“The Beatles’ Fastest Single, Recorded LIVE to the World”, Inside the Beat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DvdhqeUwTc
John Lennon on writing “All You Need Is Love” for a worldwide BBC telecast:
“It sort of dawned on me that love was the answer when I was young, on the Beatle’s ‘Rubber Soul’ album. That first expression of it was a song called ‘The word is love’. ‘The word is love’ seemed like the underlying theme to the universe, or to everything that was worthwhile got down to this love, love, love thing. That’s what I referred to ‘The word is love’ on Rubber Soul straight through to ‘All you need is love’.”
Ringo- “We were like that at the time- ‘All you need is love’. We were trying to promote that.”
Lennon: “I still believe ‘All you need is love’. I still believe in the fact that is what we all need.”
George Harrison: “Well, we thought we’ll just sing ‘All you need is love’ because it’s a kind of subtle bit of PR for… um, God basically.”
Paul McCartney: “’All you need is love’ is still a very important statement. And hopefully always will be. It’s a kind of timeless statement.”
Lennon: “It’s called love and there’s nothing to split that up. And, but that’s the secret you know. Its all true, folks. ‘All you need is love’.”
(End of Beatle’s quotes)
Now: A reposting of a revised summary of the human meta-story
“The ultimate liberation narrative: Our exodus from enslavement in animal existence to full liberation in human civilization”, Wendell Krossa
(Or- “Our foundational story: The meta-narrative of our journey from retaliation to unconditional love”)
(Note: This comment is the outcome of several decades of interaction with a valued friend, a great human spirit, and probably the finest theological mind to have ever graced this planet, Bob Brinsmead, notably with material of his such as “The Scandal of Joshua Ben Adam”.)
The foundational story of humanity is the story of liberation from our animal past and our journey to discover how to be human in civilization. This is much more than just the narrative of our physical/geographical exodus out of Africa (modern Sapiens humans left Africa over the span of roughly 200-50,000 years ago).
Insert: “AI Overview
“Modern Homo sapiens (modern humans) did indeed leave Africa in multiple waves over a broad span of time, with evidence for early, potentially limited dispersals beginning over 200,000 years ago, and the major, successful migration occurring around 50,000–70,000 years ago.
“Key Findings on Migration Waves
“Early Dispersals (approx. 270,000–100,000 years ago): Early modern humans began leaving Africa much earlier than previously thought…
“The Main “Out of Africa” Event (approx. 70,000–50,000 years ago): A significant, successful, and permanent expansion occurred roughly 70,000 to 50,000 years ago, with ancestors of modern non-African populations spreading rapidly along the coast of Asia.”
(End of AI Overview)
More than the physical migration out of Africa, our grand overall story is our exodus out of past animal existence (animal thinking, feeling, behavior) and toward becoming more human or humane beings in civilization. This is an intensely inner journey or personal quest of the human spirit, very much what Alexander Solzhenitsyn described when he stated that the real battle of good against evil is not an outer battle against social classes of “enemies” but rather it is an inner battle that “runs down the center of every human heart”. And it manifests in how we act in our societies, how we treat others.
The human struggle to make an exodus from animal existence takes place inside every human heart. It is a personal adventure (psychological, social, spiritual/philosophical) that each of us engages to free ourselves from our inherited animal drives to tribalism, domination of weaker others, and retaliatory destruction of differing others, in order to live as more truly human persons. This quest has set us on a uniquely different trajectory from animal behavior and life.
Our (humanity’s) millennia-long exodus from the animal and toward a more human manner of living, has become more and more structured by the supremely humanizing ideal of love. Love is the ideal that drives humanity’s overall trajectory of progress toward a better future, even though for much of history we have not recognized the “unconditional” feature of love that ought to inspire and guide this drive and take it to its highest reach of humane living.
Most people have felt driven more generally by an impulse to find something better than what was, what existed. In all areas of life. We have been slow to recognize and fully understand that an inner gentle, persuading impulse was orienting us toward the highest reach of love as unconditional, as the supreme ideal defining human meaning and purpose.
Our meta-story of leaving our animal past for a human future has gradually become more clear to us as we recognize more and more the barbarity of our animal past and understand more clearly what becoming truly human means.
And to date many have widely recognized that liberal democracy is the best system to enable us to express what being truly human involves. At the least, mature humanity involves the protection of the same rights and freedoms for every person, equally (i.e. not equal outcomes but equal rights and freedoms). We have embodied this in common law systems and representative institutions that curb elite power and control and redistribute power and control back to all citizens, equally.
Origins of the exodus to liberated human existence
Our meta-story begins in an animal past shaped primarily, as noted above, by the drives of (1) domination of weaker others (alpha male/female), (2) small band or the tribal exclusion of differing others, and (3) destructive retaliation toward competing others. This triad of prominent animal drives illustrates the worst of animal reality and existence. Many religious people have defined these impulses in terms of “sin, inherent sinfulness, inherently fallen humanity, etc.”, even as “demonic”. But it is more accurate to understand this inner badness as the residual animal in us all. We all experience the inner dualism between this animal element and our better self.
The base animal drives from our past animal existence provide the background context against which the wonder of our becoming more fully human appears all the more wondrous.
Joseph Campbell (“Myths To Live By”) has similarly noted the exodus of humanity leaving the animal past for human existence in stating that human story is about learning to conquer the “animal passions” in order to live as human (see “The Power of Myth”, pages xiii, 104, 144, 191, 201, 218-19, 223, 235). The struggle to overcome our animal past and its base features is engaged on the individual level as well as by humanity as a whole. Campbell also framed human story as a “Hero’s Quest” of going out on a great adventure or quest, confronting and conquering monsters, learning lessons and gaining insights, and then returning with insights and lessons learned, to benefit others.
In our personal stories, the element of struggle to overcome arises from the fact that the animal past continues into our human existence in the form of a residual animal brain that emotes the animal-like impulses noted above that continue to influence our thinking, emotions, responses, and behavior. We see this in the fact that people continue to act like animals when they exclude one another, dominate others, or retaliate vengefully against others (i.e. responding with eye for eye “justice”).
Our ancestors, unaware that they were hindering and obstructing our exodus and liberation from animal existence, constructed belief systems that validated base animal drives in terms of “justice, righteousness, good”. They initiated the early religious tradition of “cloaking evil as good”. And yes, they were simply acting according “to the lights” (i.e. the primitive understanding) that they possessed at that time.
Hence, they framed the violent destruction of enemies as deserved justice, as righteous cause to eliminate threatening competition, etc. Domination of commoners by specially endowed elites was also framed as “the divine right of kings” and based on the divine archetype of God as “King/Lord”. Tribalism was legitimized in terms of “saved, elect” true believers versus deservedly damned unbelievers.
All variants of the religious deformity of “cloaking evil as good”.
By cloaking evil as good our ancestors embedded in our belief systems and narratives the basest of animal features. Consequently, for millennia we have maintained and validated animal impulses/behavior to the detriment of our efforts to be more human. World religions continue this tradition even today.
Retaliation
Retaliation, in particular, is the one notable feature that brings the worst of animal existence into modern human life. Musonius Rufus (Roman philosopher, circa 30-100 AD) expressed the animal nature of retaliation well when he stated, “For to scheme to bite back the biter and to return evil for evil is the act not of a human being but of a wild beast” (http://unsafeharbour.wordpress.com/2012/03/31/ancient-quotations-returning-evil-with-good/).
Retaliation is humanity behaving at its animal worst. Establishing retaliation as a feature of our animal past helps to expose its bestial nature, its essential inhumanity.
Think of dogs snarling and snapping angrily at one another on a street.
And in their construction of mythical/religious systems that protected and validated our worst features, early people took the validation of evil to supreme heights by projecting the animal onto God, defining deity with base animal features.
Take retaliation for example:
When early people projected the destructive feature of retaliation onto early images of gods, they created the perception of a greater reality that was threatening, malicious, and destructively punitive. Deity was something that would retaliate violently against human failure or sin. In doing that they created super monsters for people to fear. Something that would harm you in this life and in the after-life.
Over time the feature of retaliation in divinity was refined with legal categories as righteous justice, proper punishment of evil, or just retribution. Retaliation would further be developed into systems of human justice as payback, or what we know as “eye for eye” justice. Hence, retaliation makes a line down through history to become the legal reality today of justice as deserved punishment.
Other refinements were created over history to reinforce the idea of divine retaliation as something good- i.e. such as the development of the idea of “holiness” in gods. In fact, this would become the pre-eminent feature of the Jewish and Christian God. It would be argued that because God was holy, he was therefore obligated to punish all “sin” (sin as often defined by offenses against religious precepts or laws, offenses against divine honor). Holiness became part of a complex of ideas that supported the demand for payback or punishment, including ideas of a holy God offended by human imperfection or “sinfulness”. These ideas re-enforce the theme of a God obsessed with perfection and severely retaliating against and punishing imperfection.
As religious believers would subsequently argue, because God is holy, he cannot ignore sin. He cannot just freely and unconditionally forgive sin without first punishing it (i.e. demand full payment, sacrifice, restitution). But despite the sacralization of retaliation in divinity with such concepts as holiness, at core it was still essentially very much about animal-like retaliation, revenge, or payback. Base and inhumane.
The concept of holiness has to do with ideas of purity, exclusion, and separation from things considered unclean or defiled. Holiness is a priestly invention that supports the role of priests as mediators between impure people and their gods. Holiness is a concept that intensifies the sense of human imperfection, making natural human imperfection appear all the worse, as something that religious traditions call “sinfulness”. Human sinfulness then promotes the view of human imperfection as something that must be punished, something that deserves divine retaliation. Such thinking has long promoted excessive guilt, shame, and fear over being imperfectly human.
We would do better to view human imperfection in terms of the fact that we started out in animal reality but have gradually become something that has improved remarkably over time (see for instance, Stephen Pinker’s “The Better Angels of Our Nature”, or James Payne’s “The History of Force”). This gradual millennia-long process of growth, development, and advancement over history is not something that deserves condemnation and punishment. As Bob Brinsmead reminds us, the real story of humanity is not how far we have fallen, but how amazingly we have progressed since our early beginning in savagely brutal animal existence.
Insert: None of this comment is to excuse or downplay the personal failure to live as human and the consequences of bad behavior. As free self-determining beings we are responsible for our behavior that has both natural and social consequences. I would break the issues down like this- i.e. victims are responsible to “love enemies”. Not meaning “love” as feeling gushy, warm, or fuzzy toward offenders and their horrific offenses but holding the intention to treat offenders humanely and not respond with eye for eye punitive retaliation. By holding such intentions, we maintain our own humanity in the face of evil, despite how we feel about offenders. Outrage/anger at evil is a healthy, fully human response.
And offenders are responsible to stop harming others, to basically “grow the fuck up” and join the human family as contributing members, taking full responsibility for all behaviors and the consequences of bad behaviors that include making full restitution to victims.
Add here that incarceration is necessary where offenders will not or cannot control their worst impulses to violence, abuse of minors, etc. But even while incarcerating them, we are responsible to treat offenders humanely as, for example, in the Danish restorative justice prison programs. And further, force is often necessary to stop offenders that cannot be reasoned with- whether terrorists, or violent criminal offenders. Love never abandons common sense in an imperfect world and love is always responsible to protect the innocent, first and foremost.
“Love your enemies” is not a validation of pacifism that lets repeat violent offenders free to continue harming innocent others. Love never abandons common-sense and the primary responsibility to stop violence.
(End of Insert)
Continuing…
Another validation for the belief that the gods were retaliatory was the early perception that because the gods were behind the forces of nature, and as those forces were often destructive (i.e. natural disasters, disease, predatory cruelty), early logic then concluded that the gods must be angry and were punishing people for their sins via the destructive forces and events of the natural world.
The theme of retaliation is found in the earliest human writing (circa 2500-2000 BCE), notably in the accounts of storm gods (e.g. Enlil) threatening to annihilate early people with a great flood (see the “Sumerian Flood” myth- Wikipedia). Divine retaliation is evident in other early myths of a chaos monster threatening the order of creation (“Cosmos, Chaos, and the World to Come”, Norman Cohn, or Egyptian myths of the “Return to Chaos”, or “Destruction of Mankind”). These myths were eventually developed into the grand myth of a final apocalypse, that a retributive, retaliatory God would destroy the defiled world and purge all life in a grand world-ending punishment (see the Zoroastrian beliefs that shaped the Western religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). The feature of retaliation would then reach an epitome expression in the perverse and vicious myth of eternal Hell, the final and ultimate manifestation of divine retaliation against imperfect humanity.
A related belief constructed by the ancients was that any sickness or misfortune in a person’s life was understood to be due to the gods punishing sin or broken taboos. This is found all through early mythology in accounts of gods afflicting people with sickness (e.g. Epic of Gilgamesh, or the myth of Dilmun where Enki is punished for eating the 8 original plants). This idea has cursed people with unbearable additional guilt and fear, people already suffering excessively from physical ailments. Look, for example, at the Old Testament account of Job’s ‘comforters’ berating him with this theme- i.e. that his misfortune and illness was punishment from God because he had sinned. Paul burdened the Corinthians with the same argument- i.e. that their illnesses and deaths were punishment from God for their sins.
In the construction of such mythology, retaliation was sacralized. “Evil was cloaked as good”, made something sacred or divine, “hidden under the canopy of the sacred”. Retaliation was made a core feature of deity. In doing that, early people created monsters, far above the ordinary monsters of life, to frighten one another. That fear would become a potent weapon for subjecting people to priestly authority and control.
