Note the comment below from US Vice President JD Vance pushing for the revival of undistinguished Christianity (Joe Rogan interview). He fails to make the clear distinction between the good outcomes from the themes of the Jesus message as contrasted with the horrific history of destructive outcomes from the themes of Paul’s Christ.
Also, good comment from Vance on increasing worker participation in business success- i.e. more sharing in business planning and the wealth created (recognizing the critical need for more control over one’s life as necessary for basic human psychological well-being). Vance also clarifies his administration’s goals in Iran and the necessary balance between force and diplomacy. Sounds like a man with large doses of common sense and a good grasp of liberal democracy principles.
Note also below– The Milburn article on Canada as the most woke country on Earth. A posted survey then shows that a majority of Canadians self-censor out of fear of retribution from others. Then AI Overview presents George Orwell’s statements that “the most insidious threat to free expression isn’t direct government force, but rather the voluntary suppression of ideas due to social pressure or fear of public backlash… the ultimate victory of totalitarian control happens when citizens internalize the Party’s mandates and police their own thoughts.” We are living under a form of totalitarianism already.
New material: Wendell Krossa (Note: This is a commoner’s blog-style site)
First a preface insert: Continuing with the “1001” takes on this site’s project to state that “Its going to be alright, for everyone, ultimately”.
Among other repeats: This site’s 1001 takes on the Jesus/Paul contradiction (or “obsession” of you prefer) is because that contradiction is critical to understanding good and evil. Especially, when evil has been cloaked as good as it has in religious traditions over past millennia.
Nothing anywhere has exceeded Paul’s Christ myth for cloaking evil as good. Hey, I was not the first in stating that so bluntly. Remember US founder, Thomas Jefferson, stating that the “diamonds” of Jesus were “buried in the dung” of Paul’s teaching. Ouch. So Leo Tolstoy backed him up, stating the same, using terms that would be banned, censored, and criminalized as “hate speech” today.
It is necessary to go after Paul’s Christology because that has been “the most compelling myth in the history of mankind.” As James Tabor says, the most influential myth ever. Dominating Western narratives, consciousness, life, and societies.
And the outcome of Paul’s apocalyptic millennial, or “salvation through destruction”, Christ myth? Historians have carefully researched and detailed how these ideas have driven Marxism, Nazism, environmental alarmism, and Islamic theocracy- all salvation through destruction crusades.
Paul’s apocalyptic millennial “Christ-ianity” has been most responsible for validating the salvation through destruction narrative across western history, both in religious and secular/ideological versions. And yes, Paul got that complex from historically previous sources such as Zoroastrian theology, Jewish theology, Hellenism, etc.
Bob Brinsmead offers some more comment on this in his soon coming paper on the Atonement of Christ. See that comment (from personal email discussions) at the bottom of this opening section.
Christian psychologist Harold Ellens exposed well the evil cloaked as good at the heart of Christianity in stating (This full quote from him can never get enough air time),
“Beliefs do exert much more influence over our lives than simple ideas… ideas can also, in the psychological sphere, generate ‘dynamis’, or mobilize energy… (they) may result, for instance, in fanaticism and violence, or… may also produce anxiety and inhibitions that hinder the full manifestation of the capacities of a person…
“The image of God can be seen as a basic belief or scheme, and as such it is never questioned…
“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…
“There is in Western culture a psychological archetype, a metaphor that has to do with the image of a violent and wrathful God (see Romans, Revelation). Crystallized in Anselm’s juridical atonement theory, this image represents God sufficiently disturbed by the sinfulness of humanity that God had only two options: destroy us or substitute a sacrifice to pay for our sins. He did the latter. He killed Christ.
“Ellens goes on by stating that the crucifixion, a hugely violent act of infanticide or child sacrifice, has been disguised by Christian conservative theologians as a ‘remarkable act of grace’. Such a metaphor of an angry God, who cannot forgive unless appeased by a bloody sacrifice, has been ‘right at the center of the Master Story of the Western world for the last 2,000 years. And the unavoidable consequence for the human mind is a strong tendency to use violence’.
“’With that kind of metaphor at our center, and associated with the essential behavior of God, how could we possibly hold, in the deep structure of our unconscious motivations, any other notion of ultimate solutions to ultimate questions or crises than violence- human solutions that are equivalent to God’s kind of violence’…
“Hence, in our culture we have a powerful element that impels us to violence, a Cruel God Image… that also contributes to guilt, shame, and the impoverishment of personality…”.
As Harold Ellens says, “If your God uses force, then so may you, to get your way against your ‘enemies’”.
And I remind readers, our most fundamental responsibility as humans is to learn the actual difference between good and evil, and to live out such in our lives. Adam tried to jump start that responsibility in Eden and was slapped down and damned for even trying, with a guilty naked woman beside him. Yikes.
The knowledge of actual good and evil guides our quest to answer the big questions of human existence and consciousness- i.e. What does it mean to be human? What is love? How should we live as maturely human?
Back to the new material…
Take love out (ignore, dismiss, deny) and nothing makes sense. Love is the central meaning and purpose of reality, life, and the human story.
If the creator is unconditional love as Historical Jesus stated, and this cosmos and life were created to provide the medium for humanity to exist within in order to learn what love is and how to live/manifest love in our lives, then these elements/features below are some of the critical things and stages in the grand story of humanity gradually learning and unveiling love across the history of human civilization.
Others have offered insights/speculations on the necessity for a realm of dualism, with the brutality of animal existence, to contrast with the emergence and development of a truly human existence.
Their point? A world of dualism provides opportunities for the free choice to pick for one against the opposite other, i.e. to learn to choose for love which is the highest achievement of any human, to struggle to choose against the natural animal impulses to tribalism, domination, and punitive/retaliatory destruction, and to opt instead for love as defined by sages like Jesus.
Suggesting the above as the “why” of creation is “speculative” and drawn from varied philosophical types, theologians (i.e. theodicy), and newer spiritual traditions (NDE movement), etc. Nonetheless, compare this speculative element with the speculation also coming out of materialist “science” from such areas as theoretical physics. Note, for example, the admission by physicists in the CERN documentary that “we don’t really know” what anything is, or what it is about. And as one lady physicist admitted, we physicists are nowhere near any complete understanding of reality, we don’t even know if we are on the right track to find ultimate answers (See the documentary “CERN” on Prime). She appeared a bit hesitant to state that, perhaps fearing reaction from more dogmatic colleagues?
