Church of the East is not a Christian organization in the historic sense. Historically Christianity started 15 years after the crucifixion (Acts of the Apostles ) when Barnabas and Paul of Tarsus gained permission from the Board of Directors of The Way in Jerusalem (Jesus’ movement) to start a kind of a popular sister movement aimed at the Roman populace.
Paul and Barnabas acculturated The Way into Roman society under a new name--Christianity. Paul, a Greek speaking Hebrew theologian cast Jesus' teaching in a Hebrew/Hellenistic mould. However, his published letters attest to the fact that the Apostles disagreed with his teaching, largely ignored him, and questioned his ability to relate the teaching of Jesus correctly, which they learned in a three-year 24/7 intense apprenticeship under the Master.
Three hundred odd years after Paul Christianity became an overnight Roman vogue when the Emperor suddenly attributed his victory in war over his brother to an omen he saw in the clouds immediately before the battle. The sign was later discovered to have been the first two letters of the title Christ. Christianity was in a bit of an array at the time and was not organised to accommodate the empire-wide appeal it gained almost overnight. In the process of bringing order to the new Roman state religion, Christianity, the Emperor assisted the process of defining a Creed, a set of books considered to be definitive and standard rites and processes that would organise the state’s religion and also best serve the state’s purpose. In the process a Scriptural canon was decreed and the Roman Catholic Church thus defined the Western Bible as it stands today. Hundreds of other Scripture did not make the selection and were decreed to be destroyed. Not one book actually written by an Apostle is included in the Western Bible but about thirteen of Paul’s books and letters made the grade.
What was important to Paul was for devotees to take a leap of faith and confess Jesus to be the Messiah (Christ), the Son of God—thus to believe in the fact that in Jesus God incarnated God-self and suffered and died on the cross as a sacrifice that allows God to forgive the sins of all people forever. After this first step, Christianity teaches, the devotee shall keep him/herself from unclean acts and thoughts (which included sexual communion) and wait upon the immanent return of the Messiah—which would cause a global and celestial war against all evil, non-believers and the destruction of the world as it was known—and the resultant everlasting bliss of those who confessed and kept their faith.
What is important to Jesus is for a devotee to stop his/her blind following of culturally conditioned thinking, to take an honest and hard look inside, to discover the real self and to cultivate one’s inner heaven, peace, humility and simplicity, and spiritual senses, and to live as a beacon of Light to all others who still need to be saved from their illusions.
Paul and Jesus’ Ways were different. Paul’s was like the ‘great vehicle’ or mahajana of the Buddhist movement--tailored for the masses and would unfold as a mass religion organised in the way of a state religion that could assist with administrative duties like recording births, population and tax registers and marriages. The Way is an individual mystical quest, a self-discovery and inner healing--the inner-religion.
It is no accident brought about by evil that Paul’s religion is different from Jesus’ Way—it is part of the Cosmic Plan. Paul’s Rome and her people were ready for a new religion—one that spoke of morality, kindness to people and one that campaigns for human rights for women and children. True, the Christians have committed major human rights violations in the name of Jesus over the past two thousand years but they evolved—they grew into knowing better—and most probably only because of Christianity. Christianity, for all its patriarchal ideas (such as God in three male persons) are amongst the 5 world religions today probably the most advanced in human rights. Christianity was a necessary vehicle for a people in dire need of moral religion—and it served its purpose.
Church of the East, on the other hand, grew up in India among a deeply religious people in culture rich in spirituality. The Way of Jesus was very palatable to the Indians, Persians and Chinese of the time.
Church of the East was never under control or management of any Christian group and developed totally independent from the communities in the West.
Copyright © 2001
Church of the East (Canada) Inc.. All rights
reserved.
Revised: 10/29/03.