The political significance of the crucifixion symbol

Before the Christian age, crucifixion was a political statement being made by Caesar. The meaning of the message was 'I am Caesar. Screw with me and this is how you will be tortured to death.' The entire Roman economy was dependant on the wealth generated by slaves, who were kept in line using the threat of crucifixion (torture). The post Easter meaning of the crucifixion became an insult to Caesar, and the political content of this new subversive message could be described using the phrase, 'Caesar crucifies slaves, but God raises his victims from the dead.'

You know, it has often been said that when one strips ‘theology' of the doctrine of ‘saving sinners from hell' through ‘the atonement of the blood of the lamb' the gospel is drained of all meaning and rendered null and void. Actually, nothing could be further from the truth. Toss out theology and a symbol, the Christmas symbol, and the Easter symbol emerges full of political significance. It is not required that one discuss ‘faith' or ‘make a decision to believe' in order to appreciate the profound political significance of the symbol of the cross, since it becomes visible when theology becomes invisible. While the political significance of the Christmas and Easter symbol is easy to describe and just as simple to appreciate, it is noteworthy that theology has been so successful at obscuring this symbol that for many people bringing it to their attention for the first time would probably come as a revelation. We just don't see it, because theology does not allow it to be seen and this is a damning commentary on the true nature and intention of Christian theology throughout the ages.

It has been said, with justice, that the Christian documents represent a confusing hodge podge of internally inconsistent works, with myth and legend entangled with whatever history may found on these pages. This is obvious when one flips back and forth between gospels. For example in the least theologically developed gospel, called ‘Mark', we find the Jesus Christ character claiming to be ‘a sinner'. He says, ‘Do not call me good, for there is no one who is good except God.' At the beginning of the gospel, John the Baptist is out baptizing sinners in the Jordan and the Jesus Christ figure shows up to be baptized for his sins as well. Flip over the gospel of Matthew and suddenly the now god like being known as Jesus shows up to baptized by John, and John refuses to baptize him because he is a god like being. John is not even worthy to touch one of his sandals, and begs instead to be baptized by Jesus. The Jesus Christ character, by this time a god, tells John that yes, he doesn't have any sin worth mentioning, but that he came to be baptized because otherwise people would gossip. He then instructs John to go through the motions and baptize for the sake of appearances so that people won't talk.

This pattern repeats itself again and again as we compare Matthew's theologically motivated editorial revisions of earlier stories from Mark. In one story in Mark, the Jesus Christ character is confused and cannot understand who just touched him. In Matthew's gospel the same story is edited, and in divine godlike power, the Jesus Christ character actually knows who is going to touch him before they touch him. Not a moment of confusion. With this editorial revision his god like power and understanding is brought forward in triumph.

All of which makes the Matthew gospel the most worthless ‘historical' document in the Christian canon. History cannot be edited. Things just are what they are, and changing things so that they become as they should be is not history. It is theology. And given that it is not theology grounded in anything real, but rather based upon desire, it is questionable theology at that, which means that the Matthew document is only of interest to those who are curious to find out how the world should have been, would have been, if the world had turned out the way the author of that Matthew gospel thought it should be. Those curious to take a trip through this fantasy world are free enough to do so, but the document is probably more of interest to those studying psychology while being worthless to historians, and as for the rest of it, given its fanciful view of history and reality as something that can be edited when you don't like what it says, well it is no real importance to the rest of us and can simply be ignored.

Yes, those stories of ghosts having sex with virgins and giving birth to gods, the historically false story of Herod's killing of the babies (written to fulfill the author's desire to have this baby fulfill a prophecy, not because it really happened), and all the persistent editorial doctoring and revision of earlier stories result in a work of little historical significance, and given that it not based upon reality, but rather fantasy, it is also a work of no major theological significance, in spite of the fact that out of many hundreds of documents available at the time, this one got voted into the Bible in the fourth century by priests. Although Matthew's tall tales have taken over Christmas as well as theology, they really aren't important, and they also contribute to the disguising, the hiding of the political significance of the crucifixion symbol, and in that sense are hardly harmless little feel good falsehoods. Truth in this case is much more helpful than what is alleged to be an ‘uplifting, inspiring fiction.'

