good article ....adding a piece from another source i was reading


"In the Christian Church the 'sacraments' of baptism, confirmation, marriage, the Eucharist (Communion), and so on were attempts to institutionalize gnosis (direct knowledge), and keep people dependent on the grace that only the Church could confer. They replaced the substance with a symbol.

This teaching has in effect cut centuries of Christians off from the possibility of true spiritual development, since the Christian world is socialized to look outside of itself for transformation, for 'salvation'. That image of the Christ returning at some future date, 'coming out of the clouds' to purge the earth and set things right, has led to the pervasive passivity we see in Christians when they face real-life issues of injustice, of racism, of political corruption. "