Most rivers started their lives from the mountaintop as pure white snow that turns into water droplets or as pure spring of water that oozes out from the ground to form tiny streams and rivulets, which would gradually grow into a mighty river. The river flows and finds its way to the sea having passed through all kinds of places both clean and unclean; and having collected all kinds of polluted debris of human, animal and other environmental wastes.
Before a flowing river gets to the sea for purification, communities along its lower course that have no idea or knowledge about the degrading state of the river and the high level of toxic materials contained therein, would collect water from the contaminated river for their everyday household use. Every year these communities that depend on the polluted river for drinking, cooking and other purposes would record high level of infant mortality and high level of waterborne diseases among their population.
The shaman, witch doctor, imam and priest, after due divination as per each belief’s orientation, would make authoritative pronouncements on the causes of the endemic health situations. They would categorically tell the people it is the ancestral god who is punishing them for their sins, particularly the sin of disobedience to the words of god spoken through the mouth of the religious gurus. They would prophesy that the gods could only be appeased by the offer of sacrifices, fasting and prayers. They would divinely prescribe that the people must offer sacrifices of their children and of their choicest animals to the gods.
Also, the witch doctor, the prophet and prophetess as well as the shaman would identify some poor elderly persons in the community as witches and sorcerers. They would tell the people to hold the identified witches responsible as the primary cause of the community-wide health and mortality problems. These innocent and vulnerable people were often ritually put to death directly or indirectly by neglect and ostracisation or exile.
After many generations have suffered under this culture of ignorance of basic knowledge of the truth of life, the people would have come to accept such inhumane cultural practices as their fate and way of life. The ritual killings of human and animal as sacrifices to the gods would become established as a must do annual festival in order to proactively prevent the society’s health and related problems and to appease or bribe the gods from inflicting future punishment.
This was the abominable experience of most rural communities of the world until knowledge of philosophy and science evolved among a few thinking men and women. The innocent members of these communities who have suffered grievous physical and psychological devastation were finally rescued when one gifted individual among the people began to use the endowed common senses for what they were designed for.
This exceptional thinker who succeeded in separating himself from the popular beliefs, traditions and cultures of his people was able, through observation and research, to discover the science of microbiology. He was able to identify the link between the invisible tiny organisms in the water drawn from the river and the resultant health related issues of his people.
The Lesson of the Parable and Religion: Christianity as a Case Study
Just like the contaminated river, Christianity and many similar world’s religions at the present stage of humanity have become highly contaminated with profane ideas and blatant untruthfulness. All genre of religion as they are presently formulated and practiced have become highly polluted and have turned into toxic weapons of mass confusion, mass destruction, mass control and mass killer of spiritual life in the world.
For example, the birth of the religion of Christianity started as a corruption of the pure inspirational message of divine hope, love and mercy for the deliverance of mankind from the prevailing kingdoms of hell on Earth. Unfortunately, the original divine truth and ideas behind the message have passed through many polluted terrains and have collected too many poisonous additional ideas; clever but untruthful interpretations; soul-killing doctrines; mind-confusing dogmas of faith and belief; and blue pill mythologies that are designed to sedate the faithful members in to deeper slumber and spiritual unconsciousness.
Christianity in our time is carrying too many kinds of deadly ideologies. A keen and objective observer can no longer see or recognise the original simple but revolutionary messages of hope that promised to deliver and set mankind free from the hell on earth. The laudable messages of freedom have since been turned into weapons of mass enslavement.
The hope of everlasting life that the simple Teacher of Galilee promised his listeners has since turned to perpetual hopelessness; and the eternal life on a free offer to everyone has turned into a slow agonising daily death for most of the present generation.
The promise of everlasting living water that was expected to flow from the well within the hearers and the doers of the message has since dried up and where anything is still flowing, it produces only polluted or ‘dead’ water that suppresses the awakening and emancipation of souls.
Prosperity Hustlers and Christianity
Today, instead of the divine messages of truth, hope and freedom freely given by the Teacher of Galilee, money hustlers and prosperity merchants or preachers are now offering promises of bountiful harvest of signs, wonders and miracles to all those who are willing to sow seeds in the special vineyard or money-plantation established by the General Overseer of the Kingdom of Mammon.