Now fortunately, the symbol of the crucifixion is like an encyclopedia of sermons, and requires no Bible to go along with it. It speaks volumes, and anyone who tosses aside theology and just considers the matter with a clear mind will understand what I mean when those sermons begin to heard, or perhaps even felt, almost by instinct. It really is just that clear and unambiguous. It is just marvelous in that way, and in the history of the religions of the world, I feel that in this way the symbol of the crucifixion stands out in its excellence. For the first time, perhaps the only time, we find a religious symbol not requiring the intervention of priests preaching sermons to be properly understood. It does not require evangelists. Even those who hate its anti-authoritarian revolutionary message can understand that of which it speaks. The entire Christian church can collapse, and you know, maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing, since throughout history the Christian church was the greatest impediment to the preaching of this singular gospel, and anything that bad has to disappear. When you look at it this way the fact that Christian church is collapsing into conservative reaction and virulent, defiant fundamentalism (a sure sign of its ongoing collapse into irrelevance followed by a trip to the dust bin of history), well this is actually a positive development, for now perhaps those, like myself, who appreciate the gospel of the cross (while loathing theology as much as I do) can finally ‘preach the gospel' unhindered by the constant machinations of obfusticating preachers deliberately muddying the waters with their hooves, defiantly butting with their long horns, and engaging in perpetual, never ending acts of long winded sabatoge.

But I digress...

Now as I mentioned, the gospel of the cross is so clear, such a marvelous thing, it doesn't need a bible or a minister, which is a good thing given the sorry state of that document we call ‘the bible' and given the sorry state of fundamentalist reaction sweeping the ministries in our time (as age old superstitions cave in under the weight of their own superstitious nonsense and ministers respond with defiant attempts to change the science curriculum in schools or flood the airwaves with defiant chatter in a desperate bid to stave off the inevitable). However, this does not mean that we cannot discover a few things by reading the Bible. The correct method to use here is as follows. First you toss aside the Bible as being of little value. You then encounter the crucifixion symbol. Having had the gospel preached clearly for the first time you can then pick up a Bible and begin to pick through the morass on its pages and ignoring all the ignorant first century superstitions about epileptics being shaken by shaking devils and other such irrelevant nonsense you can then discover a record of both a movement moving towards revolution followed by right wing fundamentalist reaction, with the former mostly confined to the gospel narratives while the letters attributed to Paul forming the bulk of the right wing authoritarian counter attack on the church.

The Bible is after all a useful historical document, provided that it is read critically, and provided that you already know the gospel before you read the Bible, so you don't get sucked down into the pit of right wing obscurantism that flooded its pages during the priestly vote on which documents would become ‘sacred' during the fourth century. Unfortunately, almost all these voting priests were right wing hawks and thus the sorry state of that sorry, sorry document known as the Bible, but that doesn't mean we can't still find traces of what preceded them, in that even they could not ignore the popular will and thus we find that books like Mark, which contradict their theology, present in the Bible, as well as documents such as Luke, which contradicted their right wing politics. Such documents had to be included and could then hopefully be buried under that manure pile of right wing authoritarian letters which they preferred, and rather than the revolutionary gospels, form the backbone of what became known as Christian theology, the same theology which hides the meaning of the cross, because that was what it was intended to do.

A review of the politics of the last century reveals ‘why Jesus had to die on the cross.' Now it turns out that Jesus did not have to die because some guy named Adam passed on sinful sperm (which is the official ‘doctrine', if you want to dignify something that worthless by using the term ‘doctrine' to describe such superstitious mumbo jumbo). Rather the Jesus Christ figure had to die the death of all the dissidents and unruly slaves, because he was an unruly dissident.

Perhaps you have heard of the ‘year of living dangerously' in Indonesia in the 1960s. What happened is that Washington, D.C. partnered with the government of Indonesia to mass murder an estimated half million to one million human beings. No one knows for sure since they were murdering peasants and slum dwellers, and who can really count, they were so common and there were so many of them. Their crime was they were part of a growing left wing movement in Indonesia. The Kap Gustapu (named after the Gestapo of Nazi Germany) were given the job of murdering every single last left wing voter and supporter in Indonesia, but unlike their Nazi name sakes, they were incompetent and could not find out who was voting left wing, and thus who they were supposed to murder. In frustration the United States Ambassador Green contacted the C.I.A., since they already had formulated a long list of Indonesian left wingers who needed to be exterminated the way one wipes out rats, and asked them to please hand over their list so the Kap Gustapu would know who to kill, because while they were good killers (killing is easy after all) they were lousy at doing intelligence, while the C.I.A. was real good at rooting out and murdering leftists, having specialized in the task so many times before. (See the page documenting declassified documents describing Washington's involvement in the mass murder in Indonesia, and make the most of it, because the Bush administration is currently hard at work making sure none of these scandalous documents get declassified any more, so that from now on Washington can commit mass murder without having to worry about everyone reading all the details of how it happened later...)

