Actual Christianity

It should deeply trouble Christians that Buddhists, Taoists, and even people using psychedelics routinely describe experiences of profound inner bliss resembling what Jesus referred to as the Kingdom of God, while so many Christians remain convinced that this “Kingdom” is something they must wait until death to experience. Rather than understanding it as an enlightened state of consciousness accessible in the present, Christianity has largely transformed this Kingdom into some post-death reward granted for believing the right things and living a sufficiently righteous life.

This has unfortunately become mainstream Christian thought, despite Jesus repeatedly speaking of the Kingdom as something present, near, and accessible now. The tragedy is that Christians may spend their entire lives waiting to enter a Kingdom that, according to this interpretation of Jesus, they were being invited to discover within themselves right away.

It is remarkable how thoroughly the teachings of Jesus have been altered, diluted, and at times completely inverted in the centuries since his death. Ideas that seem fundamentally opposed to the way Jesus taught people to live can now comfortably exist beneath the banner of Christianity.

Perhaps nowhere is this inversion more apparent than in the modern Christian tendency to place greater importance on professing allegiance to Jesus than actually embodying what he taught. Once salvation and entrance into Heaven become primarily matters of declaring the correct belief, a person’s conduct can become strangely secondary. Someone can preach division, contempt, or hatred throughout their life and still be regarded as a faithful Christian, as long as they publicly proclaim Jesus as Lord and Savior.

Charlie Kirk is a striking example of this contradiction. In the eyes of many Christians, Kirk is now enjoying the Kingdom of Heaven despite rhetoric widely seen as racist, misogynistic, divisive, and hateful. Why? Because he publicly proclaimed Jesus as his Lord and Savior. He could quote biblical verses like the back of his hand, yet actually living as Jesus lived, and embodying the radical compassion, humility, forgiveness, and love Jesus demanded of his followers, could be treated as secondary or even optional.

And therein lies the contradiction: Christianity has increasingly made proclaiming “Jesus!” more important than becoming like Jesus. The “Kingdom” he taught people to seek within themselves has been pushed into the afterlife, while allegiance to his name has taken precedence over actually living his teachings.

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That being said, there is a remarkable irony in Christians routinely dismissing and discrediting spiritual paths such as Buddhism despite the tremendous overlap between many of their teachings and those of Jesus. Why? Because Buddhism does not contain the narrative that someone “died on the cross for their sins.” And because Buddhists do not proclaim that Jesus died for their sins, many Christians conclude that they are going “straight to hell.”

Yet the irony is that these same people may already be experiencing the profound sense of unity and oneness with all things that, in my interpretation, Jesus described as the “Kingdom of God” within.

The irony becomes even greater when Christians condemn these spiritual practices and traditions as misguided or even satanic despite how closely some of their teachings resemble the principles Jesus himself taught. If compassion, surrender of the ego, detachment, forgiveness, and the pursuit of inner transformation are somehow satanic when practiced outside Christianity, what does that imply when remarkably similar principles appear in the teachings of Jesus?

Perhaps one of the most damaging developments in Christianity has been the way the narrative of Jesus dying on the cross for humanity’s sins has been interpreted to suggest that the essential work has already been done for us. It can turn spiritual transformation from something that must actually be lived into something that merely needs to be believed.

The sooner Christianity moves beyond the idea that Jesus’ death simply “cleansed everyone of their sins” and therefore guarantees salvation through belief, the sooner Christians may rediscover the demanding inner work at the heart of Jesus’ teachings. Reaching an enlightened state of consciousness requires transformation: confronting the ego, changing how you treat others, practicing forgiveness, surrendering hatred and judgment, and actually living differently. It cannot be reduced to a passive declaration that you believe in Jesus.

Believing in Jesus is not the same thing as becoming like Jesus and zero effort brings zero rewards.

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