In case you are a greenhorn on our planet, the Preacher Man/Woman is not asking for seeds of grape or corn or yam or rice but he is asking and seriously demanding for seeds of newly minted raw cash from the banks. The god of the Preacher Man/Woman is often threatening to withhold blessings and miracles of material prosperity to all those that refuse to sow a substantial amount of seeds of raw cash or those that use their common sense to sow frugally.
The Christian religion on sale to the world at this juncture in history is causing serious problems for the poor in spirit; for those that mourn; for the meek; for those that thirst and hunger for righteousness; for the merciful; for the pure in heart; and for the peacemakers.
Monetisation of Religion
The religion on sale is offensive to the spirit; and it is messing up the minds of serious seekers after the truth of life. The modern preacher of theology is deceptively telling the followers that all the spiritual results that the Teacher of Galilee promised as blessings in the Beatitudes are not good enough.
They are saying, in their fine rhetorics with the sweetest tongue of a snake oil salesmen, that only material wealth and riches will do for the modern age. They encourage, cajole and say to their listeners, “pursue material prosperity with your life since abundant blessing in earthly wealth and riches is the only sign that shows you are indeed enjoying God’s special favour and grace.”
Through this carnally manufactured Protestant/evangelical teachings that were concocted in the last century from the United States of America and cleverly packaged for exports to every corner of the world, followers are deceptively being led solely onto the wide path of material existence that leads to damnation whilst being blindsided from seeing or knowing about the narrow path of spiritual existence that leads to everlasting life.
Material prosperity is the sing-song of the modern Preacher of righteousness all day long. It is the only sign of divine miracles the theologically manufactured “born again” Christians are expected to receive from God. All the spiritual blessings listed in the Beatitudes are quietly played down or mentioned in passing as mere addenda to the “serious teaching” of sowing money seeds and reaping bountiful dross or crumbs in the vineyard of the General Overseer (alias The Man of God).
God and Mammon
At the present time, serious seekers of the truth of existence can no longer see the unbridgeable line and abyss between Mammon and God that the Teacher of Galilee had drawn to help his listeners understand that these two spiritually different entities should not be mixed together. Worshippers are no longer able to differentiate whether they are worshipping Mammon or God? No one in the assembly of the Faithful can tell the difference anymore.
The example of the contamination of divine ideas described above is not peculiar to the Christian religion; it is common to all modern religious empires.
Contamination of Divine Ideas
We have to reiterate again that what is now called religion in all its various manifestations is the degraded result of a once sublime philosophical propositions made in the past by a particular seeker in search of the truth of life.
The findings of the seeker, which he courageously disseminated to the members of his generation, despite vicious opposition from the political establishment, are what the latter-day generation have labeled and are showcasing (that is after it has been contaminated) as religion.
Religion is therefore the end product of a neutered truth that has since lost the power to cause revolution or impact fundamental changes in the life of a person and the society.
As the original and inspirational idea passes from one generation to another, and like the parable of the contaminated river, it attracts and captures lots of impurities that would finally distort the essence of the idea. All serious ideas on the truth of life are concerned about the healing of the spiritually sick mankind.
However, because of the contamination purposely built into the original ideas, just like the contaminated river, all the innocent folks in the downstream of the religious river are becoming sickly and are dying spiritually in large numbers.
The contaminated truth being propagated by religious institutions are no longer setting the people free as it is supposed to do. Unfortunately, the lie that is now openly being sold as a dumb-down and monetised truth is spiritually crippling, blinding and deafening the people’s common senses since it helps to deliver them effortlessly into political, economic and spiritual slavery.
The Teacher of Galilee actually foretold a Parable of the Weed to illustrate this particular phenomenon when he said,
“The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. 25 But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. 26 When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.” (Matthew 13: 24-26)
What is Truth?
In other words, the contamination of the original good ideas and teachings is not by accident but it is a deliberate and purposeful action from the political authorities to sabotage the deliverance of their profitable cargo of human sheep from ignorance and slavery. So the message, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free” needs to be further investigated by all serious seekers of truth.
Every serious seeker of the truth of life must be able to ask afresh, What truth? Which truth? Whose truth? The unique answers each of us shall come up with will surely help to remove some (if not all) of the deliberate obfuscation that have followed the age-long answers to the important question and quest of, what is the truth?
In The Spirit of Truth
SAM ABBD ISRAEL
SAM ABBD ISRAEL 