And this would be only one of so very many examples...the contras in Nicaragua, the overthrow of the elected governments of Chile and Iran and so on and so on, and their replacement, by Washington, with right wing despots in countries all over the world, the details of which the Bush administration is currently working on hiding forever from everyone so they never have to be as humiliated again as they were when that horrible report on U.S. involvement in the mass murders in Indonesia became public two years ago.

Which brings us back to the gospel, and our discussion of that other mass murderer, that other Caesar, since the murder of left wing dissenters is what Caesar does and has always done all throughout history. Now I know that Caesar eventually became a Christian, after the power seeking priests changed Christianity and perverted and muddied and hid and obfusticated. Caesar has never had a problem with church, after about the fourth century, when the whole thing had already gone right down the crap hole, but Caesar did have a problem church before that, and Caesar had a real problem with that communist known as Jesus, and we all know what happens to the left wing in this world right. If they are lucky they will pepper sprayed and beaten with sticks and herded like cattle, and if they are less than lucky, they will be tortured to death, while some guy from the C.I.A. who is there to train the torturers watches and gives more training. (Which is what happened in places like Argentina, where tens of thousands of young people were tortured, top find out who else was dissenting, and then murdered, and then became among the disappeared. The Argentinian despots had more of a problem trying to disappear the Mothers of these kids, who bravely picketed for years, the numbers of mothers growing as more and more their kids who had made the mistake of protesting something or another, instead of getting hit with sticks by cops, began to disappear. Perverted sociopaths stripped them naked and abused and tortured them for weeks before making them disappear, as Washington and the perverts in Argentina continued the ancient task of Caesar, you know, the same thing they did to Jesus a couple of thousand years ago, and for the same reason, too...

Yes, the reasons have remained the same, for there are some things that Caesar forbids people to say, yesterday, and even today, and the Jesus Christ figure said those kinds of things that get a person killed, then and up to the present day...

Mark 10:25 It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."

Luke 6:20 "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets. But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.

Luke 16:19 "There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man's table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. He called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.' But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.' He said, ‘Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father's house— for I have five brothers—that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.' Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.' He said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.' He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.'" Jesus said to his disciples, "Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to anyone by whom they come! It would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea than for you to cause one of these little ones to stumble.

Luke 12:16 "The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?' Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.' But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?' So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God."

Luke 14:12 He said also to the one who had invited him, "When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous."

We are told that the Jesus Christ figure preached the redistribution of wealth as a solution to the problem of poverty (which is reasonable, since poverty is, by definition, the absence of money)..

Luke 18:22 "Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me." ... How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."

In the years following the rise of the crucifixion symbol, a movement arose in the church which was destined to clash with the power of Rome, in much the same way that a movement arose in the 1960s in Indonesia, and at other places in other times, that was destined to clash with Washington, D.C. These people interpreted their instructions as being to establish the world communist system and the welfare state in the midst of the Roman Empire. Because the Jesus Christ figure was a pacifist communist, they attempted to achieve this revolution by growing a communist state within the state. This would be much like having the state of Arizona peacefully turning to communism or socialism and setting up the full scale welfare state right on the front lawn of Washington, D.C. I don't think I need to say that the reaction such a naive strategy would provoke would be entirely predictable, and in the case of Christianity it meant that we got religion, peddled by right wing priests, and we got that notorious mind muddling Christian religion in one hell of hurry as well. Not a trace of this early revolutionary experiment remained, as it was wiped off the face of the earth in one hell of a big hurry.

According to the testimony left behind by this extinct early church movement, these people interpreted their instructions from Jesus as being to abolish private property, set up a communist state like a Trojan horse in the midst of the Roman Empire, and then set up the strong welfare state, forever getting rid of poverty.

