Christian faith as placebo?

 January 15, 2019

The NDEs I have read and heard testified to are convincing to me. There is life after death. At death we continue to exist with consciousness and a new mode of being/seeing/communicating, etc.

 

My mode of receiving truth about revelation is cognitive. I am a thinker. The rationalist approach to religion is my strong suite. I try to experience the Spirit in a mystical way, through meditation, but it doesn’t do much for me. I can simply sit and muse on my existence—my being—and the larger Being of everything, and that gives me a sense or a feeling of something Larger beyond me, and of the pure wonder of my own being.

 

The ‘mystical’ experience for me comes through some types or music. Perhaps some sporting events touch me in that way, or some ecstatic moment happens for me. Scenes or experiences of healing or reconciliation touch me deeply too.

 

Intellectually, the Christian faith makes perfect sense to me. But existentially, there feels like a disconnect between the Biblical world and my 21st century life. What happened ‘back there’ (according to the accounts) seem foreign to my experience here and now. That world and this world seem separate.

 

Is the Jesus Thing real? How are we to understand it? Is it all symbolic? Or did something unusual, strange, and unique happen? Did God ‘come down’? Or is ‘Christ’ been made into a metaphor for the human connection with God? Have we created a symbol-system that intuits the deeper truth about the meaning of life? What was it that motivated those first believers to continue the message of Jesus? What sense do those documents (gospels, letters) make if this was an invented religion?

 

Why would a group of people fabricate miraculous stories and give their lives to a movement based on that fabrication? Political motivation? Accumulation of riches? Belief in justice and compassion? Were so many people gullible or naïve enough to make difficult life changes based on a hoax? We’ve seen movements led by con men (e.g., Jim Jones).

 

Could Christianity be a big historical Placebo? Could it simply be a successful Fake Truth taken by so many people that it bring about an effect that feels good? Placebos do bring about healing for some.

 

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