In the Middle Ages, when a man with money got tired of life, he committed suicide with the blessings of the Church.
We all know that not only was suicide a mortal sin in the eyes of the Medieval Church, but a person who committed suicide could not be given a Christian burial. In fact, one of the ways a person became a vampire was to commit suicide and rise from the dead.
But the Church approved of suicide if it was done right. When a Benedictine monk took his final vows, he was accorded burial rites. He became “dead to this world.”
If a wealthy man got tired of living, he was given church rites and buried alive. A priest accompanied him to his burial place. He was put in a hole and food and water were provided through a hole in the grave.
I said “a man with money” because he had to get the tomb dug, pay for the rites, and pay for the supply of food and water.
For the man buried alive death was not long in coming, but it was a Holy Death. He was assured of salvation.
Poor Origen! Origen lived in the fourth century and he was one of the greatest religious writers and teachers and theologians in history. But he was never allowed to become a priest and he has been damned by the Church.
The Church kept insisting that the highest virtue was sterility. St. Paul said, “It is better to marry than to burn,” but the best of all was chastity. Then poor Origen read these words from Jesus, which he quoted but I cannot find:
“Blessed are those who make eunuchs of themselves in my name.”
So Origen, following the teachings of Paul and what he took to be the teachings of Christ, got a knife and made a eunuch of himself. He spent the rest of his life being persecuted by the Church. He was denied ordination as a priest, he was excommunicated by his bishop.
But Origen kept founding new schools of theology and was too valuable to be ignored. Other bishops allowed him to serve, but none would ordain him.
Like suicide, being a eunuch was the holiest thing possible, but it had to be done right.
Jimmy Carter almost lost the presidency in 1976 because of a similar error. Jesus said that when a married man looked on another woman he had committed adultery in his heart. Carter quoted that to a Playboy reporter during the 1976 campaign and said he had committed adultery in his heart many times. His poll ratings collapsed.
CS Lewis, the great Christian writer, as an old man, said that God could let him live a lot longer, but he wished God would call him soon. That is committing suicide in your heart, but it is no sin.
I discussed the movie “The Believer,” where a young Jew was so outraged by the Judeo-Christian admiration of Job that he became a Nazi. In case you haven’t heard the story, God and Satan were talking about this guy Job who loved the Lord with all his heart.
Satan told God that Job only loved God because he was rich and healthy and had a nice family. So God killed Job’s family, took away all his possessions, and made Job sick and hated. And Job loved Jehovah anyway!
Jehovah showed old Satan what was what!
There is nothing wrong with killing a man’s family if Jehovah does it to win a bet.
And this, to my mind, is what is meant by Judeo-Christianity. It has no Jesus reducing all those commandments to two. It has LOTS and LOTS and LOTS of theology, but no RELIGION.
When the Spanish Conquistadores took over Mexico City, the Aztecs desperately sacrificed four
thousand prisoners to their god in a matter of a few hours to get them to drive the Spaniards out. They cut their victims’ hearts out and rolled their bodies down those great stairs this Great Civilization had built.
Only a few decades ago, the official line was the Aztecs did not practice human sacrifice at all. But this line was abandoned when thousands of skeletons appeared at the base of those Greatly Civilized steps, so historians declared that the Aztec priests could not have cut out THAT MANY hearts as fast as the Spaniards said they did.
So some doctors tested the theory.
Some doctors made realistic dolls and tried cutting out the hearts with the speed the Aztec priests would have had to have. They used the old stone knives of the Great Civilization of the Aztecs. At first they thought the historians were right for a change. It couldn’t be done that fast.
Then the doctors thought about it, used another technique and found out it was easy.
They were not the pros the Wise Men of the Great Civilization were, so they had to rediscover this ancient, sophisticated and lost technique.
The doctors may have been lost in the required Politically Correct admiration of the genius of this Lost Civilization. Everybody is always lost in admiration of the sophistication of all non-white civilizations.
The Spaniards, on the other hand, were appalled by this Aztec slaughter.
The Spaniards worshiped human sacrifice, too, but this was the wrong kind. There were tens of thousands of boys and girls who had been committed to monasteries and convents in Spain at birth and dedicated to a life of self-torture and sterility, but that was the right kind of human sacrifice. Those children were aging and dying and suffering and stinking in silence and behind walls.