Continuing with the dualism and free choice thing…
The choice for love is highly valued by deity and that choice for love is considered more authentic when done out of genuine “free” choice against its opposite. Hence the necessary creation of a realm of dualism with true freedom to provide such opportunity as fundamental for the development of mature humanity. The point of these philosophers/theologians is that if the choice for love is coerced in some manner, such as under threat of divine punishment or enticed by reward as in “virtue-signaling for group status”, then it is not authentic love, not freely chosen for and exercised just for its own sake.
We learn authentic good in contrast with and against opportunities to choose for opposites. Freedom of choice is critical to this experience and story. Again, as the theologians and philosophers suggest, the Creator values such and therefore grants that freedom in order for authentic love to be experienced and learned.
Nothing is more central, fundamental, or more highly valued…
Love is the meaning and purpose of all things, something that physics misses as most fundamental to reality, love being the thing that is most fundamental to conscious human existence and experience. And aside from subjectively conscious humanity there is no meaning to a material universe if such were to exist on its own. It would not even “exist” as such. Only conscious humanity gives meaning to things.
Assigning any meaning to the existence of reality, life, and human civilization begins with recognizing the critical role of love to human meaning and purpose, acknowledging love in the human factor and what love means to the human experience. There is no authentic humanity without love. Hence, to ignore the critical role of this reality, or to downplay or dismiss this, is to miss the very core of conscious human existence and experience.
We then extrapolate love out to the meaning and purpose of all reality.
This is not to deny the usefulness of science for exploring and understanding the material realm, how it functions, and recognizing that is critical to human flourishing. But science, if locked solely onto “philosophical materialism” conclusions, will not get us to a full and proper understanding of the real core of reality, why it exists, and for what purpose.
Love is the critical element to understanding the creating Source of all- i.e. deity (and also then the sustaining Source of all reality). Early people gradually recognized this and began to attribute features of mercy and kindness to their early images of God (i.e. see Joseph Campbell on the attribution of kindness and mercy to the pharaohs as representatives of divinity, as “godmen” mixtures). In such things, there was a gradually emerging/developing acknowledgment of love as central to any proper understanding of ultimate goodness, righteousness, truth, and reality.
But the grasp of the actual nature of divine love remained incomplete till Historical Jesus emerged in history. Jesus took cues from the initial breakthroughs of the Old Testament Hebrew prophets. Note Bob Brinsmead’s comments on the OT prophet’s new understanding of divine “justice”- i.e. “hesed”- not as retaliatory vengeance and punishment but as unconditional love…
“The covenant of hesed! It is a beautiful Hebrew word that coveys the idea of faithfulness, steadfastness, loving kindness, mercy and the covenant has a parental ring to it, like the covenant that any good father or parent makes before the children are born. It is everlasting and unconditional, and forgives their mistakes before they are born, as Harold Ellens has it.”
In stating this, Bob is countering the idea of the justice that we have inherited through Paul’s denial of the new theology of Jesus and his re-affirmation of the old “eye for eye” retaliatory justice of primitive threat theologies. Paul embodied this old theology in his Christ myth.
Bob adds, “The vengeance of God in the atonement of Christ at his First coming and the vengeance of God in the sequel of hell at his Second Coming becomes one great myth… (this has been) the Master Story at the heart of the Christian West… what has been called ‘the most compelling myth in the history of mankind’.”
And this beautiful summary of what Jesus introduced that entirely overturned how humanity had long viewed deity:
“The grand conclusion of the chapter I am working to finish is that God never indulges in retributive justice. Nearly everyone takes it for granted that finally, on the great day of Judgement, God will exercise his retributive justice. Yes, there are OT texts and NT texts which say that. And everyone needs some fire insurance before that happens, eh?
“The argument against is the nonviolence of the historical Jesus. If he was the image of the invisible God, as even the Hellenistic Christians said in the NT, (I would simply say he was man as God created man to be – in the image and likeness of God -Gen. 1:26)- then God must be as consistently nonviolent as Jesus revealed him to be. Even the NT prophets never got that far! Isaiah 61:3, like all the prophets as far as I can see, never got that far with the covenant of hesed, and Deutero-Isaiah not only retained “the day of vengeance of our God” but the lustful human satisfaction of having the enemies of Israel coming to lick the ground before their feet.
“Jesus broke right through. No vengeance in God, otherwise there would at least have been some desire for vengeance in him. Even when he died in torments, there was none. There is no day of retributive justice. That will make good people as mad now as they were when Jesus said the same to the good folk at Nazareth – on the Sabbath day too they wanted to do some serious work with Jesus.
“No retributive justice for Hitler? Come on, you can’t be serious! Eh? Who wants to acknowledge that best of every man is in me and the worst of every man is in me, that the same line between good and evil goes through every heart? “Be of good cheer, Brother Ridley, we will this day light a candle in all of England which will not be put out.” Wasn’t that an awesome thing to say as both men stood at the stake ready to be set alight? (Bob Brinsmead)”
(End of Brinsmead comments)
Jesus finally made the great breakthrough to get the core nature of God right as transcendent unconditional love.
He presented his breakthrough insight in the “behavior based on belief” coupling (i.e. Luke 6: 27-36), listing a set of non-retaliatory, unconditional responses toward offenders/enemies and then wrapping up the list with his conclusion of do this and you will be acting just like God.
His actual statement (paraphrased to make clear): “Do not retaliate with eye for eye vengeance but instead love your enemies because God does. God gives sun and rain to all equally, to both good and bad people. So be unconditionally merciful just as God is unconditionally merciful.” See the Luke 6: 27-36 version for the full list of responses/behaviors that illustrate how God treats all people unconditionally.
Here is the full statement by him:
“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.)
Point? He got the nature of God right, as ultimate Reality, as the creator and sustainer of all reality. Conclusion? Then, that love is at the core of all, giving meaning and purpose to everything. As someone said, when scientists finally reached the summit of the mountain of human understanding of reality they found theologians sitting there. I would paraphrase that to, no not theologians, more likely sages like the nonreligious Historical Jesus.
This Historical Jesus insight on deity is something that is far beyond the quantum micro-realm that all these physicists are exploring in their quest to understand reality. They are endlessly probing down further and further into micro-realms (i.e. quantum fields, Higgs boson) to understand not just what the core of reality is but also why it exists, what it means, and for what purpose. Most are crossing the science/philosophy boundary to speculate on such things (see Sabine Hossenfelder in “Lost In Math”).
Rather than quibble with their curiosity, I would pose the issue as what is the best conclusion to such speculation? As in- What points to the ultimate nature of good, the ultimate of right, and therefore the ultimate nature of what is true and real, as in the nature of the Creator? The real Source of all things, both material and spiritual.
Now a bit of a shift to this below:
“Tribalism, domination, punitive destruction”- The real enemy in the real battle that takes place inside each of us. This is a kind of summary of critical elements, features, and stages in the human story for visitors just dropping in for a quick looksee. I frame the overall human story in terms of our multi-millennia exodus out of our animal past to gradually become more human in liberal democracy civilization. That has been a great battle against the residual animal in humanity, to conquer and defeat the animal in order to live as truly human.
I frame the individual life stories of all humans in terms of similar elements and features, as a struggle to overcome the animal inheritance in us in order to live as maturely human (i.e. all human life viewed in terms of the “hero’s quest”).
One line of response on this site is to counter the intensified tribalism that has erupted and strengthened across liberal democracies today. Critical to this project is to defuse the impulse to frame differing others as enemies and recognize the true enemy of us all.
Taking a cue from Solzhenitsyn, this common shared enemy of all humans is not other people in differing tribes, groups, classes, nations, ideologies, religions, or whatever other categories that people use to define differing others in contrast with themselves.
Each one of us, in our personal hero’s quest, has to fight and conquer this common enemy. We have no choice to avoid this enemy, or the battle against this enemy, because the enemy resides at the core of our being, dominating our subconscious. And it is the single greatest battle to be fought in any human life, against the single greatest enemy/monster that we will ever face.
We are all at war and are all “warriors” despite any anti-war feelings that we may hold. It is an unavoidable conflict.
Our “enemy” is the worst of the base impulses that we have inherited from our ancient origins in an animal past. And critical to the makeup of this “enemy/monster”- there are ideas or beliefs that are associated with each impulse, ideas/beliefs that energize and validate the expression of these impulses in the lives of people.
(Insert: I limit my focus on “inherited impulses” mainly to these three in order to simplify something more complex for communication and understanding purposes. And I get the push from AI to see that these three impulses served a “useful survival” role in primitive people. But that animal existence no longer functions to serve humanity well and only perpetuates the horrors of endless “eye for eye” violence and war. We have better options today, notably liberal democracy approaches to organizing our societies.)
Moving back on topic:
First, we have (1) the impulse to tribalism that was embraced and validated by the early construction of proto-religions. The tribalism impulse of early peoples was eventually shaped by things like Zoroaster’s “cosmic dualism” and that was where early religious traditions learned to cloak evil as good. That cosmic or divine dualism led people to view and portray themselves as the righteous and true believers on the side of the true God and his true religion, opposed to the differing others who were framed as the evil unbelievers, as opponents and threats to the good.
Then, the validation of the impulse (2) to domination, the impulse to defeat, subjugate, and control others for their good. This impulse in our Western tradition has been shaped, for instance, by Plato’s “Philosopher Kings” fallacy, that some people are more enlightened and specially qualified to dominate and rule the general population of commoners who are more ignorant than the elites and need to be dominated and controlled by the specially qualified elites, for their own good.
As George Orwell said (quoted in the article below), some things are so lunatic that “One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.”
And then there was the validation of the impulse to (3) retaliatory destruction of the differing others/offenders because they are too corrupted to tolerate in civilization or life. They defile life thereby threatening civilization and life. And by their wickedness they incite the deity to end the world through existential apocalyptic destruction as necessary for the purification of the world.
This is how the evil of retaliatory vengeance was framed as “righteous justice” in apocalyptic millennial mythology (e.g. Paul’s Christ who would return in blazing fire to destroy all those who refuse to believe and obey Paul’s Christology- 2 Thessalonians 1, also Revelation).
What motivated early people to create the ideas/myths to validate the above evil triad impulses, to cloak evil as good, as divine?
In our line of hominids there emerged human mind, consciousness, a human spirit, a human self and that humanity brought with it the primary impulse to meaning and purpose. Consequent to this, we have to explain things and therefore early people created myths, stories to express what they believed made sense at that time.
AI Overview
Our line of hominids spans about 6 to 7 million years, originating in Africa. It began with early, ape-like ancestors learning to walk on two legs. Over time, these ancestors developed larger brains and better tools, ultimately leading to our species, Homo sapiens.
A simple way to look at this is as a long relay race. Different human species passed the “baton” of survival down through time.
1. The First Steps (7 – 4 million years ago)
Our story starts after the split from a shared ancestor with chimpanzees. Early hominids learned to walk upright.
• Sahelanthropus tchadensis: One of the oldest known. Lived about 7 million years ago in Chad.
• Ardipithecus ramidus: Lived about 4.4 million years ago. It could walk on two legs but still climb trees easily.
2. The Tool Makers (4 – 1.8 million years ago)
This group is known for walking fully upright and making the very first stone tools.
• Australopithecus afarensis: The famous “Lucy” fossil belongs to this group. They lived around 3.2 million years ago and walked just like us but had smaller brains.
• Homo habilis: Translates to “Handy Man”. Lived about 2.3 million years ago. They were the first in our direct genus (Homo) and used tools to eat meat and bone marrow.
•
3. Walking the Earth (1.8 million – 300,000 years ago)
Members of the genus Homo spread out of Africa and into Asia and Europe.
• Homo erectus: “Upright Man”. They lived from 1.8 million years ago until about 112,000 years ago. They controlled fire and used advanced stone axes.
• Homo heidelbergensis: Lived around 600,000 years ago. They hunted large animals and built shelters.
4. Our Close Cousins (400,000 – 40,000 years ago)
We did not evolve in a straight line. For a long time, other smart human species shared the planet with us.
• Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis): Stocky humans built for the cold. They made jewelry, cared for their sick, and created art.
• Denisovans: A mysterious group discovered in Asia that interbred with early modern humans.
5. Homo sapiens (Modern Humans)
Our species arose in Africa around 300,000 years ago. Unlike earlier humans, our brains became more rounded and geared toward complex language, abstract art, and rapid innovation.
(End of AI Overview)
Next query:
Our ancestors were motivated by a primary impulse for meaning and purpose hence early mythmaking to explain reality and life.
AI Overview:
Early mythmaking was indeed a powerful way our ancestors found meaning, but evolutionary science suggests it was also a vital tool for survival.
Psychologists, anthropologists, and biologists view early myths not just as abstract philosophy, but as practical tools driven by specific evolutionary needs.
1. The Need for Control (Pattern Recognition)
The human brain is an advanced pattern-seeking machine.
• The Problem: Nature is unpredictable, dangerous, and chaotic.
