they never mention.
He pacified the nappy-suffering, infant-bleating
one-line jokers --- T.V. documentary makers
(overfed and undertakers).
Sunday paper backgammon players --- family-scarred
and women-haters.
Then he called the band down to the stage and he
looked at all the friends he'd made.

The minstrel in the gallery looked down on the
rabbit-run.
And threw away his looking-glass - saw his face in
everyone.
this version

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S-j_789Utc

has shocking bad sound and glorious codpiece but if you can make it to 45 seconds in you will see Barriemore Barlow kicking ass! straight out of the centre.

ooooh and one of my favourite gnostic songs of all time

"the devil went down to georgia"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNSljt0i3TI

what a metaphor!
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Re: Have you investigated Gnostic Christianity?

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LanDroid wrote:I read The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels a long time ago and thought it was one of the best books I'd ever read. However that was back when I was still a theist, doubt I'd enjoy it as much now, but who knows? Several other BookTalkers have recommended that book.
Pagels is one of my favourite writers. I have my mum's copy of The Gnostic Gospels which I read back in 1982, and which set me on my quest to understand the relation between belief and knowledge in religion. Pagels is a highly rational and critical writer. She does not endorse supernatural claims, but does skirt around the problem of the Gnostic invention of Christ. I just bought her recent study of the Revelation.

My favourite Gnostic song is Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun.
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Re: Have you investigated Gnostic Christianity?

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The early church that sprung up after Christ's ascension was practically communist; all possessions owned individually were sold and the money used to care for the needs of everyone in the group. No one was left out, and there was no sense of upper, middle and lower classes.

I wonder what the people in this early church would think of today's USA brand of Christianity, with all the talk of prosperity theology and shit.
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Re: Have you investigated Gnostic Christianity?

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Movie Nerd wrote:The early church that sprung up after Christ's ascension was practically communist; all possessions owned individually were sold and the money used to care for the needs of everyone in the group. No one was left out, and there was no sense of upper, middle and lower classes.

I wonder what the people in this early church would think of today's USA brand of Christianity, with all the talk of prosperity theology and shit.
Don't take the Book of Acts at face value. It should be considered as fiction.

Saint Peter is presented as a Stalin-like demagogue. When Ananias refuses to give up his money Peter curses him and he dies. That is the totalitarian tyranny which results from the alleged primitive communism of the early church.
Acts 5:3-5 wrote:Peter said, "Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? ... What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied just to human beings but to God." When Ananias heard this, he fell down and died. And great fear seized all who heard what had happened.
Communists have a great facility with propaganda, concealing the fact that some are more equal than others, as Orwell put it in Animal Farm.

Acts is shoddy propaganda aimed to destroy memory of the Gnostic origins of the Christ Myth. The primitive communism of the pentecost community is presented as unsustainable against the need to mobilise an institutional hierarchy of orthodox bishops and priests.

That is not to defend prosperity theology, which is deeply unchristian, but rather to note that the context of ancient Gnostic thought contains more than meets the eye.
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Re: Have you investigated Gnostic Christianity?

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Interesting post, Gnostic. It should be obvious to see how religion has been used to promote in-group mentality which promoted solidarity (but at the exclusion of the out-group). The belief that God is on our side, not yours. I think that mindset is increasingly at odds in the modern world and with science.
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Re: Have you investigated Gnostic Christianity?

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Robert Tulip wrote:
Movie Nerd wrote:The early church that sprung up after Christ's ascension was practically communist; all possessions owned individually were sold and the money used to care for the needs of everyone in the group. No one was left out, and there was no sense of upper, middle and lower classes.

I wonder what the people in this early church would think of today's USA brand of Christianity, with all the talk of prosperity theology and shit.
Don't take the Book of Acts at face value. It should be considered as fiction.

Saint Peter is presented as a Stalin-like demagogue. When Ananias refuses to give up his money Peter curses him and he dies. That is the totalitarian tyranny which results from the alleged primitive communism of the early church.
Acts 5:3-5 wrote:Peter said, "Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? ... What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied just to human beings but to God." When Ananias heard this, he fell down and died. And great fear seized all who heard what had happened.
Communists have a great facility with propaganda, concealing the fact that some are more equal than others, as Orwell put it in Animal Farm.

Acts is shoddy propaganda aimed to destroy memory of the Gnostic origins of the Christ Myth. The primitive communism of the pentecost community is presented as unsustainable against the need to mobilise an institutional hierarchy of orthodox bishops and priests.

That is not to defend prosperity theology, which is deeply unchristian, but rather to note that the context of ancient Gnostic thought contains more than meets the eye.
If I may, I would like to ask for some more texts I could look at to support your claim here.
I am just your typical movie nerd, postcard collector and aspiring writer.
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