Now that we’ve got the sins definition in the bag, let’s talk . . .
Now, I’ve really been hoping to avoid pissing people off, but there’s just a couple of things about the way people have been inclined to worship that guy that I find odd, sometimes to the point of making us all suffer.
First the observation: A friend pointed out to me not too long ago that the cross was an instrument of torture, and that it’s kind of odd that everybody is now wearing it as jewelery. I couldn’t help but agree, and I’m not sure if the extrapolations to come were her thoughts on the subject or mine, but they seemed so obvious that I took them as my own, though credit might be due to her. . .
Let’s say just for a moment that Jesus actually comes back. And by the way, if you are someone who really believes that Jesus is God, or close enough to be considered divine, and/or that he’ll be coming back one of these days to either take people to Heaven, or make Earth Heaven, or declare that Earth had finally become Heaven, or just host his own talk show, I say to you I will not be contradicting you at all in this posting, and while it is not personally my view, I have no beef against you for holding yours, nor am I going to try to convert you via this posting. Now, let’s say he comes back, and sees a bunch of people wearing the thing he was tortured to death with around their necks. Does anybody think that that is something he would enjoy? I mean, the two flavors seem to be that the initial impression is that he would think that everybody was really happy that he got crucified, and thus wear the cross as a good thing, or, as the omniscient ruler of existence who understands why everyone is walking around with a torture device proudly displayed around their necks, wouldn’t he rather his people not burden their necks with an implement of torture? Wouldn’t the guy who took one for the team rather that people enjoy their salvation rather than bemoan and mourn it, burdening their necks with a torture device?
Which brings me to my next bone of contention, the serious one. What, pray tell, has Jesus’ death accomplished? I’ve heard it said that people believe that his death absolved everyone of sin. So is that a free pass for murderers, child rapists, and oil companies? I’m all in favor of a good teaching that helps a bunch of people, but I can’t help but notice that Jesus didn’t seem to be all that helpful in terms of the events of this world. I can’t help but wonder if as many women would have been burnt alive by his church if not for him.
I mean, since people got freaked out by the way this teacher got whacked, his followers have been eaten by lions, gone on murdering rampages regularly for the last 2000 years, have made child molestation an organized practice, and still persist in holding up the reconciliation of people to the realization that if we work together as people instead of against each other as members of religions, this might be a nice sphere to live upon.
If a relatively good guy dies 2000 years ago, how exactly does that absolve me from sins I haven’t committed yet? And does that mean that I can impede upon other peoples lives incessantly until the day I die since whatever torture I decide to wreak upon the human race amongst me has already been washed clean by Jesus? I can understand that a good guy was talking to lousy people who were too lazy and full of themselves to make the world better, and so they killed the good guy to get him to shut up. I can understand that the moral of that story is probably to start moving my ass and doing the best I can so that this planet becomes something better than the slice of Hell that guy found himself living on 2000 years ago. But what sin, pray tell, did he die for, aside from that of those nailing him up to begin with?
What I can accept is the notion that he died so as to encourage me to not sin, and for that matter anyone else who has ears to hear and eyes to see. But, given the people suffering on this planet for everybody’s sins, mine included, the idea that anyone died for sins of sinners who had not yet been born seems just plain silly. Died because of the sins of others in that moment in time, maybe. Died for the sins of those today, hardly. At best you’ll find other genuinely good people dying because of our sins, and that’s just about as close as your going to get; unless, of course, you decide to make a conscious effort to become a part of the solution rather than a part of the problem . . .
TTFN
Tygarjas Twyrls Blog 
In converting to my husband’s religion, which is a branch of Christianity, I asked the priest this very question. I wish I could tell you what his answer was, but it made no sense to me, so I didn’t retain it.
PS — bought your book and will send it on to publishers once i get famous
I like you more and more constantly, I see good things coming your way.
And as to the PS — Awesome!
May you enjoy the ride!
hi tygarjas,
some good thoughts here.
when reading the last bit of your post, i thought of what Paul wrote in Romans “Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good. But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.” (5:7-8)
there definitely are some pretty insane implications of that – as you bring up… does it mean we can live however we please? i guess we could, but i think about this truth: “Everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial”.
after all, as you say, aren’t we all searching for the best way to live? “…so that this planet becomes something better…” – what is that ‘best’ way to live? i agree with you, i don’t think it’s mass murder or child raping… i, for one, want a way that involves freedom and hope.. and i guess a way that isn’t self-seeking, because it seems like that may impede on someone else’s best way to live.
Never been a fan of Paul. To borrow from your wording, he always struck me as someone self-serving, and utterly antithetical to what Jesus taught and tried to accomplish. In fact, I’d probably link the root of what went wrong to his anti-Jesus teachings. No wonder the often schizoid nature of the church.
Meanwhile, self-seeking seems purely helpful to me. I dare say that if one never finds one’s truest nature, their capacity for assisting anyone else is probably severely limited accordingly. Though many self-serving methods certainly strike me as possibly counter-productive.
