christmas 2023 the church of the buddha christ

Sun Dec 24, 2023 3:42 pm

i woke up this morning and i thought about attending church due to Christmas but it was raining heavily this morning so i decided to stay in. I knew it would as i watched the weather forecast yesterday. Mostly i go to share the Christmas spirit. I am listening to Christmas instrumental music in the background.

when i was younger i had originally wondered why when it came to superheros, for example, you might see x-men wolverine with spiderman, and batman with superman or wonderwoman, but never wolverine with batman for example.

or star wars luke skywalker and han solo crossed over with star trek captain kirk or mr spoke. could mr spoke be seduced by the dark side with his hyper logical approach?

I now know that x-men and spiderman are from one company Marvel and batman and superman are from another, DC. there have been cross over comics.

there of course is fan fiction for example, crossing over star wars with star trek. you can write your own story say with the borg wanting to assimilate the star wars universe, or with say batman fighting wolverine.

with that in mind i know there are buddist temples, and christian churches. but why not a church of the buddha christ

my basic outline would be select readings from buddhism with the bible new testament and gospels. both would have to be modified.

buddhism is considered mostly nontheistic, at least in its most common forms. buddha did not deny the existence of the many gods of hinduism, but did not think they were relevant to Enlightment. in in buddhism and in hinduism there is karma and reincarnation

in christianity there is 1 creator god, and there is salvation in accepting jesus, to pay for sins, and there is just 1 life and it ends in heaven or hell.

so there has to be some thought on how to combine this. my initial thoughts would be to say that buddha is akin to the old testament in mainstream christianity, where buddha says how to achieve enlightment, but that no one can do so as buddha describes. and that christ's teachings complete buddha's, by showing the true god that brings salvation. so both are true and each compliment the other, of course there has to be selection as to which doctrines are accepted and rejected for both.i don't know how you would explain evil and suffering in this framework. but the christian explanation that god has an adversary the devil, who does all the bad things and so its not god's fault, makes no sense since god is omnipotent can simply eliminate the devil.

paul does make some nice statements but his ultimate theology that with Adam came sin into the world, and with christ sin debt is paid, needs to be done away with.

my thoughts is as i am most familiar with christianity, is to have basic follow the church model, with once a week on sunday, maybe praise nights on friday or saturday, with a church that has a scripture of texts, and both christian and buddhist art. maybe a statue of buddha and jesus on the cross.

by eliminating the old testament, among other benefits, is that this buddha christ church can accept standard science and evolution, which was an issue for me personally. my church rejected the theory of evolution in favor of creationism. there were discussions between young earth creationism vs old earth creationism, but either way evolution which is taught in schools is rejected. also there's a lot of killing going on in the old testament.



i know now that you can have any kind of religion you want, it is protected as a basic human right, the First Amendment in the USA. the issue of course is getting people to show up every week, and fork over money and recruit new followers and have babies and raise them. there's also divisive social issues like abortion and LGBT. and i also know thanks to Gallup polls that compared to the 1970s there has been a very large decline of religious attendance. so if no one shows up there's no religion. plenty of business are open on sunday, plenty of people don't go to church on sunday.


ultimately its religious people who are the consumers and who finance any religion. and plenty of churches have gone out of business. getting christians in the usa, and perhaps buddhist in asian countries to give up their churches to switch to this one is a very tall task, something mormons and jehovah witness and muslims have had very limited success in.