The Aztecs were rolling their sacrifices down the stairs, on the Aztec equivalent of national television.
We have the same morality today. You can’t execute man, and you certainly can’t perform a public execution, but you can lock him quietly in a steel cage for the rest of his life.
Or you can let him out to go kill some more human sacrifices on the streets. As long as nobody is executed on television, and the bloody corpses of the killer’s victims are not shown on television, the whole thing is just fine.
Judeo-Christianity is alive and well!
#1 by H.S. on 05/03/2005 - 11:59 pm
For it to be considered under the Judeo-Christian label, we can expect you to find it in their Bible.
In the Middle Ages, when a man with money got tired of life, he committed suicide with the blessings of the Church.
NOT IN THE BIBLE
We all know that not only was suicide a mortal sin in the eyes of the Medieval Church, but a person who committed suicide could not be given a Christian burial. In fact, one of the ways a person became a vampire was to commit suicide and rise from the dead.
NOT IN THE BIBLE
But the Church approved of suicide if it was done right. When a Benedictine monk took his final vows, he was accorded burial rites. He became “dead to this world.”
NOT IN THE BIBLE
If a wealthy man got tired of living, he was given church rites and buried alive. A priest accompanied him to his burial place. He was put in a hole and food and water were provided through a hole in the grave.
NOT IN THE BIBLE
I said “a man with money” because he had to get the tomb dug, pay for the rites, and pay for the supply of food and water.
NOT IN THE BIBLE
For the man buried alive death was not long in coming, but it was a Holy Death. He was assured of salvation.
NOT IN THE BIBLE
Poor Origen! Origen lived in the fourth century and he was one of the greatest religious writers and teachers and theologians in history. But he was never allowed to become a priest and he has been damned by the Church.
NOT IN THE BIBLE
The Church kept insisting that the highest virtue was sterility. St. Paul said, “It is better to marry than to burn,” but the best of all was chastity. Then poor Origen read these words from Jesus, which he quoted but I cannot find:
“Blessed are those who make eunuchs of themselves in my name.”
NOT IN THE BIBLE AS SUCH, but each of those separate words does occur there but not in that combination under Jesus’ upbraiding the Pharisees, and reiterating that remarriage after a divorce was not allowed unless it were an illegal marriage to start with (mixed race, homosexual, incestuous, polygamous) in His “Sermon on the Mount.” You exclude Paul’s very specific context.
So Origen, following the teachings of Paul and what he took to be the teachings of Christ, got a knife and made a eunuch of himself. He spent the rest of his life being persecuted by the Church. He was denied ordination as a priest, he was excommunicated by his bishop.
NOT IN THE BIBLE
But Origen kept founding new schools of theology and was too valuable to be ignored. Other bishops allowed him to serve, but none would ordain him.
Author Opinion
Like suicide, being a eunuch was the holiest thing possible, but it had to be done right.
NOT IN THE BIBLE
Jimmy Carter almost lost the presidency in 1976 because of a similar error. Jesus said that when a married man looked on another woman he had committed adultery in his heart. Carter quoted that to a Playboy reporter during the 1976 campaign and said he had committed adultery in his heart many times. His poll ratings collapsed.
MISQUOTED AND DELIBERATLY OUT OF ITS COMPARATIVE CONTEXT, SET CAREFULLY BY JESUS, FROM THE BIBLE: 28 “But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust [“to have very strong coveting for/strong seeking of forbidden things”] for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
CS Lewis, the great Christian writer, as an old man, said that God could let him live a lot longer, but he wished God would call him soon. That is committing suicide in your heart, but it is no sin.
Author [Bob] Opinion – Suicide is causing your own death intentionally, for oneself, voluntarily. There is No such thing as Suicide by God as we all know of Suicide by Cop, you MIS-represent Mr. Lewis and many others including the Apostle Paul.
I discussed the movie “The Believer,” where a young Jew was so outraged by the Judeo-Christian admiration of Job that he became a Nazi. In case you haven’t heard the story, God and Satan were talking about this guy Job who loved the Lord with all his heart.