Insert note: John Pfeiffer in “The creative explosion: An inquiry into the origins of art and religion” speculates that early shaman took people deep into the darkness of caves to view anamorphic art- i.e. cave paintings that appear to move in flickering candlelight. That was apparently intended to disorient and frighten people to then believe the shaman’s claims to know the secrets of the invisible realm of spirits- i.e. what taboos people had broken and what sacrifices were then required to appease the angered spirits. It was very much about inciting terror of the invisible realm and thereby validate shamanic/priestly control.
Few have expressed this better than H. L. Mencken:
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary”, In Defense of Women.
(End of Insert note)
The central theme of retaliation or payback lodged in deity has subsequently validated endless violence between people, clans, and nations. Retaliating deities inspire retaliation among their followers. We all become just like the gods that we believe in and worship. Part of the reason for this is that people have long appealed to the divine for approval of their own lives. People try to replicate in their own lives and societies what they believe to be the divine model or reality. This is known as the “behavior based on belief” relationship or the “ethic based on theology” relationship.
The creation of threatening, punishing gods has long validated people retaliating and punishing one another. Therefore, if you want to get to an important root validation for violence among people, then start with these core beliefs that have long affirmed human retaliation or payback. See, for example, James Carrol’s book “Constantine’s Sword” for some historical illustration of how the influence of religious views has inspired mistreatment of others. And for more detailed probing of the psychology of bad theology influencing and deforming human personality, see Zenon Lotufo’s “Cruel God, Kind God”.
Notable examples of societies using the divine archetype to validate human behavior and life- i.e. Plato’s appeal to the invisible Forms/Ideas/Ideals that should shape the ideal human society. Also, the ancient Hebrew’s appeal to the law/word/will of God to shape all aspects of their Old Testament society down to details about where to locate the 12 tribes, the details of building the Temple, and more.
When you embed retaliation in the sacred or divine, it then becomes untouchable, a sacred ideal not open to challenge or questioning. The things that we protect in God, we are notably afraid to subsequently challenge because of our natural respect for or fear of deity and this fear of the divine is re-enforced with religious threats against “heresy, blasphemy, unbelief”, threats of exclusion, severe punishment, even damnation and hellfire.
Such things are then immensely damaging to us because we are led to believe that they originate with God and are therefore ultimately true and immutable. They are realities that must be believed and loyally adhered to. Such appeal to the divine as ultimate ideal and authority has always been a powerful concept and a potent means to manipulate and control others.
By exposing the primitive origins of a feature such as retaliation we may help to break its grip on human consciousness.
The Salvation/Sacrifice Industry (the Appeasement Industry)
What has been the most damaging outcome of projecting the animal feature of retaliation onto God? It evokes in people the natural response of necessary appeasement or placation (i.e. placating the Alpha threat. See, for example, Hector Garcia’s “Alpha God”). The human fear of death, the survival impulse, plays a central role here. This is the felt need to appease the angry, threatening gods/God in order to avoid punishment, whether sickness, other misfortune, or outright death. Retaliatory gods have long aroused the primal human fear of death and the related survival impulse. The appeasement response then leads to one of history’s most oppressive outcomes- i.e. the enslavement to wasteful priestly systems of sacrifice and related salvation schemes.
Myths of a God angry at human imperfection and failure have also produced the corollary idea of separation from God, a separation that supposedly happened at the time of the “Fall” when humans lived in an original paradise called Dilmun or Eden. Since that Fall, and human ruin of paradise, God has, as mythically assumed, expelled and abandoned humanity, breaking off a former close relationship. Ultimate purity and perfection cannot tolerate impurity and imperfection (i.e. the myth of deity as obsessed with perfection).
If you think abandonment by parents is traumatizing, then add this myth of abandonment by the Creator and Source of all. Consider the impact this “ultimate parental abandonment” can have on human psyches (see, for example, psychotherapist Zenon Lotufo’s “Cruel God, Kind God”). These primitive perceptions further intensify the fear of divinity and death and incite the felt need to atone.
And so the natural psychology of appeasement is stirred and this leads to endeavors to engage some salvation plan, to offer a sacrifice to placate/appease the angered deity.
It is not clear when all this Salvationism started but we can speculate that it was long ago in prehistory. Some innovative person, probably an early shaman, came up with the idea of blood sacrifice to placate threatening gods. This may have been based on the perception that because life was in the blood then a life could be offered in place of another life. Researchers studying the origin of sacrifice suggest that sacrifices were made for varied reasons- i.e. to secure favor from the gods, to feed the gods. But another prominent reason was to appease the gods, to atone for sin. See for instance,
http://www.istor.org/stable/3155070 notably p. 605. Also,
Further, see “Sacrifice” in Wikipedia. I am focusing on this element of appeasement of angry gods because it arises at the very beginning and it has had such a damaging impact on human psyches and societies.
No matter what the ancient reasons were for sacrifice, “It is all inhumane and sadistic and stupid” (Bob Brinsmead, personal email, Feb.2013). “As for suggesting that God loved the smell of a burning animal as the OT says…then this god has not yet been humanized” (Ibid).
But here we have it today- i.e. Salvationism which argues that some payment must be made. We must pay the debt, pay for the offense, and make amends. A cruel, violent blood sacrifice must be offered. And again, the belief in human sinfulness is integral to this perspective. Human imperfection was developed into the mythical belief in human “fallenness, essential corruption, or sinfulness” to explain why the gods were angry and wanted to retaliate against humanity. As noted earlier, this was further developed into the theological logic that human sinfulness was an offense against a holy God and hence atonement must be made. Or else.
And the earliest sins were beyond silly which revealed the petty nature of the gods that early people had created. The earliest epics of punishing people’s sin told of gods that were upset because people had multiplied too much and become too noisy. People partying, having fun, conversing too loudly with one another. One god- Enlil- could not sleep because of the noise people made so he threatened to annihilate them all via a great flood (http://history-world.org/sumerian_and_akkadian_myths.htm ). The petty gods hated human self-expression, freedom, and curiosity for knowledge as illustrated in the case of Adam curious to know good from evil.
Hence, because of human sinfulness atonement had to be made. So the burdensome and destructive salvation industry has continued all through human history, feeding off of human fear and misery. And it maintains a priesthood that lives well off this human misery, employing salvation myths to manipulate and control people. Priests claim that the great cosmic separation of humanity from the divine must be healed, the broken relationship must be restored and only they know how to mediate the demanded atonement and restoration.
But there is not a shred of evidence anywhere in history that any such abandonment ever occurred except in the minds of power-seeking shamans and priests. It is all a massive system of human enslavement of the worst kind- i.e. mental, emotional, and spiritual slavery to inhumane mythology.
The salvation industry continues to reinforce in consciousness the fallacious idea of something threatening and punitive that must be appeased. It is an industry that has resulted in an incalculable waste of human time, resources, and creative potential. You see this as people under fear and felt obligation everywhere trudge off to temples and churches with their offerings, engaging often esoteric religious ritual, believing that if they don’t fulfill those obligations then they will suffer some misfortune. They are wasting time and resources that could be better spent developing themselves in other more beneficial ways. This waste was evident in a documentary I watched on the Quechua Indians of South America spending their meager resources on offerings made to saints. Entire days are wastefully spent in such activity.
I also saw it firsthand among the Manobo tribal groups of Mindanao (Davao del Norte, Agusan del Sur, etc.). People offering scarce chickens and pigs to placate angry spirits instead of seeking proper medical help. And when those resources were exhausted then often there was nothing left for a trip to a lowland hospital to save life.
All such salvation/sacrifice activity is engaged to solve a non-existent problem, a mythical problem that does not exist and has never existed- i.e. the need to appease some angry reality that will punish you for your imperfections.
The primitive ideas of a threatening and retaliatory super monster persist and continue to cause damage even today. They persist because they resonate with deeply imprinted beliefs and emotions such as the feeling that we somehow deserve punishment because we have screwed up. Today, just as in the earliest mythology, it is claimed that vengeful Gaia, angry Planet/angry Mother Earth, punitive Universe, payback karma, are angry because people have again multiplied too much and have become too creative, expressive, and successful in technological society.
As the Japanese lady stated rhetorically following the 2011 tsunami, “Are we being punished for enjoying life too much”.
See, for instance, http://www.green-agenda.com/gaia.html and note the reference to Lovelock’s book “The Revenge of GAIA”. See also…
http://reason.com/archives/2010/04/21/sinners-in-the-hands-of-an-ang ; and
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2008/06/17/202790/lessons-from-an-angry-planet/?mobile=nc.
Note this comment in the above link, “the tornados and floods battering the country (US) with almost unimaginable severity are the early tantrums of an angry planet”). Nancy Pelosi added to this irrational nonsense when she claimed in 2020 that wildfires in the Western US were evidence that “Mother Earth is angry”.
People trying to better their lives are now commonly condemned for exhibiting the sin of “greed” and thereby destroying nature by using natural resources. We then see the appeasement response in those who feel obligated to obstruct and halt human economic development and growth (i.e. make a sacrifice by returning to the “morally superior” primitive or simple lifestyle through de-growth, de-development) in order to placate the angry Gaia or angry planet. Just as in the ancient past, this sacrificial obstruction of human progress is done out of the felt need to appease some angered and punitive reality. Many people advocating these views, and considering themselves modern secularists, are holding to the core themes of primitive mythology at its worst.
Let me summarize this fear/appeasement/salvation process again as it has significantly undermined human freedom. It is a pattern that is repeated endlessly through history. Someone first scares people with some threatening scenario (i.e. imminent apocalypse, natural world punishment from the gods such as today’s claimed threat of apocalyptic global warming destroying life). This touches the most basic thing in human psychology- the fear of disaster and death (see Ernst Becker’s “Denial of Death”).
The fear-mongering prophets of apocalypse then propose a salvation scheme such as some sacrifice (e.g. abandon the “evil” of too much energy use) in order to placate the angry and threatening monster that has been presented to people. And scared people will then support the looniest and most damaging salvation schemes and willingly give up their freedom in order to find relief from whatever has scared them. Stirring fear in such a manner is a direct assault on human freedom.
(Again, H. L. Mencken, “In Defense of Women”: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary”.)
Non-retaliation or Unconditional Emerges
Among the earliest human writing in Sumeria (2500-2000 BCE) we see another line of insight that was quite entirely opposite to the theme of retaliation or payback. In those early minds still prominently shaped by animal-like features with their monstrous threatening and punishing gods, the wonder of human consciousness, or conscious human selves, was making a significant new advance. With their maturing consciousness, and its human impulses, those early people were struggling against their past and discovering in new ways what it meant to be human and to live as human. They were becoming more aware of themselves as human persons and were experiencing new human emotions that influenced them to seek liberation from debasing animal drives and perceptions. That was a stunning new surge in the grand historical journey of humanity learning to conquer the animal, to make an exodus from animal existence in order to live as human.
People were awakening more to the inhumanity of retaliation response or payback and how that reduced the remarkable status of being human to pettiness with its promotion of endless cycles of eye for eye violence and death. They were becoming aware of new human ideals and human ways of responding and relating to one another. They realized that they did not have to retaliate and destroy one another. They were feeling and experiencing the humanizing emotions of compassion, mercy, and kindness. And that developing sense of humane response led to such new practices as forgiveness which was a supremely human response that broke destructive cycles of revenge and violence. The unconditional treatment of imperfect others was a radically new insight and discovery that challenged the heretofore dominant culture of animal-like retaliation.
That was a unique new phase in the liberation of humanity from an enslaving animal past with its destructive drives. There is no worse enslavement than to the drives to retaliate and punish or destroy others. These instincts have darkened human minds with hate and revenge all across history. The retaliatory impulse has ruined relationships, communities, and significantly disrupted human progress. Look, for example, at the destruction of national infrastructure from war. That has set entire nations back for decades.
Finding freedom from our animal drives is the great exodus out from animal existence toward a truly human existence. It is the grandest liberation movement that humanity has ever conceived and engaged. It is the real exodus to a promised land. The potential presented by unconditional relating to others is the potential for liberation to an entirely new and higher plane of human existence. This new human mode of relating argues that no matter how badly people treat us we can turn human life toward something higher and better by treating them more humanely in our responses.
Non-retaliation is one element of what is more generally known as unconditional love. This refers to the practice of unlimited forgiveness without first demanding that requirements be met or amends be made. It refers to the expression of unlimited mercy and generosity toward those who are undeserving. And it refers to the unconditional inclusion of all persons whether classified as good or bad people. Unconditional clarifies in a striking new way the real meaning of human ideals and practices. It elevates as never before the true meaning of the supreme human ideal of love.
Note: Unconditional exposes the petty nature of much tribally defined love- i.e. love limited to family, friends, or one’s ingroup whether ethnic, religious, political/ideological, national, or other social. Note this statement from Historical Jesus on the nature of non-tribal love:
“Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you. If you love only those who love you, what credit is that to you? Everyone finds it easy to love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Everyone can do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Most will lend to others, expecting to be repaid in full. But do something more heroic, more humane. (Live on a higher plane of human experience). Do not retaliate against your offenders/enemies with ‘eye for eye’ justice. Instead, love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then you will be just like God, because God does not retaliate against God’s enemies. God does not mete out eye for eye justice. Instead, God is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. God causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. Be unconditionally loving, just as your God is unconditionally loving”. (My paraphrase of Luke 6:32-36 or Matthew 5:38-48.)
The gradually developing human response of unconditional treatment of others also gets to the very core of human meaning and purpose. It answers all those great questions such as “Why something?”, “Why does this universe exist?”, and “What is the point/purpose of conscious human existence?”. It is simply the greatest insight in all history as to what it really means to be human. In the discovery and developing awareness of unconditional treatment of others, people were getting to the very essence of being truly human.
