As the Easter Holiday approaches (2003) I continue a tradition of mine of writing pieces which encapsulate a dissenting view of the coming holiday. Christian tradition as it is expressed in our culture, in particular on television and in the many books that are published, and in the endless evangelical meetings and crusades always attempts to maintain the fiction that the Easter tradition is monolithic and that there is only one way to think, one way to believe, or as they constantly put it, one single way to ‘be saved'. The following is an example of an alternative picture of the meaning of the Easter season, just to demonstrate that there are other ways to believe, other ways that a person can think...
I am always struck by how so often Christian traditionalists express themselves in language that contains strong tendencies towards fascism. Christianity is a very old religion, and for thousands of years it was shaped by powerful authorities who were entrenched at the very top of the feudal order, and these elements which describe the world under feudalism continue to infuse Christian doctrine to this day. The Christian tradition in the form it is typically expressed, is authoritarian to the extreme, emphasizing the powers of hierarchies over lesser, powerless individuals who are coerced into surrendering whatever power they might possess into the hands of controlling oligarches. The language of salvation emphasizes this subjection of the serf before the Lords, and even the name of the god figure (the Lord Jesus Christ) encapsulates this ancient feudal concept of those who rule and lord it over others due to the divine rights granted to them by reason of their noble, royal birth.
This feudal relationship which justifies the authority of the powerful over those who have surrendered their own power is captured in the language that is all to common among Christians, whether they be conservative Catholics or protestant fundamentalists or evangelicals. One must ‘surrender personal will to the will of the Lord.' One must ‘give Jesus complete control over your life, your very thoughts.' This subjection of the serf before the powerful landlord figure is hailed again and again as the very highest of virtues that can a ‘born again believer' can strive to achieve. You must ‘make the Lord the Lord and Master of your whole life, surrendering you will, and giving him complete control.' Given the master - slave relationship that existed between powerful church hierarchies and obedient, docile serfs during the long age of feudalism, it is easy to see the connection that clearly exists between the historical roots of the church in a system of Lords and vassals and what passes today as ‘Christian doctrine and dogma.'
A notable inconsistency between Christian doctrine and the Bible it is said to be based upon...
It is often said by dishonest ministers and preachers that ‘they are not out to be people pleasers', but rather they must base their (unpopular) dogmas upon what is referred to as ‘the Word of God.' The Word of God in this case can be determined by simply looking up verses in what is alleged to be ‘the Holy Book' which was ‘sent down from God' and therefore, it is said to be ‘infallible and complete without any error.' It is also impossible to ignore and therefore it is asserted that this document must properly hold complete power of the thoughts of every individual on earth. Therefore, many ministers and priests, while expressing what turns out to be their own point of view on some matter, always stop to pepper their sermons with ‘proof texts' from the Bible, since this habit of Bible quoting is supposed to prove something (the book is, after all, just that authoritative).
However, in actual practice the Bible is not the authority, but rather human traditions are the authority, and that means that in the end, ministers and priests are their own authority. The Bible is just a prop, and is used continually simply because of the supposed authority that it imputes to both preachers and priests. The Bible was assembled and written by various religious authorities, and in the end it is the authority of religious authorities that lies behind the supposed authority of the Bible (here we are told that when some ministers and priests, thousands of years ago, threw out books and also included books, this strange process somehow results in a book which has greater authority than ministers and priests, in particular when the ministers and priests who created the documents died thousands of years ago. This is a peculiar idea and not particularly rational, but it goes unquestioned by the many converted serfs who became Christians, and who do not consider their own ministers or priests to be authorities, but the Bible is the authority, even though the Bible was assembled and voted upon and edited by ministers and priests...go figure...)
Now there is one way, my favorite way, to demonstrate that the Bible is not even today actually held to be an authority by ministers and priests but rather ministers and priests, who created the Bible after all, continue to be the deciding authorities to this very day (and the Bible is nothing but a prop they use to justify their own authority which they prefer to keep hidden).
Consider the following example. We are told that ‘Jesus died to pay for the sins of the world.' According to this dogma, which was developed by the early hierarchy in the church, all humanity is born damned to an eternity in hell due to the terrible nature of ‘original sin'. This original sin is passed from parent to child and is therefore ‘genetic' in that it is held to be one of the defining characteristics of human existence. (One can see, therefore, just how important Christian priests and evangelists really are, and the self serving nature of their teachings on this matter should be self evident.) Everyone, it is said, must be ‘saved' before they die and go to hell because of the uncorrected sinful state in which they born. Sin is corrected by priests and priestly rituals which are mandatory for all humanity (as is correct (‘Christian') doctrine). Christ died as a kind of ‘whole offerings sacrifice' to ‘pay for the sins of humanity' and this ritual was described many thousands of years before Christ came in books such as Leviticus. These ancient documents described a cow slaughtering ritual which was ‘a typology of the meaning of the crucifixion.' Christ came to die like a sheep that had been described as being ritualistically slaughtered by these priests in documents such as Leviticus. The only way to be saved is to participate in this ritual which ‘takes away the original sin.' This typically referred to as being ‘washed in the blood of the lamb.' and the lamb in this case describes one of those countless goats, sheep, and cattle that were slaughtered as part of some strange ritual practiced by a certain sect of priests many centuries before Christ was ever born. Often legalistic sounding language is used to describe the ‘sacrificial death of Christ and the atonement of the blood of the sacrificed lamb.' By being ‘perfectly sinless' the lamb, having been punished for the sins of the sinner with the death penalty, therefore ‘paid the price' to ‘redeem sinners from the flames of hell.' It is worth noting at this point that in Christian dogma all sinners deserve the death penalty, and ‘God is just' which in their terminology means that everyone must get the death penalty or ‘it would be a violation of the holiness of God.' Each human being ‘deserves to burn forever in hell' due to the fact that they were born, with birth occuring as the direct result of a sperm hitting an egg, thus transmitting ‘original sin'. There is no escaping this eternal damnation other than participating in the ritualistic lamb sacrifice of Jesus so that by shedding his blood in this Levitical sacrifice Christ could ‘make atonement' and thus ‘pay for sins in full' and ‘impute innocence' to the believer.