Jesus was all about the seeking, according to the stories, and in that I’d have to agree with him. When one seeks oneself earnestly, one finds that the single best way to help oneself is always to also do that which is most beneficial to everyone else. When one does that which is best for oneself, one has no choice but to do that which is best for everyone else. That’s why Paul so utterly and perfectly distorted Jesus’ teachings, he was always looking for Jesus, never for himself; and he brought everyone else down accordingly.
thanks for the reply.
which of Paul’s teachings were anti-Jesus? yes, i do agree that some of his writings can come off as selfish. i think he so often wants to contrast where he’s been (intense persecutor) to where he is (intense evangelist) – but in doing so, it can sound a bit self-promoting.
i do agree about the schizoid nature of the church… one of the few times Jesus prays for future believers in the bible is in John 17 – He prays for unity. i’m sure it was just as much a problem in the early church as it is today!
i liked what you said about the best way to help oneself is to that which is best for everyone else. it’s interesting that we live in a culture that doesn’t seem to have grasped this concept. some of the most self-focused people end up in rehab or jail or an early grave… yet they still seem to be our most “worshipped” demographic .. or perhaps we’ve not “entirely” grasped the concept – there are some current cultural fads/trends that are “others-serving” in nature – but i wonder if those will flourish or die off in the future…
So, I just decided to start flipping through the Paul texts to see what popped up first. Romans came first to hand. The first thing I noticed was how obsessed with homosexuality Paul is. He speaks like a closeted, self-hating homosexual, which would explain evangelicals to this day. Not exactly anti-Jesus, though I’m pretty sure Jesus wasn’t thinking constantly in terms of sexual impurity considering the prostitutes he used to hang out with. There was that thing about looking at someone being adultery in Matt, but that’s a slightly different matter.
For the sake of not wanting to argue things too conceptual or nit-picky, I’m no biblical scholar, the first thing to jump out at me, believe it or not, was Rom 1:30 “they disobey their parents.” This jumped out at me because a few pages earlier Jesus was telling his followers that no one who doesn’t hate their parents can follow him.
Next there was the whole circumcision thing, and Paul likes to talk about Penises a lot apparently for some reason, but the point is he’s basically arguing against the neccesity of circumcision. Vs. Matt 5:17, which is a very literal phrasing.
And then there’s that whole sexist tirade attributed to Paul in Corinthians, Jesus seemed much less misogynistic and much more feminist to me when he was getting his feet oiled, etc. . . By the way you do know what feet classically refer to in biblical terms right? But regardless of Jesus the feminist, which I am confident the text supports though I am not willing to put the research time in tonight, here’s the simple part: have you ever seen Jesus represented as having short hair? And yet the rest of all of men are supposed to keep their hair short? Really? To me a real Christian is someone trying to follow in the footsteps of the man himself, not the self-hating neurotic closet case that was written to keep control of people in the hands of father church.
Now, I’m all for the notion that none of the stuff in that book is particularly accurate given the way it was written and who it was written for, (take the book of John for example, written probably at least 60 years after the fact for a bunch of people who couldn’t agree on what Jesus was anymore), but within the context of the book, Paul flatly contradicted just about everything people liked about Jesus, which was that he was stressing loving each other over paying the priests thereby keeping them in power. As near as I can tell, Paul was written in to start bank rolling the new church and getting their power mojo going, which would explain all the condemnation rhetoric, the fear stuff, the misogyny, etc . . .
I argue these points so tenaciously because I believe the truth sets one free. Sometimes that involves multiple truths. I think those truth are experiential, and I think that sometimes a person has to confront mis-truths they were taught to believe out of a book before they can start experiencing the real truth. For example, a truth out of a certain book I am exploring at present is the notion that not masturbating, combined with conscious labor and intentional suffering, are the way to create a physical soul. The physical action of attempting what I have read determines what I will believe in this instance, not merely passively believing it like any fairly tale. What I can tell you so far is this: I like working better now, that is to say I am happier while I work, and my energy is greater, apparently as a result of how my body processes what I’m not arbitrarily discarding. Whether or not a physical something that can continue after the death of my coarser form is being created, this I cannot say. But what I can say is that I don’t need coffee, and my outlook on doing what I should be doing is a happier one. Thus this practice is enabling me to be happier at what I do, and to do more of it, which brings us back to the concept that when one does that which is truly best for oneself, etc . . .
I do not believe doing that which is best for oneself is easy. I do believe that not doing what is best for oneself makes it all much, much harder, even though at a glance it looks much, much easier. The Jews called Hasatan a component of the divine; the adversarial component of God, as in the prosecutor in a court of law. It is that within ourselves that we must pass the judgment of, or we cannot inspire any others to undergo such pain willingly for the sake of the least pain felt by all. By embracing and living up to the divinity in ourselves we can inspire the realization of the divinity in others. This is that which Jesus is said to have taught, and that which Paul denied.