The developing response of non-retaliation also proved critical to such things as the development and growth of commerce. Early people chose to stop destroying one another and instead to cooperate in trade and that lifted societies toward a better existence (e.g. Paul Seabright, “In the Company of Strangers”, Lawrence Keeley, “War Before Civilization: The myth of the Peaceful savage”,). This is known as “the moralizing influence of gentle commerce”. Other forms of good in human society flowed from this. Non-retaliation became central to human success and progress.
The response of non-retaliation and unconditional treatment of others has become central to the ongoing trajectory of humanity exploring a more humane future. It is at the core of what it means to be truly human, and at the core of the ongoing endeavor to humanize all of life. It liberates people to entirely new heights of being human. It offers a fundamental solution to the major problem plaguing human existence- i.e. the endless cycles of eye for eye violence and war. It gets to the very root of the worst of human afflictions.
The Origins of Non-retaliation
We find one of the earliest statements of this maturing consciousness of what it means to be human in an early bit of Akkadian literature- the “Advice of an Akkadian Father to his son” (circa 2000 BCE). He says, “Do not return evil to your adversary; requite with kindness the one who does evil to you, maintain justice for your enemy, be friendly to your enemy” (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/2200akkad-father.asp). We also remember here that what we find in the earliest writing we may also assume represents what was believed in the pre-literature era.
A similar insight emerged around 1500-1300 BCE in the Egyptian Instructions of Anii. This states, “Conquer malice in yourself…Do not speak rudely to a brawler…When you are attacked, hold yourself back…when your relations are friendly… the aggressor will desist…” (http://www.perankhgroup.com/ani_wisdom.htm).
The Notable Hebrew Breakthroughs
This same non-retaliation insight then emerges in other traditions across the world. For example, the Hebrew prophets (800-600 BCE) began to advocate an entirely new view of justice not as punishment (retaliation, revenge) but as liberation of the oppressed and mercy toward all. Bob Brinsmead says that in Latin/Western thinking, justice became associated with penalty, price, punishment, atonement, or payback. His study of the Old Testament word for justice- sadak- found that it meant, instead, fidelity to a relationship and had a restorative meaning related to liberation and mercy (personal email, Feb.9/13).
The Hebrew prophets also began to offer an entirely new view of divinity that was not interested in sacrifice or payback atonement. They claimed that God did not want sacrifice but instead desired mercy (e.g. Hosea 6:6, Micah 6:7-8, Amos 5:21-24). There are other statements noted by Brinsmead: “You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart…” (Psalm 51: 11-17). “When I brought your forefathers out of Egypt and spoke to them, I did not give them commands about burnt offerings and sacrifices” (Jeremiah 7:21, 22). “I take no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats” (Isaiah 1:11). Brinsmead concludes, “So Paul’s message about the propitiation of God’s wrath by the blood sacrifice of Jesus as a payment for human sin is not the fulfillment of the message of the Old Testament prophets, but completely contrary to it” (personal email, Feb.18/2013).
In these striking claims the Old Testament prophets were confronting and challenging the greatest monster ever created in history- i.e. the threatening, retaliatory God, the punishing God. They were stating that past perceptions of deity were all wrong. Now if the story of humanity is about conquering monsters, as Campbell suggests, then the mythology of retaliating, punishing deity is the biggest monster of all for people to conquer and overcome.
The Egyptians were also making similar discoveries regarding humanizing deity and attributing kindness and mercy to their pharaoh gods: “At the high period of the Pyramid age a new comparatively humane, benevolent, fatherly quality began to be apparent in the character and behavior of the pharaohs…even the gods had become kind” (Joseph Campbell, “Oriental Mythology”, p.95).
This is how the process of humanizing deity works: People discover new more humane features about themselves and then begin to frame their concepts of deity with these new features, they project human qualities onto deities. They perceive ultimate reality in terms of how they perceive authentic humanity. An understanding of divinity begins with humanity (Campbell, Myths to Live By, p.93, 243-249). Good theology begins with understanding the best in humanity and then projecting that onto deity but to transcendent degree.
Brinsmead also argues that the Hebrew prophets said absolutely nothing about the Jewish Day of Atonement. The justice that they advocated for was freedom from all oppression, to break every yoke, and to let the oppressed go free. It was the Israelite priesthood that promoted the sacrificial system and Salvationism with its bondage to priestly mediators who enslaved and oppressed people with the dark theology of looming punishment and the demand to atone. The prophets, to the contrary, were offering an entirely new view of deity as unconditionally forgiving and loving. They were promoting human liberation as quoted by Jesus in his reading of Isaiah 61:
“The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor…”
Note that he ended his reading of this section by leaving off the following statement:
“and the day of vengeance of our God”. That exclusion thoroughly pissed his audience of religious Jews to the point they tried to kill him. They longed for retaliatory vengeance on enemies and were unaware Jesus was about to begin a ministry of teaching no more eye for eye retaliation but instead “love your enemies because God does, generously giving sun and rain to all alike, to both good people and enemies”. So be unconditionally loving just as God is unconditionally loving.
Jesus could have also added the remainder of that Isaiah 61 section after skipping over the retaliatory deity statement:
“To comfort all who mourn and provide for those who grieve in Zion— to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.”
It is impossible to exaggerate how radical a break the OT prophet’s new theology was from the past dominant views of gods as threatening, punitive monsters seeking retribution against imperfect and fallible people. That had been the overwhelmingly dominant perspective across previous history. Retaliatory, punishing gods had terrorized people from the beginning. A reviewer in The American Journal of Theology, vol.13, No.4, Oct. 1909, p.605, “The Origin of Sacrifice”, states regarding a book titled ‘Semitic Magic, Its Origins and Development’ by R. Campbell Thompson, “The author appears to maintain that religious institutions have been molded by belief in evil spirits rather than by faith in good divinities. He directly asserts it of the rite which he calls atoning sacrifice”. He continues, noting the central religious belief that sickness was caused by sin; it was the result of people breaking taboos which offended the gods who then punished those people, hence, the need for atoning sacrifice to appease.
But contrary to payback punishment beliefs and responses, people were beginning to discover this new human ideal of non-retaliation or unconditional response toward others. As noted earlier, this new human response included the following elements: Unconditional inclusion of all people as intimate family (no more tribal exclusion of outsiders or “enemies”), unconditional forgiveness of all offenses or wrongs, and unconditional generosity toward all. Non-retaliation or unconditional response means absolutely no conditions in our relationships with others; no pre-requisites are to be demanded, and no payment exacted for failures or mistakes. As dictionaries define the word unconditional- i.e. “Not subject to any conditions. Absolutely no conditions. None.”
Other traditions offered similar insights on the new non-retaliatory response. In Buddhist literature we find the following statements: “Hatreds never cease through hatred in this world: through non-hatred alone they cease…Overcome the angry by non-anger; overcome the wicked by goodness; overcome the miser by generosity; overcome the liar by truth…Let us live happily, not hating those who hate us. Let us therefore overcome anger by kindness, evil by good, falsehood by truth…Nor for this matter shall we give vent to evil words, but we shall remain full of concern and pity, with a mind of love, and we shall not give in to hatred…” (Dhammapada 3-5, 223-234, 197, Majjhima Nikaya 129, written about 250 BCE, though dating to the time of the Buddha around 500 BCE, see for instance such sources as
http://www.unification.net/ws/theme144.htm ).
Confucius taught his followers to propose justice and not revenge or anger (Analects 14.36, ca. 450-250 BCE). The Taoists advocated being kind to the unkind (Tao Te Ching 49, 300 BCE). In Jainism it was said, “Man should subvert anger by forgiveness, subdue pride by modesty, overcome hypocrisy with simplicity” (Samanasuttam 136). Hindus taught that a superior person “does not render evil for evil…but will ever exercise compassion even towards those who enjoy injuring others or those of cruel deeds” (Ramaya, Yuddha Kanda 115, around 500-400 BCE). Socrates (470-400 BCE) urged, “We ought not to retaliate or render evil to anyone, whatever evil we may have suffered from him”. And so on.
Interestingly, Hinduism began when the people of North India, around the time of the Buddha (roughly 500 BCE), grew disillusioned with the sacrificial system that they viewed as wasteful and cruel (Karen Armstrong, “Buddha”, p.23). They no longer believed that salvation was through animal blood sacrifice and began to seek answers in a new tradition that focused on human potential (p.25). As people continued to understand more humane ways of responding and relating, they then rejected sacrifice, payback, and appeasement thinking and practices.
The Hindus also rejected the priestly elites, according to Armstrong. They believed that they could discover God for themselves without a system of sacrifice or a mediating priesthood (p.26).
The Historical Jesus Tradition
The movement of liberation from animal retaliation or payback broke through to a new level of coherence and clarity in the teaching of the historical Jesus who is someone entirely opposite from the Christ myth of Paul. I refer readers to the research of the Jesus Seminar for some basic principles on how to detect what the historical person actually taught as contrasted with the many statements in the New Testament gospels that are attributed to Jesus but which present contradictory teaching to his core message.
For instance, in Matthew 5 Jesus is presented as teaching that we are to “love our enemies”. Then a few chapters later (Matthew 11) we find Matthew claiming that Jesus damned people to hell for not accepting his miracles, for not agreeing with his message. This is an irreconcilable contradiction in basic teaching and must be rejected as not authentic teaching from the historical person who clearly taught love of enemies. Unfortunately, blind devotion to the sacred prohibits people from seeing such contradictions in their holy books. The result has been two millennia of profound cognitive dissonance as true believers hold two entirely opposite things in one oxymoronic merger- i.e. “Jesus Christ”.
Using Jesus Seminar principles of interpretation (i.e. “thematic coherence”), and more notably “Q Wisdom Sayings” gospel teaching, nothing in Jesus’ teaching comprises a more consistent core set of ideas than this theme of unconditional treatment of others. This is the new “kingdom of God” ethic that Jesus spoke about; the new mode of truly human existence.
The historical Jesus presented the wonder of unconditional thinking and existence in a coherent set of sayings and stories. For instance, in Matthew 5:38-48, or the better version in Luke 6: 27-36, he set a context first by summing up the old payback view of justice as “eye for eye” response or justice. This sums up past views of retaliatory or retributive response as taught in the Old Testament and all through primitive mythology- i.e. reward for good, punishment for wrong. Tit for tat. Getting even in relation to a strict standard of payback.
He then countered that old view of justice entirely by arguing that we should not retaliate against offenders, we should not respond in kind or in like manner, returning evil for evil. If we are mistreated or offended, we should respond instead with over-the-top goodness, kindness, and generosity. We should not engage in the payback response of only loving friends and hating enemies, but we should love enemies also.
Once again, my paraphrase of the central message of Jesus:
“Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you. If you love only those who love you, what credit is that to you? Everyone finds it easy to love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Everyone can do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Most will lend to others, expecting to be repaid in full. But do something more heroic, more humane. (Live on a higher plane of human experience). Do not retaliate against your offenders/enemies with ‘eye for eye’ justice. Instead, love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then you will be just like God, because God does not retaliate against God’s enemies. God does not mete out eye for eye justice. Instead, God is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. God causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. Be unconditionally loving, just as your God is unconditionally loving”. (My paraphrase of Luke 6:32-36 or Matthew 5:38-48.)
There is nothing authentically human in just loving those who love us. That is limited tribal love. Even animals do that. Genuine human response goes further and loves enemies also. It is absolutely non-discriminatory, authentically inclusive, and unconditional in its treatment of all people.
If we do this- not retaliating, not engaging in payback response- then Jesus says that we will be like God who is good and generous to all alike. Take a minute and let the radical, mind-transforming nature of this comment sink in. God, according to Jesus, gives good things (sun and rain) to both good and evil. God does not engage in the payback response of eye for eye treatment of people (rewarding only the good and punishing the evil). God does not exclude the bad. God has no favorites, and there are no insiders/outsiders with God.
There is no threat and no punishment with a God that is Unconditional Love. Like the Hebrew prophets before him, Jesus was presenting a stunning, entirely new view of deity that countered the previous historical understanding of gods as threatening, punitive entities. This was a major historical shift or transformation of human perspective. What Q scholar James Robinson called, “Jesus greatest contribution to the history of human ideas… the stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory God”.
This statement of Jesus- if you do this then you will be like God- also plays on the ancient impulse in people to replicate in their lives and societies what they believe to be the divine model; to fulfill in their lives what they believe to be the divine purpose for their lives. The behavior based on belief relationship, or ethic based on similar theological ideal.
There are other statements by the historical Jesus that affirm there is only unconditional goodness behind life and no threat or punitive reality. Note, for instance, his statements that God clothes the grass and feeds the worthless birds that no one pays any attention to. Limitless generosity shown to all life alike, no matter how insignificant.
Researchers argue that some of the other accounts in the gospels did not originate with the historical Jesus. But whoever recounted them, they are of the same tenor as the core teaching of Jesus on non-retaliatory response toward others. For instance, there is the story of the man born blind in John 9. The writer contradicts conventional perspectives by stating that this sickness was not a punishment for sin. As noted earlier, primitive people had understood that any sickness or deformity was a punishment from the gods for sin.
This belief has caused endless misery to unfortunate people afflicted by disease and deformity. It adds an unnecessary psychic burden of guilt and shame to already unbearable physical suffering. It is one of the cruelest perceptions ever concocted- i.e. that a punishing deity gets even with human imperfection and failure by sending sickness and misfortune. Again, note the persistence of this belief in that following the tsunami of 2011, a woman in Japan said, “Is God punishing us because we are enjoying life too much?”.
