What is christendom? What is science?

What is christendom? What is science?

John Bjarne Grover

There exists a widespread misunderstanding that christendom means the chance to dump your problems onto Jesus and then he will be punished for your sins instead of you - that is why he hangs on a cross - he is punished for your sins thereby. That is why the cross is the ultimate symbol of christendom, tells this misunderstanding - it is a chance to escape the punishment by letting somebody else be punished for your sins instead of you. Therefore you can escape the punishment of hell and purgatory by dumping your problems onto Jesus, tells the misunderstanding.

This would only mean that christendom is the same as the negation of human rights. Human rights must apply to absolutely every human being - if one single human is exepted there is no human rights.

Christendom means on the contrary that you should not dump your problems onto Jesus: What the story of Jesus means is that he was a god and therefore he lived in a larger reality than the humans - who think in small boxes and understand very little. When he should live also as human he was squeezed into this narrow form and his fate was inevitable. That is why the story of Jesus tells us what our limitations are - he could not escape the cross because that is how the human limitations are. Therefore we get the chance to understand how these human limitations can be transcended - and that is the nature of mysticism. Therefore christian mystics often used to contemplate his stigma because that is the nature of the human limitations. Life inside human limitations is suffering - all serious religions agree on that. Therefore the cross is the symbol of the christian creed.

This means that christendom gives us a chance to transcend the inherited limitations and understand a larger reality - which in its ultimate form means heaven. Jesus is the way to heaven - not because we can dump our problems on him which means that life gets as easy and comfortable as in heaven - but because we can get the chance to transcend the limitations.

But this means that one of the most important aspects of christendom is to understand that the reality is not only what you can register in a computer memory - it is not what the senses can inform you about.

It is a misunderstanding that redemption and grace is about dumping the problems. Jesus was a jew and Hitler's holocaust was an expression of this misunderstanding.

God loved the humans so much that he sacrificed his own son instead of the humans, is a basis for this misunderstood theology. I think I recall this problem from what I understood was education in christendom in my childhood - they referred to John 3,16 as evidence of this theology - that humans could escape doom in that way. But clearly this verse tells that Jesus is the way to 'eternal life' - which means just that Jesus took onto himself the task of living as a human for thereby giving them a chance to understand the way to heaven. It was not for suffering 'instead of'. It means that if you do not dump your problems onto Jesus, then you can get a chance to come to heaven.

It may be hard to avoid the misunderstanding unless one keeps it constantly in mind that the world is bigger than the humans understand. One of the problems for humans is what is called causality - that there is a reason for everything and this reason can be found by data analysis which searches for redundancies which can be combined for finding the regularities which explain the reasons. This is what science often does - and computers are experts in data analysis - and that is why science is felt as the opposite of christian faith. Of course science should not go in that trap - it should keep it constantly in mind that the reasons are earthen illusions which we had better see the limitations in. Science should be the quest for reasons for finding out where our illusions and limitations are the worst. Otherwise we start dumping the blame (the reasons) on each other and search for scapegoats and lose the way to heaven.

This means that it is probable that even the laws of nature are 'illusions' which have only a limited validity. Santa Teresa was levitating now and then, according to her 'Vita' chapter XX: "and then the whole body as well, so that it was lifted up from the ground. 5. This has not happened to me often: once, however, it took place when we were all together in choir, and I, on my knees, on the point of communicating. It was a very sore distress to me; for I thought it a most extraordinary thing, and was afraid it would occasion much talk; so I commanded the nuns--for it happened after I was made Prioress--never to speak of it". It was described also by others who witnessed her such as her biographer Francesco de Ribera who estimated the levitation to 2-3 handbreadths above the ground, according to Álvarez, Tomás: 'Dizionario di Santa Teresa' (Edizione OCD 2016), the article on 'levitation'.

The laws of nature are built from our faith in them - as far as our semiotic constitution allows. Technology builds on this cultural faith.

My 'Cambridge international dictionary of english' (Cambridge 1995) tells that 'christendom' is the community while 'christianity' is the teaching. But isnt it the other way round - that 'christendom' is the teaching while 'christianity' is the community? Is this where it is?