Leap of Faith

Christianity drew upon Plato's REPUBLIC as the perfect community, and married it to the “One God” concept expanding it to include “All Nations, above which there can be no other.”

Courtesy: learnsomethingnewtoday.us

(PASO ROBLES, Calif.) - Western Civilization has been dominated by Christianity for centuries, and what the Church forced our forefathers to accept has been passed to later generations as “givens” [a fact or event that is accepted as true or definite at the outset and that affects subsequent reasoning].

There was good reason for it to be so, but that no longer is the case. Yet each generation continues to accept Jesus [the Christ] as the Son of God, the Father [Coterie] who art in Heaven.

Jesus was prepared to become the lawgiver to the Holy Ghost - the Spirit of Christianity - that permeates the entire membership that together constitute the City of God.

The Catholic Church claims to be the resurrected Body of Christ that connects members to His Divinity via the Elevation of the Host, offered to the elect but denied non-members; the Eucharist decides who should advance to Eternal Life in heaven, and who not.

Jesus, as Christ, was a Community God as is Allah or Jehovah, Confucius or the Buddha, ad infinitum. The Universal God is what He has always been, a highly personal and subjective reflection of a mysterious Universal Oneness that is the unique possession of each in particular, but also the single source of all in general.

Jung, The Psychologist, studied tribal communities for years, and as a result of his evaluations advanced his theory of the "collective unconscious," that tribes everywhere react to what Jung refers to as “communal perceptions noted for the similarity of the symbols they possess,” At a point in a tribes development, the psychic-energy of individuals becomes resident in the collective-unconscious and is rendered recognizable to the group as deserving of conduct that is taboo [sacred and prohibited] and/or worthy of active-reverence.

The earliest projections probably were to natural phenomena such as animals, trees, springs, and food-plants, etc., things recognized as good, usable and necessary to the comfort and requirements of people.

Over time, human nature being what it is, the unknown resulted in human imagery being created to reflect the super-natural powers of community, what Jung referred to as “the Shadow” [inherited memory represented by a universal symbol] - statuary or icon, for example.

When the collective-unconscious is merged with individual potential, a phenomenon occurs from which two things of importance can be deduced; 1). A common level of perception does not preclude the existence of levels not common to all; and 2).

Similarity of symbols, which is not to say they correspond exactly, provides for identifiable representations and ritualized conduct that is helpful in overcoming the fear of unknown natural and powerful psychic-forces. Distinction in levels of perception resulted in a concentration of psychological power in a priesthood who encouraged ritual and taboo to placate the forces of common-unreality.

Priesthoods pretend to do what is impossible through the use of costume, ritual, the art of propaganda and ceremony that affects the psyches generally and contributes to beliefs that religions attribute to faith [belief in, devotion to, or trust in somebody or something, especially without logical proof].

The Holy See, for example, to prevent defections from the Church prior to and during the Reformation, accused “witches” of using supernatural force against the interest of the Church, and by its Edict of Faith required its members to accept what the Canon-Epicopi from the very beginning insisted was false; that witches are real.

Magic is impossible, but those who claim they can manipulate supernatural forces, possess a psychological advantage over those who tend to believe them. Prayer may seem to be a form of magic, but affects the mind, not things.

It can comfort the mind so it works more efficiently and effectively either singly or in consort with others. In consort, it amounts to a commitment to a group psychology, a power unto itself, but alone, it is an accommodation to one’s personal un-reality [“Thy will be done“].

Attribution of power to statuary or icons is a felt projection of psychic energy to tangible representations. With refined acuity, people distinguished mentally between

Psychic nuances that added new idols to Pantheons until, as a whole, it was a reflection of the community's general-will of unrealized mutual acceptance. In a leap of faith, idols collectively were recognized for what they were, a composite Oneness of spiritual proportion, the whole of which is greater than the parts, a concept not easily perceived by all.

The beauty of the transition was that it allowed homage to be paid to particular and favorite deities, miniaturized and worshiped selectively at home.

With the advent of agriculture, fertility assumed great importance and the worshipers of Bacchus devised sympathetic ceremonies [a form of presumed magic] intended to procure the success of crops.

Woman, because she nurtured the seed, became the symbolic representation of earth, whereas man assumed for himself, as progenitor, the role of creator. Bacchanalians based their agricultural hopes on the sexual-example, as described by Isaiah in his Prophecy of a religious tactic doomed to failure.

The Jews may have been first to recognize the composite Oneness of their pantheon and to move beyond the adoration of idols to the worship of a merged Spiritual and psychic “One God of the Jewish Nation” whose nature was reduced to the pages of a book, the Torah [Jewish Scripture; the collective body of Jewish teaching]. And the Jews assumed that because he was their God, they were his chosen people.

The Diaspora [dispersion of Jews from Babylon-Judea, in the 6th Century B.C.] acted as a catalyst to bind Jews to their religion. Each disparate part carried with it copies of the Torah and the admonishment of elders to preserve the ritual and to worship no other God but Him that has held them together as a people wherever they migrated.

Christianity drew upon Plato's REPUBLIC as the perfect community, and married it to the “One God” concept expanding it to include “All Nations, above which there can be no other.” Christianity, as did Plato in his Republic, excepted from membership anyone who refused to conform to the rule of the Catholic Church.

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Kenneth G. Ramey was a 79-year old "writer without a Website" who is generating excellent, provocative articles on the subject of religion and world affairs. We are pleased that Ken's "lone wolf" presence as a writer in the world has been replaced by a spot on our team of writers at Salem-News.com. Raised in Minnesota and California during the dark years of the Great American Depression, Ken is well suited to talk about the powerful forces in the world that give all of us hope and tragedy and everything in between. You can write to Ken at: kgramey@sbcglobal.net