On the weekend of Martin Luther King’s birthday I read his sermon about forgiveness, and he said, “We talk eloquently about our commitment to the principles of Christianity, and yet our lives are saturated with the practices of paganism.” Of course, he was thinking of the betrayals against the minority citizens by the majority-controlled power structures of America — at the same time that he was preaching about the crucifixion of Jesus. But what was there about paganism that he would refer to it here?
Why has it been so hard for the human race to rid itself of the vestiges of paganism? But let’s call it what it is in order to answer that question: it is polytheism (believing in lots of deities to be controlled). So what? Why be concerned about that? What Dr. King was referring to were the consequences suffered by the victims of polytheism. He went on to point out that, following the dictates of polytheism, people too often “bow before the altar of revenge.” He reminded people that they were following the traditions of polytheism when “their lives had been conditioned to seek redress in the time-honored tradition of retaliation.”
But what Dr. King was trying to explain to his congregation of suffering people was Jesus taught just the opposite. So was Jesus the great prophet against polytheism? Was he the great revolutionary, bringing down the social structures that polytheism had built up for thousands of years? What about this great prophet who was giving warning? And what happens when people who can’t give up polytheism try turning him into a deity so they wouldn’t have to heed his warning?
Dr. King showed that he stood with that opposite teaching given by Jesus. Dr. King went on to say, “Generations will rise and fall; men will continue to worship the god of revenge and bow before the altar of retaliation.” And that’s just one of the many beliefs of polytheism that keep fouling up the history of the human race.
When I was studying books about the hundreds of thousands of years of the history of religious beliefs, I learned about what modern theories claim is the long change from polytheism to monotheism. But there is also a development from mysticism to monotheism. Of course, such theories summarize the many versions of polytheism and the several versions of monotheism. And, strangely, most of the books completely ignored mysticism.
But I have my own theory of summary. I think monotheism can be summarized into 2 versions depending on how each developed: (1) from polytheism, (2) from mysticism. What happened in the case of polytheism is each religion merely claimed ‘their god’ was the only God, and so they developed a version of monotheism that was actually the continuation of polytheistic beliefs (like believing in revenge).
Now, I found out that most books ignore mysticism because it is so completely different from polytheism that the books couldn’t figure out how to deal with it. But a truly modern form of monotheism can’t be explained without dealing with mysticism. You see, when modern people claim they have “lost their faith,” all that they have lost is polytheism. And I claim they should lose polytheism because it is a false belief system, and so any attempt to develop a form of monotheism from polytheism produces a false belief system.
So let’s answer the question, “Why has it been so hard for the human race to rid itself of the vestiges of polytheism.” The answer is most people wish the beliefs of polytheism were true. They wish they could get an all-powerful deity to protect them. They wish they could make a deity change the laws of nature to benefit whatever they wanted in life. They wish they could take revenge against people they didn’t like. They wish a deity could divide Homo Sapiens into many races and in the process make their race superior over all the others. They wish a deity could control people’s sexual orientations and sexual activities. AND SO… these wishing people take all that and turn it into a religion, and then their final wish is that such a religion is the only religion. (If you think that sounds like the Bible, you’re on to something.)
Mysticism is completely different. It requires meditation and work and complete dedication to God who cannot be controlled. And it requires people to love each other with a spiritual love called agapé that God has poured into everyone’s heart. Long ago, when a special sentence in Deuteronomy was translated into Greek, people were instructed to have such powerful devotion to God that all the worshiper’s heart, being, strength, and mind was required. That’s where that special Greek word appeared: agapé.
But most people don’t want that. So they keep on trying to make polytheism work out.
