July 15, 2013

A Convenient Christianity


By Photios Kontoglou

We have made our own Christianity, a convenient, humane and reasonable Christianity, as the Grand Inquisitor of Dostoevsky says, because the Christianity taught by Christ is inapplicable, inhumane.

Instead of rising towards Christ, who said "if I am lifted up from the earth I will draw all people to Myself", we have brought Him down to where we are, and have made a Christianity that agrees with our weaknesses, with our passions, with our worldly ambitions, and we have given our saints qualifications that our materialistic minds appreciate and admire, making them philosophers, orators, politicians, psychologists, sociologists, educators, scientists, etc.

The Grand Inquisitor, speaking as if Christ was standing before him (he had commanded His capture, since He once again descended to the earth and people were following Him), said to Him: "At the time you came into the world you brought people a harsh religion, impractical and inhumane. We made it convenient, humane. Why did you come again into the world? Will you spoil it, just as it has taken off? Therefore, I command that you be burned in your name, as a heretic."

A convenient, a humane Christianity, this human construct, is a pitiful deformation of the Gospel by the wicked materialism of the flesh.

Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos