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I noticed while browsing a local bookstore that books about “secret” Christianity are very common. Perhaps they are popular also but at least I will say that the titles are legion. Everyone seems to think that the Christian establishment is trying to hide something that a few brave authors have uncovered. That’s a bold claim.
Here are a few titles and synopses: The Third Jesus?well, this one isn’t Christian at all but I couldn’t resist the title. Deepak Chopra contends here that Jesus’ teachings must be seen as invitations to join him on a higher spiritual plane before his words make any sense. The Hidden Book in the Bible suggests that there is a secret structure of meaning in the Bible. By studying the details of these stories properly we can understand the innate power of humanity. The Gospel of Thomas and The Secret Teachings of Jesus deal with the “Gnostic Gospels” which reveal a Jesus who did no miracles and died for no one’s sins. The Banned Book of Mary posits that a patriarchal church suppressed the Gospel of Mary, the mother of Jesus, because she was a woman. Of course, this Gospel is said to have revolutionary, and thus unassailable, insights. The Lost Books of the Bible is about the apocrypha, books that did not meet the criteria for canonicity. Those who seek another gospel find this notion irresistible.
These titles are a few of thousands that appeal to conspiracy theorists who assume that there must be another way, truth, and life. The bubble that surrounded The Da Vinci Code (and its dreadful movie adaptation) is the most well-known recent example of this phenomenon. A local TV station moronically teased a story about the movie by asking “why some Christians are rethinking their faith.”
The search is either ironic or insincere, I think. It’s ironic because Christianity is the least secret of all religions. Our God explains himself, gives us object lessons, reveals himself in creation, spoke face to face with patriarchs, inspired books, inhabited flesh, lives in believers as the Holy Spirit, and preserved the Bible through all kinds of effort to change or destroy it. He even gave us a book “so we can know that we have believed.” No other faith gives so much verifiable information or has weathered closer scrutiny. I could go on but it is enough to show that Christianity is not a secret.
Several New Testament books were written and distributed during a span of time when witnesses other than the writer were available to affirm or challenge the truth of book. This is clearly Paul’s point in saying that many who saw the resurrected Jesus still lived as his readers distributed the book of 1 Corinthians. He’s inviting them to challenge him on the unique and astounding claim he made?that Jesus Christ rose from the dead.
Neither is Christianity so monolithic as to support a conspiracy that hides “the real truth.” We commonly face the criticism that Christians are too divided (and thus diverse). There has never been a time when we spoke so uniformly that we could agree to hide things that some knew to be the truth. So when the Gnostic Gospels and other apocryphal books were left out of the canon it was based on a sincere effort to discern God’s revelation of the canon.
The search for hidden truth is also insincere. If you doubt that biblical Christians find parts of the Bible mysterious, enter into a debate about Calvinism or eschatology or the authorship of Hebrews and you’ll see that we still have plenty to work on.
There are also vast sections of the Bible that are clear in saying what they say. It takes work to make most of the Bible unclear. Some investigators just don’t like what it says. Thus, you have a former president of the U.S. saying that Paul was wrong about women. For this reason you have the Jesus Seminar where scholars voted to determine which of Jesus sayings (the red letter parts) he actually uttered. This dissatisfaction with the clear reading of Scripture is part of the motivation to find another Gospel?or, more to the point, another gospel.
Funny how these other Jesuses all sound like Buddhists. Think good thoughts and follow my teachings (the ones about love and tolerance, not those about salvation and sin) and we’ll all end up in the same place. Why do we need a Jesus at all? We already have a boatload of syncretic, falsely comforting, culturally acceptable religions out there. Christianity doesn’t need to become one of them, better to just become Baha’i or Buddhist or whatever. Those religions don’t need to be tortured to become what we like. You can be a sincere or fundamentalist follower of Baha’i and accept nearly any old thing that comes down the pike. You can’t be a biblical, John 14:6 Christian though.
I know that Medieval Christianity is shrouded in mystery and has a reputation for authoritarianism. We hate that. Surely these guys were hiding something.
But when we suppose that the real gospel was suppressed, we’ve got to blame Christian leaders from the founding of the church. We’ve got to discount reformers throughout the history of the church?reformers who died trying to draw the church back to orthodox Christianity based on the Bible as we have it today. In this scheme, only true heretics had the right idea. We’d have to believe that the spirit of this age with its itching ears and hunger for something novel is the right spirit for getting at eternal truth. With a little thought, anyone can see that he doesn’t want to live in that world.
Biblical Christianity is assailed by both spiritual and materialist false religions. I don’t know that one is better than the other. In both cases, we’ve replaced the truth of God with a lie. The spiritual false religions may be more deceptive because they acknowledge the metaphysical part of man.
In any case, beware of those who claim to discover that new idea or breakthrough that makes everything fall into place. It’s probably not new, and likely also a more palatable perversion of God’s revealed truth. There is no way to make the narrow gate and the difficult path more user friendly. I guess that’s why the ones who find it are called “the few.”