Acts 4:32 Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.

That Trojan horse was more than enough reason for Caesar to crucify someone on the spot, and this goes a long way to answer the question ‘why did that Jesus character die on a cross.' He died for the same reason they died in Indonesia or Argentina, or so many other places in the world, and the church he founded died as well, since you can't find even a trace of it on the face of the earth, throughout history, right up to the present time. All that remained was Christian theology and Christian religion, which, thankfully, is now drying up and dying away. The right wing will now require a new prop since that old superstition known as ‘saving souls' they cooked up as a prop for the system has run its course and is now to obsolete and discredited to do the job any more. The world requires some fresh new perversion, some new obscene superstition since that one about burning people up in hell for defying the state is to old and to tired out and to useless to carry the burden into a new century. The right requires a fresh superstition, since this one is no good anymore, and in the interlude, the opportunity exists to make trouble by emerging into the sunshine, with a cross unencumbered by the detritus of theology, and tell the story of both a political movement that emerged long ago, whose symbol was the cross, and of the church that came later, which provides a text book example of how right reaction works in societies such as ours.

The questionable foundations of ‘Christian theology'

Over the course of the first few centuries of the development of the church as an entrenched social institution Christian theology became intertwined with the animal sacrificing ritual of the ancient Jewish temple. This theological development allowed the meaning of the cross to be changed, and it was no longer an offense to the established political system, and in the end Caesar became the chief patron of Christianity and the belief in the Christian religion became enforced by Roman law.

Thus it becomes clear that the development of Christian theology was a deeply reactionary right wing response to the challenge posed by the liberation message embedded in the symbol of the Christian cross. This new theory has been termed the ‘substitution doctrine', whereby the Jesus Christ figure became a ‘substitute' for the animals once sacrificed in the Jewish temple, and so the argument went, in this way he also became a substitute for ‘all sinful humanity'. ‘I should have been crucified by Caesar,' the penitent proclaims, ‘but Christ took my place and died on the cross for me..' Animal sacrifice theology white washes the practice of political murder by teaching that ‘everyone deserves to be crucified, and Christ, the substitute took their rightful and deserved place on the cross, and thus paid the price they deserved to pay themselves for their sins.'

According to this right wing pro-state, pro- capital punishment theology, there is nothing wrong with political murder per se, since everyone is ‘born in sin' and deserves to be crucified by the state, and given this change in the meaning of the symbol of the cross is then became possible for Caesar to become a Christian himself since the new doctrine was one which served the interests of the state, and promoted capital punishment, torture of dissidents, and class divisions, rather than challenging the state unlike the original unadulterated symbol of the cross, insulting as it was to status quo. Of course Caesar quit enforcing rigid class divisions by crucifying slaves and dissidents, since that would be to embarrassing. According to Constantine's famous edict declaring Christianity the new state religion, anyone who dissented from the new religious order was to be either exiled to an island (and thus kept from polluting the minds of others with dissenting viewpoints) or burned to death at the stake for heresy (thus it was actually Caesar who started the church on the road which led to burning at the stake, rather than crucifixion, as the new form of political murder).

The process of sucking the marrow out of the bones of the earlier left wing revolutionary movement involved reinterpreting the meaning of the troublesome crucifixion symbol at the center of the movement, and this turned out to involve tying it to an ancient superstition surrounding the ‘feeding of a god', who, we are told, was not a vegetarian, but rather a heavy meat eater, as well as being a heavy drinker.

Chapter after chapter of the priestly animal cult documents in the Bible are devoted to outlining the dietary requirements of this meat eating god they were supposedly ‘feeding', and it is not necessary to go into great detail of just what was on the menu for each of the many days and times of each and every month listed in these long endless menus. The following are a few examples...

Two male lambs a year old without blemish, daily, as a regular offering. 4 One lamb you shall offer in the morning, and the other lamb you shall offer at twilight. Numbers 28:3

The fat that covers the entrails, and all the fat that is around the entrails; the two kidneys with the fat that is on them at the loins, and the appendage of the liver, which you shall remove with the kidneys. Then the priest shall turn these into smoke on the altar as a food offering by fire for a pleasing odor. All fat is the Lord's. Leviticus 3:14

In the sanctuary you shall pour out a drink offering of strong drink to the LORD. Numbers 28:7

As for the priests, their special privileges in society were protected by law, these laws having been written by priests, about and for priests, and so this is no surprise.

