Recently the Pastor General, a kind of theological CEO, of the Worldwide Church of God, said ... For people who feel dirty, Jesus offers cleansing. For people who feel ashamed, he offers honor. For people who feel that they have a debt to pay, he offers forgiveness. For people who feel alienated, he offers reconciliation. For people who feel enslaved, he offers freedom. For those who feel like they dont belong, he offers adoption into a permanent family. For those who feel tired, he offers rest. For those who are anxious, he offers peace. RITUALS OFFER ONLY THE NEED FOR THEIR CONTINUAL REPETITION." (Emphasis mine) I would differ with that and state that humans always have and always will need ritual as an outward expression of the inner consciousness. Any church that thinks it is free of ritual in some real way where some generic knowing Jesus works better, is kidding itself. The Worldwide Church of God, was and still is a church, like all churches of ritual. The debate is not over to have them or not but rather it has always been over whose rituals are outdated, of the devil or God's true and right rituals. Take Christmas, now celebrated by WCG with gusto where in the past it was recognized for what it is, a pagan celebration of the rebirth of the Sun. In this case, and with respect to Christian celebration of Christmas as the birthday of the Son of God, there is nothing new under the SUN. To review. In reality, humans notice that as the year wore on, the sun sank lower and lower in the southern sky. The days grew shorter, the nights longer and the weather more ominous. By December 22nd the sun was at it's lowest and appeared to just sit, of all things, in the grave for three days and three nights. But, on the December 25th, with Virgo, the Virgin at her Zenith the Sun came up a bit sooner and moved a bit north. It's a miracle, the Virgin did indeed bring forth the SUN. And thus all pagan god/men get December 25th as their birthday, when the Sun of God or the Son of God is born, depending. Cool beans huh! This information is about as new as the ..the...SUN! To celebrate Christmas as the birth of Jesus is to celebrate this ritual fear of darkness and birth of the Sun to rise out of the wilderness of darkness and defeat the Devil, which we might view in this context as Darkness=evil=D-evil. It is no coincidence that Jesus ministry begins at about age 30 and with being tempted by the Devil to not be the Son of God. Just as the Sun still struggles against darkness through winter to not be the Sun of God. But by Spring, at the Equinox, meaning equal days and nights in length, all is well as the Sun is risen after being crossified on the intersection of the ecliptic, the line the sun follows through the constellations of the zodiac and the celestial equator. Seems the literal Jesus, missing in action the first 30 years of his life, just as the Sun has to pass anonymously through the first 30 degrees of the Zodiac to get to the January constellation of Aquarius the Water Bearer, typified as John the Baptist, the first event in Jesus adult life according to scripture. After the Son/Sun is baptized by John, Aquarius dips below the horizon and goes into prison while the Sun?Son hardly comments and goes on his merry ministry. Six months later, Aquarius returns in the morning sky with only his head sticking up and Herod asks if Jesus is John the Baptist returned, but that is another part of the ritual we will not elaborate on. At any rate, any Church that celebrates Christmas as the birthday of the Son is acting out an ancient ritual that predates Christianity by thousands of years. As long as humans have been conscious of the cycle of the Sun of God, they have based their worship, Christian and Pagan on the cycle of the literal sun through the one year cycle of the sun through the 12 months of the year and the events of their god/men following the signs of each month. Did not God say in Genesis that the sun was given for signs and seasons and months and years? It takes a ritual to follow that fact around the celestial sphere. Of course, Easter, the time when the sun rises in the East and has conquered the darkness of winter, and is crossified on the intersection of the ecliptic and celestial equator is the start, not the end of the story. Truly, Aries the Lamb or Sun of God, and Jesus the Lamb, the Son of God take away the sin of the world, it's darkness of winter, at the Spring equinox by means of crossification. It is no coincidence that the Age of Aries died 2000 years ago at the same time Jesus, the Lamb of God died and said he would be with his 12 disciples until the end of the age, which may have been Aries, not as we think today. The Son/Sun would be with the 12 months, cycles all the way through to the end where it started again as a different age, Pices. This astronomical reality occurs about every 2150 years due to the procession of the Equinoxes. It's all ritual and any church that notes these holidays is tapping into some of the deepest rituals ever conceived by the conscious mind of man. WCG has not replaced ritual for some nebulous idea of Jesus doing this or that if we just believe or ask, which is also a ritual of sorts. It has just swapped rituals. It is the Apostle Paul that has so confused the issue for many in the New Testament and it is Paul who ritualizes the man Jesus into the cosmic Christ who he only ever met in hallucinatory visions. Get this once and for all. Paul never met the human Jesus, never or rarely quotes him or gives any indication that he knows the teachings of Jesus, his miracles, sayings or experiences. The Gospels were written long after his death. When Paul would do well to quote Jesus, he makes stuff up himself