Most people in this culture would probably have at least some familiarity with Christian dogmatism of this sort, but for the sake of the following example I thought I would attempt to briefly sketch out the doctrine above, while emphasizing the fact that Christian theology, as it was crafted by the hierarchical Church Fathers, is based on an interpretation of the priestly animal sacrificing ritual described in books such as Leviticus. When you listen to an evangelist crying out that ‘you must accept Jesus' and ‘let Jesus pay for your sins' or ‘be washed in the blood of the lamb' what you are listening to is an interpretation of the ancient animal sacrificing ritual being described by the modern descendants of the ancient Levite priesthood (whose entire religion centered around slaughtering animals and bleeding them to death as ‘sin atonement'). This idea was blended together with the crucifixion at the center of the Easter story to come up with what for thousands of years has been held to be the definitive description of the meaning of the Easter narrative.
Now in selecting Leviticus and the animal sacrificing rituals of the Levite priests, what the early theologians and their modern inheritors, many ministers, preachers, evangelists and priests, have demonstrated is that even today, as in the time when the authority of priests dictated what would and would not be in the Bible, priests and preachers continue to be the final deciding authority and the Bible is actually a kind of apologetic prop. The reason this is so is that it is clear that these ministering priests have arbitrarily exercised their own authority over the Bible, and have therefore used their authority to over ride what is written in the Bible, nullifying what it says in the prophets, for example, and then using that same authority to push forward what is said in another part of the Bible. The Bible itself has no authority in this matter, and the only authority is that being exercised by priests and ministers who decide which part of the Bible will have authority and which part will be nullified and declared non-authoritative in a believers life.
For example, one of my favorite Bible verses is found in the book of Jeremiah. In the seventh and eighth chapters of the book, there is a polemical attack on the priesthood of that time, and on their ritualistic practices as described in documents such as Leviticus. It should be noted here that the Bible does not present a consistent ideology. The documents were heavily edited and the constituent parts were taken from a number of source documents that represented disparate ideologies that were often in direct conflict. The example below will illustrate this point rather well (the book of Jeremiah was not in fact written by a single individual, but rather is composed of disparate source materials which have been gathered under the title ‘Jeremiah'.) The following simple example demonstrates not only the ideological variations that actually exist on the pages of the Bible, but is also a fine example of how the Bible is not the authority, but rather ministers and priests and their human traditions encapsulated in the form of Christian theology and Christian dogma are the actual authorities (the Bible is silenced when it speaks heresy and then extolled when it agrees with the dogmas of ministers and priests, and thus the Bible becomes like a naughty child, or the average subordinated believer, subject to the actual authority which is the authority of priests and ministers). As well, the following example bears directly on this discussion of the meaning of the symbolism of Easter, since the doctrine of Christ as ‘sin atonement' and the doctrines of Christian salvation therefore, have been based exclusively on the doctrines of the whole offerings animal sacrifices in document such as Leviticus.
There are numerous false prophecies concerning 'David's throne'
found in the prophecies. I will not list them all. Consider the following
doubly false prophecy.
"The Levitical priests shall never lack a man in my presence to offer burnt offerings, to burn cereal offerings, and to make sacrifices for ever. The word of YAHWEH came to Jeremiah: Thus says YAHWEH: If you can break my covenant with the day and my covenant with the night, so that day and night will not come at their appointed time, then also my covenant with David my servant may be broken, so that he shall not have a son to reign on his throne, and my covenant with the Levitical priests my ministers." (Jeremiah 33:18)The ideological outlook of this prophecy in Jeremiah contradicts Jeremiah's condemnation of such things as sacrifice, the ark of Moses, and the temple cult earlier in his book, but it echoes the constant refrain in the Torah, especially in Leviticus, that sacrifices would be offered forever. Jeremiah (the alternative source in the book, whom I will refer to as ‘radical Jeremiah') stated:
This was the ideological position of 'radical Jeremiah'. 'Reactionary Jeremiah' stated that sacrifices would be offered forever. At the same time he stated that David would always have a son on the throne. Zedekiah was the last of David's line to sit on the throne, and the sacrificial system was brought to an abrupt end by the destruction of Israel and the temple by the Romans around 70 C.E. While the ideology of 'reactionary Jeremiah' contradicted 'radical Jeremiah' it was in complete agreement with the priestly documents, where it was also stated that sacrifice was ordained by God, when the people came out of Egypt, and would last forever. Priests were the final editors of the Bible, and the final editors of the prophets as well, so it is not hard to imagine the actual identity of 'reactionary Jeremiah' (he was some priestly editor of the manuscript)."Thus says YAHWEH of hosts, the God of Israel: "Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices, and eat the flesh yourselves. For in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to your fathers or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices." (Jeremiah 7:21)
"This is the portion of Aaron and of his sons from the offerings made by fire to YAHWEH, consecrated to them on the day they were presented to serve as priests of the LORD; YAHWEH commanded this to be given them by the people of Israel, on the day that they were anointed; It is their due forever throughout their generations. This is the law of the burnt offering, of the cereal offering, of the sin offering, of the guilt offering, of the consecration, and of the peace offerings, which YAHWEH commanded Moses on Mount Sinai, on the day that he commanded the people of Israel to bring their offerings to YAHWEH, in the wilderness of Sinai." (Leviticus 7:35)‘Radical Jeremiah' continues with his polemic by attacking the legitimacy of the Torah as a whole, which was an attack on the legitimacy of the Levite priesthood, which, in our time, given how the Easter story has been forced into an interpretation based on the whole offerings Levitical sacrifice, it turns out that the attack of Radical Jeremiah also becomes an attack on the Christian hierarchy today, and it undermines the human traditions that are the core of the supposed Easter story (about which we will hear so much around the time of Easter). Jeremiah continues in the seventh chapter by attacking burning at the stake (‘That was no command of God's nor did it ever even enter God's mind that they should do such an abominable thing. Therefore I shall smash these people as an earthen ware pot is smashed beyond all repair, and the dead will be buried in Topheth (where the burning at the stake took place) until there is no room left to bury them.') One could bring up to date Jeremiah's savage attack on the burning stake laws (found in Leviticus, one of the books of the Torah). In this case, to modernize this part of the sermon, it never occurred to God that the church would damn the human race to burning, nor did it ever even enter God's mind that they should preach such an atrocious concept. Therefore God will smash the church like an earthen ware pot is smashed beyond all repair. (The point is well taken even after these thousands of years, since the doctrines of the church so closely resemble the doctrines of the Levitical priesthood whom Jeremiah was attacking in this polemical section of the book).