They offer the Lord's offerings by fire, the food of their God; therefore they shall be holy. Leviticus 21:6

This animal eating god of the sacrifice was, according to the development of Christian theology, the ‘father of Jesus', Jesus came to ‘substitute' for all the animals his ‘father' had been eating for many centuries, becoming the ‘perfect sacrifice for sin'. Thus Christian ‘salvation' from the ‘fires of eternal damnation' (the theological reflection of Constantine's declaration of burning those who dissented) is bound together with the validity of the animal feeding ritual of the Jerusalem sacrifice cult.

This cult was controversial even in its own time. Jeremiah rejected the validity of the cult, stating that the animal sacrifice was invented by his fellow priests (Jeremiah 7:21), and that the Bible contained forged documents describing these sacrifices, which had been writing by what he called ‘the lying pen' of his fellow priests (Jeremiah 8:8). Not all the Jewish prophets were critics, for we find Malachi blaming the drought in the Middle East on the fact that the people were starving out their meat eating god (see the page on the decline of Jewish prophecy for more information). According to Malachi the people were falling behind on their tithes and food was running short for the meat eating god, and thus it did not rain.

'Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in my house, and thus put me to the test, says the LORD of hosts; see if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you an overflowing blessing.' (Malachi 3:10)

What Malachi had to say represents Jewish prophecy at the stage of collapse. During the height of the movement the criticism of the animal sacrificing ritual was relentless. Another critic wrote, (speaking using the voice of God, as was typical in Jewish prophecy)

'I will not accept a bull from your house, or goats from your folds. For every wild animal of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the air, and all that moves in the field is mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and all that is in it is mine. Do I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?' Psalm 50:9

What is said here is just simple common sense, and it shows that even at the very height of the power of the Jerusalem sacrifice cult, these sacrifice rituals were controversial and rejected by radical elements aligned with the schools of Jewish prophecy. For example we read in Isaiah, (once again using the voice of God),

‘What do I care for your animal sacrifices? I have had all I can stand of the flesh of bulls and the blood of goats. Who asked you to do this? No more shall you trample the temple. The stink of your sacrifices is abhorrent to me.' (Isaiah 1:10) ‘Whoever slaughters an ox is like one who kills a human being; whoever sacrifices a lamb, like one who breaks a dog's neck ... These have chosen their own ways, and in their souls delight in their abominations.' (Isaiah 66:3).>BR>

Now it seems unlikely that the animal eating god showed up to consume its meals of lamb and veal and roast beef, or to drink all that beer and wine that was on the menu. So what, therefore could have happened to all these daily deliveries of food to the Jerusalem temple. Well according to the Bible, the priests were not vegetarians, and the food also supported their families.

'He (the priest) may eat the food of his God, of the most holy as well as of the holy.' (Leviticus 21:22) 'He may eat of the sacred donations, for they are his food.' (Leviticus 22:7) 'Those that are born in his house may eat of his food.' (Leviticus 22:11) 'A priest's daughter ... may eat of her father's food. No lay person shall eat of it.' (Leviticus 22:13)

Now this just makes simple common sense, in that, as one critic put it, a God does not need to be fed roasted animals. Gods also don't drink all that wine and beer that was being delivered day and night to the Jerusalem temple. It turns out that the priests were not only heavy meat eaters, they were also heavy drinkers. According to Isaiah, the priests were getting so drunk they were puking all over the tables in the temple, and then they were hypocritically writing out rules of behavior for everyone else to follow...