STATED IN THE BIBLE
Satan told God that Job only loved God because he was rich and healthy and had a nice family. So God killed Job’s family, took away all his possessions, and made Job sick and hated. And Job loved Jehovah anyway!
MIS-QUOTED FROM THE BIBLE
Jehovah showed old Satan what was what!
Author [Bob] Interpretive Opinion: This Blog is All About the Author and His Opinions
There is nothing wrong with killing a man’s family if Jehovah does it to win a bet.
Author [Bob] Interpretive Opinion: This Blog is All About the Author and His Opinions
And this, to my mind, is what is meant by Judeo-Christianity. It has no Jesus reducing all those commandments to two. It has LOTS and LOTS and LOTS of theology, but no RELIGION.
NOT IN THE BIBLE – Jesus *summarized* all his total commandments and identified the top two which headed all vertical (to God) and all horizontal (to other men) laws. ONLY ONE OF ALL THE ABOVE ITEMS WAS ACTUALLY IN THE BIBLE….
When the Spanish Conquistadores took over Mexico City, the Aztecs desperately sacrificed four thousand prisoners to their god in a matter of a few hours to get them to drive the Spaniards out. They cut their victims’ hearts out and rolled their bodies down those great stairs this Great Civilization had built.
TRUST BOB’S HISTORY SOURCES OR LOOK IT UP
Only a few decades ago, the official line was the Aztecs did not practice human sacrifice at all. But this line was abandoned when thousands of skeletons appeared at the base of those Greatly Civilized steps, so historians declared that the Aztec priests could not have cut out THAT MANY hearts as fast as the Spaniards said they did.
So some doctors tested the theory.
Some doctors made realistic dolls and tried cutting out the hearts with the speed the Aztec priests would have had to have. They used the old stone knives of the Great Civilization of the Aztecs. At first they thought the historians were right for a change. It couldn’t be done that fast.
Then the doctors thought about it, used another technique and found out it was easy.
They were not the pros the Wise Men of the Great Civilization were, so they had to rediscover this ancient, sophisticated and lost technique.
The doctors may have been lost in the required Politically Correct admiration of the genius of this Lost Civilization. Everybody is always lost in admiration of the sophistication of all non-white civilizations.
The Spaniards, on the other hand, were appalled by this Aztec slaughter.
The Spaniards worshiped human sacrifice, too, but this was the wrong kind. There were tens of thousands of boys and girls who had been committed to monasteries and convents in Spain at birth and dedicated to a life of self-torture and sterility, but that was the right kind of human sacrifice. Those children were aging and dying and suffering and stinking in silence and behind walls.
TRUST BOB’S HISTORY SOURCES OR LOOK IT UP
The Aztecs were rolling their sacrifices down the stairs, on the Aztec equivalent of national television.
We have the same morality today. You can’t execute man, and you certainly can’t perform a public execution, but you can lock him quietly in a steel cage for the rest of his life.
Or you can let him out to go kill some more human sacrifices on the streets. As long as nobody is executed on television, and the bloody corpses of the killer’s victims are not shown on television, the whole thing is just fine.
TRUE, AND A SHAME IT IS – THAT IS WHY ALL BIBLICAL EXECUTIONS WERE PUBLIC
Judeo-Christianity is alive and well!
FALSE: NOTHING ABOVE HAD ANYTHING TO DO WITH OR WAS IN THE BIBLE.
Pretty wild, Bob. But it IS your blog and you stated that you were not responsible for anything you said. Checkmate.
POLITICAL CORRECTNESS IS ALIVE AND WELL. It isn’t LIKE a Religion, It IS a religion.
Your title is wrong, it should be: Political Correctness
[SMILE] Bob, he’s my favorite Christian zygote – and don’t you forget it!
#2 by Bob on 05/04/2005 - 6:01 am
By “The Bible,” you mean the Old Testament and the asterisk afterit called the New Testament.
I keep condemning Medienval Church doctrine,but I can’t argue with the Catholic puzzlemen over the Protestant sepration of the Bible, which was adopted by the Church, and the Church itself.
