In this column so far, our aim has been to cast scepticism onto common ideas that we are fed. Many ideas that we have come into contact with have been propelled by one authority or another, and most definitely funded by some groups of people, as if human minds are the main subject to be shaped that we should eventually think alike only with different flavours. We aim to rexamine them with scrutiny rather than blind believing.

Christianity has been a common topic on all religious discussions. It is commonly believed that Christianity is about heaven and hell where good people go to heaven and bad people go to hell. It is however, not very true. There is also some misunderstanding about Christianity that it is just a reflavour of Judaism. It can never be more wrong.

Before we dive into specifics of different theologies, we should examine the idea of “legalism”. I would borrow the alignment system from Dragon and Dungeons of Good, Evil, Lawful and Chaotic. Many legalistic religions are of no double Lawful Good. Goodness about helping the weak, or, if I may, becoming benefactors, while Lawfulness is mostly about punishing the malefactors. Goodness and Lawfulness are very different concepts, yet under the umbrella of legalism, they are treated as the same, where Goodness is seen by how much “Evil” you destroy, and “Evil” is defined by how much of the Law someone has violated.

This comes as a direct contrast to a theoretical faith that is about forgiveness, absolution and simply bestrowed grace.

In the perspective of legalistic faiths, grace is a reward for good behaviours. There is no forgiveness and all sins must be punished. There is no absolution, only redemption that you must perform something in order to become clean again.

And this is exactly what Jesus preached in opposite, and thus giving birth to Christianity, and it was where he earned the ire of the Chief Priest and later died on a scheme by the Chief Priest and the Elders.

The faith that Jesus Christ preached was about absolution and unconditional love. Basically it means that the blood of this innocent man has already washed away all sins committed my men and no more good behaviours are required to go to heaven. Heaven and hell then do not exist as instruments of reward and punishment, where the legalistic faith will disagree.

Why should we talk about Christianity at all? Because it stands as the main obstacle of the legalistic secular faith that we are seeing run rampant today.

Legalism is the one single biggest faith of humanity right at this very moment. Grab any person from the street and ask them some moral questions, judgement and punishment are usually main themes of their answers. Some people who display no violent tendency would even include violent details on possible punishments against the malefactors in vivid details just to add emotional values to the narratives, as if justifying themselves as if under perpetual scrutiny, that if you are not angry enough about our common enemies, you’re a malefactor sympathiser.

Most of the social movements are not empowerment of the victims, but empowerment of the accusers, where accusations without trials and whistleblowing are encouraged. All point towards legalism being the world’s biggest institutionalised religion right now.

The core faith of Christianity however talks nothing of legalism and punishment. The 3 greatest commandments are to spread, to teach and to baptise. Paulus, the biggest proponant of the early Christianity in the Hellenic world, which was basically the lands administered by the Roman Empire, had made very clear instructions to the early Christians to not judge others, and that redemption comes from grace instead of from good behaviours. It was later established that there being a concept of a Just Judge as seen in various funeral hymns, that any man shall be judged by the only one Just Judge, referring to the omniscient God.

In terms of logic, who can be a Just Judge at all? If the judge has any knowledge that he does not possess, it is a possibility that he will misjudge. And therefore by logic only an omniscient being is capable of becoming a Just Judge, and thus humans are never the perpetually correct judges of others.

And this speaks a direct contrast to legalism. Legalism demands the society being made of individuals who share some common values to judge individuals, condemning certain behaviours to hell.

what are “Laws” in the first place though? Laws are codes to forbid individuals from certain behaviours. A Law cannot punish what it doesn’t forbit. And a Law must be practiced by a jurisdiction with a set of punishment should the code of conducts has been breached. As we have been tasked to maintain societies in habitable conditions, public order should be kept and authorities are given leave to conduct trials and punishments with a lot of precautions, like Praesumptio Innocentiae (presumption of innocence), to prevent misjudgements, and punishments are only instruments to maintain public orders. However, legalism demands severe punishment, some kind of “universal jurisdiction” that all members of the public hold power to judge, and loose definitions of punishable crimes in order to eliminate all who are not compliant to the social norm, even to a point of Praesumptio Noxiae (presumption of harm).

As legalism is the perfect weapon to maintain ideological homogeneity, it has been used to filter out incompliant voices. As ideas are hard to determine without going deep into trains of thoughts and understanding cognitively what the person is actually thinking, keywords are codified as the behavioural offenses that are easy to identify. In a social setting, if a person is continuously harassing another person with kicks and bag slams, bystanders usually do not go out of their way to accuse but would try to pacify the offender from the victim to seperate them from continuing the injuries. However, if a keyword such as a racial slur is uttered, the public will instantenously become agitated that they must stand firm to punish the person who has spoken a forbidden word, as if none of the physical contacts against the victim have been more severe than a word uttered. “Racism” has been weaponised to punish, and keywords are the main offenses as words now equate racial pogrom and ethnic clensing.

The “Yeast of the Pharisaioi” had been warned against by Jesus Christ in the Gospel of Mark. We can understand the yeast represents legalism.

A capable theologist will be able to explain to you what Covenants of Abraham, Moses and the New Covenants are about. The one faith Christianity is about is never the faith of legalism as it has never been commanded to be performed by the Christians.

Some seeds of legalism has infiltrated Christianity and subtly changed the teachings of Christianity to be more leaning to legalism. It is yet another deep rabbit hole to dive into.

“The Abrahamic faiths” are a notion raised by certain unknown group of people who try to paint Christianity in a more legalistic colour. It is however the very thing Jesus Christ warned us about.

And in the end times, certain things will happen. The Book of Revelation is a worthy read. And there are some people who push forwards the Apocalypse. And the true identities of them? We do not know. But they are legalists who Jesus referred to as the Pharisaioi and Herod in the Gospel of Mark.