‘Ah, the proud garland of the drunkards of Ephraim, and the fading flower of its glorious beauty, which is on the head of those bloated with rich food, of those overcome with wine! ... These also reel with wine and stagger with strong drink; the priest and the prophet reel with strong drink, they are confused with wine, they stagger with strong drink; they err in vision, they stumble in giving judgment. All tables are covered with filthy vomit; no place is clean ... For it is rule upon rule, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little ... Therefore hear the word of the LORD, you scoffers who rule this people in Jerusalem ... hail will sweep away the refuge of lies, and waters will overwhelm the shelter. Then your covenant with death will be annulled, and your agreement with Sheol will not stand; when the overwhelming scourge passes through you will be beaten down by it.' (Isaiah 28:1)

Now the point to be made here is twofold. First the animal sacrifice ritual was declared invalid, a forgery, and an offense to simple common sense by the critics of the prophetic schools centuries before Christian theologians set to work to redefine the Christmas message, by forcing a new interpretation onto the offensive symbol of the cross. Second, if the animal sacrifice, good feeding ritual was a forgery and invalid, then it follows that Christian theology of the ‘substitution doctrine' whereby the Jesus Christ figure ‘substituted' for the animals of the sacrifice and thus ‘paid for our sins on the cross' is a theology which, being based on an illogical and foolish forgery, is itself completely invalid. There is nothing to be gained by ‘giving your life to Jesus' and ‘being saved from hellfire by having Jesus take your place on the cross.' Even the slogan ‘washed in the blood of the lamb' is based upon a set of forged documents and is meaningless, if it is the case that the animal sacrifice ritual was meaningless, a fiction.

If the animal sacrifice ritual was valid (which would be an offense to simple common sense) then it follows that the Bible is not ‘inerrant', not is it ‘God's infallible word' since the Bible contains erroneous passages written by Jewish prophets, such as Jeremiah (the finest example) which declare the very foundations of Christian doctrine to be corrupt and based on forgeries and nonsense. You can't have it both ways. If Christian theology is true then the Bible is not ‘God's word'. And if prophecy is not ‘God's word' then it also casts doubt on the validity of the animal sacrificing and god feeding rituals the prophets condemned. There is just no escaping the internal contradictions presented by classic Christian ‘theology' developed by the pro-state, pro-capital punishment, pro-Caesar religious right during the first few centuries of the development of the church as an entrenched and powerful social institution.

The apostle Paul and the rise of the religious right

The substitution theory which sought to drain the revolutionary meaning from the original symbol of the cross originated in such classic documents of the early religious right as the book of Romans. Romans is a political polemic for the right wing authoritarian theocratic state dressed up in the form of theology. All the classic doctrines of Right Wing Authoritarian thought appear in the book of Romans disguised as ‘theology'. (See the page discussing right wing authoritarian thought for more discussion of this issue, as well as the discussion of RWA on the page ‘A Spiritual Revolution). Right Wing Authoritarians believe that human nature is essentially evil, and that the only solution to this problem is to establish class divisions in society where a docile and obedient humanity obeys the authorities. Since people are by nature evil, only a severe and punitive legal system, and the imposition of strict capital punishment can ever maintain order in society.

The book of Romans reaches its climax in Paul's notorious defense of political murder, and his defense of Caesar's right and duty to crucify the slaves. Here Paul demonstrates that he has no understanding of the political significance of the crucifixion symbol as a damnation of Caesar and his murderous state, and his right wing ignorance is so pronounced that he actually concludes a supposedly ‘Christian' document by justifying both the crucifixion and the establishment of a theocratic dictatorship.

'Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment ... for the authority does not bear the sword in vain! It is the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer ... Therefore one must be subject ... for the authorities are God's servants, busy with this very thing. Pay to all what is due them, taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due.' Romans 13:1

Right wing reaction permeates the writings attributed to Paul, and it is no surprise that today the religious right prefers to quote the Pauline corpus, while staying far, far away from the revolutionary leftist writers that Paul opposed. In the following passage Christ is portrayed as a slave driver, watching over slaves to see to it that they perform their slave duties properly, not as ‘people pleasers' but rather as those sorts of slaves being watched by a God (and who could be slack in their slave work and not be caught out by the all seeing eye of a god?) As a reward for earthly obedience to their masters slaves are then promised pie in the sky when they die, the favorite tactic of the Right Wing Authoritarians throughout history.

Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as you obey Christ; not only while being watched, and in order to please them, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart. Render service with enthusiasm, as to the Lord and not to men and women, knowing that whatever good we do, we will receive the same again from the Lord, whether we are slaves or free. (Ephesians 6:5)

'Tell slaves to be submissive to their masters and to give satisfaction in every respect; they are not to talk back.' (Titus 2:9)

The status quo was to be maintained at all costs, and slaves were not to be taught to recognize themselves and the justice of their cause in the symbol of a slave raised from the dead after dying a slaves death by crucifixion. (That would be social criticism, and not the kind of rigid preservation of authority and the status quo favored by the religious right wing authoritarians). Similarly, women were to crushed and any new rights they were accorded in the early church were to be ruthlessly suppressed and taken away. These obsolete doctrines continue to influence the world to this very day in that the United States, supposedly an advanced nation, not to mention the leading ‘democracy' still has not been able to pass the Equal Rights Amendment giving equality to women, due to the fierce resistance of the religious right wing authoritarians, who justify their social reaction by quoting Paul, the original author of the animal sacrifice theology and social reaction of the religious right throughout history.

"Let the women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but let them be in subjection, as also saith the law. And if they would learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home: for it is shameful for a woman to speak in the church. What? was it from you that the word of God went forth? or came it unto you alone? If any man thinketh himself to be a prophet, or spiritual, let him take knowledge of the things which I write unto you, that they are the commandment of the Lord. But if any man is ignorant, let him be ignorant." (1 Corinthians Chapter 14 verse 34)

"Let a woman learn in quietness with all subjection. But I permit not a woman to teach, nor to have dominion over a man, but to be in quietness. For Adam was first formed, then Eve; and Adam was not beguiled, but the woman being beguiled hath fallen into transgression: but she shall be saved through her child-bearing, if they continue in faith and love and sanctification with sobriety." (1 Timothy Chapter 2 verse 11)

"They may train the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sober-minded, chaste, workers at home, kind, being in subjection to their own husbands." (Titus Chapter 2 verse 4)

The Muslim religion was heavily influenced by the earlier Christian and Jewish documents, and it turns out that the practice of veiling women, which was enforced by Paul, actually originated not with the Muslims, but with Paul and the early right wing of the Christian Church. This passage contains Paul's famous reference to the ‘pregnant man theor.'(woman, he states come from men, and not vice versa, which would be a first if it ever actually happened). He also bullies, threatening to shave women bald headed if he catches them without their veils on, and then insists that the sight of woman unveiled risks ‘shocking the angels' and that women require ‘a sign of authority covering their head' so they must wear their veils.

"(A woman) with her head unveiled dishonors her head ... For if a woman is not veiled, let her also be shaved bald: but if it is a shame to a woman to be shaved bald, then let her wear her veil. For a man indeed ought not to have his head veiled, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man. For the man is not of the woman; but the woman is from the man... for this cause ought the woman to have a sign of authority on her head, because of the angels... But if any man seems to be contentious, we have no such custom (of allowing women to not wear veils), neither the churches of God." (1st Corinthians Chapter 11 verse 5)

Justice issues, promotion of equality, including the equality of women, the equal sharing of resources and the establishment of the welfare state, solving poverty and ending artificial class divisions were all promoted by the early church, and were all steadfastly opposed by the religious right, led by the apostle Paul (and so nothing has really ever changed, and truly there is nothing new under the sun). There is nothing to be said about social justice issues in these letters of Paul, and where the issue of injustice arises, it is only to demand that women get back into their place, and preserve the male privilege, that slaves get back into slavery, and preserve class divisions, and when it comes to justice issues, the ‘donations model' is promoted, whereby people are encouraged to drop off a can of food at the food bank ‘to help the poor.' Even today the religious right continues to promote the rigid enforcement of class divisions and social norms while supposedly dealing with the entrenched injustice and cruelty of the system by making the odd appeal for ‘donations.'

In place of justice issues, which are absent from these letters, we find instead ‘sin' to be defined not as a social problem, but rather a problem of the individual. To be human is to be sinful, since all sin has its source in the ‘human flesh.' The source of all sin is a genetic defect which passed on to the human race through Adam's sperm, according to Paul in Romans. Adam's sperm, he tells us, became corrupted when Adam disobeyed a direct order, and thus ‘through Adam' all of humanity was condemned to eternal damnation in hell. Sin is in the genitals, and is passed on when people have sex, and thus no one can escape eternal damnation, since typically it requires a sperm for birth to take place, and those sperm are evil. Thus all sin resides in the flesh, and thus it is not social injustice which is responsible for the world's problems but rather the genitals, which in another fine example of ‘substitution theory' become the target of all right wing activism.

