I’ve been studying Christianity a lot lately and, having studied other religions as well, I’m pretty convinced that Jesus Christ is the Lord and that Christianity is the greatest religion. At the same time, I think an intellectual needs to recognize that the bible as we know it is partly a product of Roman canonization. To get a really good understanding of Christianity, it can help to consider the apocrypha.
According to early gnostic Christians, the God of the Old Testament was evil and/or was/is the devil. Partly through being unusually merciful and loving for his time, Jesus Christ ascended and replaced the original God, becoming the God of the New Testament.
To understand how this could be possible requires a theory I’ve come up with, I don’t know if it’s canon for gnostic Christians (insofar as they still exist, which is not very much). Someone cannot become God just by being unusually merciful and loving. The process of apotheosis (becoming like God, or Jesus Christ, depending on your definition) also requires that one retains complete faith in the heavenly father. Despite his radical ways, Jesus never stopped loving God. Yet there is more to Jesus’ ascension than just this. Even though the God of the Old Testament was a hard God, and a cruel God, he was also still a loving God. As such, even under the gnostic interpretation, God (or the devil) wanted his son Jesus Christ to replace him.
I wonder, what could be a purer love, or be more like God’s love, than the desire for your child to be greater than yourself? Today, too many parents do not want their child to be greater than themselves. This is presuming that people who have rejected God’s love even want to have children at all.
When viewed in this gnostic sense, it may be easier to understand Christianity and the bible. God was cruel, but he was also loving and he wanted his son Jesus to be greater than himself and to replace him. Sometimes a parent can be too hard on their child, but if they truly love their child, they will want that child to be greater than them. A parent who wants their child to be greater than themselves can probably be a good and loving parent. A parent who does not want this will probably not be a good parent. They will probably reject the bible because it tells them to serve more than just themselves.
I could go on, this could also be analogized to evolution, to raising children with loving fathers who contribute to society. To truly continue in God’s love, the children must also want their own children to be greater than they are. This may be why gnostic Christians put a circle around the cross. It all ties together very easily. But going into it all would make for a really, really long blog post. Let’s suffice to say that I think God’s love is the desire of a parent for their child to be greater than they are and even though gnosticism sometimes comes across as petulant or even disloyal, there is probably something positive we can get out of it as Christians.
Alexander Fāng 