Leap of Faith Into the Less Traveled Road

One morning, nine year-old Claire asked her dad this question, "Dad, if there is only one God, why are there so many religions?

It was a simple question from a young girl that  adults would have been hard pressed to answer.  Whatever answer Claire got from her dad at that point of her  life may not have mattered much to a young girl . She was likely to have forgotten the answer anyway and soon she would have outgrown that moment of curiosity and go on to other things.

What if she didn't? And if she keeps on asking, will she find better answers? Perhaps she took her dad's answer to heart, whatever it was  at that moment, but she may have kept thinking about it into her later life - pondering and re-thinking the different iterations of the question and the answers she got from other people and from reading. What would Claire have found if indeed she kept asking?

Claire went about the second half of her childhood as most of her friends did. Her family was Presbyterian, her mom sang at the church choir, her dad a deacon. By her senior year in high school Claire decided she wanted to major in history in college, to the slight disappointment of her parents but they didn't show it. Claire had applied to and was accepted by several colleges.

That summer she spent a good amount of time at the local library to read when she was not at her summer job. The question she asked her dad when she was nine kept intruding into her thoughts so she concentrated on researching middle eastern history - part of her preparation for college and to further her young childhood curiosity. 

First, she quickly found that around the world, across different nationalities and cultures,  there were quite a number of religions, cults and sub-cults and indigenous belief systems and superstitions. There were written texts, structured practices around each of the major religions and invariably established places of worship. Long before monotheism, belief in just one God, paganism that worshiped many gods and different deities was the prevailing belief system of empires for thousands of years of human civilization up to the time of the Pharaohs in Egypt.

Claire took the less traveled road back in time, where she found that it was 6000 BCE when the Nile valley was first inhabited. In 4000 BCE, the earliest depiction of gods were on the walls of tombs. The Egyptian empire did not begin until about 3000 BCE.  The pyramids were built between the 2600 to 2500 BCE.

 From the World History Encyclopedia, she read: 

"2000-1700 B.C.E.: Abraham, spiritual founder of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, is born in southern Mesopotamia.

According to tradition, Abraham (the Bible refers to him as Abram and later Abraham; the Koran refers to him as Ibrahim) is chosen by God to spread the message of monotheism. Abraham's wife, Sarah, unable to have a child, tells him to conceive a child with their Egyptian servant Hagar, and Ishmael is born. Sarah, however, later has a son, Isaac, with her husband. Jews, Christians, and Muslims all consider themselves Abraham's spiritual descendants. Muslims claim descent from the firstborn son, Ishmael; Jews track their descent through the line of Isaac and his son Jacob".

Claire surmised that all three major religions must have been rooted from one main trunk, as if they were all branches from the same tree. And like everything, as in language and cultural evolutions, faith and belief systems went through many tributaries from and along the same river of time.

Jesus of Nazareth was born approximately 2000 years from the time of Abraham's estimated birth. It had been another 2000 years or so to today since that moment in time in Bethlehem. In that period, world empires changed hands many times. Nazareth then was part of Judea that was part of the vast territory of the then pagan Roman Empire.  

Followers of Jesus and his disciples all through the succeeding generations became the first Christians; but because of their beliefs they were persecuted which forced them to go underground.

That all changed when Constantine (for whom Constantinople in what is now in Turkey was named after) became Roman emperor. He stopped the persecution of Christians and by 313 AD he endorsed the Edict of Milan allowing for Christians to worship freely. Constantine's mother was a Greek Christian who may have had some influence later on the emperor's "conversion".  There was no evidence of that nor was there proof of the story that the emperor saw an image of the cross in the sky before a crucial battle.

What is true is that from Constantine's reign emerged The Holy Roman Empire. 

Claire had Catholic friends and on a few occasions she had a chance to attend their church services during Christmas holidays.  She on one occasion asked one of her friends why there were statues or sculptures of several Saints inside the church that were treated with reverence inside and during street processions. She asked, "Doesn't the Second Commandment prohibit that?" She quoted:

"You shall not make for yourself any graven idol, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water below the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God .."  

