Term Paper with my perspective on Christianity.

[Smitten]

Please, tell me what you think.

I wrote this paper as my midterm for my 400 level course on History, Philosophy, and Religion.
As it has been submitted, archived, and stored on a anti-plagiarism database with me as it's originator - it is essentially copy written and I need not worry about posting it on here. Plus, I already got an A for it.


Machiavelli’ Discourses on Livy and Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne illustrate at length the influence of Christianity and that which is done in the spirit of Christianity – however “un-Christ like” those actions may be. The argument to be made in this work will primarily be one of a critical approach to the Religion in agreement with much of Machiavelli’s notions of Christianity and religion in general; Examples and inferences will be drawn from the Life of Charlemagne about those who practiced it in history (De las Casas Short account of the destruction of the Indies will also be referenced). The underlying similarity is the hypocrisy and sheer lack of moral lucidity that Christianity creates amongst the masses and leadership, primarily how simply applying “God’s” name to any conquest immediately renders all Christ’s teachings dormant and allows any and all unimaginable acts of cruelty to be accepted. The work hereafter is critical, biased, and contemptuous without doubt – that said, read on.
Christianity is the most afflicted religion in terms of having been relentlessly perverted from the original intent with which it was founded. It has arguably strayed farther from the principles of its inception than any other faith throughout history and has the bloodiest legacy through the annals of time. Drawing example from Charlemagne in one of his early conquests – the Lombard War (pg.143) he was persuaded by Hadrian the Bishop of Rome to wage a war on the Lombards, which was a task that that Charlemagne’s father had undertaken earlier per the request of Pope Stephen! Waging war in the name of Christianity seemingly goes against “Thou shalt not murder” (Exodus 20:13) which is one of the ten pillars which Christianity mandates as law. Further support of the hypocrisy of the church is “Christians must be peacemakers” (Matthew 5:9), “forgiving those who do them harm” (Cited multiple times in: Ephesians 4:29-32; Colossians 3:12-14; Matthew 6:9-15; Mark 11:25-26) “treating their enemies with love” (Luke 6:27-36) “and not seeking revenge” (Romans 12:17-21; 1 Peter 3:8-12). The Lombard war showed no signs of forgiveness or love, and set revenge for the territories the Lombards had captured as the priority. Charlemagne had King Desiderius beaten and submitting to his terms of surrender and had recaptured all the cities and castles that the king had taken from Rome, but unsatisfied he pressed on and subdued all of Italy through military might, pushing out all other rulers and then gave it to his son to rule (pg.143).
The more religious one professes to be, the further they seem to stray from the principles of goodness in religion. In fact, greed and power seem to pervade those who are supposed to exemplify the ideal of these principles; including the Papacy itself. Christianity, through time, has been so perverted and misrepresented that only the husk of its original intent remains; a hollow reminder of the ethics and morality that was one man’s dream. Machiavelli affirms that “…if the Christian religion had from the beginning been maintained according to the principles of Jesus, the Christian states and republics would have been much more united and happy than what they are…” (pg.29-30) and rightly so, how could any man be expected to place faith in his rulers when they are hypocrites in both what they preach and in the actions which they perform? How could any logical creature come to a point of acceptance with such injustice and inequality that Christianity affords to the populace? If in a Christian state a man is a prince and another man a beggar; should not the same laws govern both men? – for it is a basic principle in Christian doctrine that all men are created in the image of God. If then, by that effect men are created equal, why is it that a prince may take food from whomever he wishes without cause while a beggar who takes a turnip to avoid starvation can be consequently sentenced to death for an equal offense? Hypocrisy! Machiavelli continues “…Nor can there be greater proof of its decadence than to witness the fact that the nearer people are to the Church of Rome, which is the head of our religion, the less religious they are. And whoever examines the principles upon which that religion is founded and sees how widely different from those principles its present practice and application are, will judge that her ruin or chastisement is near at hand…” (pg.30) It is much like Gandhi said, “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” (-Mohandas Gandhi)
When looking at Christianity it is impossible to ignore two major facets of its “modern” implementation – greed (wealth) and power. When combined, these two terms that are nearly always interchangeable throughout history but more often co-morbid conditions than not. Christianity, for all intensive purposes, functions precisely like a vampire – but rather than feeding only on blood, The Church is fueled by power and greed while using man’s innate need to have a purpose as leverage. Much like a vampiric parasite of myth, this desire drives the few to feed off the many – leeching as much wealth and power from the masses as possible. As a direct result of their new provided purpose and mission in life, the masses devote their existence to their religious officials who despite their hidden agendas, claim to serve only God. This leeching process is deceptive at the onset, and only comes to full recognition when the masses infected with religious fervor and with the illusion of purpose lapse into poverty and desperation. By this point it is too late to do anything; fear of excommunication, or rather punishment for speaking out against the church can be fatal. Where is the benevolence that Jesus Christ preached?
Hypocrisy continues through today, although in a more “hidden” manner. The Church still steals from the masses every Sunday and gives back only the illusion of forgiveness and false promises of everlasting life. The masses are controlled not by morality and ethical mentality, but instead by the idea of goodness – the shadow of the moral right. Further control is achieved by indoctrinating youth into a tradition of “Christian” requirements such as confession, communion, confirmation, donations, tithes, and other compulsory traditions that just give more money to the church. Tithes are perhaps the most ridiculous of the Christian traditions; being expected to give the first ten percent of one’s income to the Church each time one has any earnings is not only preposterous, but it is extortion. It requires a dangerous level of blind following like has been demonstrated throughout history, a level of faith that is dangerous out of ignorance and seeks to persecute any who do not agree with that faith. This mindset enables the belief that any who are not Christian must not be “good and righteous” which inevitably has led to violence time and time again; for example De Las Cases recounts “…with their cruel and abominable acts, have devastated the land and exterminated the rational people who fully inhabited it. We can estimate very surely and truthfully that in the forty years that have passed, with the infernal actions of the Christians, there have been unjustly slain more than twelve million men, women, and children…” (Bartoleme de Las Casas) and for what? They were upon their arrival to the Indies welcomed with open arms and kindness, yet the Christian desire for wealth and the power it supplies to its beholder led them to unfathomably immoral actions, “…they behaved with such temerity and shamelessness that the most powerful ruler of the islands had to see his own wife raped by a Christian officer… They attacked the towns and spared neither the children nor the aged nor pregnant women nor women in childbed, not only stabbing them and dismembering them but cutting them to pieces as if dealing with sheep in the slaughter house. They laid bets as to who, with one stroke of the sword, could split a man in two or could cut off his head or spill out his entrails with a single stroke of the pike. They took infants from their mothers' breasts, snatching them by the legs and pitching them headfirst against the crags or snatched them by the arms and threw them into the rivers, roaring with laughter …” (De las Casas) Actions of immorality so completely malevolent that if God existed in any approximation of what the Christians believe, he would have undoubtedly opened a pit straight to hell and had all those involved in the persecution of this peaceful indigenous population swallowed into its fiery abyss at the very moment such acts began.
Returning to modern Christianity, the goal is still to convert as many as possible to the Christian faiths because in the opinion of the Church it is the only faith that is “true”, so “true” in fact that the church has hidden pedophiles and continued to horde riches and amass power for hundreds of years all the while bleeding the majority of the populace dry of its resources. The bible certainly gives several examples of the mayhem that existed right after Jesus Christ’s time, so much mayhem in fact that priests often have to find a way to interpret them into some kind of wisdom that overshadows the darkness of those times. Some may say that it is not the Church that is evil, but the people who run it; however it is the collective of these people that make the Church and perpetuate its deceitful objectives. The precepts of Christianity, as Machiavelli said, is “…more admired than imitated, or so much neglected that not the least trace of this ancient virtue remains, we cannot but be at the same time as much surprised as afflicted…” (Machiavelli)

