DR. CUMMINGS: A modern parable
I count 50 different parables in our four gospels — nearly one on every page. Here's one of mine:
President Obama opens the 2015 Christianity Summit at Camp David. He invites Pope Francis, a Greek Orthodox Patriarch, the heads of all the Protestant religions, including the president of the Mormon Church and Seventh Day Adventists, and all their theologians. And this is what he says:
"American Christianity is dysfunctional. I have called you here to design one American Christian Church, like Islam. I want one Bible, one liturgy, and one set of religious practices. I don't care what it looks like, but I'll tell you this: any Christian group in America that does not follow this new religion will be taxed 95 percent on every dime of income, and I will enforce this by Executive Order."
Taxes talk. They get to work immediately on the Bible. The Catholics agree to give up the seven Old Testament books that they added if the Mormons agree to treat the book of Mormon like a holy treatise, not a Bible. The Protestants begin cleaning up the contradictions between Paul and James, and several scholars want to add the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, and the discussions go on into the evenings.
The liturgy is even more difficult. How can Catholics give up the Miracle of the Mass any more than the Seventh Day Adventists give up Saturday services? And what about the Orthodox ceremonies? Impossible.
But everything comes to a screeching halt with the religious practices. As they sit there in the spacious rooms of Camp David, they realize that each group has a set of traditional practices, going back hundreds of years that nobody is going to abandon: Bans on gay marriage, divorce, the role of clerical women, abortion, married priests, etc. However, they want to get out of there and back to their homes, so they hand President Obama a fake paper, titled the American Christian Church, and he accepts it at a press conference. And that's how Christianity was made. But, of course, it didn't work.
What's the meaning of this parable?
Many of you will recognize the footprint of the Council of Nicaea. The young Christian church was barely over 300 years old when the Emperor Constantine felt the need for a unified church. He wanted to conquer his pagan enemies with a state/church to keep them in line perpetually. However, the church had become even more divided and dysfunctional than today (if that's possible). Nobody could say for sure if the Arians were right, or the Nestorians, or the Docetists. Maybe the Gnostics or the Manicheans had the right idea about Christ. Who knew?
Constantine really didn't care. It didn't matter to him at all whether Jesus was a man who became God, or a God who became man. He couldn't understand the difference anyway. He just wanted something he could call his "Religion" so he could impose it on his conquered enemies. He was the emperor, and he could make this happen by Executive Order.
So he kept several hundred bishops locked up in the town of Nicaea to argue and fight and compromise until they handed him a document that seemed to outline the creed and practices of the new Christian religion. It took them one month, but they finally did it. And that's how Christianity was made. But did it work?
Not a chance. Over the years, the differences multiplied; the arguments increased; dogmatic decisions were reached based on power, not on truth. Whoever sat on the throne labeled all opposing ideas heresies. After Constantine died his successors were Arians — and guess who became the heretic?
Let's face it, Christianity never was and never will be one religion. It will always be split by opposing ideas and opinions and questions from within. But is that such a bad thing? I don't think so. I know many of our readers would like to believe their brand of Christianity is the original and that every word in their Bible was written by God, and that there are no more questions to be asked. I don't see it that way.
I see Christianity stretching down through the centuries like a huge white canvas on which to write our important questions, like: "Who am I to judge?"
Dr. Bill Cummings is the CEO of Cummings Consolidated Corporation.
This story was originally published October 24, 2015 at 9:01 PM.