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The "Ten Commandments" were never, and never meant to be, a "Christian" document. They are the ancient, primitive laws that guided a very old and archaic culture. They were not created to guide people of the twenty-first century, but groups of tribal savages living near the twenty-first century BC!
Not that they are not great and fine ideas for all people. They likely derived from the more ancient Code of Hammurabi of Babylonia. And it is a good idea not to kill, steal, and go after your neighbor's wife!:)
But most of the modern defenders of the Ten Commandments are also supporters of the noxious and obscene war for greed and oil in Iraq. So, they cannot be taken seriously as "defending" or "being on the side of" Jesus, in this or any other matter. For this sick and nightmarish war, they have trashed the most important of Commandments, "Thou shalt not kill."
It really doesn't impress a person of even moderate intelligence that they hang it up, with a kind of boastful superiority, on their walls, or in their courts. For they advocate and defend trashing this Commandment.
They support, often enthusiastically, the utter merciless slaughter of our Middle Eastern sisters and brothers. A high percentage of the nearly one million that have perished through the "shock and awe" of this ghastly bloody war have been women and children. This is the most ugly and insane behavior, and God does not approve of it, is never behind it.
The true God is Love and perfect forgiveness. He does not rain punishment upon his beloved children. The United States has some gigantic problems, at the top of which it is being run, and ruined, by a lawless, greedy, tyrannical regime controlled by a backwards incompetent.
But although the U.S. has many challenges, they are not, and can never be, the "punishment" of a petty, trivial god who is "offended" by human actions. Stupid human mistakes are not important, or potent, enough to "offend" the God of infinity. They are not even a blip on the "radar" of life!
Human beings who think that human mistakes are so terribly important base this on the assumption that their lives are the obsession of God. But God has a billion other planets, in a billion other galaxies, to run.
Our activities, including our mistakes, are simply not Number One on an endless, limitless agenda!
Earth is a school. A school is a place designed to make mistakes, for that is the only way that we ever learn anything. Only rightwing fanatics, without a particle of Love, compassion, or forgiveness in their hearts, try to present the beautiful Lord of Love in the violent, ignorant Jehovah-image of the Old Testament. This false "god" is always angry; he is violent, murderous, and completely unforgiving. He is a petty and trivial deity.
More advanced and sophisticated people realize that the sweet Infinite does not waste time with anger. We recognize this as a serious weakness among people; so why should we project it onto the immeasurable Mind of Love?
People who feel that the Ruler and Guide of the universe wastes time with unforgiveness and punishment, vengeance, and pettiness, are wrong. They betray that, although hyper-religious, they have absolutely zero knowing of the true God of profound wisdom and deeper Love. For the Love of God is infinite, and he is never petty. It simply does not matter to him whether we, on a planet so tiny as to be invisible, hang up the Ten Commandments in our courts, or put, "In God we trust" on our money. For, in the greater scope of eternity, none of these trivialities add up to a single molecule.
What is important is that we learn to love and to forgive. So, the person of wisdom does not waste time with hollow, superficial, and artificial public activities, so that she might be admired by microscopic people. She does not fight and argue about symbolic actions that are inconsequential, such as placing religious documents in public. Instead, every day, she works on the interior Self, renewing it in the healing Power of Love and compassion.
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Showing posts with label ten commandments. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ten commandments. Show all posts
Monday, January 21, 2008
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Judaism and Christianity, Jesus and Messiah
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The entire history of the Ten Commandments has never had anything to do with the Christian religion. The entire doc has been, from the beginning, a Jewish text. If "Christians" were fighting for the display of the Sermon on the Mount, at least, their arguments could hope to make a tiny bit of sense. But, they regularly make the nightmare error of equating the ancient wargod Jehovah with the Lord of pure Love taught by Jesus. They insist also that every Jewish law is also somehow "Christian." This despite the fact that most of the ancient Jewish laws, recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures ("Old Testament"), go absolutely ignored by almost all Christians all the time. Jehovah forbade the eating of pork, for example, but Christians-- almost all of them-- continue to chew and swallow huge amounts of the dangerous fats of bacon and ham.
It is as ludicrous and out-of-place for a Christian to fight to protect the Ten Commandments as it is for a Jewish person to argue for the "messiahship" of Jesus Christ.