The Bible is an editing of a vast amount of writing by rabbis and bishops. Calvin and Luther chopped out much of hte Bible as Christ knew it because it was not written in Holy Hebrew, Bible literalists, who quote the curse of Revelations on anyone who alters a single word of the Bible, have not hte slightest problem with this. The Bible the author of Revelations was referring to was the entire Old Testament as accepted by the Hellenic Jews. He wrote in Greek,not Hebrew.
So who cares?
I said that Christ said that to commit adultery in your heart was to commit adultery. Therefore to commit suicide in your heart might just be suicide.
H.S. quotes the Old Testament definition of suicide. The Old Testament also says, “Thou shalt not COMMIT adultery.”
That is my problem with Judeo-Christianity. The Judeo- part always wins.
#3 by H.S. on 05/04/2005 - 9:21 am
By “The Bible,” you mean the Old Testament and the asterisk after it called the New Testament.
Author [Bob] Interpretive Opinion: This Blog is All About the Author and His Opinions
I keep condemning Medieval Church doctrine, but I can’t argue with the Catholic puzzlemen over the Protestant separation of the Bible, which was adopted by the Church, and the Church itself.
The Bible is an editing of a vast amount of writing by rabbis and bishops. Calvin and Luther chopped out much of hte Bible as Christ knew it because it was not written in Holy Hebrew, Bible literalists, who quote the curse of Revelations on anyone who alters a single word of the Bible, have not hte slightest problem with this. The Bible the author of Revelations was referring to was the entire Old Testament as accepted by the Hellenic Jews. He wrote in Greek, not Hebrew.
ALL Author [Bob] Interpretive Opinion: This Blog is All About the Author and His Opinions
So who cares?
I said that Christ said that to commit adultery in your heart was to commit adultery. Therefore to commit suicide in your heart might just be suicide.
Agreed, mostly, the *principle* is the same. The principle is that it all starts with your heart, the body part always referred to as the seat of the soul: the mind, the will and the emotions. What you think and believe is accountable to God. What you act on makes you accountable to all. What you stated of Lewis does not apply.
H.S. quotes the Old Testament definition of suicide. The Old Testament also says, “Thou shalt not COMMIT adultery.”
FIND IT, UNTIL THEN IT IS FALSE. YES, COMMANDMENT NUMBER SEVEN – REITERATED IN THE NEW.
That is my problem with Judeo-Christianity. The Judeo- part always wins.
YOUR OPINION, NOT MINE
#4 by Antonio Fini on 05/04/2005 - 11:02 am
This is one of the reasons I read Bob. You get interesting historical tid-bits to supplement your spotty public education. Like the Origen thing. I think what Origen did to himself with a scalpel is a bit like going public with pro-white views. It takes nerve, is likely to hurt and will severly limit your future options.
I read that later in life, Origen had second thoughts, realizing too late what he gave up to follow an ideal that seemed good at the time. That’s the way it is with pioneer work. If enough people follow you, it’s glory and heroism. If not, you’re remembered as a promoter of eccentric ideas who did something really, really odd.
#5 by Mark on 05/05/2005 - 8:22 am
“So God killed Job’s family, took away all his possessions, and made Job sick and hated.”
Actually Jehovah let Satan do all of the evil deeds to Job. I’m nitpicking yes, but I’ve heard many Christians point this out as if saying their god could not do something as horrible as all this. As an agnostic it doesn’t matter to me, but I thought it interesting to point out all the same. In my eyes, and all you bible thumping brethren forgive me for upsetting you beforehand, it’s like an old west “hanging judge” who is fond of sending men to the gallows saying, “I’ve never killed a man, ever. My hands are clean.”
Also, the name Jehovah wasn’t used by Old Testament Jews or early Christians until somewhere around the 16h. century when the Tetragramaton (YHWH) was combined with the vowels of the word Adonai. I understand Bob’s usage of the term though and I heartilly agree with his derision of Jehovists. But again, I’m agnostic so what do I know?
#6 by Bob on 05/05/2005 - 11:57 am
Mark, as you know, Hebrew didn’t have vowels, so YHWH or JHWH will have to do until the archeologists find a tape recording from back then.
In the meantime, I’ll just say Jehovah so people will know what I am talking about, which is the purpose of writing.