The Torah consists of the first five books of the Bible (the term Torah referring to ‘the Law of God' imputing to the documents therefore the very greatest of authority and thus the utmost control over human thought and human life). Next, in the eighth chapter, after condemning both the animal sacrifice ritual of the Torah, and then making another specific attack on the Torah (the burning at the stake laws) Jeremiah then makes a general attack on the legitimacy of the first five books of the Bible. "Why are these people so stubborn, always perpetually backsliding...the stork in the heavens knows the time to migrate, but now my people do not know the requirements of God. How can you say, ‘We are wise, for we have the Torah,' when, actually, the lying pen of the scribes has falsified it. Their leaders are dismayed, for they have been trapped and snared, but they rejected the Word of YAHWEH, so what kind of wisdom did they have?' After asserting that the Torah was a forgery, Jeremiah then attacks the fundamental doctrine of Zionism, the notion that one should attack and pillage and commit genocide and then live in the houses and own the land of the nations you have wiped out.
This is without a doubt one of the most radical and most remarkable sermons in the entire Bible. It is important for the purposes of this discussion not only in that it illustrates quite clearly how fraudulent priestly claims to ‘Biblical authority' really are (this is a fine example of the obvious hypocrisy that permeates the entire Christian theological world view). It is very important for, as I explained above, it attacks Christian dogma at its very roots. For if it was true that the animal sacrifice ritual was a fraudulent forgery, as this particular writer insisted that it was, then all of Christian salvation has been fraudulent and rotten at its very roots for thousands of years, and it remains just as rotten to this very day.
As for the rottenness that is such an offensive part of Christianity, it is not required that one understand the rottenness that lies at the root of Christian theology, as I pointed out in the example above (fraudulent claims of Biblical revelation are used to prop up a dogmatic feudal view of the world held by conservative ministers with strong leanings towards fascism). Certainly the above example is helpful in that it indicates that claims to authority wielded by such religious fanatical ministers are nothing but dust in the wind, and not something that need by take seriously by anyone. Those who wish to prop up the authority of this ancient feudal view of hierarchy in human society must come up with a better argument than the hoary old deceitful falsehood which teaches that the source of ‘Christian salvation' and its many dogmas is found in ‘the authority of holy writ.' Ministers are obviously the authorities, evangelists and preachers are their own authority, and when the Bible disagrees with their dogmatism, the Bible gets the same treatment which churches have dished out (and wish they still could dish out) to all dissenters and those whose thoughts are free of dogmatism, throughout human history (ironically, for preaching a sermon like the one above, Jeremiah would have been burned at the stake only a few centuries ago...)
The problems with Christian ‘salvation' and all the sterile ‘theology' and mindless dogmatism that go along with it, go deeper than simply the obvious hypocrisy involved in the mishandling of the Bible (used as a tool to justify and then prop up feudal oligarchies and a vision of society where some people are Lords and others are the vassals and serfs who are ‘under their complete control' - all this symbolized and encapsulated in the Christ language you still here in the church to this very day). The problems go much deeper than Biblical hypocrisy and the mindless stubbornness of human traditions. Christianity is a cruel, vicious philosophy with a merciless perspective toward the value of human life. In fact, the whole philosophy of Christian theology can be summed in just one saying - ‘it is sacrifice that God requires, and not mercy.'
As well as being sadistic, Christian philosophy is intellectually null and void. For example, let us consider the example of a manufacturer of defective toasters. Every single toaster that manufacturer ever produced was defective. We could say that the toasters were ‘created sinful' and they were sinful then from the very moment they were produced on the factory floor. Now in this example no one in their right mind would consider ‘blaming the toaster'. Rather, we can see that if some manufacturer knowingly and continually produced defective toasters, then the manufacturer would be held to blame, and certainly not the defective (sinful) toasters that were constantly being produced in that place. It would seem that here there would be an excellent case for a class action lawsuit.
Now Christian dogmatism insists that God produces nothing but these defective toasters. The fault and the guilt will then be laid on all those toasters, and, in fact, given that these toasters were ‘originally defective' and were all created based on an ‘originally sinful' design specification, therefore the toasters must be hurled into a heap and burned for a very, very long time. As for the manufacturer, well ‘Praise the Lord' and don't ask any uncomfortable questions. One could suggest filing a class action lawsuit against God, who is obviously at fault for allowing the endless creation of so many worthless toasters, but this thought never occurs to the true dogmatic, those who will spend all their time going after those cursed toasters.