• The Myth Solution: Assigning intent to nature (e.g., “the storm is angry”) made the world predictable.
• The Benefit: If an entity has a mind, it can be bargained with through ritual, giving ancestors a sense of control over their environment.
2. Social Glue (The Collaboration Problem)
As hominid groups grew, personal trust was no longer enough to hold communities together.
• The Problem: Humans needed to cooperate in groups larger than 150 individuals.
• The Myth Solution: Shared stories, gods, and origin myths created a shared identity.
• The Benefit: Total strangers could trust each other because they believed in the same sacred narrative.
3. Information Storage (Survival Manuals)
Before writing, humans had to memorize massive amounts of survival data.
• The Problem: Dry facts (e.g., “don’t eat this root during a drought”) are easily forgotten over generations.
• The Myth Solution: Embedding survival data into dramatic, emotional stories.
• The Benefit: Myths functioned as memorable, multi-generation instruction manuals for finding water, hunting, and navigating.
4. Cognitive Offloading (Reducing Anxiety)
Existential dread and high anxiety are detrimental to survival.
• The Problem: Awareness of death and danger can paralyze an individual with fear.
• The Myth Solution: Purpose-driven narratives provided answers to “Why are we here?” and “What happens next?”
• The Benefit: Lowered stress levels, boosted morale, and kept individuals motivated to hunt, gather, and reproduce.
(End of AI Overview)
Continuing my line of comment:
For example, because our ancient ancestors believed that there were spirits/gods behind all elements of the natural realm and because many of those elements were destructive (i.e. natural disaster, disease, accident, predation) so it was logical for them to conclude that the gods were angry with their failures/”sins”, such as their neglect to present offerings to feed the gods, to offer sacrifices to appease the gods, or failure to do the work of the gods, etc. And hence we got the foundational religious mythology of angry deity threatening harm to people, punishing humans for “sins”.
And then the myths that people created subsequently functioned to validate how they acted and lived, how they shaped their societies.
What emerged out of the above- We got the common coupling that most people use to express their meaning and purpose impulses- i.e. the human practise of “behavior based on validating belief”. That is why we construct personal narratives. We choose a set of ideas or beliefs to shape our worldviews or narratives. These then shape how we think, feel, are motivated, and then respond or behave, how we view and treat others.
And this is where “cloaking evil as good, as divine” (common to religious traditions) gets very dangerous because “Men never do worse evil than when they do it in the name of their God”. Or- “People become just like the God that they believe in.” Recent example- i.e. Oct. 7.
Unfortunately, many ideas that have dominated human minds across history were formed in the early stages of human infancy, during the primitive existence of the ancient past where people were still not fully human, where they still lived a more animal-like existence. Hence, they created ideas/myths to validate what today we understand as bad behaviors like tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction of differing others.
And those early bad ideas and overall mythologies eventually came to dominate our great world religions.
Most egregious, the above features of the evil triad- i.e. the “worst of the base animal impulses” (i.e. tribalism, domination, retaliatory destruction)- have been projected onto and embodied in human images of deity, defining humanity’s highest ideal and authority. So we have today God as tribal lord who favors insiders (true believers), God as dominating alpha, and divine justice as the violent destruction of enemies.
The evil triad impulses, and their validating ideas/myths, have shaped human narratives from our earliest consciousness and subsequently have become deeply entrenched in human collective subconscious from where they manifest a powerful influence on us all still today. Evidence? The evil three are still protected and worshipped at the core of our great religious traditions, in the God of these religions.
That makes fundamental change difficult because we have so long protected and cloaked evil as good, as divine.
But we have the alternative. We can defeat our common enemy. We can be free to be truly human.
Here is where a sense of “egregious irresponsibility” comes in. We can use this sense of egregiousness as a motivating factor.
Why do we let the old evil triad impulses and validating ideas continue to curse our lives when we have the answers and have had them for millennia? We know better or ought to know better. One man in particular exposed the evil at the core of religious deity. He bluntly ripped off the cloak of good that had long covered the evil triad, the religious presentation of the evil triad as divine, and with his alternative theology he exposed the evils of tribalism, domination, and justice as retaliation.
We start with the dualism in us of the animal and the human.
There emerged in our line of hominids a human mind and spirit, a human self in embryo form that has developed and matured across millennia. It comes with new human impulses entirely contrary to our animal inheritance. Our human spirit, self, and consciousness is the real us as humans. Our true self and nature differs entirely from the residual animal in us, marking us as unique among animals. The human that is us stirs in us entirely new impulses that are the opposites of the animal in us.
Insert: As AI points out, there were others among the ancients who presented new more humane breakthrough insights and precepts such as forgiveness and love of enemies. But none presented a more coherent coupling of behavior based on belief than Historical Jesus. No one before had made such a breakthrough into a stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory, unconditional image of God.
Historical Jesus gave us entirely new ideas/beliefs to validate the human impulses in us that would enable us to overcome and reject the evil triad impulses, to counter those base impulses with the new ideal of his unconditional God and related ethical standards. We could follow his precepts and become just like God. “Be unconditionally merciful just as God is unconditionally merciful.”
With his insights on the true nature of ultimate reality as unconditional love (i.e. humanity’s ultimate ideal of the creating Source of all) we can shape entirely new complexes of alternative ideas/beliefs to counter, defeat, and replace the old systems of behaviors and beliefs, new ideas to energize and validate our human impulses. The long-term outcome is the creation and promotion of liberal democracy civilization that counters tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction and orients us to living as truly human.
The new triad to oppose the evil triad:
(1) Countering tribalism, Jesus advocated for the full inclusion of all, equally, in his statement to treat all with the same love, both family, friends, and enemies. He stated we should do that because that was what God did. God gave sun and rain to both good and bad people with no exclusion of anyone. So also, in liberal democracy we affirm the same rights and freedoms for everyone, equally.
He was pointing to the potent anti-tribalism of universal inclusion without discrimination that would eventually be affirmed more by modern era discoveries of the fundamental oneness of humans. The understanding of oneness would be affirmed by other later insights such as the common experience of this in NDEs and through psychedelic experiences. It is also a conclusion from evolutionary biology’s understanding of human origins from a common Mitochondrial Eve (“every human on earth today is a related descendent of a common East African mother”). And of course, human oneness can be affirmed by the oneness that is a basic reality in quantum realm “entanglement”. What physicist purists deride as “Woo-woo” stuff.
