Another Euro Traveler Who Never Heard of "Assyrians" |
Posted by
pancho
(Moderator)
- Monday, March 16 2009, 20:34:40 (CET) from *** - *** Non-Profit Organizations - Windows XP - Mozilla Website: Website title: |
In 1925, Americans William and Katie Seabrook traveled through Iraq and Arabia. They visited Baghdad and Mosul, met with Christians, Armenians, Kurds, Arabs, Turks, Dervishes and Yezidis...yet not a single “Assyrian”. This could be because the Nestorians had not yet begun to clamor for “their indigenous rights as Assyrians” scam. They do mention Nineveh and Assyrian excavations then ongoing, as well as Assyrian artifacts...but not a word about meeting any Assyrians, or anyone claiming to be related to the ancient Assyrians. Seated with a sheikh of the Dervishes he is told the following... “’Speaking of Christianity,’ he said, ‘it contains many beautiful truths, but also a great error. There is not one single, straight and narrow path to God. There are many paths of infinite number’. He took a napkin and twisted it round a sugar bowl so that it made a little cone-shaped mountain, which he invited me to consider. ‘We will suppose’, he said, ‘that the peak, the mountaintop, stands for Unity or God. And we will suppose, all round the wide base of the mountain, men who wish to attain the peak. From any spot at the base, the direction to the top is not north, south, east or west; it is upward. But the mountain is too steep for any mortal to climb straight upward; so here are some journeying eastward, and others westward, by winding paths, that mount gradually higher and higher. A party traveling east meets a party traveling west. ‘Whiter?’ each asks the other party. ‘To God!’ both cry. And then, if they have not wisdom, each cries to the other” ‘You are lost. Come, face about, and go with us.’ And then, alas, my friend, they dispute and condemn, not knowing in their unwisdom that all paths lead to God if they mount only upward.” And now I think I understand better what finally put the nail into Christianity’s coffin. I think the wrenching experience of the Protestant Reformation was the last straw in teaching Christians murderous intolerance...from which the religion suffered from its very beginning. But the Reformation led Christians to despise one another like nothing had yet. For these slight and petty distinctions, even more perhaps than the Christological battles of the 4th and 5th centuries, Christians resorted to murder and torture and all manner of heinous crimes committed against their OWN kind. For this reason, more than any other religion, Christians have become the most intolerant of all...because they had to become insane enough to murder even the children of “heretics”. To them there HAD to be only one way and that had to be THEIR way, by now defined in the most narrow and uncompromising of ways. Even if any reasonable person could see that this was no way for ANY religious and spiritual person to behave, the Christian had left himself no option but to carry on his insane path....HIS path...the only allowable one. The Reformation split the Church in two...and then in several more pieces. Religion became a game of numbers, of adherents, of money, of bodies. Serious defections left the Church poorer, in followers, power and wealth...and the new sects were as determined that their way had to be the new and only way, else they could not maintain themselves. Christianity “spread” through intolerance from then on...and intolerance will be the death of it...and thank God. Kindness, love, gentleness, generosity, patience, good will....all will survive the death of Christianity....even as they all suffered through Christianity. The essential goodness of the human bean will survive Christianity...but Christianity cannot survive the goodness of the human heart....because ultimately we have been moving away from intolerance...much to the Church’s dismay. Even though we’ve suffered a mad spurt of Christian-led intolerance for the past few decades...it is more a sign that Christianity is reaching its endgame than that it is really in “revival”. The wars in Israel and Palestine are the result of Christian intolerance, nothing more. Both in the murder of innocent Jews and the rape of Palestine supposedly to make it up to the Jews who survived Christian intolerance. It was not something either Jew or Muslim sought. Glory Hallelujah and Amen too. --------------------- |
The full topic:
|
*** |