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It is always hazardous to use the word "Christianity" as if it ever in history represented a homogeneous or unvarying teaching. Historically, "Christians" have been notorious for disagreeing about just about everything!
The quirky idea of Augustine, that of "original sin," became popular in orthodoxy, for it forced the people to "need" the organized, official Church. But "original sin" is by no means universal among "Christians."
Among the first Christians, during the first four centuries, they had never heard of it! And even after the fourth century, it was far from universal. (Augustine was born in 354.)
But the basic and true teachings of Jesus, representing the mystical relationship between God and man, including Love, are homogeonizable with the mysticism of all other faiths-- Buddhism, Hinduism, Kabbalism (in Judaism), and Sufism (in Islam). So, the teaching of Love is indeed both universal and permeating among the human spiritual systems that we call "faiths." It is the single mark that identifies universal spirituality.
It is cosmically understandable: Our sisters and brothers from other planetary systems will never be able to figure out Catholicism or the Baptist religion; but Love all can understand!
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Wednesday, June 18, 2008
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