(2) Jesus further advocated for nondomination in human relating, for human greatness manifest through mutual serving among equals. That was a rejection of the Hellenism that dominated Jewish and Roman culture at the time of Jesus (see Helmut Koester’s “History, Culture, and Religion of the Hellenistic Age”). It was a direct rejection of Plato’s “Philosopher Kings” as representing human greatness, something that Paul would later re-establish in his Hellenistic Christ myth.
My query: Grok, your thoughts on this-
Plato believed that some people were especially endowed and because they had accomplished great things, whether in art, sports, war, poetry, etc., hence they were specially qualified as “Philosopher Kings” to rule others- i.e. the ignorant commoners.
Grok responded:
Plato’s Philosopher-Kings is a profound but deeply flawed ideal. It’s one of the most influential ideas in political philosophy, and it rewards serious engagement even (especially) when we reject key parts of it.
What Plato actually argued:
In The Republic, Plato (through Socrates) describes an ideal city-state ruled by a small cadre of “guardians” who become philosopher-kings. These aren’t just smart or accomplished people— they undergo decades of rigorous education in mathematics, dialectic, and moral formation to grasp the Forms (especially the Form of the Good). Only then can they rule with true knowledge rather than opinion.
The “noble lie” (myth of the metals) justifies this: people have different natures (gold, silver, bronze), and the golden-souled ones should rule for the benefit of all. Ordinary citizens (the “ignorant commoners,” as you put it) pursue their own crafts and live better under wise rule than they would trying to govern themselves. Plato was reacting against Athenian democracy, which he saw as chaotic, manipulated by rhetoricians, and prone to disastrous decisions (like the Sicilian Expedition or executing Socrates). Merit based on wisdom, not popularity or wealth, was his solution.
Where it has real strength
• Competence matters. Modern evidence from psychology, genetics, and organizational studies shows substantial variation in cognitive ability, impulse control, foresight, and other traits relevant to governance. Putting the most capable people in charge— properly vetted and incentivized— often outperforms pure lotteries or pure popularity contests. Singapore’s system (meritocratic, technocratic, with strong safeguards) has delivered impressive results compared to many more “democratic” peers. Plato rightly saw that most people are not deeply interested in or equipped for high-level statecraft.
• Virtue and character are neglected in many contemporary theories. Raw IQ or technical expertise isn’t enough; Plato’s emphasis on moral formation is insightful.
• Division of labor: Not everyone needs to be a ruler, just as not everyone should perform surgery.
Serious problems
• The selection problem. Who identifies and trains the philosopher-kings? In practice, this tends to become self-perpetuating elites, nepotism, or ideological capture. Plato’s system assumes incorruptible wisdom; human history shows power selects for different traits (ambition, coalition-building, manipulation). The track record of “enlightened despots” is mixed at best (Marcus Aurelius was admirable, but his successors weren’t; modern examples like technocratic authoritarianism often slide into censorship and rent-seeking).
• Underestimates knowledge problems. No small group possesses enough dispersed, local, tacit knowledge to centrally plan a complex society. Hayek’s critique of central planning applies here too. “Commoners” aren’t just ignorant masses; markets, civil society, and decentralized trial-and-error aggregate information better than any guardian class.
• Dignity and consent. Treating most people as natural subjects clashes with observed human capacities. Many “ordinary” people show practical wisdom in their domains. Liberal traditions (Locke, Madison, Mill) correctly prioritize consent of the governed, rule of law, and institutional checks precisely because no one is wise enough to rule unchecked. Even gifted people are biased, myopic, and self-interested.
• Empirical outcomes. Pure versions haven’t scaled well. Democracies with republican safeguards (separation of powers, federalism, property rights, free speech) have produced unprecedented prosperity and liberty despite their messiness. Plato romanticized a static ideal city; reality is dynamic.
A clearer modern take
We should want competent, virtuous leadership without granting anyone Philosopher-King status. This means:
• Meritocratic selection into elite institutions (with rigorous standards, not just signaling).
• Strong institutional constraints so even flawed leaders can’t do catastrophic damage.
• Cultural emphasis on wisdom, long-term thinking, and character— something contemporary education and media often fail at.
• Humility about what rulers can achieve. Government is necessary but dangerous.
Plato diagnosed real flaws in unfiltered democracy and the value of excellence. But the cure of benevolent elite rule ignores the permanent facts of human imperfection and the knowledge problem. The best systems channel self-interest and competition while elevating competence where it counts (e.g., independent judiciaries, professional militaries, evidence-based policy bodies) without anointing rulers over subjects. In short: Respect hierarchy of ability and accomplishment, but never absolutize it into political dominion. Truth-seeking favors mixed regimes that balance these tensions over utopian blueprints. What aspect of this strikes you most— the elitism, the educational ideal, or something else?
(End of Grok comment)
Across subsequent history the understanding of the essential “God-given” equality of all human persons was developed further (not equality of abilities, gifts, or outcomes, but equality of value as human). This understanding would find expression in the modern era development of liberal democracy as the best way to organize human societies, with institutions that curb elite/bureaucratic powers and orient state institutions to serve their populations by protecting individual rights and freedoms as critical to healthy human development.
(3) And completing the “triad” point above- Jesus further advocated for non-retaliatory, nonpunitive “justice” as in “no more eye for eye but instead love of enemies”. This has descended to contemporary restorative justice approaches. Applying the Luke 6 conclusion- “Be unconditionally merciful as God is unconditionally merciful”.
Framed with common sense, this is not the suicidal empathy extremism of dogmatic pacifism, “catch and release” of violent offenders, or related approaches. What used to be called “tough love” holds all responsible for their behavior and enforces the Jesus precept to “go and sin no more”, as in make necessary changes and stop bad behavior now, not tomorrow. Or face the consequence of incarceration for repeat violence.
Wrapping up…
As Solzhenitsyn said, our battles of good against evil should not be fought against each other, not one group against another, not one social class fighting another. Our fight against evil should primarily be focused inward on the real enemy inside all of us, our inherited evil triad impulses to tribalism, domination, and retaliatory destruction of differing others. Include in the “enemy” the ideas/beliefs that we have inherited that validate and energize these impulses, and worst of all the deity images that embrace tribalism, domination, and vengeful destruction- “evil cloaked as ultimate Good, as divine”.
Embracing the fallacy of tribalism as formalized by Zoroaster in his theology leads to inciting that very primitive impulse in people. The outcome? The generation of suspicion and fear of differing others. Add the apocalyptic element in such mythology that fosters the exaggeration of the threat that others pose to existential scale. Apocalyptic distorts normal problems all out of proportion to the threat they actually pose. We witness this daily from news media doing their panic-mongering insanity with normal weather extremes, claiming it indicates the end is nigh due to “climate change”.
