Gnostic Christianity Part Two By Kendra Givens

Summary

Gnostic Christianity was a heretical movement that developed in 50 AD.

Believing that a perfect God could not have created evil in the world, 

they instead took the opposite approach and decided that he did

not create the world. A demon did.

(Gnostic Depiction of the Demiurge/Devil)

Conversation between a Gnostic, and Athiest, and a Christian

Christian: It’s so terrible for the family, but it's all a part of God’s plan. I just know it. 

Gnostic: A part of God’s plan? A mother and her little child being struck by another car and killed is a part of God’s plan? What world are you living in? Are you insane?

Atheist: Yeah, I’m with you! There’s no way this is part of any God’s plan. 

Chrisitan: There’s just no other explanation for such a senseless event, I’m afraid. Something good has to come out of it or else there would be no point to anything. 

Atheist: My friend,  I think you just discovered the secret of the universe. 

Gnostic: Well I wouldn’t go so far as to say that. I definitely think there is a point to the universe.

Atheist: Oh yeah? And what is it?

Christian: Yes, please enlighten us.

Gnostic: I think the point to the universe is that it should never have existed at all. 

Atheist and Christian: . . . . . . . . 

Gnostic: Yeah, I said it. 

Christian: How could you? This is such incredible blasphemy coming from your mouth. My dear God cover your ears. You should not have to hear this immorality. 

Atheist: Well I am not like this blubbering fool over here, but I certainly don’t think the universe was a mistake. Not at all. The big bang and evolution are such beautiful things that science has discovered. I won’t go so far as to say they are on purpose, but they are certainly not a mistake. 

Gnostic: And to what would you two say this world is? A coincidence? A place created by God. No, to all of that I say no.

Christian: But why? 

Gnostic: This here funeral. The car crash that left a wonderful father and alone for life, that killed a little girl and her darling mother. To say it is a coincidence as science does is to diminish the worth of their lives. And to say it is a part of a plan as your God does is to make a mockery of their death. I say the world is a mistake because to say that is to say their suffering was a mistake. They should have never had to suffer at all. Only the devil would put them through that. 

Christian: The devil! The devil is among us. I must pray and ward off this evil that has overtaken you. 

Atheist: You make some good points my dear religious, misguided friend. If I did believe in a God, I think I would have to believe in one who did not allow suffering at all. It does make a lot of sense that only a demon could have created the world with all its tragedy. 

Christian: BLASPHEMY! I need some holy water to cleanse myself of this sinful conversation. 

Atheist: But my dear, your own precious book says quite the same thing, now doesn’t it. 

Chrisitan: I don’t believe you. 

Gnostic: John 5:19: “We know that we are God’s children and that the whole world lies under the power of the evil one.”

Christian: I can’t take this anymore. God my dearest loving God, save me from them.

God: Oh no they are quite right. I have sent many signs to you confused people. A  snake to the prison of Eden to give your ancestral parents the gift of knowledge and freedom. Instead, you call my actions a sin and believe humanity should have remained ignorant in Eden forever. I have sent a savior to show you the way to heaven and enlightenment. Instead, you drink his blood and eat his flesh and wear the instrument of his torture around your necks.

I have tried. I really have and so you may see how bewildered I am when you build your little houses of prayer and sing your little hymns and worship the God who sent floods, and plagues, and war, and killed innocent little children. It is really quite baffling. The beautiful, grand story of the universe is once the Gnostics were right, then the Christians came along, and confused this poor God so much I have decided to make the atheists right. 

  

  Quotes about Gnostic Christianity

“The Devil’s greatest trick isn’t getting you to think he doesn’t exist. Quite the reverse. It’s getting you to think he’s God and that you must obey him without question. Devil worshippers aren’t a rare exception in our world – they’re the norm.”

― Adam Weishaupt, Abraham: The World's First Psychopath

“God, far from being alien to us, far from being a distant deity, is inside us all. Our mission is to find him within us, to release our inner divinity. It is not anyone else we should be worshiping, but our own highest capabilities. That is the great test with which we are confronted... do we have the courage and knowledge to look to ourselves rather than external “gods” ? Can we find our divine spark? That is the Holy Grail, the most sacred and spiritual object of all. The quest for the Holy Grail is the most difficult conceivable.”

― Brother Abaris, The Illuminist Army

“If the world turns to religions of knowledge and enlightenment rather than place faith in dusty books and fanatical prophets, the vast divide between science and religion will be at last be healed. We can enter a Golden Age of human thinking and spirituality”

― Michael Faust

Video Explanations

Excerpt By Elaine Pages in The Gnostic Gospels 

    Explains how Gnostics believe you can find God and Salvation within yourself

    "But those who wrote and circulated these texts did not regard themselves as "heretics. Most of the writings use Christian terminology, unmistakable related to a Jewish heritage. Many claim to offer traditions about Jesus that are secret, hidden from "the many" who constitute what, in the second century, came to be called the "catholic church." These Christians are now called gnostics, from the Greek word gnosis, usually translated as "knowledge." For as those who claim to know nothing about ultimate reality are called agnostic (literally, "not knowing"), the person who does claim to know such things is called gnostic ("knowing"). But gnosis is not primarily rational knowledge. The Greek language distinguishes between scientific or reflective knowledge ("He knows mathematics") and knowing through observation or experience ("He knows me"), which is gnosis. As the gnostics use the term, we could translate it as "insight," for gnosis involves an intuitive process of knowing oneself. And to know oneself, they claimed, is to know human nature and human destiny. According to the gnostic teacher Theodotus, writing in Asia Minor (c. 140-160), the gnostic is one has come to understand who we were, and what we have become; where we were... whither we are hastening; from what we are being released; what birth is, and what is rebirth.

    Yet to know oneself, at the deepest level, is simultaneously to know God; this is the secret of gnosis. Another gnostic teacher, Monoimus, says:

    Abandon the search for God and the creation and other matters of a similar sort. Look for him by taking yourself as the starting point. Learn who it is within you who makes everything his own and says, "My God, my mind, my thought, my soul, my body." Learn the sources of sorrow:, joy, love, hate . . . If you carefully investigate these matters you will find him in yourself.

    What Muhammad 'All discovered at Nag Hammadi is, apparently, a library of writings, almost all of them gnostic. Although they claim to offer secret teaching, many of these texts refer to the Scriptures of the Old Testament, and others to the letters of Paul and the New Testament gospels. Many of them include the same dramatic personae as the New Testament--Jesus and his disciples. Yet the differences are striking.

    Orthodox Jews and Christians insist that a chasm separates humanity from Its creator: God is wholly other. But some of the gnostics who wrote these gospels contradict this: self-knowledge is knowledge of God; the self and the divine are identical.

    Second, the "living Jesus" of these texts speaks of illusion and enlightenment, not of sin and repentance, like the Jesus of the New Testament. Instead of coming to save us from sin, he comes as a guide who opens access to spiritual understanding. But when the disciple attains enlightenment, Jesus no longer serves as his spiritual master: the two have become equal--even identical."

   Gnostic Christianity Comics

Discussion Questions

• What do you think about gnostic beliefs? 

• Do they make more sense than Christian ones?

• If not, how would you explain evil without using the “part of God’s plan excuse”?

• How do you make sense of a loving God wiping out his creation with a flood, killing firstborns, making parents sacrifice their children to prove their faith?

• Does this make you think deeper about the way you interpret the bible? 

• Do you believe humanity is inherently evil or innocent?