Miss Buddha (106 page)

Reform and Conservative Judaism

Most Reform and Conservative Jews in Israel
have immigrated from the Western democracies, particularly from the
United States. While deeply committed to Israeli statehood and a
continuing presence during Israel’s modern history, they have been
largely unsuccessful in a base among native-born Israelis.

Nevertheless, in recent years both movements
have ordained native-born Israelis into their rabbinates, so some
progress is being made.

Needless to say, the leaders of both Reform
and Conservative Judaism are vocal lobbyists for breaking the
prevailing Orthodox monopoly on defining the nature of Israeli
Judaism.

:: Christianity ::

Today, Christianity is, by a
wide margin, the largest of all world religions with substantial
representation in all populated continents of the globe. Not
surprisingly, at the turn of the 21
^st
Century Christianity saw a
total membership of nearly 2 billion people.

Like any system of belief and values—whether
Platonism, Marxism, Freudianism, or democracy—Christianity is in
many ways comprehensible only from the inside—i.e., to those who
share the Christian faith and beliefs and strive to live by
Christian values.

Doctrine and Practice

Christianity is a community. It is a way of
life. It is a system of belief. It is a liturgical observance; a
tradition. As a religion, Christianity is all of these, and
more.

While each of these aspects of Christianity
share attributes with other faiths, each also bears unmistakable
marks of its Christian origins. That is why it is helpful—if not
unavoidable—to examine Christian ideas and tenets comparatively,
i.e., by relating them to those of other religions, while we also
examine those features that are uniquely Christian.

Central Teachings

It is easier to describe Christianity
historically than to define it logically, but such a description
does yield insights into its lasting elements and essential
characteristics.

One such element is, of course, the person
of Jesus Christ since he is, in one way or another, the key element
in every historical variety of Christian belief and practice.

However, all Christians have yet to agree on
what makes Christ, the person, distinctive or unique. Naturally,
they would all affirm that his life should be held up as an
example, and should be followed, and that his teachings about love
and fellowship teaches the best of human nature and relations.

While much of his teachings echo the
teachings not only of the rabbis of Judaism—he was a Jew, after
all—but also echo the wisdom and teachings of Socrates, Confucius,
and the Buddha, for the Christian, Jesus can be no less than the
supreme preacher and exemplar of the moral life.

What we know of the historical Jesus is what
we are told about him in the Gospels of the New Testament of the
Bible.

Other portions of the New Testament
summarize the beliefs of the early Christian church; and from even
a cursory reading, it is clear that Paul and the other writers of
Scripture believed that Jesus was the revealer not only of human
life in its perfection but of divine reality itself.

Jesus gave this divine reality a name. He
called it “Father.” Consequently, his followers called him
“Son.”

Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection—which is
what early Christians referred to when they spoke about him as the
one who had reconciled humanity to God—made the cross the principal
symbol of Christian faith and devotion, the sign of the eternal and
saving love of God the Father.

This love is, all through the New Testament
and in subsequent Christian doctrine, the most significant among
God’s attributes.

Even today, Christians hold and teach that
God Almighty is in dominion over all that is in heaven and on
earth, that He is righteous in judgment over good and evil, that He
is beyond time and space and change—and, above all, they teach that
“God is Love.”

According to the majority of Christians, the
creation of the world out of nothing and the creation of the human
race are expressions of God’s love, and so was the arrival and
suffering of Christ, His only Son.

The classic statement of this trust in the
Love of God came with the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the
Mount: “Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor
gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you
not of more value than they?”

In such words early Christianity found
evidence both of the unique standing men and women have as children
of such a heavenly Father and of the even more special position
occupied by Christ, His Son.

In fact, that special position led the first
generations of believers to rank Jesus Christ along with the Father
in stature—and eventually with the Holy Spirit as well, whom the
Father had sent in Christ’s name—in the formula used in baptism and
also in the several creeds formulated during the first centuries of
the Common Era.

After some additional reflection (and a
healthy helping of argument and controversy) that view eventually
settled down as the doctrine of God as Trinity.

Baptism “in the name of the Father and of
the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” and sometimes just “in the name of
Christ,” has from the beginning been the means of initiation. At
first it seems to have been administered chiefly to adults after
they had professed their faith and promised to amend their lives,
but this would later turn into a more inclusive practice with the
baptism of infants.

Another universally accepted Christian
ritual is the Eucharist, aka The Lord’s Supper, in which Christians
share bread and wine (representing the body and blood of Christ)
and, through them, express and affirm His spiritual presence.

As the Eucharist developed, it became an
elaborate ceremony of consecration and adoration, the texts of
which have been set to music by numerous composers of masses.
However, the Eucharist has also become one of the chief points of
conflict among the various Christian churches, which disagree about
the “presence” of Christ in the consecrated bread and wine and
about the effect of that presence upon those who receive it.

Another fundamental component of Christian
faith and practice is the Christian community itself—the church.
Since the word “church” appears only twice in the Gospels, some
scholars question the assumption that Jesus intended to found one;
but his followers have always been convinced that his promise to
always be with them, “to the close of the age,” found its physical
fulfillment in His mystical body on earth: the holy catholic
church.

Today, the relation of this
holy catholic church to the many ecclesiastical organizations of
worldwide Christendom is the source of major divisions among
them.
Roman Catholicism
has tended to equate its own institutional
structure with the catholic church, as the common usage of the
latter term suggests, while some extreme Protestant groups have
been all too ready to claim that they, and they alone, represent
the true visible church.

