THE
END AND ABOLITION OF RELIGION
Author: Robert D. Brinsmead
“I have a dream…” Martin Luther King Jr.
“You may say that
I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one…” John Lennon, Imagine
I too have dreamed…
There was a tribe that lived happily together in the rainforest.
They were like one big happy family who worked, played and sang together under
the stars.
One day a shaman arrived declaring that the Great Spirit of the
forest had a plan to bestow his endless favours on everyone who put devotion to
the Great Spirit above everything else, even above family or friends.
The shaman said that the great One had set aside the beautiful
white sandstone rock from the cliffs beside their river as a sacred symbol and
reminder of the great One’s presence and promise. Every family in the village
should now set up an uncarved slab of this rock before each family hut as the
sign of devotion to the great One and as a sign that they were the great One’s
special people on earth.
At first it made the tribe very happy to think they had this
sign and sacrament of the great One’s presence among them. And they dedicated
themselves to the great One’s praise and devotion.
After the passage of time, someone discovered that there were
two distinct kinds of sandstone rock that could be hewn from the great cliffs
that rose up beside the river flowing through the village. One had a yellow
tinge containing what looked like tiny flecks of metal. The other sandstone had
an off-white texture with a light greyish tinge.
An argument developed in the village about who had the right
kind of rock. Some of the villagers had one kind of rock and some another. Some
of them were persuaded to change their rocks, but others clung tenaciously
either to one kind of rock or the other. In their zeal to honour the great One,
some began to accuse and criticize those deemed to have the wrong kind of rock.
They even said that those who did not have the right kind of rock should be
expelled from the village.
Still later, it was discovered that not all the yellowish or
the greyish sandstone was the same. At least a dozen different kinds of
sandstone rock were identified. The tribe became divided according to how many
kinds of sacred rocks were identified. It seemed that the more dedicated the
people were to the great One, the more divided they became over the issue of
the right kind of rock to use as the symbol of the great One’s favour and
presence. Discord about the sacred rocks led to strife, endless arguments,
mutual hostility and shunning of those judged to have the wrong kind of rock.
In some cases it even came to bloodshed.
Because their zeal to honour the great One was done in the
great One’s name, no one felt guilty about hurting their own tribespeople in this way. They were simply putting the
great One first and making devotion to the great One
take precedence over all human relationships. Each group within the tribe said
that they alone had the true sacrament of the great One’s presence whilst the
others were either deluded or disobedient. The once happy tribe was racked with
bitter divisions and hatreds over this issue of identifying and distinguishing
what was supposed to be sacred rock and what was supposed to be common rock.
And so it came about that the
very thing that was supposed to unite them only succeeded in dividing them.
Violence in the
Name of the Sacred
I dreamed again…
All over the earth it seemed that people were divided by a
multitude of sacred things. Whilst some were divided over the issue of sacred
rocks, others were divided over the issue of sacred animals. Others again were
divided about sacred places. Then there
were sacred times, sacred food, sacred water, sacred ceremonies, sacred
garments, sacred books, sacred dogma, sacred mediators and all kinds of sacred
institutions to guard and promote whatever
was deemed to be sacred.
All over the earth people were condemning, despising,
banishing, imprisoning and killing other people whose sacred things were
different. It seemed that the more devout people were, the more they mistreated
those deemed to have sacralized the wrong rocks, animals, places, times, and
water, food, garments, dogma, books and what have you. And all this inhumanity,
of course, was done in the name and for the honour and glory of their Transcendent
One.
It seemed that those who were religiously committed were not
civil, and those who were civil were no longer religiously committed.
Then there arose a sage of obscure parentage from an obscure
village in an obscure province. Except for having a simple and remarkable
wisdom, he was a very ordinary man who refused any title of honour except to be
called ben Adam in the Hebrew tongue of his
ancestors or bar nasha in the Aramaic tongue of his
people. In either case, it only meant that he was just a son of [ordinary] humanity. His full name was Joshua ben Adam in Hebrew or Yeshua bar Nasha in Aramaic.