This belief promotes a sense of sinfulness and obligation to appease or atone, to submit to salvation/sacrifice schemes and mediating priesthoods. It is oppressive slavery and wasteful to boot. But Jesus taught, contrary to the fallacy of divine retaliation, that there was no punitive reality that demanded appeasement. He confronted the ancient perception of a threatening, punishing deity behind life and denied that any such monster existed. He taught the very opposite, and this was considered blasphemy by his contemporaries.
We find this same core theme of unconditional treatment of others in Jesus’ short stories or parables. He spoke, for instance, of a prodigal or wasteful son (Luke 15) who was welcomed home, forgiven, and treated generously by his father who refused the son’s offer of repentance or atonement. The father just wanted to freely celebrate without any requirement to make amends or demanding payback first for the wrong done by the son.
It is important to note that these stories also include other characters who represent conventional retaliatory, payback attitudes. These other characters express the resistant stance of many good people toward this radical new teaching on unconditional response toward offenders. Note in this regard that the older brother in the prodigal parable is indignant that the father is too generous and unconditional toward the wasteful son. He believes in conventional justice where good is rewarded and wrong is punished. He represents many good, moral religious people who demand that justice be upheld and fulfilled. There should be some form of retaliation, some form of “fair” and exact response according to the deed done, whether good or bad. Strict “eye for eye”.
But the generous, unconditionally forgiving father would have none of it. He believes in justice as liberation, and scandalous generosity toward all, whether good or bad. He illustrates the new human response of unconditional treatment of all persons irrespective of what they have done. Again, with the qualifier this must not become pacifist refusal to hold offenders accountable and refusal to restrain the violent. The unconditional approach to all is about maintaining our own humanity in our confrontation of evil in life, notably by restorative justice approaches that treat offenders humanely after incarcerating.
The older brother exhibits the harsh and petty nature of payback thinking and response. His sense of righteous morality and payback justice is offended, but his morality is in reality the pettiness and cruelty of primitive payback thinking. It is more animal-like than truly human. And this story shows how deeply ingrained such thinking is in many people. Unconditional generosity and mercy offends good moral people demanding conventional justice as punitive.
The story of the vineyard owner and workers makes a similar point (Matthew 20). At the end of the day all the workers are given the same payment, regardless of hours worked. The workers who started at the beginning of the day are not cheated. They received the wages that they agreed to. But the late starters who get there at the end of the day, for whatever reason, also have families to feed. And the owner gives them the same as the early starters who then find such generosity offensive and complain to the owner. The owner is not acting according to conventional views of just or “fair” treatment of people. He is too generous and unconditional, according to the early starters. And his generosity pisses them off. They live by conventional fairness as strict reward or punishment according to actions done. They are good, moral people with a strong sense of justice as payback. They do not get this new unconditional treatment of undeserving people.
The story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10) also speaks to unconditional treatment of others. The Samaritan assists a wounded enemy, showing no sense of tribal exclusion or socially required payback but only concern for the wounded man’s welfare as a fellow member of the human family.
In this new body of teaching by the historical Jesus we are seeing millennia of primitive thought being completely overturned. Jesus is arguing for an entirely new type of authentically human response. And he states very clearly that, contrary to all past historical teaching on deity, this is what God is actually like. Let me state his teaching as plainly as possible in theological terms. God is not threatening or punitive. God does not retaliate against human failure or wrongdoing. God does not punish anyone. God does not engage payback response toward anyone. And God does not exclude anyone. Most previous human perspective on Ultimate Reality was wrong, according to the historical Jesus.
This is such an entirely new understanding of Deity or God that it is hard for us to get the full impact that his teaching had on the people of his day. The greatest monster in history- the threatening, punishing God- was being confronted directly and overthrown as a great lie. That monster was being decapitated and conquered. The great payback God of religion, the greatest bogeyman ever created with all the added features to terrify- i.e. holiness, wrath, judgment, hell, blood sacrifice to appease- that was all being discounted entirely as a grand historical fallacy and thrown out as unworthy of truly human thinking and existence.
God was being revealed as unconditional love. At the very core of reality, the creating and sustaining Consciousness was being presented as an inexpressibly wondrous unconditional goodness, generosity, and mercy. The implications of this were stunning. It meant the end and abolishment of all sacrifice and all salvation thinking and practice, and the consequence of this meant the end of all priest-craft, dominating priesthoods, and conditional religion. It lifted a great burden off of humanity with all the associated guilt, shame, despair, and fear that has always accompanied ideas of human sinfulness and myths of gods punishing that sin.
Follow the obvious conclusions for yourself. Since the beginning, most religion and Salvationism had been built on the inhuman myths of a punishing, retaliating deities. That mythology of monster gods, according to Jesus, did not exist and had never existed. Hence, all the subsequent salvation theology and practice was a response to a problem that had never existed in the first place- i.e. meeting atonement conditions to placate angry gods in order to be forgiven. God had never been angry with people for their animal beginnings and their imperfection and their gradual historical development toward something more human.
Further, God had never abandoned humanity at some mythical fall after a lost paradise. There had never been any separation that needed to be healed or restored. God had never threatened to punish anyone. It was all just bad mythology to scare people, and shaman/priests had from the very beginning used that mythology to manipulate and dominate populations by fear (again, see John Pfeiffer’s “The creative explosion: An Inquiry Into the Origins of Art and Religion” on the origin of religion as an institution to terrorize and control people).
So we need to radically revise our perceptions of deity or ultimate reality. The ultimate reality behind all was revealed by Jesus as unconditional love. That had always been the true nature and character of God. And now simply stated, because there is no threatening, punitive God, then there is no need for salvation or any form of sacrifice. This means the end and abolition of religion as we have known it for millennia.
Christianity Reverts To Payback Conditions
We need to radically revise our perceptions of deity or ultimate reality. The ultimate reality behind all was revealed by Jesus to be unconditional love. That had always been the true nature and character of God but no one had expressed it clearly to people due to its distortion and burial by the main religious traditions of history. But following Historical Jesus we are now without excuse. We should know better than to continue the religious burial of this stunning new theology. Now, to state it as simply as it deserves, because there is no threatening, punitive God, then there is no need for salvation or any form of sacrifice. This means the end and abolition of conditional religious traditions with their myriad conditions for salvation and subsequent demands for unquestioning devotion to religious belief systems, required rituals, and religious lifestyles as markers of “true believer” status.
It has all been an immense and entirely unnecessary burden on humanity, engendering fear, anxiety, guilt, shame, depression and despair, even nihilism and violence as the psychologists/theologians Ellens and Lotufo have detailed in their books.
No religion has ever communicated to humanity the unconditional nature of God. Get this clear- They all present as and even claim to be the authoritative representatives of God to humanity and none of them has presented the actual unconditional nature of God to people.
Christianity Reverts To Retaliatory theology and conditions
First an insert: A summary preface for the comment just below.
This refers to Paul’s retreat to retaliatory theology in direct contradiction to the new non-retaliatory theology of Jesus. The ultimate “burial of a diamond in dung”. History’s greatest fraud, etc.
Superlatives don’t do justice to what Paul did to the core theme and message of Historical Jesus. Try to get some sense of the stunning contradiction of Jesus that Paul expressed in his Christology (i.e. his transforming of Jesus into the Christ).
First, a refresher- Jesus stated “his greatest contribution to the history of human ideas” in his stunning new theology of an unconditional God. That was an entirely new and unheard of idea that had never before been as directly and clearly stated as Jesus did in his main teaching. His theology of an unconditional God was the single most profound insight ever presented to human consciousness, and it was offered to liberate human minds from previous millennia of threat theology.
Jesus framed his new unconditional theology this way- “There must be no more eye for eye vengeful/retaliatory treatment of others. Instead, you should love your enemies. Because God does not vengefully retaliate. God unconditionally loves God’s enemies. How so? God generously, inclusively, universally gives the two critical gifts for survival in agrarian society- i.e. sun and rain for crops- to both good and bad people. No discrimination, no exclusion of the bad guys, no retaliatory eye for eye punishment or destruction as “righteous justice”. Just unconditional love for all.” (My necessary paraphrase of the central theme, theology, and message of Historical Jesus to make it more clear. Apologies, Jesus.)
Paul then two decades later directly confronted that theology of Jesus, rejected it outright, and then retreated to re-affirm retaliatory, punishing deity with his restatement of threat theology in his Christ.
He does this in the main presentation of his gospel, the letter to the Romans written around 50 CE. From the very beginning of Romans he hammers the theme of “the wrath of God”. And he then moves on to state that the wrathful God demands violent blood sacrifice, in for example chapter 5, “We are saved from the wrath of God through the supreme divine condition of the blood sacrifice of the cosmic Christ.” Again, I paraphrased that a bit to summarize and make clear what Paul was saying.
Then later (chapter 12: 17-20) he states the theology that undergirds his gospel of demanded sacrifice to appease divine wrath. He quotes an Old Testament verse to illustrate his image of deity, “’Vengeance is mine, I will repay/retaliate’, says the Lord”. A direct contradiction of Jesus’ entirely opposite image of a non-retaliatory God.
Jesus died for protesting the sacrifice industry, and mainly for overthrowing the archetypes that were the foundation of sacrifice, i.e. the myth of a wrathful God that demanded sacrifice as the condition for forgiveness, acceptance, and salvation. The priests, who recognized exactly what he was protesting then had the Romans put him to death. They understood that his public Temple protest was not, as explained by today’s Christians, a protest against money changers defiling the holiness of the temple environs. No, not at all.
Sources? See Bob Brinsmead’s two essays:
“The Historical Jesus: What the Scholars are Saying”
https://bobbrinsmead.com/the-historical-jesus-what-the-scholars-are-saying/
“The Doctrine of Christ and the Triumph of Hellenism”
https://bobbrinsmead.com/the-doctrine-of-christ-and-the-triump-of-hellenism/
Jesus’ death was for his Temple protest against the sacrifice industry and the most dangerous element in his protest was his new theology of a God who did not demand sacrifice. In the new theology of Jesus there was no divine wrath, no demand for payment, punishment, and no threat of destruction through apocalypse or hell. In Jesus’ stunning new theology there was just unconditional love.
In his first presentation in a synagogue (Luke ch. 4) the Jewish audience had also understood his new theology of an unconditional God and reacted violently to that stunning new image of deity and consequently tried to murder him right then. He had outright denied their longing for a vengeful, retaliatory God to punish their enemies.
About a year later, the priests finally had him killed, mainly for his protesting and overturning the theology that undergirded their sacrifice industry, for his rejection of the fear-instilling theology of angry deity demanding conditions like blood sacrifice. That retaliatory theology had long been the principal validation of their entire industry, livelihood, and authority over the population of Jews.
Paul then, two decades later, transformed Jesus’ death, that had been a protest against sacrifice, into the ultimate sacrifice to appease wrathful deity. Has there been any greater contradiction and fraud anywhere in the history of human thought, belief, and narrative? To overthrow entirely what someone stood for, and died for, and then to completely reframe them and their message, to make them represent the entire opposite of what they had taught and died for?
Terms like “stunningly egregious” fail to communicate the level and scale of fraud involved in what Paul did.
Going right to the central point in this- Paul rejected Jesus’ core theme of a non-retaliatory deity and re-established angry, retaliatory, vengeful, punishing, destroying God at the heart of his gospel of the Christ.
Yes, the Jesus message is there in the Christian New Testament, but it has been effectively overwhelmed and buried by the dominance of Paul’s Christ in the larger context.
The gospel authors, all proteges and devotees of Paul’s Christology, felt obligated to include the basic wisdom message of Jesus as it was a well-known oral tradition of their era. But they then deformed it with all sorts of added sayings and parables to make it appear that Jesus supported the Christology of Paul- i.e. that he viewed himself as sent by God to be the cosmic sacrifice to fulfill all previous sacrifices. The varied New Testament authors affirm Paul’s Christology that presents Jesus as the dominating Lord of all, the great punitive destroyer of the world in a world-ending apocalypse to be followed by the eternal destruction of all unbelievers in hell. Ultimate Zoroastrian dualism/tribalism, domination, and violent destruction.
Jesus had earlier rejected messianic Lordship over others and stated that, instead, we must serve others, just as he came to serve. He would never have embraced Paul’s “Lord Jesus”. And his central statement against retaliation (no more “eye for eye” retaliation) meant that he certainly would not affirm ultimate divine retaliation in apocalyptic punishment and destruction followed by eternal retaliatory punishment in hell.
Historical Jesus would have had nothing to do with Paul’s Christ of 2 Thessalonians 1: 7-9, where “Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels (coming in fiery apocalyptic destruction). He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might”.
Here again is James Tabor in “Paul and Jesus”:
“There was a version of ‘Christianity before Paul’, affirmed by both Jesus and his original followers, with tenets and affirmations quite opposite to these of Paul… the message of Paul, which created Christianity as we know it, and the message of historical Jesus and his earliest followers, were not the same. In fact, they were sharply opposed to one another with little in common beyond the name Jesus itself” (p.xv1).
“Paul is the most influential person in human history and realize it or not, he has shaped practically all we think about everything… the West in particular… the foundations of Western civilization- from our assumptions about reality to our societal and personal ethics- rest in a singular way upon the heavenly visions and apparitions of the apostle Paul. We are all cultural heirs of Paul, with the well-established doctrines and traditions of mainstream Christianity deeply entrenched in our culture. In contrast, Jesus as a historical figure… has been largely lost to our culture” (p. xv11).
“Paul operated with a strongly apocalyptic perspective that influenced all he said or did” (p.15).
“The entire New Testament canon is largely a post-Paul and pro-Paul production…” (p.19).