Now why would Christianity be so unreasonable, so irrational at its very core? It will be necessary to disparage those defective toasters, only if the purpose of it all was to support the inequality which embedded in the ancient feudal system of Lords and Serfs. The Serfs were defective. The Serfs were sinful. Society was not defective and sinful. Rather it was the Serfs who were faulty. Society was as it was divinely ordained to be. Those defective Serfs, however, would require some work. But thankfully, they had a hierarchy of Priests, who shared in the Lordship over the feudal world, and since only priests could bring ‘salvation' to those defective serfs, you can see how the social position of the priestly oligarchy would remain safe, and their privileges intact only so long as those serfs remained convinced of their own ‘originally defective nature' and also convinced of the efficacy of the blood sacrifice ritual practiced by the healing priests. As well the doctrines of ‘control' and ‘surrender of the will' and the ‘lordship of Christ' are all reflections of the feudal order, and served to solidify and justify the social inequality of feudal society, with the social order of Lords and Serfs mirroring the relationship between Serfs and their heavenly overlords, first among them, their Lord Jesus Christ. Just as Jesus Christ was a totalitarian and brutal tyrant, presiding over hideous torture chambers and gruesome dungeons, as all despots do, so the feudal order was cruel and totalitarian, and hostile to the least expression of dissent, and ruthlessly opposed to both human dignity and human liberty.
None of these characteristics have been purged from the schema of Christian ‘salvation' to this very day. But then social inequality, and the same relationships between Lords and vassals still exist in human society to this very day. Christianity has deep roots, and permeates western thought in ways that remain unconscious to many, exerting an influence over even those who do not consider themselves Christian, but nevertheless continue to internalize the ideology of repression that Christianity saw fit to teach to the world for thousands of years. In any society where inequality has been internalized, a theology like that of Christianity can still take root, and in American society, where the doctrine of social inequality is particularly strong, there remains to this day a very strong fundamentalist, evangelical Christian impulse, which, as it did during the age of feudalism, labors to prop up the surrounding social system and keep under control the large numbers of vassal serfs by subjecting them to what is supposed to ‘the authority of Christ' (and Christ always tells people to be obedient to authority figures, and not rock the boat, as you can easily see by listening to those sermons and reading those pamphlets and books...the authority of Christ is today, as during the time of feudalism, merely a proxy for the powerful in American society, who are the ones who benefit the most by being surrounded by meek and obedient vassal serfs, after all.)
The Gospel
Now it is one thing to reject the Gospel as it has been preached for thousands of years. It is quite another thing to preach the Gospel as it might be preached, if it were stripped of both the fraudulent claims of ‘Biblical authority' and the inconsistent and irrational doctrines and dogmas of human tradition that have welded themselves to the Easter story. Nature, it has been said, abhors a vacuum, and where no Gospel is preached, the pseudo-Gospel of feudalism is left to rush back in and fill the empty space that is left behind when the pseudo-Gospel is destroyed. For this reason, although for many, many years people have dismantled the feudal Gospel in so many different ways, it continues to thrive, since all that is left behind after all these attempts is a vacuum.
Now in order to reconstruct the Easter message, it is first necessary to clear ones mind of every last trace of cow sacrificing dogma. I have found that this is not easy for people to do after thousands of years of being taught what defective toasters they are, and how ruthlessly they must be punished for the simple act of being born human. However, in order to preach the gospel anew, and thus fill that vacuum, one must be able to think in new ways. And one of the first changes that needs to be made is to take that doctrine of sin, reverse it, and place where it so obviously belongs. The doctrine of ‘sinfulness' belongs first to ministers and priests, and then by extension to all Lords, all those who consider themselves superior and thus require that every other human being serve their interests by being taken captive by doctrines of social inequality, encapsulated as they have been in the dogmas of feudal Christianity.
One of the best ways to do this is to strip the Easter story of its human traditions and its theological mumbo jumbo and then bring the story up to date, you might say, to see what the symbolism of the event actually means. (One complaint I have heard so many times before is that when the Easter story is stripped of its Levitical cow components, its doctrines of ‘paying for sin', the Gospel story has been drained of all its meaning. Nothing could be farther from the truth.)
Now consider the following. The Jesus Christ figure was a heretic in his time. He spent a great deal of time attacking the religion of his day (and thus was a harsh critic of the legitimacy of religious practice, much like ‘radical Jeremiah' was in his day). Stories of Yeshua's conflicts with the religious authorities permeate the gospel stories that have come down in the Bible, this in spite of the fact that feudal Christianity was intolerant of any display of dissent. It is typical of the hierarchy to attempt to deflect the criticism by insisting that ‘Jesus attacked the priesthood of his day because they did not acknowledge that he was God.' According to the testimony the crux of his criticism was actually that, to quote one of his sayings as it was reported in these documents, ‘If you understood the meaning of the saying, it was mercy that God required, and not sacrifice' you would never condemn the innocent.' In short, he attacked the religious leaders of his day because their were dogmatic Levites when it came to sacrificial and priestly ritual, and were consequently also a bunch of ruthless pricks. (The same criticism can be leveled at the Levites in the Church today, who do, after all, damn the whole human race to unimaginable tortures in a blazing furnace for not participating in that all important ‘sin sacrifice' ritual which they have embedded at the very core of Christian dogma.)
By insisting that God required simple mercy, and not animal sacrifices, Yeshua was clearly in the line of Radical Jeremiah as far as the stream of prophecy went. There are other attacks on the validity of the Torah, and thus the supposed authority of the religious powers of his day, which are described in these documents. As one example he taught the people that the ‘ritual clean-unclean laws' of the Torah were ‘human traditions' and thus ‘he declared all foods clean.' This story, taken from the Gospel of Mark, was an attack on Leviticus in particular, and includes a sarcastic reference to the preaching of Jeremiah described above. ‘You hypocrites. You nullify the prophets for the sake of preserving your human traditions, and you do many other things just like that.' (Once again, the same criticism could be leveled at modern day ministers and evangelists, who nullify the preaching of the prophet Jeremiah for the sake of preserving their human traditions concerning Christ the Levitical sin sacrifice, which forms the very central pillar of all Christian theology).
