Oscar Pfister. Christianity and fear (№ 430007)

In the arsenal of theology, I was looking for a weapon for holy war; I was looking for means by which the Gospel idea of ​​salvation could triumph in the souls of those who had lost their strength and succumbed to temptation - and would return the lost, broken, sick to the right path ... Neither historical, nor systematic, nor practical theology, taken separately, did not correspond this much needed requirement. In all ages, the Church was to be illuminated with the spirit of Christian love; she was called to give people this love and make them instruments of divine love - but in fact, in her history, the trace of such efforts is almost negligible, despite the examples of many whom love has transformed, and many who dedicated their lives to deeds in her name. Endless disputes about dogmas - cruel, fanatical, filled with hatred, and the more powerful, the more petty, insignificant and further from the understanding of love was their subject; disputes about the forms of worship, which were given magical power; fear, striking to the shiver of any believer, when he understood that his own conscience tells him to depart from the church charter - and thereby deprive his soul of salvation; a fierce hatred of heretics, who, knowing the Bible and faith, willy-nilly rejected old beliefs and adherence to church dogma, even if they attributed such deviations to satanic tricks; questions of power, money and law, resolved in spite of the gospel - all of this, as I found out, was much more concerned than the task of translating divine and human love into life. In an effort to prove that they better understood and embodied the religion of love, some Christians smashed the heads of other Christians who also served Jesus and wanted to be His disciples; often entire nations were involved. People killed, robbed, raged more mercilessly than beasts of prey - in the name of the One who died on the cross out of love and by death bore witness to the message of love brought by Him. Of course, there are many testimonies of sincere love and true piety in church history. And yet, if the criterion announced by Jesus in the Gospel of John becomes the yardstick, it will be that according to which disciples are recognized by mutual love, and not by subtle differences in dogmas; if it becomes His main commandment about man's love for God, his neighbor and himself; if they are the words of the Apostle Paul, who put love above faith and hope (1 Cor. 13:13), then the history of the Christian religion is more like a monstrous misunderstanding or an abnormal deviation from true Christianity. Dogmatic theology and its history, with their ruthless adherence to irrational dogmas that have nothing to do with love, seemed to me to be a roundabout maneuver undertaken with one goal: to bypass the main point of Jesus' preaching and demands. I saw how the Gospel and the doctrines of the Church horrified people, for any doubt about them threatened to be burned at the stake and in hellish flames; I compared it to the careless contempt with which the love of Christ was trampled upon; and I considered it as straining a mosquito and swallowing a camel.