Seeing As I Am Now a Poster Child for Celtic Christianity...
...I will explain what I believe. This discussion started on murdergeisha, flipped over to fayroberts and then I was invited to join in. Now I'm copying it over and adding to it. Read and discuss as you feel.
It’s a measure of the respect I have for Fay that I didn’t just plough into this with the inherent madness of the typical Aquarian! And I hope my ‘disagreement’ with the notions of Christianity is more encouraging than not! * laughs* I wrote out my initial responses in Word and thought about what I was saying.
As you know, I’m a huge proponent of Celtic Christianity. And while I know it is not politically correct to side with what has developed into the contemporary view of ‘all that is limited, closed-minded, and stifling’ (my statement, not a quote), I admit to the perversity of nature that I do call myself a Fundamentalist Christian. I only thought it proper to specify that I DO use that term to define myself, in one of those "we're not all that bad" kind of way. I sometimes see using the term--under its actual meaning--as a kind of radical rebellion, a la the gay community embracing the word "queer" or the black community using "nigger" to take the insult out of it and empowering themselves through what was formerly abuse. And believe me, you will be abused if you claim you are a Fundamentalist Christian.
Honestly--it helps to know the languages the Bible is originally written in. It also helps to know which translations are literally word-for-word and which ones are meaning-for-meaning. The Roman monks who copied out things in the Dark Ages gave the twists and tweaks we now struggle with. In fact, that's why a layman being able to READ a Bible was such a sin and why Tynsdale (sp?) was literally martyred by the Roman Church for the "blasphemy" of translating the Latin into understandable language for the English. The priests and bishops wanted to control who knew the truth and that's why Catholics often know their Catechism and the Rules better than they know the actual Bible. Priests would rather TELL YOU what to believe than let you learn it yourself.
That is also why it is so difficult to know what the original Celtic Church was in many ways. The early works of the Celtic Church were written in Greek (because the Gaelic/British language was forbidden to be put into writing about sacred subjects through Brehon law and the Druids ruling the sacred in vernacular language to be anathema...but there was a reason for that.*) At one point in history, the greatest scholars in the Known World were Irishmen writing in Greek. When it came to copying down what we would know of the Celts, their beliefs, their stories, and their history, that was all controlled by the Roman monks who copied the information down. With a Roman slant.
Boring intro:
I follow Christ; I take the name ‘Christian’. I believe everything the Bible says; therefore I am both a Fundamentalist and a Literalist. I do, however, also know that one needs to understand the precise MEANING of the words in the Bible-and most garden-variety ‘Fundamentalist Christians’ can quote the King James Version without a real understanding of the words. Worse, many of the words are not precisely meant NOW as they were when they were first written in Hebrew, Greek, or Aramaeic. If you want proof of this, just go watch TBN for a few hours.
End of boring intro!
Most of us are Celts or of Celtic-descent; there is a natural energy of our race that runs through us and draws us back to traditions that are often Eurocentric and born from the earth. The Celtic peoples were the largest race in Europe after the Fall of Rome. It is a naturalistic gestalt that embraces body and soul, mind and spirit, man and nature, God and the Universe. The fact that our modern minds fragment these things is sad, because I think our forebears understood more by embracing things more loosely and less ‘boundaried’ than we do now.
I honestly believe-and I’m not trying to convert anyone, mind you-that God intended us to be FULLY WHOLE. That means not only in mind, body, and spirit, but One with nature and in communication/communion with both the world and each other. We were not meant to be segregated off into separate beliefs, nor were we intended to use the Light as it was given to us to torment some and persecute others.
I know why many people are turned off to Church-most of us are. It’s not the God or Christ of those churches we flee, it’s the manmade rules and the odd prejudices of those who are the establishments of those churches that sent us running away. I wish I could remember the whole joke, but the punchline is something like this: God says, “I told you to LOVE one another, not form denominations and start inquisitions!”
For God is Love. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son...because each of us was made to be IN COMMUNION with both God and each other. Mankind was MADE in the image of God, with a God-shaped hole inside him that would cause him to seek out his Maker. It’s why we all feel incompleat without the “someone to love”. Whether beloved or The Beloved, each of us yearns for it and needs it.
Of course, Celtic Christianity also does not go for the one-sidedness of either male or female celebrants; both sexes are considered “different but equal” in their own ways, and it does not require going overboard to redress the artificial patriarchal emphasis the Roman Catholic Church has put upon spirituality, religion, church, God and everything else. God is not a Sexually-Assigned Male. God has no sex; He is the All and Everything. Sexuality is a type of fragmentation of what is required to bring two spirits/souls/bodies together and is all about the body and reproduction and sexual function...all of which God certainly has no need for.