For this reason, in the New International translation of the Bible, which was commissioned by evangelical fundamentalists, Jeremiah's attack on the whole offerings sacrifice laws of Leviticus is deliberately mistranslated. In the NIV Jeremiah declares that God did indeed tell the people to make many animal sacrifices, which is the exact opposite of what the passage actually states. This bald faced deception is really remarkable. In every other translation of the Bible I have consulted the passage is translated correctly. No other version of the Bible did anything quite so hypocritical, but it does show that the fundamentalists understood that the attack of Jeremiah was also an attack on the fundamental doctrines of Christian theology, and they reacted as all dogmatics have, and silenced dissent, by silencing Jeremiah. This is a remarkable example of hypocrisy in action, and unfortunately, the New International version of the Bible is today the biggest selling Bible in the world, as evangelicals do their worst in ensuring that their doctored translation gets into the hands of the largest number of people possible, thus keeping Christian dogmatism safe from unseemly attacks by Biblical writers. It is also a fine example of the authority of priests and ministers, which, as I suggested above, supersedes the supposed authority of the Bible, upon which they claim to rely.
So the first point to be made in retelling the Gospel story for Easter, is that Yeshua (the Jewish pronunciation of the English translation of the Greek term ‘Jesus', which I prefer) was a dissenting voice, and actively protested against the religious orthodoxy of his day, and also counseled people to break the supposed ‘Law of God' and encouraged rebellion against the religious oligarches of his time.
According to the testimony, he also didn't have much use for Caesar, and counseled his disciples to break with the social contract in force in the society in which they lived. When it came to Caesar and his subjects, he told them, ‘You know that those who are supposed to rule over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all.' Here, the social order is to be turned up side down, and the legitimacy of those who claim to be ‘lords' is brought into question. No one has the right to the claim to exercise authority over another human being. Everyone therefore is equal, and social differences are an illusion, greatness not something to be admired, but rather scorned and turned away from. (Is it not remarkable that, as the Bible is subjected to the authority of Christian authorities, that this ‘Jesus Christ' character should be transformed into the greatest of all Caesar's, the absolute Lord and Master who is ‘taking complete control'?)
Now two charges were laid against this rebellious character. The first charge came from the ministers and priests of his day, who charged that he was committing blasphemy, by challenging the ancient religious authorities, and also by claiming to be ‘a Child of God.' You can compare this claim to be a child of God, with the notion of being a ‘slave of God'. A slave has a different relationship with a master, than a child has with a parent, and given that throughout history religious oligarches have always preferred obedient and deferent slaves (who were under ‘complete control' with no will of their own but to obey authority figures) you can understand then why this strange new teaching of being ‘children of God' was so deeply offensive to the religious authorities. There are many parables on the subject. For example, what parent who had a hungry child would toss them a stone and then tell them to eat the stone? Similarly, I could ask, bringing the metaphors up to date, what parent would take their child and burn them forever and ever and ever and call it ‘discipline'. You can see then that those who adopt this new way of thinking (they are children of God, not feudal serfs who slavishly serve a sadistic, despotic feudal oligarchy) are then set free from the attempted terrorism practiced by Christian preachers and evangelists. After all, let's be sensible. You don't blame a toaster if the manufacturer was negligent. And what parent burns their own children in hideous furnaces forever and ever and ever?
Now to bring the analogy up to date, let us consider such a character on the loose today. He constantly attacks the religious authorities and advises people not to accept the validity of ancient religious documents, which form the power base for powerful religious oligarches. He regards inequality in society as something fraudulent, and has no regard for office or rank. Rather, like one of the ancient Jewish prophets, he has no problem in roasting high political figures and the most reverend preachers and shows no respect for what human tradition teaches us is sacred.
Later on this same character was executed using the same method that the Romans used to rid themselves of rebellious slaves. (Crucifixion was the method used to execute slaves in the Roman world, and the hideous slow death that resulted was intended to strike terror in the hearts of any other slaves who might be harboring thoughts of being rebellious themselves. There are many ways to execute someone ( a quick blow to the head would do the job rather nicely) but this gruesome torture known as crucifixion was the chosen method simply because it was agonizingly painful and truly terrifying to consider, and thus was a form of social control in that it was intended to inspire a kind of terror that simply smacking someone over the head and killing them quickly could never inspire.
So we can see then that this character was subjected to the most gruesome and torturous death penalty practiced at the time in order to strike terror in the hearts of those who might want to listen to him, or take up his rebellious practices. In short he was considered a serious threat to the powers that be, both Caesar and the religious oligarchy of the time.
Now today, if one heard about a person who preached against religion and Caesar, and you then heard of how both religious oligarches and Caesar had such a person tortured to death in the worst possible fashion, you wouldn't have any trouble understanding the meaning of the Easter symbol. Everyone would comprehend the significance of what had happened, and they would also find it easy to understand why it had happened as well. It is only when it comes time to consider ‘the death of Christ' that suddenly people begin thinking of ridiculous mind numbing nonsense. They begin thinking of punishing defective toasters. They begin to dredge up stories about some cow that got its throat slit in some ancient barbeque ritual practiced by one small clique of not particularly important ancient priests. Soon enough they are vassals in system of brutal, sadistic feudalism, bowing before the supposed authorities, learning to become obedient to those who would lord it over them and exercise authority over them.
Truly the perversion of Christianity is remarkable. Certainly such a subversive message required perverting, from the point of view of the powerful, those who wished to Lord it over others in a system of social inequality. This perversion was their work, and it served their interests well. What were left with is typical of the propaganda of the oligarches. It is a mish mash of lies and perjury and outright deception and fraud, all designed to muddle the heads of anyone foolish enough to listen to it all, and the end result is just one more in that endless variety of feudal serfs that the perversion of Christianity was designed specifically to produce. So successful has this perjury and fraudulent deceit been, that many millions of people cannot even consider the Easter Message without thinking as they have been trained to think by the oligarches who are manipulating and deceiving them. The obvious symbolism buried in the Easter symbol, never even occurs to them. The deception has been successful, and the challenge to their authority and their power embedded in the symbol of the Easter cross has been effectively destroyed and rendered harmless.