Josh or Yesu began teaching a strange
new thing called the good news of the
kingdom of the Abba. (Abba was another Aramaic word which meant dearest papa or daddy). Anyhow, this was a message about a new kind of universal
brotherhood. He invited the somebodies and the nobodies, the politically
correct and incorrect, the insiders and the outsiders, the elite and the marginals to celebrate its arrival with eating and drinking
together, without distinction of creed, class or gender, and without any of the
old animal-like pecking order of superiors and inferiors.
In this new brotherhood/sisterhood, no one would hold anything
against anybody on the grounds of any thing, especially in regard to silly or
trivial distinctions between things deemed sacred and profane, clean and
unclean.
The sage said that people were the sole bearers of the image of
the transcendent Abba and the only sacrament of his presence – and nothing else
was sacred. Henceforth the only way to honour and serve any Transcendent
reality was to honour and serve one another, but especially people who were
sick, poor, ignorant, despised, lonely, forsaken, cast out, oppressed and
needing any kind of human help. In this new order of humanity, the only way
anyone could love or reverence the Unseen Abba was to unconditionally love,
forgive and minister to ordinary people as the bearers of the Abba’s image and
presence.
The teaching of this sage was deemed to be so dangerous by both
the religious and civil authorities of his day that he was hurriedly executed
for blasphemy and sedition. What he said could not be put to death, however,
and his spirit lived on proving that there is something stronger than death.
This spawned a movement that proclaimed his greatness.
At first they said he was the Messiah of his own tribe. As his
fame spread to the Greco-Roman world of that day, his legend also grew. He was
given the title son of God, a title that
was identical to inscriptions on the coins bearing the image of Caesar
Augustus. He was even said to be virgin born like Augustus, Alexander the Great
and all the great heroes and divinities of Greek mythology. By the fourth
century the movement that bore his name had become a great Institution. It used
its full authority to proclaim that the humble peasant was God Almighty in the
highest and most absolute sense
The creeds and dogmas of this great religious Institution were
now totally focused on the worship of this man. Those creeds and dogmas said
absolutely nothing about his message. The man had replaced the message. The
iconoclast had become the icon. Soon this great Institution was condemning,
banishing, flogging, burning and killing legions of people in his name with
pogroms, burnings, Crusades and Inquisitions.
It set up more sacred things than ever in his name. It created more
sacred books, sacred creeds, sacred garments, sacred ceremonies, sacred water, sacred
meals, sacred times, sacred places, sacred relics, sacred traditions and myths
than any of the old shamans could have shaken a stick at. And it imposed this
plethora of sacred things on millions on pain of temporal punishments and
eternal damnation.
Could anything be more antithetical to this humble sage, this
ordinary man – because son of man was
all he ever claimed to be – than this hierarchical Institution that was so
chock full of so many sacred altars on which to slaughter so many innocent
people?
Imagine…
Then there arose a wind of awesome destructiveness. I was
amazed that it did not blow down a single tree, destroy a single flower or hurt
a single person. But it blew away every single myth, legend and sacred thing
that had been erected in Josh’s name and every other name. The wind seemed to
be laughing as it swept all this stuff up in its furious path, and I thought
that it sounded like the laugh of Josh when he knocked over all that religious
stuff at the temple in Jerusalem so long ago (That’s another story, that I
can’t stop to explain just now).
When this wind had passed, nothing remained but the clearest
light of a candle in the dark. It was the light kindled by Josh so long ago and
nothing had been able to put it out. And the only sacred thing left now was
ordinary human people doing very ordinary human things for one another.
ABOU BEN ADAM
Abou ben Adam (may his tribe increase!)
awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight of his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
an angel, writing in a book of gold.
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adam bold,
And to the Prescence in the room he
said:
"What writest thou?" The
vision raised its head,
And, with a look made of all sweet accord,
Answered, "The names of
those who love the Lord."
"And is mine one?"said Abou, "Nay, not
so,"
Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerily still, and said, "I pray thee, then,
Write me as one who loves his fellow men."
The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night
It came again, with a great awakening light,
And showed the names whom love of God had blest,
And lo! Ben adam's
name led all the rest.
Leigh
Hunt
Henceforth,
according to the prophet from
Thomas
Sheehan
RDB
Web Published – August 2008
Copyright © 2008 Robert D. Brinsmead