When you examine the Hebrew, the "allusory words" to God are the masculine case (since He is under a kind of geas not to have His real name within the Hebraeic tongue!), but it's also made VERY plain that God does not exist outside or without the Holy Spirit--which is in the feminine case. "Ruach" is FEMALE and linked into both Sophia/wisdom and the idea of BREATH. To be "inspired" is to have that "in-spirit-ation", the Breath of God, coming into one. Therefore, Yahweh/Jehovah and Ruach together are pansexual and yet ONE. There is no "male God" in truth.
I should look the verses up, but God's very plain here and there about who He is--and even Jesus tells us that when He looks upon us, He does not see "...masculine or feminine, white or black..." but that He sees EACH of us as individuals, capable of ANYTHING we set our hands to achieve. We are equal under His love. You'll note these verses are usually ignored by the Roman Church as well as any other patriarchal situations that want to keep women beneath their thumbs. I've been told many times my place is not to preach, it's to mind the nursery.
And God has told me that IS NOT TRUE! *laughs* *(joke)* What I can tell you is this: "God knows the plans He has for you; plans to prosper you and not to harm you." You are Called to do something special in the world; don't ignore that urging deep inside.
As a Celtic Christian, I believe in the inherent magic of His creation. The act of creation itself is a miracle-the making of SOMETHING out of NOTHING. God is a creative God, and He graces each of us with something valuable to create. “Christianity” was never meant to throw out the magic of the miraculous. In fact, if you look through the Bible, you see many of the people, men and women alike, who go forth and speak prophecy or visions or manifest the miraculous because God moves through them.
It is not that magic is bad in and of itself-it’s all to do with the SPIRIT behind the magic. If you do it out of love, to help others, to make the world a better place, then God is behind the magic you weave and He can only bless it. It is the magic that is worked out from a SELFISH spirit that is wrong and counter to God.
Because “the devil” is not the opposite of God, and neither is hate. God is Love, and the opposite of love...is selfishness. Period. Those that do evil do it out of selfishness. Everything you see wrong in the world manifests out of selfishness.
I recommend you read THE MIST-FILLED PATH; Celtic Wisdom for Exiles, Wanderers, and Seekers by Frank MacEowen. He presents the truths simply, citing both Christian and pagan beliefs and never siding with either.
It does not matter what you call yourself. So long as your spirit is aligned with God and you live a loving, grateful, giving life, you are where you should be. That's why I don't tell people "If you don't believe in Christ, you are going to hell". There are people that will not call Christ their Saviour who will enter the Presence of God.
The thing about 'believing Christ as your Saviour' is pretty much about sacrifice and getting through the process of rejoining God a bit easier, which I'll explain.
After all, if EVERYONE who did not believe in Christ were damned to hell, then what of Moses, who was reckoned to be a friend to God? What of David, who was said to have "God's heart"? What of Mohatmas Gandhi and every other truly SAINTLY person who has lived and died doing good in the world?
The whole idea is, we live our lives and do what we do. Our actions are based NOT on "what we do", but THE SPIRIT BEHIND what we do. Giving food to the hungry or aiding the poor is POINTLESS if you do it with selfishness or hatefulness. If you give "just because everyone else does", your heart is in the wrong place and that 'good deed' will not be accounted 'good'. It will be counted as just another selfish act you did.
God tells us--in almost every culture--that He will judge our hearts. That after we die, we approach Him, and He looks into our lives and then decides if we will remain in His Presence or if we will be dibert, a Celtic term meaning a bit more than "cast out".
I believe that "hell" is spending the rest of eternity KNOWING you turned your back upon God. Of having finally gotten close enough to really SEE the Love and Light you were rejecting and then you are sent away from it FOREVER, where you will yearn for Him as you have never done before. And whenever I think of people lost in THAT darkness, all I can do is weep.
The reason Christ's substitutionary sacrifice is meaningful to us is the same reason most 'religions' use a blood sacrifice--it's a scapegoat. It's someone or something taking on all your sins, everything that might make you a bad person, and "paying that debt". So in that moment of sacrifice, you are set free and only your good deeds remain to be judged.
The reason one "takes Christ as their Saviour" is very simple--you then become Covered in the Blood. When God looks upon you, He no longer sees the petty sins you may have committed; He sees His Son's Blood has paid those sins and you are CLEAN. There is no impediment to your entering His Presence. So you are literally "saved" from the Judgement.
