“Never lose sight of it.” Losing sight is what makes thinking all of life is a series of carnival rides does. Not merely enjoying something. And then there are Christ’s words about it not profiting to gain the whole world and losing your own soul. Not a good trade off.
— Shari
It’s interesting how profundists like me and AFKAN are more and more taking Shari’s comments as our starting point. As we say down South, That gal is about half BRIGHT.” I read her summation and it gets my brain into action.
As usual, I am not agreeing with or disagreeing with what she says. There’s too much common (What a misnomer!!) sense in what Shari says to leave any room for disagreement. Good comments provide a springboard. The above statement hit me between the eyes because it reminded me of how professional preachers use Christ’s words as a springboard for them to prove their own importance, their own detailed Biblical knowledge, and how little they read what he said and then THINK about what HE meant.
Take the Lord’s Prayer. We are told that the thing to do is to repeat it endlessly, or, as Jesus said, “Many thin they will achieve salvation by much saying.” But if you look at the context, that is exactly what he was NOT advocating.
What Jesus was saying when he recited the Lord’s Prayer was, “It is enough to call a fish a fist.” He was contrasting what one should say to God to what was being done at the Temple, where endless hours were spent praising God and talking, talking, talking.
No wonder they ended up having to crucify him. Nothing could have been as infuriating to the Temple priesthood as Jesus’s reducing all their endless chants to a simple, bare, stark petition to God for what a person needed while he DID good things. We need bread to keep us going, forgive us IF and to the extent that we do the same for others; provide as few temptations to us weak humans as you can.
One minute long. All those endless hours Temple priests made their living on meant very little.
Then there is the rich young man. How many sermons have been devoted to Jesus’s instructing the young man to give all he had to the poor? They build whole social systems and Marxist Liberation Theology on that. But what Jesus said was, “If you would be PERFECT, sell all you have, give it to the poor, and FOLLOW ME.” Listening to the average sermon you would think the last three words were never spoken.
The question Jesus was answering was NOT, “Lord, what is the ideal socioeconomic system?” The question was, “What must I do to be SAVED?” The answer was, “Follow me, and nothing else.” The man’s property was a detail, and earnest of really abandoning all and following Jesus.
Modern “Christians” intensely dislike the idea that Jesus really meant it when he said “My kingdom is not of this world.” One of the perversions that have destroyed the “Christian” right has been their turning him into a fanatical Israeli nationalist. That was precisely what frustrated the Jews of his own time. The rejection of Zionist nationalism is EXACTLY what Jesus was renouncing when he said, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.”
The Modernists were terribly upset with the idea that Jesus was really as obsessed with the Next Life. Now the “Christian” Right is rejecting that same idea. They are deeply upset at the idea that Jesus was betting everything on the Next Life. How can they keep their dues-paying congregation in church if they don’t give them a Guide to Better Living and Political Truth, and just keep talking about some Next Life?
Sorry, gang, that is what Jesus WAS obsessed with. Every word he said to thetrich young man and to everyone else had nothing to do Political Relevance. When he speaks to us, he speaks of what is needed to save our particular souls. It is altogether personal.
Frankly, I have not the slightest need of one more political philosopher. If Jesus was wrong about the eternal future of the soul, he was openly, totally, gloriously wrong. The woods are full of world view philosophers like me. But Jesus, to use Lawrence Brown’s words, “towers above history” precisely because he had a unique message, a total, uncompromising commitment to the idea that he, and he ALONE, knew how to save my personal soul.
Jesus was that absolutely unique phenomenon, a man who was either totally right or totally wrong. And he put EVERYTHING on the line for it. No Buddha, no Confucius, no Aristotle is fit to tie his shoes in terms of pure moral courage.
#1 by AFKANNow on 05/21/2008 - 1:57 am
Notice something else that so many of the “Christian” organizations tend to miss about Christ:
He was singularly intolerant.
He never forgave ANYBODY, and it was as simple as that; that was His Father’s responsibility.