Add more- The demonization of differing others as “evil” (again, the Zoroastrian framework that defines all this as religious, cosmic, and divine). This religious framing then feeds “righteous” hatred of the other accompanied by rage (i.e. rage as often the manifestation of fear). And the dominos continue to fall.
After stirring enmity toward differing others, people then locate their anger within narratives that present themselves as the righteous heroes engaging the defense of good against evil, of saving something that they claim is under apocalyptic-scale threat. Well, that then demands that they purge the threat that is the evil other whom they have demonized.
Saving the threatened thing then requires that those posing the threat must be destroyed, the threatening people must be eliminated. Here is where retaliatory vengeance has long been presented as righteous justice, as honorable defense against evil to “save the world”.
Embracing and affirming the varied elements/features above gives people “emotional satisfaction”. Just as simplistic stories of “eye for eye” justice satisfy many. They got what they deserved.
Free Press writer Spencer Klavan illustrates this satisfaction many get from watching, for example, the recent movie remake of Homer’s Odyssey
“There Is Good and Evil. Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’ Isn’t Afraid to Say So: Nolan trusts Homer—and his audience—to recognize that villains deserve defeat and heroes deserve to triumph”
https://www.thefp.com/p/there-is-good-and-evil-christopher?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
In our own lifetimes we have watched these salvation through destruction narratives play out repeatedly in eruptions of religious violence, and in the “secular ideological” variants of the same themes as in Marxist narratives and revolutions, also in the environmental alarmism crusade that refuses to back off from its ruin of entire countries (e.g. Germany, Britain, etc.).
When people are convinced by bad ideas that they have to destroy differing others (Solzhenitsyn’s “class against class”), then you get just another of these endless “eye for eye” cycles of “salvation through destruction”.
Add the Zoroastrian cosmic dualism, i.e. the divine element that validates all this as righteousness against evil, and we get some sense of what has shaped Western narratives and life over past millennia granting endless billions who believe such narratives, “emotional satisfaction”.
And yes, aside from the primary inner battle of good against evil, there are real battles in our world that require forceful defense against threatening others. What we term “just wars”.
In the modern era we understand better the nature of actual “just defense” as the situations where totalitarians, strangely enough, driven by the above mythical systems, are aggressing on innocent others. Hamas is an standout example of people driven by the above Zoroastrian mythology. So also, we would include socialism and environmental alarmism as operating under such themes.
The criteria for detecting authentic battles at societal-scale? The necessary defense of liberal democracy against collectivist totalitarianism.
Returning to my point above– We have been fed these bad ideas for millennia with the epitome worst of the mix in the myths of a God who embodies and validates it all, and that mental deformity has long been embedded in the deepest part of our psyches as the archetypes/templates of our subconscious. From there it influences us to embrace similar versions of the same old deformed themes in ever-emerging new variants both religious and secular/ideological. Too many of us continue to find “emotional satisfaction” in embracing these new variants.
This is why this site advocates for the Jesus insights that broke the grip of the old theology on human minds. His stunning new non-religious theology of God as unconditional love was the brilliant light that overturned previous millennia of the darkening and enslaving burden of threat theology. He enacted radical transformation at the very core of human thinking, emotion, motivation, and consequent behavior and life.
Here are the essays that detail the fuller picture on bad ideas and better alternatives to construct narratives, with Grok’s help here and there, The essays are in the sections below this opening one…
“The ultimate liberation movement- Our exodus from an animal past to freedom in a human future” Posted on July 9, 2026 by Wendell Krossa
The ultimate liberation movement- Our exodus from an animal past to freedom in a human future
“Reality, Life, and Human Civilization- Three great emergences created to rise and progress toward something better” Posted on July 9, 2026 by Wendell Krossa
http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=16193#more-16193
“Speculating on the meaning/purpose of human life and experience” Posted on December 16, 2021 by Wendell Krossa
http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=8661
“Separating ‘diamonds from dung’ (Jefferson, Tolstoy). The project to recover the Jesus insight on theology (pulling unconditional reality out of conditional religion)” Posted on July 11, 2026 by Wendell Krossa
http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=16205#more-16205
“The Worst and the Best” Posted on July 11, 2026 by Wendell Krossa
http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=16216#more-16216
Another of the Grok summaries of main essays on this site:
Grok, how about summarizing the main points in this article just below (linked):
“Humanity’s worst ideas, better alternatives (Old story themes, new story alternatives).”
http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=9533
Another example of advocacy for undistinguished Christianity that continues the cognitive dissonance resulting from embrace of “Jesus Christ”- i.e. the mixing of the two profoundly opposite theologies and messages of Jesus and Paul.
See the link below to Joe Rogan’s interview of US Vice President JD Vance.
Pushing for the revival of a general Christianity does not distinguish the good of the Jesus message from the contrary bad of Paul’s Christology. Paul’s Christ myth continues the burying of the good by the bad. It maintains the apocalyptic millennial complex of bad ideas that have caused such harm across past history (i.e. Richard Landes on the apocalyptic millennialism that drove Marxism, Nazism, environmental alarmism, and contributes to Islamic theocracy via Muhammad’s mentor Waraqa using Matthew’s gospel to shape his theology for Islam).
Paul’s Christology continues the religious custom of cloaking of evil as good, as divine.
Vance states that Christianity made an important contribution to Western history and civilization, in that it promoted freedom and the value of individuals as equals. Yes, some in the Christian movement did contribute to the development of such ideas and principles. But it needs to be made clear that those liberal democracy values and principles would stem from the themes of the Jesus message on the nontribal, universal inclusion of all people, equally (i.e. an unconditional God giving sun and rain to all alike, without discrimination).
Add the Jesus statements that true greatness was to serve and not lord over others, principles that found eventual expression in liberal democracy institutions oriented to curbing elite/bureaucratic power and serving citizens as the sovereigns and the source of power/authority in society.
Also, the Jesus precepts and theology orient us to restorative approaches to justice, not vengeful punitive approaches. He stated, “There should be no more eye for eye retaliation against offenders but instead love your enemy”.
Paul’s Christology themes are entirely opposite- The Christ embodies and advocates the tribalism of true believers included and saved while unbelievers are excluded and damned. His Christ epitomizes lording over others as modelled by Lord Jesus Christ with related precepts for wives to submit to husbands, slaves to submit to masters, etc. And his Christ myth advocates the theology of punitive, violent destruction of enemies/unbelievers (see, for example, 2 Thessalonians 1, Revelation, etc.).