But most people trip over all these terms like "sins". It's basically about cause and effect, debt and payment, actions and consequences: Sins and Forgiveness. Sins are the debts of CONSEQUENCES OF YOUR ACTIONS and Forgiveness is literally "the forgiveness of your debts". And there are lots of verses in the Bible that back up that God says WHEN your debts are FORGIVEN, it's compleat. They are paid-in-full and therefore NO LONGER EXIST. No accusation of indebtedness can be made against you; the sin is totally gone.
THAT is why Christ came. God knew the world was getting uglier and there was no other way to give Mankind hope than to show us we were not forgotten--and that He still desires our relationships with Him. That is why we were created. And THAT is also why there's such emphasis as "God the Father"--because only a true "father" could forgive you ANYTHING. Only a true "father" would want only the best for you, and would want you to be happy and healthy and would love you no matter what. It's not a "male thing", it's a familial/relational "thing". A "father" sires, protects, and provides. He loves and cares. He desires the love of his children.
THIS is the Gospel, really. It's not about condemnation or oppression or setting some metaphysical bar so high that NO ONE could ever hope to reach it. It's about "a father" so loving His children that He wants them to come home. Period.
Every one of us has a God-shaped hole within our hearts. God has a hole in His heart that is shaped like YOU. And honestly, He would have done it all for merely ONE of us. "For God is unwilling that even a single one be lost."
As to that idea of 'dibert': To the Celts, who were all about "community" (after all, the Cymro are "the Companions" in literal translation), to be cast out and denied the community of the rest of the tribe was tantamount to a death sentence. There WAS no life outside the tribe. Everything you were was within that tribe; your naming, your beliefs, your heart and your soul were there.
We grow up in this life thinking we are all dibert. The modern culture does not disabuse us of this belief.
______
* The Druids were not against common people knowing what was sacred or the actual truth--but they knew that only those who had been trained to know it inside and out could communicate it properly in a population that was mostly illiterate. To be a druid, poet, or Brehon/keeper of the law, you had to be intensively trained for a generation; almost 21 years. The beliefs of the Celts were only permitted to be written in a language of the literati: in this case, Greek. Most of the extensive Celtic libraries were lost in both the Norse invasions down both coasts of Ireland and Scotland/Wales, and later during the Jacobite Uprising in Scotland where anything "Gaelic" had to be destroyed as well as anything Roman.
I hope my words have encouraged you and not discouraged you in any way.
Love you,
Nechtan :)
P.S. For those looking, I've only JUST started tagging the Celtic Christian entries. I'll be done in a couple of weeks!! *laughs*
It’s a measure of the respect I have for Fay that I didn’t just plough into this with the inherent madness of the typical Aquarian! And I hope my ‘disagreement’ with the notions of Christianity is more encouraging than not! * laughs* I wrote out my initial responses in Word and thought about what I was saying.
As you know, I’m a huge proponent of Celtic Christianity. And while I know it is not politically correct to side with what has developed into the contemporary view of ‘all that is limited, closed-minded, and stifling’ (my statement, not a quote), I admit to the perversity of nature that I do call myself a Fundamentalist Christian. I only thought it proper to specify that I DO use that term to define myself, in one of those "we're not all that bad" kind of way. I sometimes see using the term--under its actual meaning--as a kind of radical rebellion, a la the gay community embracing the word "queer" or the black community using "nigger" to take the insult out of it and empowering themselves through what was formerly abuse. And believe me, you will be abused if you claim you are a Fundamentalist Christian.
Honestly--it helps to know the languages the Bible is originally written in. It also helps to know which translations are literally word-for-word and which ones are meaning-for-meaning. The Roman monks who copied out things in the Dark Ages gave the twists and tweaks we now struggle with. In fact, that's why a layman being able to READ a Bible was such a sin and why Tynsdale (sp?) was literally martyred by the Roman Church for the "blasphemy" of translating the Latin into understandable language for the English. The priests and bishops wanted to control who knew the truth and that's why Catholics often know their Catechism and the Rules better than they know the actual Bible. Priests would rather TELL YOU what to believe than let you learn it yourself.
That is also why it is so difficult to know what the original Celtic Church was in many ways. The early works of the Celtic Church were written in Greek (because the Gaelic/British language was forbidden to be put into writing about sacred subjects through Brehon law and the Druids ruling the sacred in vernacular language to be anathema...but there was a reason for that.*) At one point in history, the greatest scholars in the Known World were Irishmen writing in Greek. When it came to copying down what we would know of the Celts, their beliefs, their stories, and their history, that was all controlled by the Roman monks who copied the information down. With a Roman slant.