[dr2005]

As I am a Christian, I'll start off by saying that all of my comments are drawn from an academic perspective and not any objections to criticism of Christianity. I don't object to such criticism in the first place anyway as long as it's warranted, but in the interests of fairness and impartiality I'll put that out there first.

On the whole I think you make some good points about the way in which Christianity can and has been distorted by those seeking to use it to further their own ends, and the hypocrisy within the Church which has developed as a result. It's also good that you've picked up on the political elements at play within that which explain how it has been used in that fashion, and practices such as indulgences which defy any theological explanation. Where it does fall down, however, is that there is a fair amount of blurring both between different Christian denominations and the actions which have been carried out "in the name of Christianity" over varying periods of time. You do appear to jump from the medieval conduct of the Church straight into the modern day with the implication that nothing has changed since then, and that is not a conclusion which stands up to scrutiny on its own. There are also some factual errors on the continued use of indulgences, which went out quite a while ago, and the application of charges to confession, communion and confirmation - as one of my parents works as a catechist I can confirm no charges are applied for any of them and donations are purely voluntary if the candidate or their family wishes to. It's a minor detail but the problem is your assessor may pick up on them and mark you down accordingly. The other big problem from an academic point of view is the lack of evaluation as to how much of this is down to Christianity as a belief system and how much of this is down to belief systems generally being open to exploitation - comparison with other systems, both theistic and non-theistic, would bolster it in that regard and also lend more weight to any critical comments you make in the essay.

Those are just general observations without going into the fine detail of the essay, but if you want some more detailed feedback or to discuss any of them please let me know.

[John 6:29]

I enjoyed reading this essay. In fact, as a Christian, I only disagree with a couple of statements. However, it's not even a disagreement, just a matter of semantics.

The essay seems to make a lot of hasty generalizations without separating the masses from the minor. That is, overall, you seem to assume that all Christians are exactly the same. That there has been no progress, that there are no Christians seeking reform, and that there are no peacemakers, etc.

The reality is, as you mentioned, these have been issues since the beginning of the Church. Just reading through the Epistles we can see that people were already falling away from the principles Christ had taught. In fact, Paul rebuked a couple churches rather harshly (Corinth and Galatia) for their hypocrisy. Paul also addressed some people who were preaching Christ in vain conceit and jealousy. So, as far as that goes, we haven't really progressed much from there.

However, this is not to say that there are many who have tried to change this, nor does it go to say that all Christians are hypocrites. By all means, I am. I am the worst of sinners, and I admit that with all sincerity. But looking at people like Soren Kierkegaard, Aaron Weiss, Francis Chan, St. Francis of Assissi, Rich Mullins etc. there have been many Christians who have sought reform of the Christian faith. Take this quote from Kierkegaard for example:

The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.
-Soren Kierkegaard

It's ironic to me that a lot of the bashing of the religion in your essay, is also things that Paul directly addressed to other Churches in the Epistles.

There's more I have to say, which I'll get to if I have time, more of the semantical issues. But, at any rate, I agree with the majority of it.

[Smitten]

Thank you for the feedback, I would like to hear more if you would not mind sharing.

Still open to new responses as well.