I would call myself an atheist right now, but I feel something within me that is religious. I don’t know what I believe in but I want to study Christianity, but I have no idea where to start. I was born catholic but absolutely hated it, there was contradictions to its teachings at every turn, and there was constant cruelty and abuse. It felt like a place for rich middle class assholes to call themselves good people and justify their bigotry. For 5 years now, I’ve referred to myself as “atheist,” but have always been very interested in concepts of Christianity and Gnosticism, as well as religion in general. However, every community – both IRL and online – of Christians has been ridiculously toxic and hateful, and as a bi (also confused about that too) man I have never felt safe at any of these places, even “inclusive” ones. But christian themes and ideas have always made me feel a way that is indescribable, and I want to reevaluate my faith.
Now, from the little I know about Christianity, Gnosticism seems to, at least from my view, reconcile the the things that gave me so much grief about the bible. The idea of the bible’s YHVH as being an ignorant and malevolent being whose arrogance leads it to enslave humans and go against god’s true ideals, and bringing suffering to its imperfect world. But, how would I reconcile this as a communist? If the “goal” of Gnosticism is to is to escape to the perfect, immaterial world, what would be the point of making our current one better?
I want to do more research, and try to find the answer to all of this but I just don’t know where to start. I think I should read the bible, but I have so much shit going on, so I don’t know whether or not I can commit to that. Already I have 8 hours of school, an hour of studying Chinese, an hour of working out, and still spending time with my friends and family, I don’t know how I could commit more time to diligently and properly studying religion. Do any of you comrades have advice? Thank you for reading this, and I’m sorry it’s been a stream of consciousness-type post.
A bit of a contradiction I suppose, but this question actually led me toward Communism. My own beliefs are a bit of an ecclectic mish-mash of all sorts of non-scientific stuff, that I’m not going to even try to explain, but part of it is the idea (like “an injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere”) that nobody is “done” (reincarnation of some sort is part of it too) until everybody is “done”.
So, the goal (or at least current project) becomes to advance society to the point where everyone has the opportunity, resources, safety, inclination, etc. to explore/develop this part of the human experience. Which to me, is only possible in some form of collaborative egalitarian society. The nice part is if this succeeds, even if all the non-material stuff is BS, you still end up with an excellent material existence
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As far as reading The Bible, (I wouldn’t bother, but if you do), don’t start at the beginning and just try to slog through. Most people recommend starting with the Gospels, beyond that I couldn’t give specifics. And if you do go for the slog, try to find an annotated version that you like, the extra context is worth it.
Maybe not yet, but for me I got a lot more out of learning about early Christianity and the evolution of ideas/organizations than I expected going in. Also, some Christian Mystics (I particularly like Meister Eckhart) are really interesting if you’re in the right mindset.
(Re-reading this I suspect not, but) hopefully there is something helpful in there
thank you, this is very helpful. can we chat on matrix? i have some questions about gnosticism and religion in general.