“The ‘Jesus’ who most influenced history was the ‘Jesus-Christ’ of Paul, not the historical figure of Jesus… Paul transformed Jesus himself (and) his message of a… kingdom of justice and peace on earth, to the symbol of a religion of otherworldly salvation in a heavenly world”, (21).
“The form of Christianity… (that thrived in the late Roman Empire)… was heavily based upon the ecstatic and visionary experiences of Paul. Christianity as we came to know it, is Paul and Paul is Christianity. The bulk of the New Testament is dominated by his theological vision”, p.24).
“Paul’s view of Christ as the divine pre-existent Son of God who took on human form, died on the cross for the sins of the world, and was resurrected to heavenly glory at God’s right hand becomes the Christian message”, (39).
“The Q source is the earliest collection of the teachings and sayings of Jesus… the most striking characteristic of the Q source in terms of reconstructing Christian origins is that it has nothing of Paul’s theology, particularly his Christology or view of Christ”, (41).
From these varied sources try to get some sense of how egregiously damaging Paul’s message has been in distorting and burying Jesus’ discovery of a stunning new theology that changes everything from the core on out, or from the foundation on up.
(End of Summary preface)
Now, to continue with the original comment (i.e. original version of this essay). The varied points made in the preface above will be rehashed throughout this original comment below.
A generation after Jesus died, his followers, with a disappointing lack of insight, dismissed his core theme of unconditional God and reverted back to the retaliatory thinking of historically previous religious belief. And they, along with Paul’s initial Christology, created the retaliatory theology and system of belief called Pauline Christianity that, with help from Emperor Constantine, eventually dominated Western civilization. In the development of Paul’s Christ-ianity, the historical battle between retaliation and non-retaliation reached a new climax of profound contrast and opposition.
In direct contradiction to Jesus’ teaching, Paul’s Christianity was developed as a religion of supreme conditions backed by threats of ultimate retaliation through nature, through apocalyptic destruction, and hell. Christianity then became history’s ultimate embodiment of the archetypes of punishment, threat, payback, or retaliation.
In this regard, Christianity has been like all religion which makes divine forgiveness and love conditional. But none more so than Christianity which created a theology of the supreme condition ever conceived- i.e. that of the divine demand for an infinitely valuable and universal applied payment via a cosmic Savior for all humanity. Previous religions had insisted on varied animal sacrifices to appease offended gods, including human and even child sacrifices. But Christianity took this thinking to new heights by arguing that as the sin of humanity was an infinite offense against an infinitely holy God so the payment must be equally infinite and universal. Ergo- Paul’s Christ myth.
According to Brinsmead, church theologians over subsequent centuries then constructed the theology of not just a human sacrifice but the sacrifice of a “God-man” (a member of the Godhead or Trinity). Only an infinitely valuable sacrifice could meet the demand to make the required infinite degree of recompense necessary to atone for the infinite nature of the offenses against Deity. This type of retaliatory theology took conditional Christology to previously unimagined heights of extremity and magnitude.
Paul’s Christianity rejected the liberation that Jesus had tried to promote, liberation into unconditional living in the new kingdom of an unconditional God. Christianity retreated, instead, back to enslavement to retaliatory theology, thinking, and existence.
The historical struggle between retaliation and non-retaliation reached a unique high point in the Jesus/Christianity contradiction. In the message of historical Jesus we had the new understanding of what truly human existence could be- i.e. unconditional response and relating validated by unconditional theology. His message had presented an existence of no conditions, no requirements to be met in order to receive full forgiveness, unconditional inclusion, and unlimited generosity.
But in pronounced contrast, with Christianity we got the retreat to a system of supreme condition, a return to the God of anger, retribution, and demands for sacrifice/payment. Unfortunately for Western societies, Christian retaliatory ideals have reinforced the felt need for payback justice in society as well. Note in this regard the Christian support for the death penalty in the US, and record-breaking imprisonment of offenders, even non-violent ones. People, indeed, become just like the God that they believe in and worship.
How did this happen? How did Christianity get it all so wrong? Because the man whose thinking and theology became Christianity- i.e. the apostle Paul- did not pay attention to what Jesus actually said or taught. Paul ignored entirely the unconditional teaching and theology of Jesus and created instead a new theology about the person Jesus (not the message of the man but a message about the man) that was shaped through and through by the primitive retaliation perspective. Paul got Jesus backwards, upside down, and absolutely opposite to what he had actually taught.
Paul intentionally and directly, as stated in Romans 12, rejected the stunning new non-retaliatory theology of Jesus and re-instated the theology of a retaliatory God. He does this by quoting an Old Testament verse that states “’Vengeance is mine, I will repay/retaliate’, says the Lord”. This is entirely contrary to Jesus’ statement of his new theology as “No more retaliatory eye for eye, but instead love your enemies because God does, giving sun and rain to both good and bad people. Be unconditionally loving just as God is unconditionally loving” (my paraphrase of Luke 6 and Matthew 5).
Insert: Jesus presented his new theology within the common “behavior based on belief” coupling. This ethic/theology relationship could be stated as- Here is the divine ideal, the theological archetype for how to respond and behave.
Shifting back on topic…
Paul, and the other followers of Jesus who fell under Paul’s sway, were very much like the older brother in the Prodigal parable. With their inherited sense of righteousness, morality, and justice as required eye for eye retaliation or payback, they could not just ignore wrongs committed by offenders/enemies with the free forgiveness that Jesus had advocated and illustrated in the Prodigal Father. No. All wrongs had to be first punished before forgiveness and salvation could be offered. Compensation had to be made. Debt had to be fully paid as the prerequisite condition to forgiveness and mercy. Holiness demanded that all such conditions be met first. Tit had to follow tat.
Paul explained in Romans that humanity had willfully fallen from original perfection and that all people had become sinful and therefore all deserved punishment and damnation. So a cosmic scale sacrifice/payment had to be made to atone for what was believed to be willful human sinfulness. A sacrifice of a God-man was necessary to placate an offended God that intended to enact retribution on all humanity.
Note the varied summaries of the retaliatory justice theme in Paul’s letters, starting with his central book on Christian belief or doctrine, Romans: “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men (Rom.1:18)… you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed. God will give to each person according to what he has done…. to those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger. There will be trouble and distress” (2:5-8).
He then presents the salvation solution to avoid the threatened damnation and destruction from the angry God, “the redemption that came by Jesus Christ. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood” (3:25). The condition for escaping the wrath of God is “faith in the blood sacrifice of Jesus”. This condition for escaping wrath is repeated elsewhere throughout Romans. “If you confess with your mouth…and believe in your heart…you will be saved” (10:9).
Other statements express this payback theology, “God is just: he will pay back trouble to those who trouble you…He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel…They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord” (2Thessalonians 1:7-9).
The book of Hebrews continues this theme of retaliation and the condition of atonement by blood sacrifice. “Every violation and disobedience received its just punishment…” (2:2). For those who do not believe, “I declared on oath in my anger, they shall never enter my rest..” (3:11). “It is mine to avenge. I will repay” (10:30). The condition to avoid this anger, “He sacrificed for their sins…when he offered himself…” (7:27).
This theme of blood sacrifice to appease a threatening God continues throughout the New Testament and reaches a terrorizing culmination in the book of Revelation. After noting again the condition of violent, bloody sacrifice to appease angry deity (“He has freed us from our sins by his blood”, 1:5) the writer of Revelation then threatens those who refuse this blood sacrifice with an endless roasting on the big barbie down under. And he means burning in the “lake of fire”, forever (20:11-15). Ultimate and eternal payback, punishment, or retaliation. In Revelation the peaceful, forgive-without-limit, cheek-turning, love-your-enemies Jesus is presented as the angry, sword-sticking-out-of-mouth, unforgiving, fiery eyes, hate-your-enemies Christ. A true Christian monster.
Going through the New Testament to note these varied statements that highlight the contrasts between the messages of Jesus and Paul’s Christ, reveals something of what Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy tried to communicate with their contrasting terms- “diamond versus dung”.
Where Jesus had taught that no payment needed to be made before forgiveness was offered, Paul along with other New Testament writers claimed that all debt must be paid in full before God would forgive. Paul denied what Jesus had taught. He went against Jesus’ message entirely. He missed the most humanizing insight of all history, the discovery of the greatest idea ever conceived. He then successfully short-circuited and aborted Jesus’ effort to communicate the truth of an unconditional God and unconditional lifestyle to people, that would have resulted in the grandest human liberation movement of all. And yet, confoundingly, Christianity claims to be the religion of Jesus. Well, where then is Jesus’ central message of unconditional treatment of others? Christianity opted instead for the message of Paul about supreme conditions.
It has been established that Paul was a domineering man who tolerated no opposition and jealously fought to have his theology established as the only authentic Christian theology (see, for example, Charles Freeman’s “The Closing of the Western Mind”, p.109-114). James Tabor (“Paul and Jesus”) has summed this up well in stating that Paul wrote most of the New Testament and the other books included in the New Testament canon support his viewpoint (e.g. the gospels and Acts). Christianity is therefore Paul’s religion. Paul’s view of Jesus is the one that the world has received. And there is nothing of true unconditional in Paul or his Christ-ianity.
Yet the diamond of unconditional teaching is still here and there in the New Testament even though it has been almost buried by the dunghill of retaliatory mythology and theology that dominates the New Testament. This leads some of us to conclude that the greatest threat to Christianity is not from its many outside opponents, whether from atheism or other religions. The greatest threat to Christianity is the historical Jesus and taking his unconditional message seriously. Historical Jesus spells the end of Paul’s Christ.
Deity Meeting A Lower Standard
Varied Christians today glibly use the term unconditional love to describe the Christian God. That is an oxymoronic and irreconcilable mixing of entirely opposite things. Consequently, they come up with some fantastical and contorted explanations when presenting what they call “God’s unconditional love through the sacrifice of Jesus”, seemingly unaware of the contradictory nature of what they are stating (see for example, http://www.biblicaltheology.com/rom/rom_12_13.html noting the comment, “because love without hypocrisy loves as God loves: unconditionally… By so doing we leave the judgment and vengeance entirely up to the Lord”. Huh?
See also http://www.commontruth.com/UnconditionalLove.html.
Others simply give up entirely on unconditional-
http://withchrist.org/unconditional.htm or http://preservedwords.com/uncond-pv.htm ).
And yes, admittedly, other Christians are at least embracing and wrestling with this theme of unconditional. They sense the spirit of this ideal in what Jesus taught but they present it thus- We feel obligated to forgive and love unconditionally because Jesus taught that. Hence, we must then let God take vengeance on sin and sinners because retaliation is a divine responsibility as Paul teaches. In this manner they are trying to maintain both the theme of unconditional, which cannot be denied in Jesus’ teaching, and yet also maintain the old payback views in their overall theology which is the supporting background of their belief system (i.e. that God will exact ultimate revenge).
This is an irreconcilable and profound merging of contradictory things, but it is the best that they can come up with given the starkly opposing realities that they are trying to hold in tension. This contradictory Christian mish-mash is the result of holding a felt obligation to the immutable sacred that they have inherited (i.e. a holy God that must punish sin) and then trying to read the unconditional Jesus through this payback lens. The outcome is that the retaliatory theology of Paul only distorts the humane ideal that Jesus was advocating. The larger retaliatory context that they are maintaining woefully distorts the actual meaning of unconditional.
So when pressed on this issue of unconditional theology and unconditional treatment of others, Christian believers will argue that God cannot just forgive sin. God is holy, they claim, and must first punish all sin before he can forgive. Holiness takes precedence over unconditional love. Therefore, a holy God demands that any debt first be paid in full before he will forgive or include anyone in his salvation. A sacrifice must first be made before mercy can be shown, a position that even the Old Testament prophets had rejected with their claims that God wanted no sacrifice but only mercy. Consequently, unconditional (absolutely no conditions) is distorted beyond recognition.
Hosea 6:6, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice”.
In response, we need to challenge the holiness theology, that demands prerequisite punishment and debt payment before forgiveness is available, by asking a simple question- Why cannot God just exercise authentically free and unconditional forgiveness as Jesus taught and be merciful and generous without first demanding payment? We imperfect people are urged to act like this- to love and forgive with no pre-conditions being met first. We are told to just forgive others for their offenses. Why then is the God of Christianity held to a lower standard of behavior than we are?
Isn’t God assumed to be ultimate goodness and love? The supremely humane reality? Why then are we held to a higher standard of human response and relating than God is? As Brinsmead says, a God who demands full payment before he forgives is a God who knows nothing of genuine forgiveness. Where the debt is paid in full, then no authentic forgiveness is required.
And what about the definition of authentic love in such places as 1 Corinthians 13? It states that true love “keeps no record of wrongs”. That sounds like the unconditional love taught by Jesus. And is not God the most authentic love? Why then hold the contradiction of claiming that God must keep a record of all wrongs and punish all sin? The entire salvation and sacrifice industry is built on foundational principles such as keeping required records of all the faults of imperfect people and demanding full atonement for such sins.
Again, if ordinary people are held to the humane standard of unconditional love then it is valid to ask why a supposedly supremely humane God is not held to the same standard? Edward Schillebeeckx has correctly stated, “God is more human (more humane) than any human being” (“The Praxis of the Reign of God”, Mary Hilkert, p.56). Why then these nonsensical myths of a God who exhibits a lower standard of inexcusably subhuman behavior? God is either Unconditional Love (absolutely no conditions), or not. If God is not authentically unconditional love, then you cannot define God’s highly conditional nature with the term unconditional. You are talking absolute nonsense.