Increasingly, however, Christians of all
denominations have begun to acknowledge that no one group has an
exclusive right to call itself “the” church, and, today, a movement
is afoot to work toward the reunion of all Christians.

Worship

Over the years, Christians
of all traditions have placed strong emphasis on private devotion
and individual prayer, as Jesus taught. But Jesus also prescribed a
form of praying, universally known as the Lord’s Prayer, the
opening words of which stress the communal nature of worship: “Our
Father, who art in heaven.”
Our
Father.

Since the times of the New
Testament, the prescribed day for the communal worship of
Christians has been the “first day of the week,” Sunday,
in commemoration of the resurrection of
Christ
.

Like the Jewish Sabbath, Sunday is
traditionally a day of rest. It is also the time when believers
gather to hear the reading and preaching of the word of God in the
Bible, to participate in the sacraments, and to pray, praise, and
give thanks.

The needs of communal
worship have spawned the composition of thousands of hymns,
chorales, and chants, as well as instrumental music, especially for
the organ, and since the 4
^th
century Christian communities
have also constructed special buildings for their worship—churches
and cathedrals—thereby also helping shape the history of
architecture.

Christian Life

The two principal Christian commandments are
to love God, and to love your neighbor.

However, the application of these two
commandments alone to the various situations in life, whether
personal and social, does not necessarily result in uniform moral
or political behavior.

Many Christians, for example, regard
consuming any amount of alcohol as a sin whereas (many) others do
not. Also, on any given question, you can find Christians on both
sides of the political spectrum, as well as in the middle. Even so,
with these obvious divides, we still speak of a single and
unequivocal Christian way of life, a life informed by the call to
reverence and service.

And what the Christian “way of life”
normally entails is the conviction of the inherent worth of every
person as one who has been created in the image of God; it emraces
the sanctity of human life and of marriage and of the family; it
includes the imperative to strive for justice even in a fallen
world. These dynamic moral commitments are accepted by most
Christians, no matter where they fall on the political spectrum,
and no matter how much their own conduct may fall short of these
norms.

This trait, however, is not uniquely
Christian: almost every religion set moral standards that are
almost—for the average follower—impossible to maintain, and it is
evident already in the pages of the New Testament that the task of
working out the applications and implications of an ethic of love
under the conditions of worldly existence has never been easy; it
is clear that there has, in fact, never been a “golden age” in
which this was otherwise—think: Romans burning Christians for
entertainment.

Eschatology

Christian doctrine, however—especially as
expressed in the Christian hope for everlasting life—does hold the
prospect of such a time. In fact, the historical Jesus (at least
according to the Gospels) spoke of this hope with such immediacy
that many of his followers clearly expected the end of the world
and the arrival of the eternal kingdom in their own lifetimes.

Ever since the
1
^st
century the expectations of a soon-to-be-here Judgment Day
have ebbed and flowed, at times reaching fever pitch and at others
receding to an acceptance of the world just like it is, the end
well beyond the horizon.

History

Virtually all that we know about Jesus of
Nazareth himself and about early Christianity originates with those
who claimed to be his followers, and because they wrote in order to
persuade non-believers rather than to satisfy historical curiosity,
their information often raises more questions than it answers.

Consequently, no scholar has ever succeeded
in auditing and harmonizing all such sources into a coherent and
completely satisfying chronological account.

In fact, due to the nature
of these sources, it is, for practical purposes, impossible to
distinguish between the original teachings of Jesus himself—what
the historical person actually said—and the teachings
about
what he said now
sprouting in the various early Christian communities; for it is so
easy to put persuasive words in someone’s historical mouth,
especially since he or she is no longer around to keep you
honest.

What is known, however—what is regarded as
fact—is that the person and message of Jesus of Nazareth soon
attracted a following of those who believed him to be a new
prophet; and the recollections of his words and deeds, transmitted
to posterity through those who eventually composed the Gospels,
view Jesus’ days on earth in the light of events (miracles) such as
his resurrection from the dead on the first Easter.

And so, these followers concluded that what
he had shown himself to be through his resurrection, he must have
already been at the time when he walked the Earth—and, indeed, must
have been even before he was born of Mary, in the very being of God
from eternity.

The authors of the Gospels then proceeded to
draw upon the language of their existing Scriptures (i.e., the
Hebrew Bible, which Christians came to call the Old Testament) to
account for the reality they had observed as the apostles of Jesus
Christ.

Believing, further, that it had been Jesus’
will and command that they congregate into a new community—as the
redeeming remnant of the people of Israel—these Jewish Christians
came to form the original Christian church in Jerusalem.

And there it was that they believed
themselves to receive His promised gift of the Holy Spirit and of a
new, and holy, power.

The
Beginnings
of the Church

It could well be said that Jerusalem was the
birthplace of the Christian movement, and remained its foundation
at least until the city was destroyed by Rome in 70 CE; a locus
from which Christianity was soon to radiate to other cities and
towns in Palestine and beyond.

At first, Christianity’s appeal was mostly
confined to the adherents of Judaism, to whom it presented itself
as a revival—though not in the sense of novel and brand-new, but in
the sense of taking a new view on fulfilling what God had promised
to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.