                                       -- Exodus 20:1-17  (MEV, Modern English Version)

Her friends did not have an answer, except to say that it was the tradition they grew up with. Claire went on to read up on it. She found a plausible explanation. The conversion of the Roman empire after Constantine was slow in chronological time but it was a rapid change in the ideological sense. The old Roman temples, like their Greek equivalent of an earlier era of the Greek empire, had many gods attending to the people's needs. National Geographic dedicated one issue on the subject:

"The Roman Empire was primarily a polytheistic civilization, which meant that people recognized and worshiped multiple gods and goddesses.. They believed that these deities served a role in founding the Roman civilization and that they helped shape the events of people’s lives on a daily basis".

It's plausible, Claire read the explanation of some scholars, that an accommodation was made during the conversion to not subject the people to an abrupt, perhaps even traumatic, and complex change from temple worship to the new idea that was Christianity. Methodically, the statues of the gods were slowly changed to or renamed after Christian saints and martyrs to adapt to the new concept of monotheism and, henceforth, to preaching Christianity.  Being what they were to the worshippers, the images and sculptures, steeped in tradition, remained in the traditional places of worship, patrons to different needs of the people. Plausible but perhaps not conclusively established.  Claire kept that to herself and not make it a judgment wedge between her and her Catholic friends, although the vexing question of the Second Commandment in Exodus 20: 1-17 remains.

The Roman Empire was vast. It was all of Europe and the Middle East and parts of Asia. Like the Greek empire before it, the Roman Empire was influential in how culture and the sciences and religion were spread and developed. Roman Catholic doctrine  spread throughout the empire. Italy today was where the seats of power used to be at the time of the Caesars (notably, twelve of them in succession) from the last century before the birth of Jesus Christ to the end of the first century after his death.  Rome and where the Vatican is today was the seat of Roman Catholicism. The empire's influence was such that much of the languages in Europe evolved from Latin, which was the language used during the Catholic Mass until the Vatican Council decreed  the end of its use in 1963-64; by 1969 churches worldwide stopped using it to conduct the mass completely. 

Fast forward to 16th century Germany.  In 1517, one hitherto unknown priest named Martin Luther caused  what started as a minor stir by challenging a Dominican friar's preaching, "that the purchase of a letter of indulgence entailed the forgiveness of sins".  Luther's concern was that it could lead to a slippery slope where rich people  could conceivably buy their way out of sins, i.e., a large donation or an outright offering of a tract of land to build a church could buy salvation. That little disagreement led to more and what followed was known as The Great Reformation.

Martin Luther pushed and succeeded in having the Bible translated from Latin to the German vernacular to allow the common people to read and understand the "written Word of God" and interpret them in ways not dictated only by the religious leaders. On June 13, 1525, already out of the priesthood and actively involved in the movement of Reformation, Luther married Katharina von Bora, herself an ex-nun when she and several other nuns escaped from a monastery to join the  movement. Luther hence decried the practice of celibacy because it was not a Biblical requirement  for anyone who professes to preach and spread the Gospel. 

To make a long story short, the movement to reform the church led to peasant protests. That started to split among specific area and jurisdictional churches into several splinter groups of protesters, henceforth labeled Protestants.

Claire soon found a very long list of different denominations of churches under the main umbrella of Christianity, so many to list here.  Claire was intrigued by the Amish. Where did they come from? In America, the general public recognizes  them for their traditional attire, horse drawn black carriages, coexisting as an anachronism in a modern society, who speak German at home but speak English to conduct their trade and engage in commerce.

Claire was actually led to the Amish when she first read about Anabaptists. They were one of the splinter groups who called for re-baptism, because the protesters were all baptized at infancy but learned from Biblical passages that Jesus was baptized as an adult by John ..

