Revision: After posting this on Tuesday, I pulled it Wednesday morning because I was upset with how the post turned out. After some thought, I have a few ideas on how, why and where I went wrong.

A couple years ago I read a book by John Shelby Spong that changed my life. Spong is (or was) an Episcopalian bishop. The book is called A New Christianity for a New World: Why Traditional Faith Is Dying and How a New Faith Is Being Born. This book outlined information that I had never read about the bible and Christianity. To make a long story short, it completely deconstructed my faith and idea of how the world works. For a number of years following I was left with… nothing. Only over the last two years have I begun to reconstruct my ideas on God, life and love. The reason the book had such an immense affect on me is because I thought horizontal or linear—modern. The book was a crash course in vertical thinking.

Two weeks ago I watched the documentary Zeitgeist. This film is sensational. It is strongly based on finding the truth that is being hidden from us. To save us from being lambs or mindless. The films website strongly requests the viewers question everything and not to take the film as truth either. The film is really, in my opinion, just a conspiracy film. The film is based in modernism.

Modernism is a trend of thought that affirms the power of human beings to create, improve, and reshape their environment, with the aid of scientific knowledge, technology and practical experimentation, and is thus in its essence both progressive and optimistic.

Zeitgesit means spirit of the age (per Wikipedia). The spirit of this age, per the film, is based on fear and conspiracy. Everyone wants to keep us in fear. The church, the news, the government and the banks and at least some of them are giving us real reasons—9/11 and the following wars—to keep us in fear.

I do not have the education to argue with their theory that explosives were placed in the twin towers and that the U.S. was really behind the 9/11 attacks. They have a lot of convincing evidence or at least it seems that way. It also seems like Benny Hinn is really healing people on his TV show. It’s really easy to make an idea seem believable when you don’t offer any counter-evidence. Especially when you prey upon peoples hopes and desires.

The first section of the film argues that Christianity is just a tool to control the public. The church is a money-making machine. It is an opiate. Ah! Now this isn’t physics or architecture or science. This is something I know about. The film uses similar information to what Spong used in his book.

The film begins to point out that the major Judeo-Christian stories all resemble other myths. Specifically how it follows astrological seasons and the myth of the sun god Horus. Or the similarities between Noah and Gilgamesh. Or the similarities to the popular birth narrative of Jesus. There is the star, three magi, born in a manger. The film documents a list of other myths that use those exact events. This is very threatening to the linear, horizontal and modern version of the bible. This is similar to the Jesus Seminar’s attempt to understand who the real Jesus was. Once you understand this real truth then that negates the necessity for faith or the church or God. Right?

Well, if you are modernist, then maybe it is. If you see the world in a straight line that does not deviate. I guess so. But do we really exist in such a simple world that is so easily based in dichotomies? I would argue that we do not. Before I go any further, let me add that the film only uses information that benefits the theory it is putting forward. It leaves out information that might be damaging to it’s argument. When it compares Judaism to other earlier myths it doesn’t add how Judaism was the first to have a monotheistic God and not a pantheon of them. Or that the New Testament, of the Christian bible, contains four birth narratives that are individually unique and not just the most common one.

What the film leaves out is important, but it is not the most important. The most important part is that the bible or any sacred text is a work that is neither linear nor horizontal. It is not a science text book. It is not historical annal. But a living text that changes and grows with its readership. It is a book that directs us to beyond ourselves and into ourselves. It is a symbol, a myth and a paradox. It contains errors and it contains God. It is not The Truth, but directs us to that truth. It is a story. And there is nothing wrong with telling the same story, even if we just change it slightly, in order that we keep getting to where we want to go.

I can’t answer questions around 9/11 that this film puts forward. I can tell you that the context in which it delivers it’s message on those that believe is dangerous and limited. I don’t deny that bad things have and do happen both outside and inside the walls of the church. It would be foolish to think that we are all being duped and/or that nothing good comes from it.

There has been a lot of modernist-hate on this blog lately. I think that approach, if taken further than a joke, is inappropriate. However, it is equally inappropriate to not recognize that there is more than just modernist thought and, when it comes to matters of faith, modernism is highly unequipped.

I would recommend this film. It got me thinking.