To make any sense of a “Christian” contribution to freedom it must be made clear that it was the themes of the Jesus message and not the Christ themes of Paul.
Across Christian history when the Jesus themes were neglected and Paul’s Christ myth was dominant in Christian minds, we had state-coerced conversions under emperor Constantine, we had violence and bloodshed for unbelievers, the slaughter of Muslims and Jews in Crusades, and the torture and burning of heretics and witches. To illustrate the influence of Paul’s Christ- Calvin out of his zealotry for the honor of Christ had fellow Christian theologian Michael Servetus burned to death for not stating Calvin’s view of orthodox Christology. Servetus refused to move an adjective three or four words over in a sentence.
When people push for undistinguished Christianity, with Paul’s Christ themes dominant, there is no freedom of religion or freedom in general. You get totalitarian suppression and violence toward heretics and unbelievers.
Joe Rogan Experience #2526 – JD Vance
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtxyvD58eDg
Aside from this “quibble”, Vance offers some good explanation on their goals in Iran- i.e. preventing the death-cult theocrats from getting nuclear weapons. And they do not seek to engage a drawn out war or regime change as some US Republican Hawks want. The goals are to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and keeping the Strait of Hormuz open. Their approach is both negotiation and the use of force when US positions (or others) are attacked. But diplomacy is the preferred option.
The problem is that in negotiations there are pragmatists who appear to disagree with the hardcore fanatics/hardliners. So Vance as chief negotiator has to maintain balances between these different factions in Iran as well as balance between the differing concerns of Republican hawks and doves back home.
Vance also shares similar policy ideas to Magna founder/boss Frank Stronach on giving workers more share in business planning and successes. Because if we don’t, then younger people, disillusioned with the problems and shortcomings of capitalism, will increasingly turn to socialism and that will be disastrous for all.
Conrad Black on companies sharing profits with employees as a strategy to counter the frustrations of young people with capitalism and the growing turn to socialism for help.
“Conrad Black: How to fix our broken tax system: We need to incentivize our most successful capitalists to participate in job creation and the fight against poverty”, Conrad Black, July 11, 2026
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/conrad-black-how-to-fix-our-broken-tax-system
Black opens with:
“From time to time over seven years I have inflicted upon readers some of my public policy ideas, including a partial privatization of the welfare system. The method envisioned is using the tax system to impose a very small and refundable wealth tax to enlist the wealthiest and most financially sophisticated people to assist in job training and creation. It would have to be carefully designed and the taxpayers would have to understand it as part of a comprehensive program of cost and tax reduction and that the additional tax was refundable.
“Instead of being an assault upon the means that they have amassed by their own work and ingenuity or even inheritance, it would be borrowing from them by the state in the public interest to enlist the sagacity of the taxpayer to supplement the efforts of the welfare system in increasing employment and assisting the disadvantaged. It would be designed to encourage the replacement of outright payments to the unemployed with opportunities for them to sustain themselves through gainful employment.”
He suggests that we use the tax system to incentivize the most successful capitalists to be participants in achieving poverty reduction, increased job creation, and better trained workforce.
He then references a recent discussion with Frank Stronach, the founder of Magna, an auto parts giant. Stronach has regularly urged business leaders to be more cooperative in sharing the successes of business wealth creation with workers as critical to defusing worker and youth frustration with capitalism’s failure to provide them with the same lifestyle as their parent’s generation. The growing frustration and disillusionment with free market capitalism has resulted in many, especially younger people, turning increasingly to socialism for answers to their frustrations with failure to attain the benefits of previous generations.
Black offers Stronach’s response:
“Frank’s formula was that 20 per cent of pre-tax profits would go to dividends as a pre-declared matter of right. Ten per cent would constitute employee stock grants and profit participation. Seven per cent would be devoted to research and technology, six per cent to participation in profit by management, two per cent to bona fide charities and all of the rest to taxes and increases in assets and retained earnings.”
(End of Black article)
AI Overview
“Frank Stronach champions a business model called “Fair Enterprise,” which advocates mandating that companies share a significant percentage of annual profits with employees. Stronach argues that by making workers partners in prosperity, businesses can boost productivity while defusing the growing disillusionment with capitalism among younger generations.
The Core of the Problem
• Stagnant Wages: Younger demographics increasingly feel that free-market capitalism is failing to provide them with the same standard of living and purchasing power their parents enjoyed.
• The Turn to Socialism: Due to this economic squeeze and mounting wealth inequality, many individuals are looking toward socialism for alternative answers.
Stronach’s “Fair Enterprise” Solution
• Predetermined Profit-Sharing: Stronach advocates for a corporate constitution that legally predetermines the split of annual profits among four key stakeholders: investors (shareholders), management, employees, and society (philanthropy).
• Increased Motivation: He points to his experience building Magna International, where giving employees and managers a direct stake in the company’s success led to massive corporate growth and higher worker satisfaction.
• Stakeholder Capitalism: By expanding the definition of business success to include the financial well-being of the workforce, Stronach argues that capitalism can be preserved and strengthened.
“More details on Stronach’s economic framework can be found through the Canadian Economic Charter of Rights and explored in his Fair Enterprise Management Philosophy.”
We are still at peak woke
Maintaining our reputation as the most woke country on Earth.
“Woke doublethink controls Canada: How can we find answers if we aren’t allowed to ask questions?”, Chris Milburn, Jul 16, 2026
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/chris-milburn-woke-doublethink-controls-canada
He opens,
“Are we really past ‘peak woke,’ as some think? Perhaps it’s true elsewhere. But recent events suggest the underlying ideology remains deeply entrenched in Canada… Canada remains stubbornly mired in it…
“Postmodernism’s most damaging legacy has been its insistence that even our most basic and self-evident truths — including the biological reality of womanhood — are open to question… like a malignant cancer, postmodernism spread quietly at first before metastasizing throughout our cultural and societal institutions.
“Along the way, it produced increasingly absurd ideas, such as’ and ‘queering math.’ But to most people, the most visible consequence has been the efforts to ‘break the gender binary.’
“As science fiction author Philip K. Dick said, ‘Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.’ Activists can try to ‘break the gender binary,’ but its existence is as fundamental a truth as the physics of light or the reality of mathematics. Our human existence as male or female is as definite and fundamental a distinction as black and white or up and down.”
Milburn continues, noting George Orwell’s warning of dangerous “doublethink” where people hold contradictory beliefs and accept both as true. He follows this with a quote from Orwell, “One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.”