Boring intro:
I follow Christ; I take the name ‘Christian’. I believe everything the Bible says; therefore I am both a Fundamentalist and a Literalist. I do, however, also know that one needs to understand the precise MEANING of the words in the Bible-and most garden-variety ‘Fundamentalist Christians’ can quote the King James Version without a real understanding of the words. Worse, many of the words are not precisely meant NOW as they were when they were first written in Hebrew, Greek, or Aramaeic. If you want proof of this, just go watch TBN for a few hours.
End of boring intro!
Most of us are Celts or of Celtic-descent; there is a natural energy of our race that runs through us and draws us back to traditions that are often Eurocentric and born from the earth. The Celtic peoples were the largest race in Europe after the Fall of Rome. It is a naturalistic gestalt that embraces body and soul, mind and spirit, man and nature, God and the Universe. The fact that our modern minds fragment these things is sad, because I think our forebears understood more by embracing things more loosely and less ‘boundaried’ than we do now.
I honestly believe-and I’m not trying to convert anyone, mind you-that God intended us to be FULLY WHOLE. That means not only in mind, body, and spirit, but One with nature and in communication/communion with both the world and each other. We were not meant to be segregated off into separate beliefs, nor were we intended to use the Light as it was given to us to torment some and persecute others.
I know why many people are turned off to Church-most of us are. It’s not the God or Christ of those churches we flee, it’s the manmade rules and the odd prejudices of those who are the establishments of those churches that sent us running away. I wish I could remember the whole joke, but the punchline is something like this: God says, “I told you to LOVE one another, not form denominations and start inquisitions!”
For God is Love. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son...because each of us was made to be IN COMMUNION with both God and each other. Mankind was MADE in the image of God, with a God-shaped hole inside him that would cause him to seek out his Maker. It’s why we all feel incompleat without the “someone to love”. Whether beloved or The Beloved, each of us yearns for it and needs it.
Of course, Celtic Christianity also does not go for the one-sidedness of either male or female celebrants; both sexes are considered “different but equal” in their own ways, and it does not require going overboard to redress the artificial patriarchal emphasis the Roman Catholic Church has put upon spirituality, religion, church, God and everything else. God is not a Sexually-Assigned Male. God has no sex; He is the All and Everything. Sexuality is a type of fragmentation of what is required to bring two spirits/souls/bodies together and is all about the body and reproduction and sexual function...all of which God certainly has no need for.
When you examine the Hebrew, the "allusory words" to God are the masculine case (since He is under a kind of geas not to have His real name within the Hebraeic tongue!), but it's also made VERY plain that God does not exist outside or without the Holy Spirit--which is in the feminine case. "Ruach" is FEMALE and linked into both Sophia/wisdom and the idea of BREATH. To be "inspired" is to have that "in-spirit-ation", the Breath of God, coming into one. Therefore, Yahweh/Jehovah and Ruach together are pansexual and yet ONE. There is no "male God" in truth.
I should look the verses up, but God's very plain here and there about who He is--and even Jesus tells us that when He looks upon us, He does not see "...masculine or feminine, white or black..." but that He sees EACH of us as individuals, capable of ANYTHING we set our hands to achieve. We are equal under His love. You'll note these verses are usually ignored by the Roman Church as well as any other patriarchal situations that want to keep women beneath their thumbs. I've been told many times my place is not to preach, it's to mind the nursery.
And God has told me that IS NOT TRUE! *laughs* *(joke)* What I can tell you is this: "God knows the plans He has for you; plans to prosper you and not to harm you." You are Called to do something special in the world; don't ignore that urging deep inside.
As a Celtic Christian, I believe in the inherent magic of His creation. The act of creation itself is a miracle-the making of SOMETHING out of NOTHING. God is a creative God, and He graces each of us with something valuable to create. “Christianity” was never meant to throw out the magic of the miraculous. In fact, if you look through the Bible, you see many of the people, men and women alike, who go forth and speak prophecy or visions or manifest the miraculous because God moves through them.
It is not that magic is bad in and of itself-it’s all to do with the SPIRIT behind the magic. If you do it out of love, to help others, to make the world a better place, then God is behind the magic you weave and He can only bless it. It is the magic that is worked out from a SELFISH spirit that is wrong and counter to God.
Because “the devil” is not the opposite of God, and neither is hate. God is Love, and the opposite of love...is selfishness. Period. Those that do evil do it out of selfishness. Everything you see wrong in the world manifests out of selfishness.
I recommend you read THE MIST-FILLED PATH; Celtic Wisdom for Exiles, Wanderers, and Seekers by Frank MacEowen. He presents the truths simply, citing both Christian and pagan beliefs and never siding with either.