The people of the Book [Hebrew Scriptures ("Old Testament")] have made it clear, repeatedly, that Jesus is not, was never, their messiah. Now, the whole idea of a "Messiah" was a Jewish one, not a Christian teaching. And does it not make sense, if you have a question about Judaism, to ask the experts-- the Jews-- about any of their teachings? The "Messiah," in prophecy, was predicted to be a very bloody general who would lead legions of Jewish soldiers in war against the Romans. The whole world, it was predicted, would be flowing with the blood of the Messiah's "enemies." Jesus, a man of non-negotiable and unchanging peace, did not fit this profile at all. So, it only made sense for the Jewish people to reject him as their Messiah. So, despite later Christian bias, and the twisting of ancient records and prophecies to make them look as if they were specifically about Jesus, I have come to the logical (indeed, inevitable) conclusion that Jesus was not the "Messiah of Jewish prophecy. Except for a single text in Mark, which might have suffered emendation and/or alteration by a later Christian scribe, Jesus himself never claims to be the Messiah. In fact, I believe that he denied it, as he does in The Mystic Gospels of Jesus the Christ.
What mostly uneducated fundies have never come to terms with is the solid historical fact that Christianity and Judaism are two very different, in many ways, unrelated, faiths. As two faiths, they have two separate sets of Scriptures, two different sets of recognized "prophets," two different sets of teachings, different traditions, different "holy" days, different customs, and yes-- most spectacularly-- different gods. The "Jehovah" of the Hebrew Scriptures was never the God of pure Love taught by Jesus. (That alone explains why, although some form of the wrongly translated name "Jehovah" appears nearly seven thousand times in the Hebrew Scriptures, it does not appear a single time in the best ancient texts of the Christian Scriptures.)
Most Jewish people today have as sophisticated and loving an image of God as anyone. But, four thousand years ago, the primitives worshipped a god of genocide, rage, emotional immaturity, violence, and psychosis. This confusion between two very different godimages is why Christian fundies are so hopelessly confused.
Your best bet, with people whose minds resemble blocks of unchanging granite, is just to let them be. In time, karmic force alone has the necessary power to alter some minds. Happily, it is not our job even to try to change the dogmatic mind!
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The entire history of the Ten Commandments has never had anything to do with the Christian religion. The entire doc has been, from the beginning, a Jewish text. If "Christians" were fighting for the display of the Sermon on the Mount, at least, their arguments could hope to make a tiny bit of sense. But, they regularly make the nightmare error of equating the ancient wargod Jehovah with the Lord of pure Love taught by Jesus. They insist also that every Jewish law is also somehow "Christian." This despite the fact that most of the ancient Jewish laws, recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures ("Old Testament"), go absolutely ignored by almost all Christians all the time. Jehovah forbade the eating of pork, for example, but Christians-- almost all of them-- continue to chew and swallow huge amounts of the dangerous fats of bacon and ham.
It is as ludicrous and out-of-place for a Christian to fight to protect the Ten Commandments as it is for a Jewish person to argue for the "messiahship" of Jesus Christ.
The people of the Book [Hebrew Scriptures ("Old Testament")] have made it clear, repeatedly, that Jesus is not, was never, their messiah. Now, the whole idea of a "Messiah" was a Jewish one, not a Christian teaching. And does it not make sense, if you have a question about Judaism, to ask the experts-- the Jews-- about any of their teachings? The "Messiah," in prophecy, was predicted to be a very bloody general who would lead legions of Jewish soldiers in war against the Romans. The whole world, it was predicted, would be flowing with the blood of the Messiah's "enemies." Jesus, a man of non-negotiable and unchanging peace, did not fit this profile at all. So, it only made sense for the Jewish people to reject him as their Messiah. So, despite later Christian bias, and the twisting of ancient records and prophecies to make them look as if they were specifically about Jesus, I have come to the logical (indeed, inevitable) conclusion that Jesus was not the "Messiah of Jewish prophecy. Except for a single text in Mark, which might have suffered emendation and/or alteration by a later Christian scribe, Jesus himself never claims to be the Messiah. In fact, I believe that he denied it, as he does in The Mystic Gospels of Jesus the Christ.
What mostly uneducated fundies have never come to terms with is the solid historical fact that Christianity and Judaism are two very different, in many ways, unrelated, faiths. As two faiths, they have two separate sets of Scriptures, two different sets of recognized "prophets," two different sets of teachings, different traditions, different "holy" days, different customs, and yes-- most spectacularly-- different gods. The "Jehovah" of the Hebrew Scriptures was never the God of pure Love taught by Jesus. (That alone explains why, although some form of the wrongly translated name "Jehovah" appears nearly seven thousand times in the Hebrew Scriptures, it does not appear a single time in the best ancient texts of the Christian Scriptures.)
Most Jewish people today have as sophisticated and loving an image of God as anyone. But, four thousand years ago, the primitives worshipped a god of genocide, rage, emotional immaturity, violence, and psychosis. This confusion between two very different godimages is why Christian fundies are so hopelessly confused.
Your best bet, with people whose minds resemble blocks of unchanging granite, is just to let them be. In time, karmic force alone has the necessary power to alter some minds. Happily, it is not our job even to try to change the dogmatic mind!
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