Selling Jesus to the Romans

This riff by Seth Godin — Think like me, agree with me — gives a good clue to what happened to the early Christian church as it went mainstream.  The only way to go mainstream . . . to appeal to the politicians and the patricians . . . was for the Christian mythos to adapt to the prevailing world-view.  It could not have spread as rapidly as it did if it relied upon people actually changing their ways of thinking.

"The challenge doesn't lie in getting them to know what you know. It won't help. The challenge lies in helping them see your idea through their lens, not yours. If you study the way religions and political movements spread, you can see that this is exactly how it works. Marketers of successful ideas rarely market the facts. Instead, they market stories that match the worldview of the people being marketed to."

The early church father-politicians adopted the Sol Invictus - Mythris Mysteries. By so doing, the Roman Catholic Church became moral successor to the remaining power of the Roman Empire itself.

They did exactly the opposite of what they were told to do.  They did put new wine into old wine skins, and those old skins are exploding like a slow motion train wreck.

Meanwhile, the true teachings of Jesus were handed down by an oral and encoded line of transmission through the centuries in an unbroken chain.

-oOo-

Tom Fox
Louisville, Kentucky

Tom Fox on Facebook