It does not matter what you call yourself. So long as your spirit is aligned with God and you live a loving, grateful, giving life, you are where you should be. That's why I don't tell people "If you don't believe in Christ, you are going to hell". There are people that will not call Christ their Saviour who will enter the Presence of God.
The thing about 'believing Christ as your Saviour' is pretty much about sacrifice and getting through the process of rejoining God a bit easier, which I'll explain.
After all, if EVERYONE who did not believe in Christ were damned to hell, then what of Moses, who was reckoned to be a friend to God? What of David, who was said to have "God's heart"? What of Mohatmas Gandhi and every other truly SAINTLY person who has lived and died doing good in the world?
The whole idea is, we live our lives and do what we do. Our actions are based NOT on "what we do", but THE SPIRIT BEHIND what we do. Giving food to the hungry or aiding the poor is POINTLESS if you do it with selfishness or hatefulness. If you give "just because everyone else does", your heart is in the wrong place and that 'good deed' will not be accounted 'good'. It will be counted as just another selfish act you did.
God tells us--in almost every culture--that He will judge our hearts. That after we die, we approach Him, and He looks into our lives and then decides if we will remain in His Presence or if we will be dibert, a Celtic term meaning a bit more than "cast out".
I believe that "hell" is spending the rest of eternity KNOWING you turned your back upon God. Of having finally gotten close enough to really SEE the Love and Light you were rejecting and then you are sent away from it FOREVER, where you will yearn for Him as you have never done before. And whenever I think of people lost in THAT darkness, all I can do is weep.
The reason Christ's substitutionary sacrifice is meaningful to us is the same reason most 'religions' use a blood sacrifice--it's a scapegoat. It's someone or something taking on all your sins, everything that might make you a bad person, and "paying that debt". So in that moment of sacrifice, you are set free and only your good deeds remain to be judged.
The reason one "takes Christ as their Saviour" is very simple--you then become Covered in the Blood. When God looks upon you, He no longer sees the petty sins you may have committed; He sees His Son's Blood has paid those sins and you are CLEAN. There is no impediment to your entering His Presence. So you are literally "saved" from the Judgement.
But most people trip over all these terms like "sins". It's basically about cause and effect, debt and payment, actions and consequences: Sins and Forgiveness. Sins are the debts of CONSEQUENCES OF YOUR ACTIONS and Forgiveness is literally "the forgiveness of your debts". And there are lots of verses in the Bible that back up that God says WHEN your debts are FORGIVEN, it's compleat. They are paid-in-full and therefore NO LONGER EXIST. No accusation of indebtedness can be made against you; the sin is totally gone.
THAT is why Christ came. God knew the world was getting uglier and there was no other way to give Mankind hope than to show us we were not forgotten--and that He still desires our relationships with Him. That is why we were created. And THAT is also why there's such emphasis as "God the Father"--because only a true "father" could forgive you ANYTHING. Only a true "father" would want only the best for you, and would want you to be happy and healthy and would love you no matter what. It's not a "male thing", it's a familial/relational "thing". A "father" sires, protects, and provides. He loves and cares. He desires the love of his children.
THIS is the Gospel, really. It's not about condemnation or oppression or setting some metaphysical bar so high that NO ONE could ever hope to reach it. It's about "a father" so loving His children that He wants them to come home. Period.
Every one of us has a God-shaped hole within our hearts. God has a hole in His heart that is shaped like YOU. And honestly, He would have done it all for merely ONE of us. "For God is unwilling that even a single one be lost."
As to that idea of 'dibert': To the Celts, who were all about "community" (after all, the Cymro are "the Companions" in literal translation), to be cast out and denied the community of the rest of the tribe was tantamount to a death sentence. There WAS no life outside the tribe. Everything you were was within that tribe; your naming, your beliefs, your heart and your soul were there.
We grow up in this life thinking we are all dibert. The modern culture does not disabuse us of this belief.
______
* The Druids were not against common people knowing what was sacred or the actual truth--but they knew that only those who had been trained to know it inside and out could communicate it properly in a population that was mostly illiterate. To be a druid, poet, or Brehon/keeper of the law, you had to be intensively trained for a generation; almost 21 years. The beliefs of the Celts were only permitted to be written in a language of the literati: in this case, Greek. Most of the extensive Celtic libraries were lost in both the Norse invasions down both coasts of Ireland and Scotland/Wales, and later during the Jacobite Uprising in Scotland where anything "Gaelic" had to be destroyed as well as anything Roman.
I hope my words have encouraged you and not discouraged you in any way.
Love you,
Nechtan :)
P.S. For those looking, I've only JUST started tagging the Celtic Christian entries. I'll be done in a couple of weeks!! *laughs*