{"id":49511,"date":"2016-03-30T22:12:18","date_gmt":"2016-03-30T22:12:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=49511"},"modified":"2016-03-31T01:24:58","modified_gmt":"2016-03-31T01:24:58","slug":"ive-seen-christianity-describes-as","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=49511","title":{"rendered":"I’ve seen Christianity described as.."},"content":{"rendered":"

[ by Charles Cameron<\/strong> — a little matter of rising (i trust) between the two stools of belief and unbelief ]
\n.<\/p>\n

I have seen Christianity<\/strong> described as —<\/p>\n

The popular belief that a celestial Jewish baby, who is also his own father, born from a virgin mother, died for three days so that he could ascend to heaven on a cloud and make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh, drink his blood, and telepathically tell him you accept him as your Lord and master, so he can remove an evil force from your spiritual being that is present in all humanity because an immoral woman made from a man’s rib was hoodwinked by a talking reptile possessed by a malicious angel to secretly eat forbidden fruit from a magical tree.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Don’t these atheists understand anything about poetry?<\/p>\n

**<\/p>\n

Don’t the Christians understand anything about poetry?<\/p>\n

Try this as an exercise for the imagination — picture this —<\/p>\n

To suppose the Eucharist<\/strong> <\/p>\n

Suppose the hypothetical all of everything
\nin unspooling itself chose to exhibit itself in
\none human, suppose further all the sun’s
\nlight were caught in wheat and baked into
\nbread, all the world’s pains and passions
\ncrushed like grapes into wine, suppose the
\none person took loaf and cup and with
\nword and gesture raised them blood, body <\/p>\n

of his own self to be supped and sipped,
\nthus woven into his one flesh, blood, mind —
\njust when his flesh is torn, blood spills —
\nsuppose then that his mind to love were to
\nentrain this new body of many bodies to
\nheal with all radiance each instance of pain..<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

**<\/p>\n

I offer this poem as a bridge in two directions — to allow the sensible atheist<\/strong> a means of glimpsing what might be admirable in his Christian friend’s faith.. — and to allow the Christian on the brink of leaving the faith for “sensible atheism” a means of retaining much of the deep beauty of that faith<\/strong> while leaving behind both the bribes of heaven and the threats of hell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[ by Charles Cameron — a little matter of rising (i trust) between the two stools of belief and unbelief ] . I have seen Christianity described as — The popular belief that a celestial Jewish baby, who is also his own father, born from a virgin mother, died for three days so that he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[727,526,497,741,754,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atheists","category-charles-cameron","category-christianity","category-poetry","category-sacrament","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49511"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49511\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49520,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49511\/revisions\/49520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}