Intolerant does not begin to describe Him; when He would get down to the brass tacks of teaching, people would say, “This is a hard teaching,” and walk away.
Incidentally, note the implicit vertical component in who He chose to address on what topic.
For instance, He said one thing to a people who needed to be fed bread and fish, and got their attention – or at least that of His Disciples – by the miracle of Creation.
Contrast that with The Lord’s Prayer, which was only given in privacy, and only to His Disciples.
That gets us to “Pearls Before Swine,” but that’s for another time.
#2 by backbaygrouch4 on 05/21/2008 - 6:21 am
“No Buddha, no Confucius, no Aristotle is fit to tie his shoes in terms of pure moral courage.” And where stands Socrates who cheerfully accepted a cup of hemlock rather than abandon the pursuit of truth?
#3 by shari on 05/21/2008 - 10:35 am
I don’t think Socrates laid down his life for others. Nor did any of the above. Christ said “I AM the way, the truth and the life.” Socrates stands with Buddha, Confucius, and Aristotle.
#4 by Dave on 05/21/2008 - 1:02 pm
The world is of full ironies. There is no economic problem in a well-ordered society. There are bees for honey, cows for milk, and orchards for fruit. The stewardship of these is placed in competent hands for those living in the present and for those yet to be born.
The “family”, accordingly, is sustained through descent with an inheritance that grows and is not wasted or dissipated. Marriages are properly supported and capital is properly husbanded so that marriages can succeed and children are raised in security.
But this is not the reality. The reality is the dominion of criminals who see to it that dereliction is officially sanctioned and that ruin is encouraged. Hence “carnival rides”. These criminals have a vested interest in the dissipation of capital because their object is theft, not husbandry.
Look at the “Greatest Generation”, for example. We have been subject to over 65 years of the romanticizing of the violence of WW II. Even where that violence is strongly condemned, it is covered with a patina of romance, the “Holocaust” included.
But what is never confronted is the reality of the dominion of criminals and their evil for that is what WW II really was, a situation where the restraints were entirely lifted from criminals who went about committing crimes without any fear of retribution.
Have you ever heard a member of the “Greatest Generation” mention this? Or mention the fact that the lifting of the restraints upon those with a proclivity toward criminality was universal?
And those members of the” Greatest Generation” who were actually thrown into combat never honestly talked about it, not because of the horrors, but because they were fully aware of the enormity of the crimes that were committed and of their personal subordination and cowardly attitude toward those crimes and toward the criminals committing them.
They in fact recoiled at the romanticizing of the War at home. Nevertheless, it was heresy for them to mention it. They dare not, and did not.
Did Stephen Spielberg ever catch even one little sliver of that truth in his abominable portrayals of “history”?
He did not because Spielberg’s vested interest is in the sanctioning and promotion of dereliction for profit, and the encouragement of ruin, an object he shares with most of the Hollywood film industry.
But the takeaway is this: Evil is for real. Criminals are for real. They hold dominion over large swaths of life. They are widely and officially celebrated and we are forever encouraged to subordinate ourselves to them. It has always been so, and in that, nothing ever seems to change.
#5 by Bob on 05/21/2008 - 2:35 pm
I have never feared death per se. I’ve seen a lot of it. Drinking hemlock is a lot better way to go than most of the ones I have seen.
But going through what Jesus went through, and KNEW he was going to go through, is something else again.
#6 by Pain on 05/24/2008 - 4:32 pm
That’s why Tom Fleming doesn’t like you. You are twice as smart as he is, and when you talk, he loses all self-importance.
The truth is a loaded gun. Remember what Blondy said to Tuco: “There’s two kind of people in the world, my friend; those who hold loaded guns and those who dig. You dig.”
You might say there are two kinds of people in the world, my friend; those who seek the truth and those who want their own self-importance.
People who seek self-importance don’t like digging. And Tom Fleming doesn’t like you (or anybody else really). He makes a living on Southern traditionalists desperate to make friends and loyal to a fault and on Serbs desperate to make friends and loyal to a fault. Y’all keep him safe from Angel Eyes and give him half what you make.