Odds are we don’t live at the end of human history like the billions before us, but rather entrenched within the timeline with centuries, or millennia, to follow. Oddly enough, however, we have a tendency to perceive our experiences as the end product of preceding developments. The truth is it’s likely we experience the developments of whatever lies ahead.
We study the history of western civilization, Christianity, our nation, the arts, financial systems, etc., to understand our current experiences.
Go back in time to the 1840s and chat with a newspaper publisher. He’ll likely grow giddy with excitement as he explains how the telegraph has been a gamechanger in war coverage. Thanks to the telegraph, war coverage had never spread so rapidly prior to the Mexican-American War.
Little would he know, however, that the internet would make newspapers inconsequential and even less economical.
The pinnacle of communication for those in the 1920s would have been audio from a box called a radio. They could hear their president speak or “listen to” a show.
Big deal now, right? Those people must have been super bored. But rest assured our descendants will say the same about us. That would most likely include our grandchildren.
The development rages onward
Moving away from technological developments, however, we carry this thought experiment to other experiences. What about developments in forms of government, financial systems, and even religion. Are we also living within the age of development rather than experiencing the end product of preceding centuries?
History says the former.
Our fortunate progression away from legal slavery
Take ancient civilization, for example, an early precursor to our western world. In many cases, the majority of people were slaves mainly due to debt or captivity from frequent, and regional, warfare. Slavery did endure to recent times. Even today we have a large underground population of trafficked humans. We rightfully consider them slaves, victims of grave injustice. But the mainstream acceptance of slavery was all the more a reality in the ancient world.
This was so much the case that critics of Christianity often stress the lack of opposition Jesus or Paul showed toward the institution. Even the Torah of the Hebrew Bible gives God’s rules and regulations on slavery.
Instead of an enduring reality today, Jews and Christians alike rightfully reject slavery as a societal sin despite Christian attempts to justify it with the aid of scripture as late as the 19th century.
Drastic socioeconomic, political change
If we were to visit feudal society in the Middle Ages, and explain the concepts of God-given rights, individual sovereignty, the practice of free religion, property rights, and capitalism, the serfs would cynically laugh us off the manor and advise us not to discuss these things with their “lord”.
Many of America’s founding fathers, if not most or all, would likely find our centralized government a travesty if not a betrayal of their efforts. Perhaps they would see it as a form of tyranny quite familiar to contemporary Europe.
Later we find Europeans drastically decreasing, or destroying altogether, monarchical power following developments in the American colonies as well as the continent’s Age of Enlightenment during the 17th and 18th centuries.
Onto the development of religion!
I rather not spend too much time on economical or political changes because I’d love to give space to religion on this topic. So, here we go.
Suppose we are satisfied with our choice of whatever form of Christianity, understanding it to be that gold refined by the fires of a past riddled with hardship, sacrifice, and courage.
But nestled in the church of our choice, are we experiencing the end product, or the fulfillment of what our faith was destined to be? Or are we simply experiencing another age in the history of world religion where our form of faith is a mere pebble on the seashore?
Time for a fun thought experiment
Imagine a friend of yours of the same age, maybe a work or drinking buddy, presents to you his newborn son. In the following years, you watch that baby grow into a mature adult. He’s a good kid, you might say, but he’s nothing special.
Then he becomes highly influential in your neck of the woods. People like you really like this guy because he shows them God’s love while challenging the hypocrisy of their corrupt religious leaders. Occasionally, you get wind of a couple of miracles, but you simply laugh it off as “people talking”.
Yet, you wonder how he came to be so influential in your neck of the woods. After all, you don’t remember him being that special. I mean, he was always a good kid.
A surprising visit from the future
Say I visit you from the future, perhaps five centuries later. You notice I don’t look like you nor one of your people.
I would say to you, “That boy you watched growing up, the son of that friend of yours, the one who influenced a lot of people in your area and got into all that trouble in the big city nearby, do you remember him?”
You laugh and say, “Yeah, sure do.”
“Well, he’s one of three persons of the one God I worship. Every Sunday I feast on his body and blood, quite literally. I belong to a large religion with him as the center of our worship. He rose from the dead. His resurrection is the foundation of my faith. He’s my savior, but also my judge at the end of the world.”
“Well,” he replies, “I knew he had disciples, but all that stuff about being one of three gods, or persons, or whatever you’re saying, that really bizarre thing you said about consuming his body and blood five centuries later, rising from the dead — and now he’s the basis of your religion?
“Are you sure you’re from the future? Are we talking about the same kid?”
“Of course. And, oh, I forgot to mention that my God-man and you are of the same race and religion. You come from the same neighborhood. Our religion is rooted in your religion, but we don’t mind wiping the floor with your descendants.
“We know that while on earth, his disciples were people just like you. That changed a few generations later. Your people as an ethnic and religious whole had him killed, declaring before his execution that his blood be on you and your children.
“So, thanks for giving him to us. We needed one of your people to fulfill your incomplete religion. And yes, we keep your descendants down a class or two.”
“Yeah, sure,” the man replies. “I need to get back to my livestock. Have a nice day.”
He laughs and walks away.
Your visitor from the future
As irreverent as that thought experiment may be, we too would be baffled by a visitor from five centuries later describing his religion. Perhaps it would be an offshoot of Christianity as Christianity was an offshoot of Judaism.
Maybe he would be a Mormon, a resident of the Mormon States of America where Jesus visited long ago.
After all, the Mormons hold a spiritual claim to this land. Everyone else resides in crowded coastlines, exiled there after decades of conflicts. That’s because polygamy requires a lot of real estate. Yes, God tells the apostles to bring it back. All this is necessary because Mormon numbers declined drastically during the 23rd century, so it was high time to regrow it the old-fashioned way — reproduction and martyrdom!
Christian developments
Within the history of religion, non-eastern religions aside, we went from polytheism to monotheism, to a monotheism of three, to becoming gods ourselves, hitching up with other gods, and together taking ownership of another planet.
We have a Christian body originating in Rome that sees its leader as the successor of Peter, the alleged chief of apostles, the alleged first bishop of Rome. His brother bishops are also purported successors to the apostles redistributing apostolic powers to their priests so that they can convert bread and wine into the body and blood of the second person of the triune God.
Fragmented from the Church of Rome, aka the “Catholic” Church, we have western Christians mistaking their Bible for a univocal word of God, not knowing that it’s rather a plurality of writings by a plurality of authors. This anthology is the product of early Christian leaders they deem heretical!
We have mountain folk playing with snakes and speaking in gibberish for the glory of God, a modern, yet unprecedented, practice in the history of Christianity and typical to Appalachia.
What’s next?
What are we to say about all this?
Concerning religion, many believers and nonbelievers agree that the existence of God is contingent upon whether any religion (more often than not a major world religion) contains within itself divinely revealed truths.
Why is that a litmus test for the existence of God? I fail to see divine revelation, oral or literal, as a necessity. Perhaps it’s assumed if God exists then it would necessarily follow that he would deliver a message to humanity. Therefore, it is assumed, if no revelation is truly divine then God fails to exist.
I often wonder if any form of religion in the past, present, or future is a true expression of God. I wonder if any of these religions have anything to do with God whatsoever. I’m not going to discuss here why I find it most likely that God exists (another post perhaps), but I don’t see the existence of God as contingent upon the existence of a religion that accurately portrays him.