Sunday School gave me a good head start on a lifetime of depression.
Christmas brought us this cute little Prince of Peace, who was going to save us by showing us the way. Then, by late March or early April, the combined Roman and Judean authorities had gruesomely executed him, as the general population let it happen. Year after year I learned more details, but the ending never changed.
The best Jesus could do was offer to make the afterlife a good one, to make up for all the assholes we have to put up with in this one.
It leaves the critical question of religion unanswered. Is it to ease our interactions in this life or just to pave the way for the strictly theoretical next one?
If Jesus really just existed to save the salvageable among humanity, how is that different from giving birth to a second child just so it can donate tissue and organs to your ailing first one?
I have a lot of trouble celebrating the political murder of someone who just wanted to show people how to be happy together.
Unfortunately, the end of Christ's life is what really soured me on people. The Christians were this handful of underdogs when the overdogs killed their leader. The movement immediately began to warp, as its new leaders remade God in their own image. What could be more warped than two or more sects of the religion of peace and love making brutal war on each other and torturing their captives?
Christ was a subversive. His death was a political statement by both sides.
If you want to cut through the clutter of scriptural bickering, it boils down to this: live by the peaceful teachings. If the incorrigibly violent people attack you and kill you, it's all right.It'll only hurt for a little while. Then you get to go to heaven. Don't become a violent person to oppose violence.
It's okay to duck, dodge and run away, as long as you don't leave a weaker person to take the blow you have evaded. It is better to be struck down because your flight was slowed by the innocent you were carrying to safety, than to fight, win or lose.
It is very hard to get yourself to live that way. I'm not at all sure I want to. But there are some excellent ideas there.
Christ was executed. Gandhi was assassinated. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. Men of peace fall to men of violence. Or they simply become objects of contempt and ridicule, like Jimmy Carter.
In the end, Christ was a victim, not a warrior. He didn't suddenly strip off his robe, revealing the leotard and cape of SuperJesus, and go flying around smashing evildoers. In fact, his failure to do that contributed to his fatal loss of popularity.
When I watched the movie "Gandhi", I was so conditioned by American cinema tradition that I had to remind myself he wasn't suddenly going to turn into Gandhiman and lay down some ass-whuppin' martial arts moves on the British colonial authorities.
Appeals to the conscience only work on people who possess one.
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