Does Christianity have a future?

This article is an abridged version the last chapter in my book What I Have Written first published in 1999.

There are two models of Christianity within the church: the traditional redemption model and the spiritual “creation” model. The creation model is a shift back towards a more “gnostic” approach. A major shift from the physical to the spiritual took place with Vatican 2, but this may be too little too late. Vatican 2 is shorthand for the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council opened under Pope John XXIII in 1962 and closed by Pope Paul VI in 1965.

Having preached physicality throughout its history, the Christian church now has the problem that Western society has become hung up on physical existence. If it cannot be bought, sold or possessed, it has no value.

There are many people who are becoming dissatisfied or disillusioned with a purely physical existence and are seeking spiritual answers. But why would anyone seeking answers to help them satisfy an inner need turn to a religion that only has promises of future life with a God who is somewhere “out there”?

How can a religion that has no inner life itself offer any relief in a physical world?

As a religion, Christianity can offer no more than another set of physical rules to follow, making life even more repressive than it currently is. Does anyone genuinely seeking spiritual answers really need to hear that they are nothing but a poor sinner?

For this reason, I do not see a future for Christianity in its present form.

The Christian church is supposed to be built on the teachings of Jesus but actually negates the teachings of Jesus. If the Christian church is to avoid extinction, it must turn to the teachings of Jesus as its basis of being. It must dismantle its hierarchy and turn the church over to its congregation. The church must learn to guide and help practitioners towards an understanding of self and personal responsibility.

That understanding can only come from free will and from within. We can help one another, but ultimately we must do it ourselves by our own free will and for no other reason than that we want to. In order to survive the Christian church would have to turn to the “heretical” thinking it has brutally suppressed for 2,000 years.

Was Jesus the legitimate King of the Jews? There are two accounts of the lineage of Jesus through Joseph in the Bible, the first in Matthew and the second in Luke. They give different lineage but both lead back to David. An interesting point is that Luke continues the lineage of Jesus past David to Adam, and then to God.

19 And Pilate wrote a title, and put it on the cross. And the writing was, JESUS OF NAZARETH THE KING OF THE JEWS.
20 This title then read many of the Jews; for the place where Jesus was crucified was nigh to the city: and it was written in Hebrew, and Greek, and Latin.
21 Then said the chief priests of the Jews to Pilate, Write not, The King of the Jews; but that he said, I am King of the Jews.
22 Pilate answered, What I have written I have written. (John 19, KJV)

Jesus was not crucified because of any claim he made to being the Messiah, but because his birth and his teachings made him a political liability to the Pharisees. Jesus, King of the Jews, preaching the exact opposite to what the Pharisees (and later Christianity) stood for. Pilate knew that Jesus was king of the Jews.