"Mark 1:9–11, 9 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan river. 10 And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. 11 And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son;1 with you I am well pleased.” 

The Anabaptists, therefore, merely followed the scriptures once they started reading the Bible.  Baptism hence was done as a total immersion in water on adults only because infants were not only deemed innocent they were unable to speak to confession, and whose faith were yet to be determined. "The Amish, Hutterites, and Mennonites are direct descendants of the early Anabaptist movement". 

Anabaptists were persecuted in Germany. Many escaped to other parts of Europe.  Generations of them later made it to the newly created nation called America where they were and are free to worship freely.

Claire read:

"Because the Amish do not have church buildings, they hold church services in their homes. Every other Sunday, the members of the local district meet in the home of one of their members. Services rotate among the homes throughout the year, coming to each household about once a year depending on the number of households in the district".

There are no altars, stained glass windows, not even hymnals because they sing from memory (in German), etc.

Claire could not find any reference in the New Testament that Jesus referred to worshiping in a physical church.  Instead, she saw Jesus as a reformer who did not call for people to be in a specific man-made structure in order to worship God. In fact, she read, from Matthew 6:6 ESV, Jesus proclaimed,

“Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is  in heaven".  Jesus also spoke in parables.

"6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you."

Claire was  overwhelmed by the number of Christian denominations - from the various Catholic  and Protestant denominations all over the world worshipping in small and mega churches and cathedrals. By that time Claire was not so much confused as she was exhausted after she read from Matthew 24, 

"And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world? And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many..

Claire then believed that the last portion of the Biblical quote above led to the question she had asked as a child that could be interpreted to predict the spread of so many who will call themselves Christians but not least of all are the other prevailing belief systems - Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, each with several subsets. 

In the end it was not so much that Claire found her answer but that it gave her a more profound resolve to read the Bible for spiritual guidance and leave history where it belongs - in the past. 

Before the summer ended she decided that she will change her major from history to chemistry or biology, to the delight of her parents who knew of Claire's affinity to and proficiency in math and the sciences, graduating valedictorian. Her Dad asked, "Why the change of heart?"

Claire replied, "I believe I have sufficiently enough of history that I need. I'd like to focus on the future.  I hope to do well and go on to medical school but  I promise, you will only pay for my undergrad and I will be on my own towards a post graduate degree".  Her Dad assured her he has enough saved for that already and not to worry.

We can only wish Claire the best as she finds herself at a crossroad in a world where uncertainty dominates her future despite the seeming abundance of answers.

. 

  

  

Leap of Faith

Religious or not, people often use or invoke the word faith in a variety of affirmations toward what they strongly believe in. It can be a solemn declaration of trust in someone or something.

Common dictionary definition: "The word faith is to refer to belief in something despite lacking any evidence for it."

One Biblical definition goes: "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen". Hebrews 11:1  (KJV)

Faith. Ordinarily, we've expressed it in varying circumstances as in, "I have faith in you, you can do it", as a declaration of total confidence in someone's ability.  Likely, however, in everyday life, we are not using the word in its proper context. Even in the first example, if we have seen the skill or talent of the individual, then faith does not apply if we have witnessed one's ability to accomplish the task.  On the other hand, in the expression, "This restored my faith in politics", or "I have faith in this or that politician", we may have a more appropriate reason for using it, if we have not previously seen any  evidence among politicians to warrant the restoration.  Generally speaking, anyway.

If faith is already an unconditional affirmation, leap of faith raises it to another level, though not always in a good way.  It is a bold thing but it can also be considered foolish under a certain set of circumstances.

The Great Leap Forward in Chinese history was such an economic disaster that caused an estimated 20 million deaths due primarily to famine from 1958 to 1962 when the communist regime instituted a drastic communal industrialization across the country.  It was a leap of faith by the communist politburo to emulate a Soviet style  industrialization via a communal system; an untested theory of drastically converting farm lands and farmers into manufacturing industries and industrial workers, respectively, overnight.