and misses grand opportunities to back the literal Jesus. Jesus was not a literal person ever for Paul. Jesus was in the sky, in the heavens, he was the mystical and ritual son of God. A mystical Jesus is a ritual Jesus and the Jesus of most Churches who can somehow offer cleansing, honor, forgiveness, reconciliation, freedom, adoption rest and peace from the sky or in the human heart. These feelings are obtained in the Christian church by ritual. While the WCG and others have said that baptism is not a requirement for being a Christian, (only God knows how they get around what the New Testament says about this topic, even their beloved Paul), it is a ritual that brings one to feeling cleansed. Ritual washings are almost mandatory parts of all human religions. Before the Lamb of God, humans were washed in the blood of the Bull Taurus, during the age of Taurus. This ritual is the origin of the New Testament statement, his blood be upon us and upon our children spoken by the crowd when Pilate is suppose to have offered to save Jesus. (You don't know Pilate.) It's a line form and ancient ritual and a misused one as well. It is no coincidence that on an ancient temple that now sits as the base for the Vatican were the Mithraic words from the age of Taurus religion, whosoever does not eat of my flesh and drink of my blood , has not eternal life. It wasn't talking about Jesus, but the ritual is very old indeed and still practiced as oft as ye drink it even by the New and Improved Worldwide Church of God, now renamed International Grace Fellowship or something like that, who knows. All humans need rituals. Sometimes I smudge my apartment and myself. This means I light some sage, waft the smoke over myself or others in a ritual of both cleansing and awareness. And it smells great! Does the smoke do anything? No, it just wafts, but the ritual touches the subconscious and makes a point about being human. I also meditate which is pretty darn difficult for Mr. Brain Runs Like a Train. It's a ritual. A sitting a certain way for a certain time in a certain place thinking no certain things about nothing to achieve a subconscious result. It brings a peace and calm and maybe I can avoid the calm my anxious soul meds by a ritual. I can pass the flame of one candle to another and another with each previous candle going out but the flame moving on. Is that flame the same flame I had or is it different. Is it a type of how our spirit can move on form candle to candle as each preceding candle or life goes out? Is it a way to explain reincarnation? Sure, maybe, dunno. It's a ritual. Every Western Christian Church thrives on ritual. Many Churches thrive on smoke and mirrors too but that's another kind of worship format. Any church that thinks it has found some kind of Jesus that replaces ritual is kidding itself. Humans have gone from pagan to Jewish to Christian to Jewish to Pagan rituals back and forth for thousands of years. Oh wait, I forgot to say Egyptian as well. They are all the same with only the names being changed to protect the nave and innocent. Show me a church that claims such a high ground that excludes rituals as some a shadow and nasty throwback to an ignorant time and I will show you a church with no heart, a membership that is wandering around in the wilderness knowns as La La and better not even be meeting as that would be a ritual done to honor some event or deep theological meaning. You know, most churches keep Sunday. Some keep Saturn's Day, but most keep the Day of the Sun with Bible studies held on Woden's Day (The Our Father) night's. There is Moon Day night football and Elder meetings and for some, the Sabbath begins on Frigga night at sundown, the Mother of all. The Apostle Paul is said to have said in Galatians 4:10, you observe days, and months, and times and years...I am afraid of you, as if he was ever going to change that. Seems he never read that the sun, moon and stars were given for signs and for seasons, as we read in Genesis in the creation myth. Mankind has noted the signs and seasons and based whole religions, include present day Christianity on the rituals derived from such observations. Ritual is the means by which humans identify with the mystical and the spiritual. They are not an end in themselves. They teach. Now it is true that many rituals teach BS and just because someone practices rituals does not mean it contains any truth. Sometimes a ritual contains more truth than those who think they know and practice it can ever imagine. Sometimes they think they keep the true, original and pure rituals while others keep the profane, stupid and ignorant rituals, not knowing that what they practice differently is one and the same in historical fact. No, to say Rituals offer only the need for their continual repetition. is to miss some very deep realities about how human consciousness thrives, experiences, and relates to the gods, God, the now here and the here after. Maybe the shedding of blood for sins offers only the need for repetition and I think we have shed just about enough blood on the planet in the name of washing away sin, but rituals are necessary to a healthy spirituality. Maybe we can rethink the cannibalistic eating of flesh and drinking of blood symbolically to atone for sins that we really aren't responsible for since Original Sin is a theological construct and our fall as humans collectively never really happened literally in space and time. It's a control thing and used in a fear, shame and guilt based theologies. At least it did not happen in such a way as we better adopt the exact right ritual from the exact right God for the exact right effect, or we are so going to hell, no matter how nice we are. |
