Sometime during the third century a group of outcast Christians who called themselves Gnostics, a word that means knowledge or acquaintance, buried papyrus scrolls of their sacred documents so that the "orthodox" Christians would not destroy them. Those documents, discovered in 1946 at Nag Hammadi in Egypt, disclose a kind of Christianity that is different from the Catholic/Protestant religion based upon the "orthodox" New Testament, and reveal an approach that may, in fact, be as old if not older than what is now called Christianity.
This Gnostic Christianity invites people to seek
within themselves a deeper sense of self that leads ultimately to the
revelation that within each of us is a "True Self" that is a
spark of divinity. Within this "True Self" God is known. In the
Gnostic approach, the world is not viewed as a good place that was driven
into sin by the acts of human beings, but rather is a place that lacks the
fullness of love and moral sense that is at the heart of the divine. It is
not so much that human beings are sinners, but that the world itself is
deficient, and only when one touches their innermost "True Self"
does serenity and love truly become known to each person. For Gnostic
Christians, Jesus Christ is a revealer of this "True Self" that
is divine, and leads people into an awakening of their true nature.
In the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas Jesus says: "...if
you do not become acquainted with yourselves, then you are in poverty, and
it is you who are the poverty." The core issue is--what do you know
about you? After all, if you don't know yourself who you walk with
everyday, how can you presume to know God who you have never seen or
touched, and exists in ways that only your "True Self" can tell
you. That is the essence of true spirituality - not just a religion!
Gnostic Christianity is not just the same old
Christian concepts repackaged. It is an approach to spirituality that is
radically different from the common Christianity that is in churches all
around the country. Gnostic Christianity expands the Bible to include
other Gospels such as The Gospel of Thomas, The Gospel of Truth, and The
Gospel of Philip - each as old as the New Testament witness, but from a
different perspective. The emphasis is not on doctrine or dogma, but
rather on self-exploration and awakening oneself to a deeper spiritual
reality.
If you have ever thought that perhaps religion has
been more about control and power than about truth, then perhaps you are a
"closet gnostic". Gnostic Christianity was up-rooted in the
early centuries because it spoke against oppressive ecclesiastical forms
and the dominant "atonement theology" that is practiced in "orthodox"
Christianity. Today, just as almost two thousand years ago, Gnostic
Christianity stands outside of Catholicism and all the various forms of
Protestantism - evangelical, mainline, liberal and fundamentalism - as a
resurrected voice that speaks of a different way, with beautiful and
sacred writings that tell of a Christianity that may have been much closer
to the heart of Jesus than anything that has been seen in many centuries.
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