Watch The Context
Retaliatory thinking has missed entirely the real meaning of ideals such as forgiveness. As noted above, when you try to embed human ideals in a recompense/make amends context (e.g. unconditional love in a Christian atonement theological context) you distort the real meaning of human ideals like unconditional love. This ideal is then no longer authentically unconditional. This is the problem with all religion which has been essentially conditional from the beginning and is entirely unsuitable to communicate unconditional reality.
Admittedly, conflicted by their intuitive awareness of unconditional as a more humane alternative, religious people have tried to humanize their gods over history, recognizing that the deities they inherited were missing something basic to ultimate goodness. In response, they added more humane features to their gods, such as love and mercy, to temper and balance out the harsher features of tribalism, alpha domination, and retaliatory punitive destruction. Nonetheless, religious believers also the felt obligation to maintain the old deity features that had to do with retaliation and punishment.
As noted above, religious people, for example, continue to affirm that holiness in deity demands punishment. Holiness in deity has long been understood as fundamental to justice and therefore takes precedence over mercy or love. Forgiveness and love are then dependent on first making some payment or sacrifice. Well, forgiveness is then rendered meaningless. When human ideals are couched in a religious recompense context they are then rendered something entirely different from the unconditional that should define them. This is Brinsmead’s point again that a God who demands full payment/punishment before forgiving knows nothing about authentic forgiveness.
Ignoring, dismissing, or rejecting the core message of Jesus, Christianity has continued to sacralize the divine retaliatory justice of Paul’s God/Christ- “’Vengeance is mine, I will repay’ says the Lord”, “Lord Jesus will return to destroy all who don’t believe my gospel”, etc.
The Christian God has been framed as the ultimate version of the divine retaliation reality and ideal, with his dominant qualities such as infinite holiness demanding infinite payment. The Christian God has been presented as the ultimate retaliating monster, more so than other historical retaliatory deities. And Hell in Christian theology has been the ultimate statement or expression of the hateful, inhumane response of retaliation toward human imperfection. Again, all to frighten people into subjection to the vast salvation/sacrifice industry that saps human time and resources and hinders human progress.
The sum of the matter is that the Christianity constructed by Paul got Jesus all wrong and it got God all wrong. As ultimate, transcendent good, God is indeed unconditional love just as Jesus taught. And unconditional love to incomprehensible and inexpressible degree and quality, beyond all human imagination (i.e. “transcendent” as better than the best that we can imagine or express in language). With a God that is no conditions love, there is no threat, no condemnation or judgment, no exclusion of anyone, no punishment, and no conditions to meet for acceptance, absolutely nothing to fear.
Let me state as plainly as possible the central point that the historical Jesus tried to make. Every human being is fully and equally included; all are freely forgiven, and all receive the unlimited generosity of God. All are safe no matter what they believe or don’t believe. There is no threatening monster behind life to fear or dread. There is only Unconditional Love at the very core of all reality and life. There are no conditions to meet to be included in the love and generosity of this Ultimate Parent. No one has ever been separated in any manner from this Unconditional Love.
And while we are engaged in the project to conquer this human-constructed monster, i.e. the inherited images of a retaliatory, punishing God, we also set our sights on bringing down the second greatest monster of all- i.e. death. Over human history, death has been made an even greater terror to people because it has been defined and explained in terms of religious belief and myth. Shaman and priests have long told people that death was a punishment from God for sin, and more punishment would follow after death. Cheer up, they said, the worst is yet to come. Such mythology intensifies natural human fear of death. Death then becomes a terrifying monster for humanity to face and resolve.
I know a lady who was reduced to despair and crying when a relative of hers died who had refused to meet the Christian condition of “accepting Jesus” in order to “be saved”. The lady subsequently believed that her relative had gone to hell. That cruel nonsense adds further psychic misery to already unacceptable human suffering. The realization that there is only unconditional love at the heart of all reality, and greeting us beyond death, dispels the enslaving fear of death or life after death. Unconditional does indeed take the sting out of death. Death can then be seen as the toothless monster that it really is. We should not fear or hesitate to laugh in the face of such a grotesquely exaggerated monster.
Unconditional offers liberation like nothing else from across history, and especially liberating is the realization that there is no threatening, punishing reality behind life or after life. This recognition goes to the deepest roots of long-held human fears, anxieties, concerns, despair, and depression. In this regard, unconditional is utterly limitless in its liberating potential for human minds. It goes to the root of darkness and enslavement in human consciousness, darkness long promoted by religion and its myth of ultimate divine retaliation and punishment.
Unconditional love at the very core of all reality breaks the grip of religious fear by overturning those past fallacies of some imminent divine retaliation and the need to placate that with sacrifice or payment. Real liberation is more than just social freedoms. It is more essentially about the liberation of mind, thought, perception, feeling, and spirit. We can be physically free but still enslaved to the worst ideas held from a primitive past. Unconditional ideas/beliefs therefore take freedom to the very heart of what really enslaves humanity, and this positively impacts human creative potential in profound ways. It liberates mind and emotions and spirit from a long history of guilt and shame over being imperfectly human, and still gradually developing toward something better and more humane.
Unconditional theology and ethics points us toward the ultimate meaning and purpose of the universe and life. As others have suggested, the main point of human existence is to learn something about love. Well, this new definition of love as unconditional, takes that formerly high human ideal to new heights of clarity and humanity.
This new insight into unconditional love as the supreme human ideal and the true nature of ultimate reality offers profound potential to reshape human behavioral response and society. It liberates as nothing else can ever do from all the debasing and dehumanizing features of animal existence with its conditional exclusion (small band, tribal loyalty), domination, and retaliation, and the destructive consequences of these behaviors in human society.
Living An Unconditional Life
Intuitively, questions arise as to how we express the unconditional ideal in daily life. I once brought up this idea of unconditional treatment of others in a discussion group and someone countered, “Oh, you’re saying that we should let all the psychopaths go free?” Well, no. Absolutely not. No such thing is being suggested. Any common-sense understanding of love will recognize the fundamental responsibility to protect innocent people from harm. This means that people who cannot or will not control their worst impulses to harm others need to be restrained, locked up and in some cases- i.e. psychopathy- the key thrown away.
We remember the common-sense expressed by the pacifist preacher who said, “If someone attacks me and my family, I will beat him over the head with a 2by4 and when he is lying on the ground unconscious then I will sit down and discuss my pacifist principles with him”.
Common-sense love and responsibility may even require pro-active endeavor to prevent such things as threatened terrorism (i.e. what the US is doing in Iran).
However, any such protective restraint of violent offenders should be done “with a loving heart and with the other person’s welfare in mind” (http:www.unification.net/ws/theme144.htm). This is a call for conventional views of justice to be continually re-evaluated and reformulated in terms of necessary restraint but also in terms of the ongoing need for strengthening restorative justice ideals as desirable and more effective human ideals and practices (i.e. more effective for lowering recidivism rates). And we ought to be careful that when presenting these common-sense qualifiers above (i.e. forcible restraint of violent people) that we do not diminish the full impact of the ideal of unconditional treatment of all others.
(Insert: “With the other person’s welfare in mind”- i.e. just as the Allies sought the restoration of Japan and Germany post-WW2, restoring them to the community of nations.)
Further on the issue of justice, how do we judge and assign culpability to any human life? For example, decades ago a teenage boy in the US was condemned to death for a brutal rape and murder of a woman. But during his trial it came to light that he had been brutalized from before birth. His father, suspicious that his mother may have cheated, had beat her pregnant stomach. After the boy was born, he was thrown against walls for crying, and beaten repeatedly. He knew only hate and violence all through his young developing life.
And if the condition of psychopathy is involved in such cases, researchers suggest there may even be a genetic factor. These people may be born with defective brains. They still need ongoing restraint and even imprisonment in order to protect others. But surely they should also be shown mercy for things that have happened to them that were beyond their control. So the argument is not about setting people free that cannot control their own base impulses but for treating them humanely and showing mercy to even the worst offenders (e.g. abolishing the death penalty).
Further, some studies have shown that exacting punishing revenge through our payback justice systems brings no ultimate or final closure to victims (e.g. http://www.apa.org/monitor/2009/06/revenge.aspx ). We also remember that forgiveness does not mean that victims are responsible to personally like offenders in order to properly forgive them. Others argue that forgiveness is more about personal liberation from negative emotions regardless of any contact or relationship with offenders.
And by way of caution here- normal human sensitivity will respect the overwhelming trauma caused to victims by the unrestrained and intentionally cruel violence of some offenders. Sensitivity will understand that each person approaches these human ideals in different ways, from differing experiences, and at their own chosen pace. Any severely traumatized person deserves the utmost respect in regard to how they may wrestle with these human ideals, or choose not to engage them. So while we can argue that unconditional treatment of all others is a profoundly liberating approach, different people will embrace such things as they feel capable. The trauma of some people, however, does not mean that unconditional treatment of others should be dismissed as unrealistic, impractical, or unworkable. Such dismissal would deny victims the liberating potential of this ideal.
Others argue that if there is no threat of punishment in society then there is nothing to restrain people from wrong behavior. Anarchy and chaos will break out. But the discipline of psychology has shown that most people respond better to positive affirmation than to threat and fear. The Australian Psychological Society has a paper entitled “Punishment and Behavior Change” (http://www.psychology.org.au/Assets/Files/punishment_position_paper.pdf) which argues “that recent trends towards increased reliance on punishment as a primary response to crime” do not work as expected.
For example, punitive parenting approaches have been linked to higher levels of aggression in children, the paper claims. And these punitive approaches do not rehabilitate and deter criminal offenders. They don’t teach “alternative acceptable behaviors”. The paper recommends approaches that teach children and offenders to be aware of other people’s perspectives and feelings, thereby promoting empathy and other more positive alternatives.
Also, we obviously teach children the “natural consequences” to all sorts of actions. One man suggested there was value in the driver’s point system for curtailing his daughter’s more aggressive approach to getting to destinations. She was “inspired” by her mounting points to slow down and follow traffic speed limits.
Others have noted the obligation of love to care for others. We affirm this in the responsibility to improve our own situations in order to properly care for our families. And if someone runs a business operation then they are not just responsible to care for their own family but also to ensure their business continues to operate successfully so that employees may also be enabled to care for their families. In such situations debts owed to the business must be paid and we have a legal system to ensure that debts along supply chains are paid.
We do not abandon common sense in the pursuit of human ideals like unconditional. It does not mean the mindless pacifism of just turning the other cheek in the face of bullying or violence, or just giving to everyone who asks or borrows. Offenders must also be taught the value of consequences as critical to their development as mature humans.
And unconditional is not an argument against restitution. That is a common-sense and entirely humane responsibility of any offender. It is up to the victims to freely choose to engage unconditional response toward offenders, or not.
Contemporary psychology (and theology) further offers another insight that is important to consider in regard to our struggle to overcome our animal past and live as human. It states that we are not our inherited animal brain (e.g. Jeffrey Schwartz, “You Are Not Your Brain”). Though we still struggle against the residual influence of the animal brain, we are in reality a conscious self that is essentially love (see for instance, Albert Nolan’s “Jesus Today”). Some suggest that the real human self as love is the God of love that is incarnated equally in all humanity as inseparable from the common “human spirit”.
Note again that the ideal of unconditional treatment of others faces stiff resistance from varied sectors of the human family. It is an ideal that is particularly offensive to good moral people, and notably to religious folk like Christians (some examples- http://withchrist.org/unconditional.htm , and http://www.acts17-11.com/cows_unlove.html ). We saw this earlier in the stories of Jesus where some people were included as a contrast to other characters expressing unconditional generosity, such as the older brother who was offended at the generous father who refused to punish or demand repayment first from the returning wasteful son. The father did not act according to conventional payback justice (i.e. reward the good, punish the wrong).
We could respond to such constricted and stingy righteousness by recognizing that all of us intuitively feel that we should be treated unconditionally and our failures forgiven freely. But we are then often less generous with the failures of others that we view as worse than ourselves (i.e. viewing the failing others as positioned further over toward the bad end on the continuums of good and evil that we hold). So we set conditions for others that are harsher than what we apply to ourselves. This type of thinking leaves us all insecure in the end. Who is really forgiven and included and safe if some are to be excluded from full unconditional treatment? Once we make it conditional and uncertain for some then it becomes conditional and uncertain for all of us.
I would add that to apply the ideal of unconditional only to response to major traumatizing events (e.g. serious crimes) is to miss an important application. Lifting a population or society is more about all members practicing unconditional in the little details of daily mundane human interaction. This is where we experience unconditional as a “hard saying” but as the purest form of liberation and enlightenment and the best way to lift all life toward something better.
Human ideals develop over history and sometimes spread gradually through populations. They are first felt and imagined by the courageous few (e.g. Jesus, Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, etc.) who will begin to experiment with them in real life situations. They are often exhibited against conventional social practices that may dominate societies in a contrary manner. Hence, there is often initial resistance to the new ideal and associated practices. But if the new ideal is something authentically human, then it will grow and spread via a learning process. Hence, the advice of the early Akkadian father to his son to act in a non-retaliatory manner oward offenders was surely not something notably believed or practiced in his time but it has become more widely accepted in our age.
Also, with new ideals you will often get extremist applications as part of the social learning process. For instance, some have taken compassion to what is considered a pacifist extreme (i.e. “turn the other cheek” in all situations of violence, or a dogmatic non-resistance toward all evil). But also integral to any form of love is the element of healthy anger at evil and the refusal to yield to such, and consequent endeavor to prevent further evil in order to protect the innocent.
We might say that while Ultimate Reality or deity is absolutely no conditions love, and that serves as a noble ideal for life here, the messy reality of imperfect life requires all sorts of diverse compromises and responses.
