Mark ( our commenter, not the Book) says:
“Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls; for My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.” Matt. xi. 29, 30.
I’ve wondered how the church could justify their lust for self sacrifice in light of this scripture.
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Mark, the trick is so obvious you miss it.
Fifty or a hundfred thousand years ago some caveman shaman made a wonderful discovery. Instead of speaking for himself, he said he spoke for God. He found that people who would not listen to him would listen to God.
And he discovered that, if you are God’s spokesman, it is just as good as BEING God.
Better. If you are obviously wrong, you can just say you misinterpreted God’s Words. But nobody can get you for that, because you are the only one who can talk to God at all.
When a prince owed them money, a pope would routinely put the prince’s hundred thousand subjects under the interdict. Terrified old people were denied the last sacraments, the sacraments essential to salvation. How could a man who called himself a Christian do this over money?
Very simply. It was not money owed to HIM, it was money the prince owed to GOD.
How many times have you heard a “Christian” pronounce some variant of the following words:
“You can insult me all you want to, but I will not allow you to insult GOD.”
With that simple and age-old dodge, a person can justify ANYTHING. So the parents gave their children up to a life of suffering in a strict monastery or convent for the Sake of God. They give themselves up to misery for the Sake of God.
“…and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
That’s pretty clear. But there is an easy way around it. “Christians” say that Jesus did NOT say, “and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who offend our idea of God.”
So today’s self-styled Christians almost invariably are totally unforgiving, but only inthe name of God and for the Sake of God.
The Temple priests who caused Jesus to be crucified followed that version of Christianity to the letter.
The Temple priests never said they wanted Jesus tortured to death because he had offended THEM. They said exactly what “Christians” have said ever since: They wanted Jesus crucified because he had offended GOD. Jesus was a trouble-maker. Jesus was a danger to the True Religion and would lead others into the Pit of Sheol.
A person who takes responsibilty for his own actions, as Jesus demanded that we do, has definite limits on what he can do to another human being. A person speaking in the Name of God has no such limitations. The crueler he is the more it proves his dedicaton to True Religion.
We have an exact duplication of that thinking among today’s whites who consider it a virtue to hate the white race. What could be more moral, more Christian, than sacrificing one’s own race for the sake of others, for the sake of God?
I quoted a Methodist bishop who said exactly that last sentence in in 1955 as part of his demand for integration. Everybody understood integration meant the end of hte white race, and he said it was a sacrifice we had to be willing to make For The Sake of God.
What could be more holy than to give up every natural feeling of loyalty to your own people for God’s sake?
So if that bishop was right. what could be more holy than violating every other natural feeling?
Look at that last sentence. It comes directly from the thinking behind handing one’s newborn baby over to a monastery in the Middle Ages. What could more holy than to give up every natural feeling and subject your own child to a lifetime of exhaustion, starvation and self-hatred in a monastery FOR GOD’S SAKE?
Look at that last paragraph. What could be more holy than to subject YOURSELF to a lifetime of hunger and exhaustion and deprivation FOR GOD’S SAKE?
All you have to do is put that little twist to The Lord’s Prayer.
Which was exactly the thing that Jesus kept telling people NOT to do.
Which is why people exactly like today’s Old Testament Christians put Jesus on the cross.
#1 by Elizabeth on 09/29/2005 - 12:18 pm
I lost my comment before I finished, so here’s another try:
There were few differences between life in the Middle Ages in a castle or in a
monastery or convent, and most monks and nuns were children of the nobility. (There
were servants in the monastery and the convent: these weren’t technically monks
or nuns, but they were all under obedience to the abbot or abbess.)
The really strict monasteries and convents didn’t last long: it never took long
for one of these to slip. Most monasteries and convents were closer to a 19th
or early 20th century boarding school or college. (Co-ed education is comparatively new
except here in the U.S.) Being cold and miserable was something everyone in the
Middle Ages could easily experience, and not having enough to eat was pretty routine
in pre-modern Europe. (Having plenty to eat most or all of the time was one of the
early selling points to get Europeans to cross the Atlantic to North America.)
#2 by Elizabeth on 09/29/2005 - 12:25 pm
As for the middle class — middle class boys might get to go the university
and get into the priesthood. Middle class folks generally didn’t get to be
monks or nuns until pretty late in the Middle Ages because it took a lot of
money or land to get a monastery or convent to take your small kid and educate
him or her for the several years before they could be a full-fledged member of
the community. Both the middle class and the nobility found convents handy places
to put extra, handicapped, or ugly daughters, or for parents who were REALLY
convinced no man would be good enough for little what’s-her-name.
#3 by joe rorke on 09/29/2005 - 6:28 pm
It’s absolutely amazing to me what people who call themselves “christians” will do. The thing that did it for me was when I saw so many people who called themselves “christians” wrap their cars in the American flag and do everything they could to support mass murder. Of course, I’m talking about Iraq. I could not then and I cannot now imagine Jesus Christ saying, “lock and load, boys, we’re gonna dust some ragheads today!” I just can’t imagine it. The Divine Physician. The Gentle Jesus. The Bread of Life. The True Vine. I can’t accept it. I’ve lost my religion.
#4 by Rocko on 09/30/2005 - 7:11 pm
I think Bob and joe rorke have missed a crucial point here, and have adopted a sort of “magical” view of Christianity, that somehow the fact that people have been hypocrites in every era and civilized society somehow shows that Christianity is false. That is very poor reasoning.
The Sermon on the Mount is a sermon against hypocrisy. Jesus constantly condemned the leaders of his day as hypocrites. His most important (at least recorded) sermon is focused on that. As Bob has often said, when he figures something out that makes real sense, he realizes Jesus said it better already.
Jesus said “By their fruit ye shall know them”. It is fine to moan about how bad so many “Christians” are, and condemn the whole thing, if you just ignore the plain teaching that Jesus himself pointed out. Why do you think he kept repeating the point? Obviously He knew it would be a big problem.
joe rorke is right, that the warmonger attitude is not a result of what Jesus taught. How does that invalidate Him? Just because Bob’s spelling is poor, that doesn’t invalidate the English language. It is Bob that is at fault, not the language.
Bob uses a phrase, “Old Testament Christians” to say what Jesus said more simply, that is “hypocrites”. Almost everything Jesus said came straight out of the Old Testament, so does that make him an “Old Testament Savior”?
“He is my brother and my sister who does the will of my Father”, said Christ. There it is again. If they don’t do the will of His Father, then what does that mean? It isn’t complicated.