What makes the Easter symbol so threatening is not just that it encapsulates the wickedness of power and the corruption and injustice of human society. Certainly it does describe just such a system where the sin is found at the top, while the top attempts to misdirect the serfs below with silly doctrines about defective toasters (for which the only known cure is found by turning to and serving those at the top, thus completing the circle rather nicely). What makes the Easter symbol so subversive is the resurrection story.
Consider the following example. Once upon a time there was a rebellious fighter for the rights of some extremely poor people who lived in slums. Now in Columbia just a few oligarchs own about three quarters of the land and three quarters of the wealth of the country. There is a small middle class that shares in what is left over, and then there are millions of desperately poor people living in destitution and squalor. Death squads roam the country spreading terror and executing anyone rebellious enough to try to organize any change in that feudal society. (Currently Columbia is the most dangerous place on earth to be working for any kind of human rights, with the death squads claiming victims every single day.)
Now let us suppose that this powerful entrenched feudal landlord bunch in Columbia destroyed the life of one of these rebellious campaigners for the rights of the destitute in Columbia. That would not be anything extra-ordinary, but rather would be an everyday occurrence. But let us remember the Easter story, and then flesh out the story in the following way - God intervened and the executed slave rose from the dead. Now to complete the parallel with the ancient example, you can then imagine a huge movement rising up on the earth. In its early days Christianity spread like wild fire among the poor, the slaves of the Roman empire. One Roman noblemen wrote that this idiotic religious insanity had to be stopped and then he urged his readers to consider the types of people who could be found following this disgusting superstition (they were, according to his description, nothing but the lowest people in society, for the most part this idiotic belief being the superstition of a bunch of slaves).
Now let us look at the Easter story as propaganda. Think of Caesar. The message becomes ‘Caesar crucifies slaves, but God raises slaves from the dead.' Now you can understand that when Caesar crucified someone, they damn well stayed dead. You can also understand how humiliating the Easter message was to those powerful oligarches of ancient Rome. By saying that you were a Christian, you were making a political statement. You were saying, ‘Caesar crucifies slaves, and God raises the persecuted from the dead.' For this reason, because of the political content of the Easter message in the times in which it originated, those who claimed to be Christians were subjected to the death penalty. To be a Christian was to make a political statement that was humiliating to Caesar, who was accustomed to having it told around that all the people he slaughtered stayed in their graves. This strong political message that is embedded in the Easter symbol has been long lost in the mumbo jumbo of ‘sacrificing cows at a sacred cow barbeque' but with a little imagination, and clearing ones mind of dogmatism, it is still easy to uncover the truth here and bring the political message embedded in the Easter story back to life.
One can imagine then, the story spreading like wildfire in Columbia, that yes, they killed that one campaigner for freedom, but he rose from the dead. Of course, the peasants of Columbia who flocked to this banner in great numbers, would be considered the lowest life form on earth by people all around the world. However, ignoring this aspect of the story for a moment, you can easily understand the political message of this particular Easter story. It would be targeted at the elite of Columbia, and the message would clearly be, ‘you ruthless, evil pricks.' This political aspect of the Easter symbol, as I said, has been lost for a long time, and just does not occur to people, but it is so important, to make sense of the New Gospel, and so I bring it to your attention...Interesting, is it not...
The Bible consists of grab bag of documents that were assembled for a specific purpose by the early hierarchy that emerged in the church. Eventually, because the Christian message was spreading like wild fire among the serfs and the slaves (who immediately apprehended and appreciated the political content) it became necessary to co-opt the new movement, and this process took several centuries, but eventually Christianity became that towering bastion of conservative reaction were are also so familiar with, and its ancient meaning and its heritage of dissent and protest were crushed under a pile of rubble, and the transformation to the cow sacrificing doctrine we are all so familiar with was complete.
Nevertheless, certain documents made it into the Bible that were probably not the first choice of these extremely conservative clerics, since over the course of centuries they became ‘scripture' through the practice of being used, and thus they could not be ignored. (Rather they could be ‘interpreted' out of existence, or even, as the example of Jeremiah above demonstrates, they could just simply be ignored, nullified as it were, while preferred documents are elevated to the first position.)
So it is that we find interesting traces of this early revolutionary doctrine in the church that wound up in the Bible. For example, the following passage from the first chapters of Corinthians encapsulates this early revolutionary point of view rather nicely...
"For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power ... I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever I will thwart." Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the subtle debater of this present age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For consider your call, brethren; not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth; but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong, God has chosen things without rank or standing in the world , mere nothings, to overthrow the existing order ... I came to you without pretensions to eloquence...The gospel I preached did not sway you with clever arguments, but rather carried with it the conviction of spiritual power..I was determined to know nothing among you except Christ crucified, so that your faith might not be based on the wisdom of men, but rather on the power of God...Among the mature I do speak words of wisdom, though certainly not the wisdom belonging to this world, or to the powerful who govern it...None of the powerful who rule the world has ever known this wisdom. If they had understood then they never would have crucified the Lord of Glory ...If any one destroys God's temple, God will destroy him. For God's temple is holy, and that temple you are. Let no one deceive himself. If any one among you thinks that he is wise by the standards of this age, let him become a fool like me so that he may become truly wise. For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For He catches the wise in their craftiness and knows that the arguments of the wise are futile."
A few comments on the above piece
There are those who would point out that 'The Roman Empire was not a feudal society' and that feudalism came later.
I anticipated this criticism when I was writing the piece.
I am aware that the Roman Empire was not what historians call 'feudalism' however the difference between the slave system of Rome and the feudalism of the middle ages and capitalism today is merely the listing of some technical differences - the system itself remains essentially the same - you have Lords and you have Serfs...
Now as for Christianity 'creating' feudalism that was not what I was saying ... this 'feudal' system of Lords and Vassals, of Elites and Slaves, which exists to this very day, pre-dated Christianity and what I was saying is that Christianity was perverted in order to maintain the power of the status quo. This form of Christianity did not create the Status Quo, it was created to protect the status quo, and eventually became the prop for what would technically be described as feudalism, although the essential system of Lord and Slave has always been the basis of human civilization...
