The way not followed

What would have happened if that early Christian church had decided that the life and teaching of Jesus was the beginning of a new religion, with God in a different nature.   Christianity might have been quite different and become more mystical.   It would have been a religion of peace, equality and tolerance.   

Jesus was a religious revolutionary who said that God is gentle and within you, you don't need to obey the rules of sabbath, food and gender to be at one with God.

Christianity took all that away and restored the Old Testament with headquarters set up in Rome because the gospels also claimed Jesus as the Jewish messiah and used quotations from the Hebrew bible as proof.     

This was a second and quite different nature of God but it was the one that the early church adopted, along with a priestly class.  Christianity became the very type of religious organisation that Jesus had challenged.

I think that Christianity lost its way when it chose the Old Testament God.  This was the God who was more like a distant emperor than a loving father;  a God who ruled the world and would punish wrongdoing severely; whose wrath should be feared; whose subjects should be humble before him.  

When we have our debates about Unitarian Christianity, perhaps we should bear this in mind.  It is the spark of the spiritual revolutionary we should retain,one that points towards a God of love and a community of all people -  not the king in the sky.

tony mcneile