Thoughts from Pagan Christianity

Here’s my first response to Viola’s exhaustive masterpiece: Western Christianity is starting to look like the Twilight Zone in comparison (or should I say, contrast) to the primitive Christianity of the first century (the time of the apostles and New Testament documents).

The Twilight Zone. That’s massive. That’s scary. One of the greatest truths I’ve gained (or relearned or supported further) from this mind-blowing array of information is, in the famous revolutionary words of Rob Bell (to give credit), simply this: everything is spiritual. While and where there has always existed a false separation of the secular and the sacred in Judaic and Pagan religions and philosophies (even New Age to a degree), primitive Christianity flipped this idea on its head which was one of the things that made it such a countercultural revolution (which it isn’t now so much). For the early Christians, there were no sacred spaces, because everywhere and everything was sacred for them (as they were themselves the “House of God”, not a building), and there was no priestly system because every believer was a priest (as well as a child of God). Now you may say, “But Judaism shares the same God and scriptures, therefore their system cannot be false”. Good question, glad you asked.

Within the Jewish system, the separation of sacred and venerated spaces and objects from the non-sacred was (along with the sacrificial system) a false reality of symbols and shadows. Animal sacrifices didn’t take away sin (as the book of Hebrews says), they foreshadowed Christ’s sacrifice, the reality and substance. The separation of sacred and secular (if they even had such a word) was to symbolize the separation of darkness from light and the divine from its creation. However, while the Old Testament saw God as dwelling in a tabernacle, the New Testament sees God as being in everything, but especially in believers.

Unfortunately, Western Christianity has made church a special sacred time where you act different than on Monday when actually the early Christians of the first century got together in each other’s homes and interacted intimately and with spontaneity (like a gathering of friends, which it was). The Lord’s Supper was a full meal of happiness and celebration (not a mystical, magic ritual, or ritualistic “solemn remembrance”). In conclusion, I would encourage you to climb out of your neat and nice comfort zone and read this book, considering the in-your-face facts (but with grace, of course). Maybe then we can start to climb back out of the Twilight Zone.

Colossians 2:16-17

Hebrews 8:3-6

Hebrews 10:1