There is also an important theological component to social change for many people. They come to understand that ultimate reality is unconditional love and this provides a sense of security and safety. It has a liberating impact on their consciousness and enables them to embrace life more fully as this realization frees from anxiety, fear, depression, and despair. This can then lead to a wider liberation of public consciousness in significant ways and the outcomes of this may reverberate throughout societies.
Love Beyond Comprehension
When considering this relatively new discovery of unconditional love at the core of all reality, we ought to remember the true nature of things considered transcendent or having to do with divinity. Such reality is beyond all imagining in terms of its real perfection and beauty. It is beyond our understanding or ability to express. As Joseph Campbell notes, categories, words, names, or statements only distort and diminish the truly incomprehensible. What Ultimate Reality actually is, is so much better than we can ever conceive or express. The reality of a God that is unconditional love is something infinitely better than the best that can be imagined. When “Near-Death Experiencers” return, after encountering the unconditional love of the great Light in surrounding realms, they cannot find words to express it. So, as Ken Ring says, they stammer hyperbole about that love. It is something better felt than understood or explained.
In light of this, anything less than or contrary to unconditional love could be evaluated as not fully human or humane. Unconditional becomes a new touchstone or centering ideal for truth and meaning in human narratives. It becomes the new baseline for perception of reality, for meaning, for human purpose, for authentically humane feeling, response, behavior, for overall authentic human existence. Comparatively, anything less may be considered as not authentically human, as even subhuman. This historically new ideal answers the profound human desire to know and experience what it means to be truly and fully human. Unconditional is the critical guidepost as to what to look for in order to find that better future or existence that all humanity intuitively longs for.
At the core of the universe is this pulsating Energy, Life, Power, Mind, or Consciousness that is defined most correctly by Unconditional Love. It is the greatest discovery ever made, the greatest insight ever conceived. It gets to the ultimate meaning of the universe and life, to the purpose of all. And it gets to the essential nature of what creates and sustains all things, and why all has been brought to exist- i.e. for the purpose of learning, living, and experiencing something of real love, of love that is unconditional. Unconditional takes the ideal of love to new heights of humane experience and expression. Unconditional is the grand liberation that we continue to reach for.
There is a major revolution occurring in the historical development of human perception and outlook. Humanity continues to explore and discover what it means to be truly human and what is the real nature of humane reality. But we have further work to do in order to fully root out this perverse perception that there is some horrific monster behind life that is going to retaliate and punish humanity. This is a residual perception that still hinders modern consciousness from a full liberation into a more humane future.
The grand narrative of humanity is about this liberation into that more human future. Counter movements like Paul’s Christology have tried to derail and abort this liberation but it goes on, driven by dreamers like the Akkadian father, the Hebrew prophets, the historical Jesus, and many others who have also felt something of the wonder of being truly human. We are just beginning to play around the edges of something so profoundly wondrous and liberating that we are hardly able to understand or begin to express it. It pulls us forward to make life something ever better.
Unconditional love is about liberating consciousness from all that limits humanity, from all those dark ideas that devalue the wonder of being human and depress human creative potential. Unconditional offers the possibility of a genuine purging, cleansing, and transformation of the conscious and subconscious.
Wendell Krossa
Appendice A:
Some argue that any speculation about unknowable realities is a waste of time. Like the frustrated atheist who blurted, “Lets get rid of all this metaphysical bullshit” (Billy Connolly?). But because a lot of distorting speculation has already occurred over history (i.e. the basest, most inhumane features have long been projected onto ultimate reality) and such speculation has long shaped human thought and behavior, often in damaging ways causing much harm, then it is important to correct that speculation and offer better alternatives. To point toward a better direction for human perception. Hence, my foregoing theological speculation on new ways of perceiving ultimate reality or deity as unconditional love.
Even atheist Sam Harris came to realize that you have to deal with people where they are not where you wish they were. He was referencing the common-sense need to encourage moderation reforms in Islam.
Appendice B:
When we state that at the core of all reality there is Unconditional Love, we are not referring to some distant-from-humanity reality, out there somewhere, or up above somewhere in the “heavens” (i.e. the primitive mythology of “sky gods”). The Unconditional Love that creates all and sustains all in existence every moment is at the very core of our own consciousness, closer than our own breath or our own atoms. In fact, it is probably not even correct to perceive of human consciousness, or the human spirit, as something separate from the greater creating Consciousness.
For example, the NDE discovery of an amazing oneness of people with God, while still existing as distinct persons. This counters the mythical fallacies of “sinful, impure, and imperfect humanity” having been rejected and separated from the purity and perfection that is God.
What matters most in the cosmos and world is right here inside us, at the center of our personhood. We, each one of us, are at the very center of what is most vital in the cosmos. There is no circumference, only Center, and each of us is that Center (to borrow and paraphrase some comments from Joseph Campbell).
This is also to counter the commonly made argument of how small and insignificant humans are in the universe. We need to question this argument that sometimes appears to devalue humanity, as the dimensions of this spatial realm may not mean much in terms of the value and role of consciousness. Conscious human experience appears to be the most real thing of all in the cosmos. It may be the only “real” thing in the cosmos. It may be that which gives reality to all else (see for instance, “Quantum Enigma” by Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner).
Appendice C:
If humanity can no longer blame punishing gods, how then do we explain human misfortune and suffering? We can no longer explain it, as people have done all across past history, in terms of angry gods retaliating against sin, or disciplining failing people, or teaching people lessons. And anyway, what monster would harm or kill people just to teach someone lessons in order to compel admission of personal guilt, as is the argument of Job’s comforters? And what monster would harm others basically to show off a favorite pupil faithfully taking it on the chin, as in the portrayal of God in Job?
We have better alternatives to help in understanding the mystery of suffering. For instance, we now recognize there is an element of freedom in nature and in human existence (i.e. authentic freedom of choice and action).
Freedom is an element that is essential and inseparable to any authentic understanding of love. Any contemporary understanding of a truly humane deity must accept the fact of non-intervention (non-coercion) as central to genuine love. Love does not over-rule human freedom and choice. This leaves open the possibility for poor choice and hence, abuse and suffering caused to others. But such freedom also permits genuine moral good to be expressed which, according to theologians, is valued highly by a God of love.
For more detail on these issues that have perplexed people for millennia see, for instance, “The Triumph of God Over Evil” by William Hasker. He offers a fairly thorough coverage of the issues related to human suffering and attempts to understand and explain this mystery as much as it is possible.
Appendice D: More background to Retaliation and Conditional religion
Let me rehearse here in summary some of the more prominent themes from early mythology that have continued to shape human belief systems through history, most notably with a punitive retaliation orientation. I am focusing on the origins of the two basic realities and themes developed in this essay- i.e. animal/human, retaliation/unconditional.
First, to clarify, the human fear of death is the fundamental impetus to mythmaking (Campbell- “The recognition of mortality and the requirement to transcend it is the first great impulse to mythology” Myths to Live By, p.22). Early people with their developing human consciousness became aware of life, of existence, and of beauty, love, suffering and all that comes with conscious human experience of life. But it was their awareness of death that impacted them the most. Their experience of life and love would end in the rot of death. That realization of finiteness and mortality became a terror to people.
Coupled with their death awareness and death fear they also felt the fundamental impulse of consciousness for meaning and purpose (Victor Frankl). This primal/primary impulse for meaning drove the human desire to understand it all and to explain life and death to themselves and to others. This led to early attempts at mythmaking, at creating systems of meaning or explanation.
While fear of death pushed early people to create mythical explanations, there were associated ideas that shaped the nature of the explanations that they came up with. Prominent among such ideas was the perception that there were spiritual forces or spirits/gods behind all the elements and forces of nature. We see that in early accounts of water and wind gods (storm gods), gods of lightning and thunder, sun gods, moon gods, and other related gods.
Early people, using the best logic available to them, concluded that the spirits/gods were angry because the forces of nature were often destructive and harmful to people.
Further, people emerging from an animal past understood life in terms of animal drives and impulses that still dominated their existence, such as small band or tribal mentality, domination of others (alpha male/female), and retaliation (violent destruction of competitors/enemies). It is important to note that retaliation begins with the animal world. We continue to embody our animal past in our physical body and in our genes (i.e. the 98% similarity with chimpanzees), and we also share the same dark and brutal impulses that animals manifest without guilt or shame.
These dark animal impulses are mediated to humanity via a core animal brain. This is the dark side in humanity, what religious people call “original sin or human sinfulness”. Viewing human imperfection and failure as sinfulness is to view humanity too harshly as possessing something that rightly provokes the gods to retaliate. Human imperfection is then viewed as something deserving punishment and damnation. Early myths also added the element of willfulness to human failure. The ancients claimed that early people intentionally chose evil (a more serious fault- i.e. first degree or intentional choice) and they thereby ruined the original paradise and destroyed life (the Fall of man or original sin myth). Later people would project onto their gods the feature of holiness which further sharpens the sense of human imperfection and affirms the felt need to punish humanity. Theological retaliation logic then argues that holy, pure gods are obligated to punish sin that they view as an offense against their holiness.
But again, to call our animal background and inheritance “sin” is to unnecessarily demonize humanity and to intensify the felt righteous urge to punish. Our animal background is our inheritance and it remains with us in the form of this inherited animal core brain (formerly the “tri-partite brain” in evolutionary biology terms- i.e. the reptilian core, the limbic system, and then the later cortex that mediates the more advanced human impulses). Humanity should not be condemned for emerging out of an animal past and struggling to gradually progress toward a more human future. Surely patience and assistance is a more appropriate response to our history-long endeavor to become more human.
Unfortunately, with our animal background and its residual animal drives still experienced in human life, the brutal features of animal existence were then projected by early people onto their gods. Those gods were shaped as predatory, punitive, tribal, dominating, and retaliatory deities. They punished and destroyed people. For example, note the Sumerian Flood myth (Wikipedia) where an early council of gods decided to annihilate humanity with a flood, for partying and celebrating too much (i.e. being too noisy).
Further in relation to these myths, people developed the belief that any human sickness was evidence of punishment from the gods. It was understood that the gods caused sickness because people had broken taboos and consequently deserved retribution. The “eye for eye” justice thing again.
The ultimate expression of the gods retaliating against human imperfection was the idea of final apocalypse, a grand annihilation of all humanity and all life, the final violent destruction and ending of the world. This would be the ultimate expression of retaliating gods punishing humanity.
But later mythmakers would take retaliation and punishment even further in the perverse myth of hell. After the apocalyptic ending of the world, imperfect humanity would then be destroyed and punished forever in a fiery and tormenting hell. This is the dark and perverse drive to retaliate and punish taken to a traumatizing extreme.
The culmination of developing these themes in early mythmaking is the perception that there is something threatening and punitive behind life, some great retaliating monster; a super predator. This has been the most damaging perception ever created by human minds. It has reverberated all down through history in human consciousness causing incalculable terror, misery, and despair.
As noted in the essay, this perception of something threatening and punitive, or retaliatory, then sparked the appeasement response in early people. This is the fear of death and the survival impulse being aroused to extremes. Early people, afraid of the angered spirits/gods, naturally sought a way to escape punishment and death. They wanted to find some way to appease the angry gods and find salvation from their threats.
Therefore, the early shaman/priests devised salvation schemes. Notable here was the offering of sacrifices or blood to appease angry spirits. The salvation/sacrifice movement was developed into a massive endeavor across human history. It was revised and refined in many diverse ways in the varied religions that people have created but it has always expressed essentially the same desire to appease some angered and retaliatory entity behind life.
Christianity developed the above myths into their most extreme expression (supreme and cosmic scale sacrifice/salvation) and that Christian body of myths has arguably shaped Western consciousness and society more than any other complex of ideas, and the Christian civilization of the West has subsequently influenced much of the rest of the world (see James Tabor statements from “Paul and Jesus”).
So we have this line of descent from base animal characteristics and existence down to early animal-like myths and gods, and further down to more refined expressions of such themes in religions like Christianity. But in contrast to this line of descent, we also see in history the emergence of human consciousness in early humanity. That is something new and uniquely human or humane. As John Eccles says, it is something entirely outside of the evolutionary process- “A supernatural, spiritual creation… no other explanation is plausible”.
And human consciousness, with its new and uniquely human impulses, takes humanity in an entirely new direction from animal behavior and existence. This sparks the human exodus into freedom (liberation from animal drives and existence). It is the beginning of the long, gradual process of the humanization of all life in the wonder of civilization.
Evolutionary biology or psychology often does not get the human element right with its endeavor to understand human experience and life in terms of our animal past and inheritance. These disciplines have distorted and degraded the uniquely human by trying to explain it too completely in terms of animal drives and existence. There are more helpful explanations coming from the disciplines of theology and psychology that properly honor the unique wonder of being human (see, for example, the books of John Eccles).
With the emergence and maturing of human consciousness there has been an ongoing struggle between the human and the animal. Religious traditions try to explain this as a struggle with original sin, but see, for instance, Lyall Watson’s “Dark Nature” for alternative approaches to understanding human imperfection.
Despite the ongoing influence of that animal inheritance, our human consciousness has sparked an overall trajectory in history that improves irreversibly toward something better over time. Note Stephen Pinker’s “The Better Angels of Our Nature” and James Payne’s “History of Force” for evidence of this long-term improvement, rise, and advance of humanity and human civilization. We endlessly become something more humane over time and we also humanize the rest of life.