After an economic recovery a decade later, largely through aid infusion from the Soviets, China went into another program of reform -  The Cultural Revolution. It was another leap of faith in the aging Mao Zedong in 1966. It was during that time that an attempt to completely eradicate traces of capitalism and western culture. The Red Guards, mostly young people, brandished the Red Book (compilation of Mao's sayings) as they went about going after literature and all literary sources connected to capitalism and western thought.  Even classical music and musicians were targets of the purge. Western theater and movies were banned. It was "cancel culture" on steroids.

The Cultural Revolution too failed.  Unfortunately, in the neighboring country of Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge in a leap of faith in its leader, Pol Pot, did the exact same thing between 1975 and 1979. Over two million Cambodians were killed in the process - 25 per cent of the total population.

China pivoted from the last socio political experiment to where it is today. It is now a major military power with an economy second only to the U.S.  How did it do it? It became a sociopolitical hybrid by running its government in the traditional socialist system but conducts its economy the capitalist way. Gone are the Mao jackets and the ban on everything "bourgeois". Western movies are in, classical concert halls are back, and in 2016 Disneyland Park opened in Shanghai. Tennis, gymnastics, aquatic sports and soccer that used to be abhorred by the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution are getting government support and world class results.

"On the morning of February 21, 1972, US President Richard Nixon landed in the People’s Republic of China".   That visit 51 years ago was hailed as "the week that changed the world".  Looking back, it was the week that changed China. If one will look at the photos of that week, Chinese officials were in their Mao jackets.  Check the photos today and you will see that from President Xi to every male bureaucrat and white collar worker, western coats, shirts and ties are the norm.

It was a combination of first, a huge leap of faith by western capitalists to invest in China and in return took advantage of cheap and unlimited manpower (figuratively speaking) and second, China's new government stepping away from pure communist ideology.  Contrast that with Cuba whose government still insists on communism circa 1950s.  Instead of being the tourist magnet like most of its Caribbean neighbors, it is stuck in a 1950's economy, despite being only 90 miles away from the world's largest economy.

In a subtle way, the west today is undergoing a sort of cultural revolution of its own, if we look closely. We hear certain young politicians constantly invoking "tax the rich", young activists bemoaning against capitalism, politicians caving in to climate activists who are pushing for the banning of gas stoves and ultimately all fossil fuel powered vehicles, shutting down fossil fuel industries as certain groups go about deflating tires of or vandalizing parked SUVs to drive home their message.  Certain books are banned; if not totally, they are revised to edit or remove certain words for content to be aligned along a perceived socio political agenda for today.  As a result, the west seems to be saddled with a panoply of revolutions at the same time: Language, Gender and Neopronoun, and Transgender Revolutions, and so on, including the potential for men to get pregnant a reality.

"The American Medical Association floated a trial balloon for uterus transplants for biological men who identify as transgender, pushing the next phase of "Frankenstein tech" for cross-sex procedures".

----Washington Examiner, August 15, 2023

The AMA is not some crackpot organization but it is getting carried away along this long winding river of revolutions sweeping the west. 

These examples are by no means the only identified phases of these new revolutions.  Much of the world can only hope that these too shall pass like the Chinese Cultural Revolution. 

Meanwhile, it is conceivable that China could become the No.1 Economic and Military power, following the historical trajectories along which empires grew and faded in the last several centuries. 

Almost two years ago I wrote about, "2050:The Ebb of the Tragic Trajectory of a Once Powerful Nation"

The reader, if so inclined, may want to read that: (copy, paste  the link below in your search bar)

https://abreloth.blogspot.com/2021/10/2050-ebb-of-tragic-trajectory-of-once.html

"The End Of Time"

In one of his "Yogism", the much beloved baseball great said,

“It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”

                                                                                         ― Yogi Berra

As early as  the first millennium, people have been predicting the end of the world; the first recorded one predicted that it was to occur between 66-70 A.D. After that, many more predictions followed during each millennium, more so in the current century. There were bracket-years predictions, i.e. 1368-1370 as predicted by a French alchemist in 1366. Others were more specific  to the month and day and even time - October 19, 1533 at 8:00 a.m. by a mathematician named Michael Stifel.  