The point of the piece above was supposed to be the following...
Crucifixion was a political statement.
The message was 'you screw with Caesar and rebel against the power of the social order, and you get tortured to death in a grisly manner while everyone watches.' To those who were watching the political message was 'I am Caesar, screw me with me and this is what you will get.'
Now the crucifixion story which is the Easter story is also a political message. The message in this case was subversive, in that the political symbol chosen by Caesar and its political message were subverted, and the message became 'Caesar crucifies slaves, but God raises slaves from the dead,' or again the message could be articulated as 'Caesar, you are a good for nothing a-hole' or 'Caesar, you are a ruthless and evil prick' and so on...
You might have heard the bit about how 'I should have died on the cross but Jesus was a substitute and took my place.' Or 'I deserve to be crucified, but Jesus saved me by being crucified on my behalf.' Or 'God's wrath was poured out on Jesus as he was crucified on the cross, and thus he paid the price for me.' Now let us examine these superstitions for their political content. You will notice that when Caesar crucified someone and tortured them to death (for his political purposes) he wasn't doing anything wrong. They deserved to be crucified, and were getting just what they deserved. The ideology of these doctrines, which are at the very core of the reactionary Easter message preached by so many ministers and evangelists, has the effect of white washing the role of Caesar (and this is how we recognize in these so called dogmas of 'salvation' the workings of reactionary political forces on the far right wing of society). You deserve to be crucified and the fact that you have not been is due to the great generosity of Caesar's good heart. Caesar is an instrument of the wrath of God. When Caesar tortured people to death it was simply Caesar doing the work of God. Later on, according to reactionary theology, that God will also torture them a lot worse in the flames of hell. Caesar's role is cleansed, purified, and white washed using this doctrine, and the political content of the meaning of the crucifixion is drained. The white wash is so complete that using the corpse that is left behind it is possible to grind it to powder and make some of that pablum that can then be fed to the people leaving them unaware of the political content of the meaning of the crucifixion. In fact once they have swallowed the 'substitution dogma' they will become supporters of Caesar and his wrathful nature, they will become supporters of torturers, both here and in the after life, and thus will become suitable right wing reactionaries, which is the kind of people the substitution doctrine was designed to produce. This doctrine celebrates the abuse of the weak by the powerful and thus you can see how its ideology is the exact opposite of the political message that was originally carried in the meaning of the Easter Symbol (which was subversive, and clearly targetted at Caesar).
In some passages, frequently quoted by the forces of right wing Christianity, Caesar is praised for dishing out the death penalty, and everyone is urged to obey Caesar.
"For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of him who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain; he is the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be subject, not only to avoid God’s wrath but also for the sake of conscience .... Slaves, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not with eyeservice, as men-pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing the Lord ... Obey your leaders and submit to them; for they are keeping watch over your souls ... A man who has violated the law of Moses dies without mercy at the testimony of two or three witnesses ... It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God ... Remind them to be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient."Passages like this are typical of the ideology that was introduced into the church during the time of conservative reaction and backlash, and are consistent with the white washing of Caesar's role in the crucifixion described above (Caesar did good in meting out the death penalty, Caesar was the wrathful arm of God in the world). However there was also this other 'revolutionary' element in the early church, and in this case the rulers of the world (described as ignorant forces to be resisted in the passage quoted above) are equated with the devils.
"For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places."Now as for that nonsense about 'Jesus died to pay the price of going to hell forever for the original sin' well that is what is called conservative reaction. Notice how no one notices the revolutionary political content of the Easter Message, since the Message of Easter has now become all about how sinful and tainted everyone is, how desperately in need of a good washing. No one thinks of the political content of this message, and that was the point...this so called gospel of 'originally defective toasters' disguises and hides the political content of the meaning of the Easter Symbol. In doing so it became a religion that even Caesar could live with, as history proves. Such a gospel did not challenge the social order but rather propped up the social order, and even today the most reactionary and right wing forces in society can live with that gospel that teaches 'original sin' and 'Jesus died to bleed away the sin from sinful peasants.'
Caesar could not live with a gospel which taught the message that those whom Caesar murdered were rescued, since it made Caesar look like a disgusting prick. A Liberation Gospel could not be tolerated and so we are left with that other reactionary, right wing perverted gospel everyone is so familiar with, a gospel which Caesar and the rest of those reactionary priests could live with, since it was drained of its offensive political content.
That this stategy was effective can be seen even today. After all, it is once again Easter is it not, and is not everyone thinking about their own sinfulness, and is not religion focusing on the way Jesus died to save them from going to hell for their naturally sinful degraded defective condition? Is anyone recognizing the fact, even today, that Easter is actually an ancient revolutionary holiday, and the celebration of the sarcastic symbol that was the banner of slaves in the Roman Empire, the banner they lifted up against their crucifiers, their persecutors, as they sought to 'overthrow the established order'? That no one recognizes this political content is proof enough that the conservative backlash was successful, in that this other offensive gospel passing itself off as Christianity has effectively rendered the political message of the symbol of Easter invisible, and thus made it null and void.
So then, to summarize, the purpose of the piece above was not to discuss 'how Christianity created feudalism' but rather to bring to consciousness this wonderful political symbolism that was once the meaning of Easter, long long ago ...
Have a nice (revolutionary) EasterV When Easter rolls around, try to forget about the rabbit with the eggs, and forget about that pile of rubbish about the original sin and the bleeding Jesus bleeding all over those sins to 'wash them off' and take a second to remember what a jackass the Easter Symbol made of Caesar, and maybe take a moment to celebrate those revolutionary slaves, plotting, in futile hope it turned out, but plotting none the less, to lift their sarcatic upside down crucifixion banner and to 'over throw the existing order', before their blossoming movement was hijacked and purged of all its insulting elements, and with that done, finally that a-hole Caesar could become a Christian himself, without worrying about being humiliated by that Cross.
