The well-oiled machine kicks in again with Lord Jacob taking over the lesson. "And there is another very good reason to consider long and hard about what you are going to value in the Christian religion. I learned this one talking to a Jew. I asked him, "If Jesus was a Jew, then why are you not a Christian now?'
"He replied 'I find the idea that you can live a life of wickedness and deprivation, then pray to Jesus just before your death to absolve your sins, and poof, you're now going to live with God forever, to be ridiculous. We Jews believe that you must live your life in a manner that shapes you into the kind of person that can be one with God.'
"What he said made a lot of sense. How can you define yourself by the material possessions in your life, and all of the other things of this world, and then live for eternity in a place where none of these things exists. Those parts of you that have identified with the physical world would have to be left behind after your death. It's quite possible that so much of you would have to be stripped away to make it into heaven that there would not be enough left of you for anyone to recognize as you.
"So how are you doing so far girls? Is what I said earlier about what we value still sounding so outlandish? Are you going to consider long and hard about what it is you value in your life?"
Most of the girls were now showing that they were beginning to understand by nodding their heads in agreement. They all at least looked less worried.
Lady Jennifer now spoke, "I want everyone here to recognize that none of you are really reacting badly to what we just said. We know that most Christians believe as we do, so just on a percentage basis we stood a good chance you would accept what we said. Yet we don't just hope for the best. We also had our church working in our favor in selecting possible candidates to join our kingdom.
"People who value the belief that non-believers should fry in hell find our church very unsatisfying for them. They need to hear hell-fire and damnation from their religious leaders from time to time. Their weak belief needs to hear from people they respect that those who do not believe as they do will have terrible things happen to them in order to re-enforce that they are doing the right thing.
"Our church, on the other hand, is only about the positive things in life and in Christ, so eventually those who are weak in their faith move along to something they can better identify with. Without actually specifying what we are looking for, our church naturally weeds out the undesirables"
Evellyn raised her hand at this point, and when Lady Jennifer nodded towards her, she spoke in her regal, yet neither arrogant nor haughty voice. "Mistress Jennifer, I think I am feeling much the same as Ally did earlier, but from the opposite side. Just as she could not get past how she felt in spite of your husband's sound reasoning, I feel the same way about what I believe.
"As you know, I was a Catholic before I came here, and in that faith we have a label that is used for people who like to pick and choose the parts of religion they like from the parts they don't like called 'Cafeteria Catholic.' I have been raised to believe that religion is an all or nothing thing, so… I don't know… I just don't know how to process this."
Lady Jennifer replied, "You need to keep in mind that it is Christ that is all or nothing, not religion. As you will come to learn, religion is far from an all or nothing thing. As for the Cafeteria Catholic accusation…"
"I'll take this Jenny," said Lord Jacob. "This is heading where I want to talk next." Then to Evellyn he said, "I have heard this label many times. First of all, we are not asking you to pick between what you like, and don't like. That is the choice of a child. What we are asking you to do is make the choice of an adult, which is to pick between what works, and what doesn't work.
"Secondly, I find it rather ironic for Catholics to accuse others of 'picking and choosing' considering all of the picking and choosing that went on in the fourth century to create the Catholic Church. In a place called Nicea, at the behest of a Roman Emperor who needed a unified religion to rule his empire, a group of people who valued the belief that non-believers should fry in hell, gathered together there to choose among the various different beliefs and writings what best supported what they valued. From that effort came eventually what we now call the Catholic Church and the Holy Bible.
"Considering the people who gathered there, and for the purpose they were gathered, it is absolutely incredulous to believe anything good would come of it. These people took a vibrant and rapidly growing religion, and gave us not only the Dark Ages, but also Islam. Exactly how those dots get traced we'll leave for another day. What's important for now is to consider that it would be over thousand years before Christianity could be reborn as a faith that is a blessing on mankind.
"This leads to our last topic to consider for the evening, and I'll ask this of you Evellyn. Do you believe the Holy Bible is the word of God?"
Evellyn was a little flustered by this question. It took her a few moments before she finally replied, "Of course I do, Master Jacob."
Lord Jacob assumed an expression of skepticism as he responded. "I noticed you hesitated in your response. All good Christians are supposed to worship the Bible as the word of God. Maybe, in fact, you are like us, and just about every other Christian, who only reveres the Bible as being inspired by God. This is Christianity's dirty little secret that nobody wants to talk about, because of the cowards in our faith who will condemn them as blasphemers.
"I believe that all reasonable Christians know that God speaks to us in more ways than the Bible. One of those ways is the Earth He created. It is clear He took more than six days to do it, and it occurred way more than six thousand years ago. In this day and age, you have to be a willing idiot to believe in literal interpretations of the Bible, and that is what those who claim you must worship the Bible want you to be. They want you to be a willing idiot. They want you to turn off your God given ability to reason, and to believe as you are told."
Lord Jacob paused for a few moments to allow what he said to sink in before he continued. "There is a lot of debate over when and who wrote which book of the Bible, but do you know what there is absolutely no debate about? There is absolutely no doubt that Christ did not write a word of it. He did not write any of it, nor did He have a scribe following Him around to record His every word. Christ clearly did not believe that the written word was required to get his message out.
"As many of you have already been told, and we will discuss further on another day, the written word is required if you wish to rule over mankind. It is not required if you wish to lead them. Christ is a leader for mankind, not a ruler over them. His message for mankind was meant to set them free, not to enslave them.
"The people who had their way in Nicea could never trust mankind. They never believed that the average man could decide for himself how best to engage in a relationship with Christ. These people had always existed from the moment of Christ's crucifixion, but they could never have their way until a willing emperor came along, who like them, was looking for a way to rule over the lives of men.
"Considering the Bible did not begin to come together until the fourth century, does that mean that all of those Christians up until then were not real Christians?"
Again, another pause to give the girls a chance to think. "Well girls. We have completed what we had planned to cover about the shared religious values of this kingdom for this evening. Of course there is so much more, as we have only scratched the surface, but before we continue on to how these values shape the definition of our kingdom, are there any questions you feel you need answered now?"
Source: reddit.com/r/eroticliterature/comments/2pxubu/next_generation_christian_kingdom_ch03_marcia