By one count a total of 196 "published" predictions by those with considerable following - from religious leaders, spiritualists, psychics, astrologers, cult leaders, yes, even mathematicians. Nostradamus and his quatrains  predicted July 1999. Charles Manson chimed in with his own prediction for 1969.  Well known psychic/astrologer Jeanne Dixon, known to have predicted JFK's assassination, was a best seller author and syndicated columnist, predicted April 4,1962 then later revised it to 2020. They were all wrong. 

Of course, we know now, at least through today anyway, since you are reading this, that indeed none of those predictions happened.

Now, why were they taken seriously at first, or at least up to the moment they were proven wrong? Several reasons.  Some had  charisma, religion played a role, cult following and mass hysteria, etc. In some cases, psychics and astrologers made so many predictions that if a handful somehow came vaguely close, or interpreted to be close enough, they were highlighted by their proponents while  ignoring the rest that were even blatantly wrong.  In the case of Nostradamus, his predictions were so vague that it was all about how they were interpreted and made to fit certain actual events.  

Keep in mind the power of numbers.  Let's say ten million people read their horoscope every day.  Even if one horoscope proved correct for just 1% of the readers on that day, that would still have been 100,000 people. The following day's horoscope, with the same 1% rate of accuracy, would have another 100,000 people getting correct predictions (some  from the previous number, some would be new "hits") .  Over time that will multiply into some kind of meaningful statistical mass; enough to keep readership at a sustainable level of interest, including those who read them purely for  entertainment.

At this point, we can assume, given the level of incredulity over past end-of-the-world prophecies cited above, that any future predictions along the same path are likely to be wrong.  But wait, we still have several waiting for the next centuries to unfold. One scientist predicts 2026, two spiritual leaders have 2026 and 2028 predicted - one due to an asteroid hit, and another based on the rapture. 

There are three predictions for the 22nd and 23rd centuries. Two have specific dates of Dec. 30, 2129 and another for Sept. 30, 2239.  Egyptian-American biochemist, Rashad Khalifa, predicts 2280. Most predictors usually refer to their prophecies to occur during their lifetime.  The last one stuck his neck out to a specific date two hundred years from now.

Then there are far out into the future predictions that will be beyond any reasonable fact checking because the earliest is 300,000 years  to a few billion years from now. Then there's one that simply predicts a mathematical number of 10 followed by 100 zero years into the universe's future. For certain, our sun has a finite mass that it loses at the rate of 4000 tons per second. It will be a matter of time before it ends it's energy giving existence, albeit, not for another 2-3 billion years. 10 followed by 100 zeros are the number of years for when the universe will be so spread out that all of  space will have zero energy.   So, there we have it.

Now, how about actual events long before we were here from fossil evidence that led to the decimation of innumerable species. Mass extinction  happened at least five times.  However, each "end-of-time event" did not occur as one day events, except for one.  Climate changes took thousands of years to complete.  There were intense volcanic activities, changes in solar radiation, plate tectonics, severe changes in ocean chemistry, prolonged drought, all kinds of ecological imbalances, etc.  Then there was that one-day event 65 million years ago when an asteroid hit what is now the Yucatan Peninsula on the Gulf of Mexico. It wiped out the dominant species of dinosaurs. Extinction of 50% of all species followed, which then ushered the rise of warm blooded animals, including mammals, from which our earliest ancestors arose.