Have a nice Easter...
As I mentioned above, on each religious occasion it has become a ‘tradition' with me to write dissenting pieces during the holiday season...
The following piece was written in dissent during the Christmas season (2002). How did we wind up with the story of fatherless God baby who was born of a Virgin as the official Christmas legend? It turns out that the people who invented this story were extremely conservative and believed in the infallibility of the Jewish Torah, and thus it turned out to be the case that the babies father was cursed in the Torah as 'a nigger' (thus it became a requirement that he have a mother, but no father)... The Racist origins of the Christmas myth
This piece was written in protest as the Iraq war was about to begin, and conservative Christianity, as one would expect, began using the Bible as a tool to further the war effort...Why do war gods never fight there own wars, but always order people to do their dirty work for them. Atheistic War propaganda as a tool to supportn the military...
Atheism in the Church, and the Pro-war position
Above I quoted some of the 'revolutionary language' that demonstrates that the political message embedded in the Easter symbol was recognized in the early days of the church (how could they not recognize it?) I also wrote a satirical piece that assembles a large number of these sorts of verses and blends them into one seamless whole to tell the story of 'Manuel the Columbian Peasant' who was murdered by the death squads. Each line in this piece consists of fragments of these 'revolutionary' passages which have been spun together into a whole (and this is the source of the satire, which might not be readily apparent to those who are not familiar with the Bible, thus recognizing the source material that has been spun together to create this piece...)
The Liberation Gospel
Why I believe...
It turns out to be the case that I am one of those idiotic superstitious peasants myself...you know the type being stupid enough to believe that God raised a rebellious Roman slave from the dead, to inspire peasants to ‘overthrow the established order'...Now some might call it wishful thinking on my part, and others might consider it a type of mental illness, but I have really good reasons for believing as I believe, and given that it is Easter, I do a little sermonizing of my own, first spelling out above (or attempting to) what I believe, and now I will conclude by explaining Why I believe...Freedom, you know, comes with a price...I preach liberty, but liberty isn't free, in that everyone must learn the hard way. The alternative is dictatorship and forcing people to think and live a certain way. While no one wants to be lorded over, at the same time people don't like learning the hard way, but really in the end, its one or the other. I mention this because in the tough fight ahead it can be frustrating to watch people make the same historical mistakes over and over again, to watch them being led astray, deceived, and then used and abused. But its called learning from experience, which is what this great laboratory known as life is all about, and its preferable to living in slavery, don't you think...
Wings of an eagle
The photo above is from April 22, 2001, Earth Day, and it was also the Sunday which was the concluding day of the Summit of the Americas. I call this the 'Eden Wing' which was intended to be unfurled as a 'protest banner' at the Summit of the Americas.
The stunt was preceded by an email spamming campaign that began on Friday night (April 20th) and lasted until Saturday morning sometime. You can find links to these emails on the Internet on the following page, which are interesting because they are the 'press release' which announced the unfurling of this big wing, made out of clouds during the summit of the Americas. Because, after all, if you are going to pull a stunt like that one, you really do need to go around making an ass out of yourself before you do it, or it loses all its intended effect, right. These so called 'press releases' are probably the worst press releases ever sent out about anything ever in history. They usually have titles such as 'fly to Eden on stork wings with Yahweh' which I am sure really impressed everyone who got one of those stupid sounding 'press releases'. I once so credulous and gullible, but the last few years have 'matured me' if you call become extremely horrified and cynical a type of 'maturity' (but I am sure some people might prefer it to credulous and gullible). As for the videos linked to in the press release, I make the statement that "I think I probably have enough of a wing going to release a video." Actually if you view those videos you will notice that they hardly helped my cause, since all you can see is a 'smudge' or a bit of a streak forming and that was about it.
The press release links are found here. The significant thing to note is that yes, hard as it might be to believe, the dating on those press releases is Friday evening, the 20th, and that matters more to me than the ridiculous sounding content of those so called press releases... Eden Wing Press Releases
there is a lot of history that goes with those press releases, going back to when I was kid. As just one example I will direct your attention to a letter I wrote describing the strange happenings at Banff National Park in Canada when I was fifteen... Banff letter
There are links to some scanned gifs of the actual letter, as well as a link to something that I refer to as my 'story page' which is not highly recommended since it is another one of those gullible credulous things I was still in the habit of writing several years ago, you know, before I became so damned cynically disgusted with this planet and thus finally, at long last, become a world weary and cynical 'mature adult' just like everyone else (not something I am convinced is an improvement, by the way, but at least it makes communication a little more possible than what otherwise might have been the case)
The symbolism of a Giant Wing and 'flying to Eden' were borrowed from another piece of mythology, this time from the book of Revelations. A great woman is suffering with labor pains and struggling to give birth to her child. Meanwhile a Giant fire breathing dragon is waiting to destroy her child the very moment it is born. The child is born but before the dragon can destroy the new born infant, it is 'snatched up to heaven'. The woman sprouts the two great wings of an Eagle and escapes the dragon by flying to Eden.
Which brings us to the next great protest banner which I am looking for sometime in the times ahead. As they destroy Eden it seems fitting for Eden to come to life , finally at long last. The Eden Wing at the Summit of the Americas was a promise as well, a promise of the literal restoration of Eden to the Sahara, as another one of those mythological type signs, and it seems appropriate to me that such a thing should happen while they destroy the place where Eden was described as being in those ancient myths. By the way here is my 'Summit of the Americas' weblog page as I watched the protests unfold and waited for that wing...I doubt if any of those protestors at the summit even knew who I was... Summit of the Americas Weblog
A Unified Field Theory
The Unified Field Theory
is also available as a zip file -> unified.zip
Introduction :The Pioneer Effect and the New Physics. A brief description of the new physics required to explain the 'Pioneer Effect', which is the constant deceleration of space craft as they fly through space.