To sum up, the long historical record of the development and refinement of retaliation (payback, punishment, revenge) has to do with our animal past and inheritance, and the early projection of this onto images of God. The long historical record of the development of the unconditional treatment of others (i.e. non-retaliation, compassion, mercy, and other human traits) has to do with human consciousness emerging and maturing in humanity over the long-term. As some argue, this consciousness is inseparable from divinity that has incarnated in all humanity and inspires humanity through the wonder of consciousness to become something better over time (the “gentle suasion” we often feel to do the right thing). Human consciousness and a human spirit inspire us to become what we are- truly and fully human.
To further clarify again, let me add that researchers like Karen Armstrong (“Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life”) and Jeffrey Schwartz (“You Are Not Your Brain”) are also wrestling with this issue of dualism, or dual natures, in humanity. They argue that as human persons, or human selves, we are not our animal inheritance. We are more essentially human and defined by the core human feature of love. This is our essential nature as human persons, as supernatural, spiritual creations. Our consciousness that is oriented to love defines us most essentially, not our animal past or inheritance.
Thus, a new dualism is emerging. Note also the “Near-Death Experience” research in this regard. Monism or materialism never dealt properly with the fundamental human impulse for meaning or purpose. It never understood fully the wonder of human consciousness or the wonder of being human as a distinct and unique new reality in life.
Further comment on “From Retaliation to Unconditional”…
While appreciating the contributions of evolutionary biology and psychology, I have a quibble with such disciplines in that they try to explain the human too much in terms of our animal past and inheritance. Example- reducing human love too much to just the animal survival impulse- i.e. “species altruism”. Yes, an element of that is in the mix, but human consciousness and love is something far more unique and wondrous than the comparable features in our animal relatives. We are far more than just the 98% genetic relationship with chimps. That other 2% points to a vast gulf of uniqueness and difference.
Neuroscientist and Nobel laureate John Eccles, for example, details the difference between human and ape/chimp consciousness in his books, hence, the titles of some of his books- “The Wonder of Being Human” or “The Human Mystery”. We are something stunningly unique in the animal world. Our consciousness is something entirely distinctive and wondrous. We are much more than just our animal brain to paraphrase Jeffrey Schwartz’s “You Are Not Your Brain”.
I affirm Eccles’ conclusion that we are led to believe that the human self is “a supernatural, spiritual creation”. Something far more wondrous than just another species of animal. Hence, our life trajectory in human civilization toward something uniquely different from animal existence. What we are counters entirely the dominant anti-humanism of today’s nihilist apocalyptic narratives. Note how Julian Simon, in his own individual way, highlighted the wonder of being human in our ongoing improvement of life on this planet (“we are more creators than destroyers”, in “Ultimate Resource”).
Nuf said, eh.
Moving along…
Authentic hope is based on a discovery of the true nature of Ultimate Reality as love. That inspires the emergence and development of true freedom at the core of the human psyche, the last great stage of the human struggle for freedom that has been a never-ending battle across history as humanity has made the grand exodus from our animal past to become human in civilization, Wendell Krossa
The Three Great Trajectories fill out this meta-story- i.e. the trajectories of the cosmos, life, and human civilization.
“Three great emergences, three grand trajectories… the exodus to ultimate human liberation” (with Grok and Chat evaluations)
http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=14623#more-14623
Setting a context- Free at the most profound level of human being.
Many of our fellow citizens walk around in liberal democracies presenting as free. And they do benefit from a variety of material freedoms- i.e. notably the freedom of speech as the most foundational freedom, freedom to own and improve property (free market basics), freedom to make contracts with free others, freedom to create and live a unique life story as long as others are not physically harmed, also varied minority, sex and gender freedoms, and varied other rights and freedoms protected under liberal democracy laws and representative institutions. Basically, “live and let live” respect, or at least tolerance for all.
But at the same time too many citizens of liberal democracies are still subjugated and tyrannized by the worst of all enslavements, that of mind, emotion, and spirit still captive to a complex of bad ideas that were constructed by our ancestors to form their earliest mythologies. Those ideas became deeply embedded in human subconscious as archetypes that then subsequently influenced later generations to form the great religious traditions and frame them with the same basic themes. And those have descended right down to continue dominating the modern era.
Summary lists of the basic themes of “bad ideas” complexes:
“Humanity’s worst ideas, better alternatives (Old story themes, new story alternatives)”.
http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=9533
“The complex of ‘bad religious ideas’ that have darkened and enslaved human minds from the beginning” (short versions below with Grok’s comments on them)
http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=13571#more-13571
And as I have often quoted, identifying as “secular, materialist, or atheist” does not exclude one from enslavement to bad ideas.
Psychologist/theologian Harold Ellens:
“Basic cultural beliefs are so important, especially in a dominant widespread culture, because they have the same properties as individual basic beliefs, that is, they are not perceived as questionable. The reader may object that ‘God’, considered a basic belief in our culture, is rejected or questioned by a large number of people today. Yet the fact is that the idea of God that those people reject is almost never questioned. In other words, their critique assumes there is no alternative way of conceiving God except the one that they perceive through the lens of their culture. So, taking into account the kind of image of God that prevails in Western culture- a ‘monster God’… such rejection is understandable…” (End of Ellens quote).
Our fellow “materialist/atheist” colleagues in liberal democracy may be unaware of the “secularization” of mythology that has resulted in secular ideologies framed by the same basic complex of bad ideas that have shaped the great religions (i.e. “secularized” as the transformation of a religious theme into a “secular/ideological” version of the same theme).
Hence, the same complex of bad religious ideas in the lists above has also shaped the core themes of modern-era secular ideologies like Marxism and environmental alarmism, two prominent systems of belief still dominating today’s world and competing with liberal democracy for prominence in organizing human societies. The battle between these two systems- i.e. collectivism versus free individuals- has been traced from its origins and subsequent descent down through history by, for example, Arthur Herman in “The Cave and the Light: Plato Versus Aristotle, and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization”.
Related:
Richard Landes in “Heaven On Earth” notes that Plato’s collectivism is a major influence shaping the current “elite/commoner” divide in our societies.
Prehistorian John Pfeiffer suggests this divide may have emerged much earlier than Plato’s “Philosopher Kings” that Plato argued were the specially qualified people who should rule the rest, the commoners. Pfeiffer says the belief in some people as more specially qualified to rule all others began with the earliest shaman who claimed special knowledge of the secrets of the invisible realm of spirits (i.e. what angered them, what sacrifices/offerings would appease them) and thereby elevated themselves above fellow tribals to become the earliest elites who, through promoting fear of the invisible, sought to dominate and control their fellow tribe members.
Those early shaman creatively offered explanations that would form the foundational themes of later religious traditions.
For example, the shaman and their priestly descendants claimed that natural disasters, disease, accident, and predatory cruelty were manifestations of the angry spirits/gods who were behind those elements of life. And those gods were obviously punishing people for breaking taboos, for their “sins”. The solution to appease the angry gods and ensure survival? The shaman stated that people had to appease the anger of the spirits/gods with blood sacrifices, both animal and human. Research on the origins of sacrifice suggests varied explanations for the development of this violent tradition- i.e. substitution of a life for a life. Or, the demand for equally severe punishment- i.e. eye for eye retribution- to satisfy the sense of offended justice, and so on.
The outcome of primitive minds trying to solve the issue of human suffering in a dangerous world can be generalized in the theme of “salvation through violent destruction” that would become a dominant framing theme at the core of subsequent historical religious traditions.
“Violent destruction” as in bloody, brutal sacrifices, and also in divine demands to purge evil enemies from the world (extermination crusades), along with divine threats of apocalyptic destruction as ultimate punishment for human sins. Notable illustrations of this central religious theme include the “Sumerian Flood” myth, Egyptian myths of “Destruction of humanity, Return to Chaos”, book of Revelation in the New Testament, etc.
Have we progressed beyond such primitive thinking? Not so much. Today many still hold the belief that there are angry Forces/Spirits behind the natural elements of the world that are punishing human sin. “Vengeful Gaia, angry Planet, angry Mother Earth (Nancy Pelosi stated this as the cause of the 2020 California wildfires), retributive Universe, payback karma, etc.
Hence, the need for destruction of our societies through the madness of Net Zero decarbonization as required to “save the world”. The Xhosa cattle slaughter of 1856-57 was another historically recent example of salvation through destruction lunacy.
The worldwide crusade of the past three decades to destroy our societies through Net Zero decarbonization has been one of history’s most notorious examples of “salvation through destruction” madness. This now sputtering “profoundly religious” crusade reveals that many still suffer ongoing enslavement to the most primitive ideas/beliefs at the deepest levels of human consciousness and spirit, even among those living in liberal democracies.
The outcome of ongoing enslavement to bad ideas is that bad ideas/beliefs incite and validate our inherited impulses to tribalism, to domination of others, and to vengeful retaliatory destruction of differing competing others. Hence, bad religious ideas have functioned as major contributing factors to the endless history of human violence and wars. They constitute the “idea” that General Nagata fretted over and said that we have to defeat if we want to resolve violence for the future.
Notes:
Contemporary embracing and protecting the themes of the “bad ideas complex” hinders the final and ultimate liberation of humanity at the deepest levels of human makeup- i.e. at the level of mind and spirit. Maintaining the bad idea themes in our meta-narratives perpetuates the mental/emotional enslavement that will continue to validate the animal drives that enslave us to our worst impulses and will prevent the full liberation to be human.
I hit often the “egregious tragedy” note when covering bad ideas and the outcomes in human life and society.
“Egregious” (outrageous, intolerable, scandalous, awful, etc.) in that we were long ago given the singular insight that went right to the core of this problem to conquer/slay the enslaving monster of bad ideas, notably to slay the bad images of ultimate reality or deity that embody the bad ideas complex and give it ultimate validation- i.e. deity as tribal, dominating, vengefully destroying.
Ultimate liberation
The argument here is about freedom at the most fundamental level, a much deeper level of liberation beyond or behind the public manifestations of freedom that have resulted from the varied social liberation movements of the past- i.e. the freedom from poverty that began to explode around 1820 with the wider implementation of equal rights and freedoms for all citizens in liberal democracy, or the liberation of women and minorities in the 20th Century liberation movements, etc.
The ultimate human liberation movement takes place in the depths of the human psyche because everything flows out from how we think, perceive, and feel about reality and life. How we are then motivated to act/behave that then shapes our societies.
Ultimate human liberation includes freedom from the deformed archetypes that have darkened and enslaved human consciousness across past millennia and have produced the bad beliefs, ideas, narratives that have consequently resulted in the outcomes of deformed personalities, lives, and societies that psychologist Harold Ellens and others speak to.
Primitive mythically framed archetypes have incited and validated the worst in humanity across the millennia.
This goes to the core of human meaning and purpose as revealed in the grand story of our existence on this planet- i.e. the human liberation movement that is our exodus out of our animal past to discover and live what it means to be human in civilization. And this is about the role that love plays in human liberation, notably love taken to its ultimate reach as “unconditional”.
And taking a cue from Solzhenitsyn (i.e. my paraphrase and additions to his basic point that the real battle of good against evil runs down the center of every human heart), taking this cue… each one of us plays a critical role in promoting the larger exodus by engaging the real battle of good against evil. This battle is not primarily fought against differing others in our societies but is fought inside each one of us- i.e. the battle against the common enemy of our inherited animal drives. This is intensely personal and the real human struggle.
This is where human liberation is fought for and achieved at the most profound level. And success in this battle will result in transformation of lives and from there on out to societies.
There is a fundamental reason why hope should dominate our lives. It should be based on a profound “spiritual” insight- i.e. that there is love is at the core of reality and life. And it is love far beyond what we normally consider love- i.e. the stunningly inexpressibly wonderous love of an unconditional God that is transcendent in every feature or characteristic. It helps to read the NDE accounts to get some sense of the profoundly wondrous nature of this love that is the central discovery made in that movement.
Anyway, more on this later…
Origins of the insight on unconditional deity
The unconditional nature of deity was first and most clearly stated by Historical Jesus as the core theme of his message- i.e. the Q Wisdom Sayings message as recorded, for example, in Luke 6: 27-36. Earlier people had made proto-insights pointing in the direction of unconditional but never made the complete breakthrough that H. Jesus did.
The Akkadian Father (2000 BCE) appears to be the first recorded person to get the ethical side of unconditional right. But he did not get the theological element of a “behavior based on similar belief” coupling. He later stated, “Make sacrifice to your God”, showing that he still believed in angry deity demanding the condition of blood appeasement.
Over a millennium later (800-600 BCE) the Old Testament prophets suggested unconditional mercy in their protests against the retaliatory theology that demanded blood sacrifice, payment, punishment. They took some initial steps toward the image of an inclusively merciful God. Jesus, influenced by the OT prophetic tradition, referred to several OT insights on unconditional theology in his first public presentation- i.e. the Luke 4 accounts of God sending help to the enemies of Jews:
“I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed— only Naaman the Syrian.”
Jesus further backed up his new unconditional theology with parables that illustrated this stunning new theology- i.e. the Prodigal Father (representing God) who welcomed his wayward son back, without conditions. Also, in his treatment of societal outcasts who were invited to public meals, etc.
His insight on the true nature of deity as unconditional love has been powerfully affirmed by the historically recent “Near-Death Experience (NDE)” movement that emerged into the public consciousness of the modern era around 1975 with Raymond Moody’s “Live after Life”. Since then, multiple thousands of such experiences have been published.
Discovering unconditional as the true nature of God- i.e. humanity’s ultimate ideal and ethical archetype- is the highest reach of understanding in humanity’s journey out of the darkness of our animal past to find meaning and purpose in human civilization, to creatively and freely explore what it means to be human, how to think and live as authentically human or humane.
Unconditional counters the animal in us most potently, liberating us from that inherited evil to live free as human.