So, end-of-time events did occur a few times. No written records of any kind of predictions from dinosaur-prophets because even though they  ruled for perhaps 160 million years none of them could write.  But there were plenty of fossil records from that one event and prior to and after, which allowed scientists to piece together a history of several end-of-times that resulted in the extinction of 99% of all species that ever lived. 

Natural calamities happened and will happen again.

We have our own history, replete with humanity's proclivity to make war with one another.  But only now, the present time, when we actually have the ability to unleash the most powerful weapons against each other.  Mass casualties never before experienced in battle happened during the last two world wars, Chemical weapons were used in WWI and in WWII two atomic bombs were dropped over Japan that ended the Pacific War, just three months after the European conflict was put to an end.  

Today, with the amount of nuclear weapons stockpiled in the hands of several nations, humanity has finally achieved the ability to wipe out life on earth several times over. This is the modern-day sword of Damocles hanging over the entire world. Generally speaking, such worries do not preoccupy everyone's thoughts constantly but every now and then it has a way of sneaking into people's consciousness or loudly intrudes in conversation of either sociological  or political  nature. What is the average person to make of it?  How does anyone know?

There remains one resource coming from the world's several religions, including from the three major faiths of Islam, Judaism and Christianity. Almost without exception, each of them has a prediction on end-of-time future events written in  texts that when taken together seem to follow along the same vein.  The most common theme being that of the return of the Messiah or Mahdi.

Without leaning one way or another, basis our own personal faith, there is a way to synthesize what appears to be a general common theme, in a non-prejudicial manner. First let's get in here a not-too-familiar word but will be quickly followed with a definition: Eschatology is defined as "the part of theology concerned with death, judgment, and the final destiny of the soul and of humankind". It is therefore the study of “last things” 

In almost every religious eschatology, apocalyptic texts are always part of the entire message. Given that almost all of them were written in the early centuries A.D., some of the predictions, according to some religious and geopolitical analysts alike, could only be referencing to today or the near future.  While the world had always been visited by catastrophes like earthquake, famine, diseases and the regularly occurring wars in the past, most opinions from the same analysts seem to point to  calamities that can happen only today or at some future time.

Do they have a point? Well, we can ponder a few things. By no means that  these are the only ones.

As mentioned earlier, the world today, not  centuries ago, has the capability to destroy itself with weapons of mass destruction not limited to nuclear but chemical and biological as well.  We know now from the Covid experience that the rapidity of transportation and ease of movement across boundaries can easily disperse pathogens several times more quickly than how the Bubonic plague and the Spanish flu did.  Intentional dispersion by warring nations will only intensify the speed.  

The quote from Matthew 24:6, "You will hear of wars and rumors of wars.." can only be true in today's world-wide-web of the internet; clearly not so in ancient times or even as late as the 19th century when news across borders moved at glacial pace.  During those times, only those geographically close to the conflict would hear about wars and only later when historians would write about them that people would know about wars.  Today's instantaneous cable news and social media make hearing about "wars and rumors of wars"  a timely reality. 

With 8 billion people and counting, it is not difficult to imagine the severity of famine that is predicted in  the apocalyptic texts of many religions. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and other versions of carriers of doom in the other texts, will seem to have a clearer path than at any other time previously. The third horseman symbolized "a food merchant, rides a black horse symbolizing famine and carries the scales."

Let's stop with the gloom and doom at this point because as bad as the amount of tribulation being dispensed by the various eschatological texts, there is in every case the moment of redemption that is more hopeful. That is the good news. Unfortunately, this is even more a point of contention between belief systems that only results in more division. Let us not forget that several conflicts in the past were precipitated by religious differences, either as the whole reason or in part.

What we are left with is back to Yogi Berra's charming thought about prediction.  In truth, predicting is not only hard, it is impossible, in human terms, that is. 

We will not be able to predict when the end time is. However many texts  there are from various sources of faith, that moment is and cannot be known.  The New Testament that Christians around the world refer to, says exactly that.

Mark 13:32. King James Version .. But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.

That is where we are today.