In response to “My Humility Can Beat the Hell Out of Your Humility” Shari writes:
“Now days such people don’t outsuffer Christ, they just care more for all the poor people in the world. They are Commies for Christ. ”
Lord, a good comment DOES set my mind on fire!
Please note, Shari, that that “suffering” is seldom done in unpleasant places. They put on a tuxedo and tell an audience at a Hollywood fund-raiser about how awful they feel about third world suffering and how we all need to siffer for it.
A good comment makes my mind go into unexpected places. One of the big deals was called Liberation Theology. Its goal was to meld Christianity with the New World doctrine of Marxism.
All of a sudden, Marxism is the Old World theology.
I was listening to the commentary on an Italian DVD. The interviewer embarrassed the hell out of hte filmmaker. This commentary was bout 1990, and he asked the moviemaker, “How is your movie on Trotsky coming along?”
A litle background. As Sophia Loren once said in a movie, “I’m not supposed to make sense. I’m ITALIAN!”
Before the 1980s the entire European film industry, like European universities, was solidly Communist. But other European movie makers kept it subtle. Subtlety, as Sophia Loren was proud to point out, is not an Italian trait. So when the movie was made I was watching the commentary on, no one in Italian film considered anything important but the Communist Revolution.
So this particular film maker’s great ambition was to prove that the champion of the Only True Faith was not so much Lenin as it was Trotsky. He had planned and dreamed of an epic film about this that would have all the European film-makers gurgling with delight.
Suddenly with the collapse of the Soviet Empire Communism was exposed as not only something that was born senlie, but silly and evil.
Poor baby! Just a few years before this guy had been in the middle of whole culture of people who assumed that Communism was the Way of the Future. He did NOT appreciate being reminded of that.
So Liberation Theology has gone from synthesizing Modern Thought, i.e, Marxism, with Old Thought, i.e., Christianity to desperately trying to find another peg to hang its ideas on.
EXACTLY the same thing happened in the case of Zoroastrianism. Fot the first SEVEN CENTURIES of its existence, Christian theologians tried to synthesiz their faith with that of their world’ most powerful religion, one that had been the official religion of Persia since long before Xerxes invaded Greece.
The it just plain disappeared. Iran was conquered by Islam. Zoroastrian literature was burned.
All the Christian theologians instantly forgot the centuries they had tried to synthesize their faith with the other Great Faith. But the synthesis kept reappearing in the form of Manichaeism.
Manichaeism and Marxism are, when you cut the crap and get down to cases, amazingly similar. Both say they are all for Goodness over Badness, but their mutual idea of Goodness is self-hatred and genetic suicide.
Guilt and self-hatred are what both Manichaeism and Western Communism are all about. Early Christianity preached sterility. In fact, the more you had to offer, themore beautiful you were and the more intelligent you were, the more blessed it was for you to lock yourself up in lifelong chastity.
Many early Christian stories expressed this ideal. A beautiful, intelligent and, yes, blond woman would marry her ideal man, handsome, healthy, virtuous and smart.
The, on the wedding night, she would persuade her husband that they should live in mutual chastity. This was St. Paul’s ideal. This was the early Christian ideal when they were melding with the later Zoroastrian hatred of all things of This World.
So when Marxist self-hatred keeps surfacing in the name of Christ, we should not be surprised.
Which is why I write about genetic morality. In Marxism and in trditional Christianity there is no such thing. Their only genetic morality is self-hatred.
#1 by Elizabeth on 01/21/2006 - 1:33 pm
The “early Christian stories” about a young man and a
young woman marrying and agreeing to celibacy were just
that — stories.
An older couple might decide to live together without
sex — and I’m told that some do — but that didn’t
necessarily have anything to do with religion.
Before 1200, women under religious vows were basically
free to travel — as long as they got permission from
their abbess. (Vow of Obedience) Then, the major restriction
on traveling was being able to arrange to do so: a lot of
medieval Europeans, whatever their condition of life,
would keep an eye out for a group going in the general
direction they wanted to go, get some supplies together,
and go. You just had to do it with at least one companion,
for safety, if not for company.
Between 1200 and the early 1500s, there were a few remaining
abbesses who sat in assemblies of nobles, minted money, sat in judgment
over their nuns and servants as well as their secular flocks,
and sent armed men to fight for their kings and emperors.
#2 by Shari on 01/21/2006 - 4:23 pm
Early Christians were probably just as gullable as now, but I don’t think sterility was St. Pauls ideal. He wrote in I Cor. that husbands and wives were to give each other what was due and not to defraud one another. He also wrote in I Timothy about seducing doctrines, forbidding to marry, etc.and advised young widows to remarry. I think that Manichaeism was a heresy wasn’t it? I know that Marxism certainly is, and it makes me nauseous to listen to those who try to make it sound so Christian. A big burden for whites is contraception. We are the only ones who use it, so we can pay more and more for welfare and war. Getting married and having their own children is very hard for those who still want to do that, to put together. I also think that there are more young singles, who would like that thanyou might think.
#3 by joe rorke on 01/21/2006 - 8:39 pm
As I read this piece, Bob, the computer on the top of my neck instantly picked up on something you said. I immediately thought that you won’t like my comment. Then it occurred to me that you have said on occasion that you are a Christian. In your piece you mention something about Zoroastrianism (not my thing) and Christianity. Brace yourself. Here it comes. “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof; but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.” Please forgive the king’s language. You’ve probably heard it before. Most of it was in my head but, I admit, I deliberately looked it up so as to not deceive you as to the exact wording.
I deliberately put this comment in here because you mentioned in an earlier piece that people who quote Scripture “too much” cannot be trusted. There is some truth in this observation but it’s not entirely true. There are exceptions to this rule.
I understand that Scripture I just quoted to you. I have understood it for quite a long time. I am aware that being “on” Bob’s Blog is being in “the world.”
#4 by Peter on 01/21/2006 - 11:51 pm
I liked your brief story, Elizabeth. I always like to read of history as it relates to the current state of things.