This from a survey…
“Majority of Canadians say political correctness has ‘gone too far’: Seven-in-ten say they self-censor to avoid offending others”
https://angusreid.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/2016.08.27-Political-CorrectnessFinal.pdf
AI Overview
You can explore Orwell’s complete essays on this phenomenon via The Orwell Foundation or his uncensored thoughts on intellectual cowardice in The Marginalian.
You are spot on. Orwell famously argued that the most insidious threat to free expression isn’t direct government force, but rather the voluntary suppression of ideas due to social pressure or fear of public backlash.
In his unpublished preface to Animal Farm (later titled “The Freedom of the Press”), he observed that publishers and editors actively kept topics out of print simply because they were terrified of public opinion, not because they feared official prosecution. He warned that when intellectuals and writers censor themselves to avoid retribution, unpopular ideas are easily silenced without the need for an official ban.
This same dynamic of “self-policing” extends into his famous dystopian novel 1984, where the ultimate victory of totalitarian control happens when citizens internalize the Party’s mandates and police their own thoughts.
(End of AI Overview)
Bob Brinsmead’s recent post on his coming paper on the atonement of Christ:
“Yes… my argument in support of this assessment is conclusive. In the teaching of Jesus and in the supporting life of Jesus, God does not practice retaliatory justice (eye for eye), there is no day of vengeance of our God, because God is as consistently non-violent as his image and likeness in the historical Jesus showed him to be. If Jesus was non-violent in life and teaching, so is God. God’s final solution to violence is not superior violence.
“The Christian doctrine of the atonement teaches the practice of retaliatory justice and is a depiction of God’s violence, but the teaching of Jesus in the ten verses in the outline of his teaching in Mathew 5 and Luke 6 to Luke 7:1 utterly refutes it.
“The biggest and simplest mistake is to read those ten verses merely as Jesus giving us a human ethic without realizing every bit of it is about basing our behaviour on God our Father’s behaviour- do thus and thus, just as your Father does all of this. Everything Jesus asks us to do is patterned on what God does. Jesus would not direct us to be non-violent unless our Father is non-violent.
“Well, you know all this, but I am just pointing out that the tendency is to read it only as an ethic for us to practice. This is the mistake that Paul makes in Romans 12: 17-20. He follows the human ethic of Jesus but fouling it all up with the motivation that God will do the vengeance stuff for us. Don’t throw you opponents into Hell, God will do that dirty work for you, Eh?
“In the following brilliant statement on these ten or so vital texts in the discourse of Jesus, Jack Miles nails why the passage is so well known but in reality not known at all:
“’Yet the popular reception of this sermon, for all the fame it has conferred upon Jesus, has been such as to obscure his deeper originality and his more radical revision of the tradition he inherited. This has been so because discussion of his ethic of non-resistance to evil has so consistently focused on the application of this ethic rather than on its premise- namely, that human beings must do thus because God does thus.
“’But does God in fact do thus? This is the question that interpretation of this passage generally does not ask. Jesus assumes a positive answer to that question without ever asking it, but his assumption elides a drastic revision of the divine identity. When we recall how God has in fact conducted himself in the face of opposition or insult from past enemies, it becomes clear that although Jesus speaks as if God is now as he always has been, he is in fact revealing (or enacting) an enormous change in God’.” (Essay, Jack Miles, The Disarmament of God, in The Destructive Power of Religion, Edited by J. Harold Ellens, with an Ad Testimonium by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Forward by Martin E. Marty)
“Some big guns here, eh? And what a statement!!
“This raises the question of the violence of God as portrayed in the Old Testament- i.e. the Expulsion from Eden, killing about 30 Hebrews in the discipline during the Wilderness journey for grumbling about diet, etc.), the genocide of seven indigenous nations without mercy (Deut. 7), sending Assyrian and Babylonian Empires to punish Hebrews by burning, killing, removing people from their land into foreign lands, etc., etc. Not by a long shot the behaviour of God according to Jesus. Although the prophets get a better view through a covenant of hesed, they still have a day of vengeance of our God, and the prophets still express the lust for revenge and the satisfaction of nations finally coming to worship at their feet, lick the dust, etc.
“This raises the question of how the early church met the issue of Marcion wanting to reject the OT in its entirely and the church composing 2 Peter around 130-140 CE partly as a response to Marcion with an Inspiration of all Scripture not to be privately interpreted, so lock it all away from common people in foreign languages, etc. What then is special revelation? Is inspiration only a matter of how God talks only to Hebrews and Christians and no one else? And didn’t Jesus edit out violence as the Ebionites who got their cue from Jesus how to reject sections of the OT, etc. In other words, the church never properly addressed in what way scripture is inspired and to what extent in Hebrew and then Christian scripture. These are some of the issues I am yet to deal with in a sum up of the “Theology for the next Millenium”. Shalom, Bob”
(End of Brinsmead post)
My response to Bob’s above post:
Bob, good to get more input from others (the Jack Miles quote above) on this single most profound insight/statement in all history from any human being- i.e. Jesus’ behavior based on belief coupling. I have been pushing this since that reread long ago based on two insights- one in the late 80s from Clifford Geertz on the Balinese of Indonesia basing all their reality on what they believed was the divine model or pattern. They built their villages and houses to model what they believed was the divine pattern. “Behavior based on belief”.
Then James Robinson, getting the negative aspect of “non-retaliation” in the “stunning new theology of Jesus”. Robinson missed the positive side of that stunning new theology in the unconditional nature of that Luke 6: 27-36 list of ethical responses to offenders/enemies. And he ended his book with some statement of “maybe this will count in the day of judgment” which seemed odd and contradictory to that earlier statement of his on the stunning new theology (an unconditional deity does not “judge” people but perhaps grants what the NDE people say is a “life review”, not as judgment but as a learning experience).
And a clearer conclusion, as in the Luke 6 version, would have been “Be unconditionally merciful just as your Father is unconditionally merciful”. The point of the list of precepts is to treat offenders with unconditional mercy because God does.
I have come at this a thousand ways since as it can not be stated enough on how profoundly that one statement changes everything, everything that we (humanity) have been told across the history of human consciousness and narrative creation, driven as we are by our impulse to meaning and purpose- i.e. to know what it means to be unconditionally human. And the gift of the contrast between Jesus’ message and Paul’s Christology gives us such a contrast to understanding what good and evil really mean as I blogged about in my latest site posting- notably, how religious traditions have consistently cloaked evil as good, as divine.
Yes, as you note in your post- a stunning new theology for a new millennium.