Now I have said it before and I will say it again. If ‘sin' lives in the human flesh, and is the result of corrupted genetic coding passed on by sperm, then the logical route to a real solution would be for the human race to launch a class action lawsuit for homicidal negligence on the part of the creator of the code. No one chooses their genetic code and if people are ‘born sinful' then it follows that no one has any choice in being a sinner in that they are forced by nature to sin. Therefore it follows that they cannot be judged for sin, since they have been programmed to sin. Common sense also tells us that were it the case that everyone was born as the result of ‘sinful sperm' contacting an egg and creating ‘sinful flesh' a solution to the problem would not be to attempt to ‘wash the sinful DNA' with ‘the blood of a lamb.'

Such superstitious mumbo jumbo is an offense to simple common sense, but it does serve as the foundation for what will become a right wing redefinition of the meaning of the crucifixion. Why the RWA dictatorship? Because everyone is evil and needs to be controlled. Why is everyone evil. Because some guy named Adam passed on sinful sperm. Is anyone exempt from the duty to ‘obey' the RWA state? (Obedience is the most common word used by Paul, and this describes his vision of the political order.) No. No one is exempt because everyone is damned by that sinful sperm (well, except for Jesus, who escaped that sinful sperm by being ‘born of a virgin'.) As for everyone else, they are going right straight to hell unless they partake of the substitution of Jesus who ‘died as a sacrifice for our sin' (the ‘substitution' doctrine introduced by Paul in the book of Romans, which is based on fusing together the symbol of the cross with the earlier animal feeding rituals of the Jerusalem temple cult.)

All this makes about as much sense as damning an ‘Aardvark' for possessing a ‘sinful Aardvark nature.' No Aardvark every chose to be an Aardvark. To condemn Aardvark's for being Aardvarks would be incredibly stupid, but, for some reason, throughout history people have been willing to go along with the idea of condemning human beings for having been born with human DNA and thus standing damned to hell for the high crime of being born. To exist, to have ‘flesh' is to be eternally damned. Try the same doctrine on an Aardvark sometime, and perhaps appreciate just how atrociously stupid it really is. And for further discussion of the ridiculous internal contradictions of Pauline theology see the page ‘Christian Shame Based Conditioning.' Paul's genital hating theology does not exist for the purpose of being logically consistent, and an examination reveals a shaky philosophical position, because the purpose of this theology was not to be consistent or even rational, but rather to serve as the foundational prop for right wing reaction, and to give a new meaning to the symbol of the crucifixion, by sucking the marrow out of the bones of the symbol by infusing it with superstitious mumbo jumbo and nonsense about some animal eating god.

Criticism would thus be turned inward, and people could learn to criticize themselves instead criticizing the state or even worse questioning authority. That it worked very well is proved by thousands of years of history, and many thousands of Christmas celebrations of ‘salvation from our sinful genitals' which was brought down as a gift from the ‘father of Jesus', the animal eating beer drinking god, ‘salvation from hell fire' and ‘our lives in eternity' being assured through the ‘payment for our sin' of being born as Aardvarks encapsulated in that wonderful symbol of God's grace, the animal sacrifice of Jesus, who came to supposedly save us all from the fate of an eternity in hell for a mistake in our sperm code that was the fault of the authorities, who of course cannot be held responsible or questioned. Therefore we must tell Jesus how sorry we are and ‘repent' and then spend the rest of our lives fighting with our ‘sinful genitals'. This will be such a tall order that no one will have much energy left to establish the welfare state or end poverty or set up world communism or fight against capital punishment. It worked really well as the history of the now collapsing, obsolete Christian church demonstrated. It remains to be seen what sort of mumbo jumbo will arise to prop up the Right Wing Authoritarian movement now that classic Christianity is on its death bed (writhing in the throes of defiant fundamentalist reaction, a sure sign of the fast approaching end)..


Have a merry (and 'revolutionary') Christmas...

Related pages...

Pages linked to above...
CIA attempts to block declassification of documents which describe Washington's involvement in the mass murder in Indonesia

False mysticism and the Decline of Jewish prophecy

Right wing authoritarian thought

RWA on the page ‘A Spiritual Revolution)


Other related pages...
Critical dissection of Paul's philosphical contradictions in the book of Romans

The origins of the Virgin birth story ... a previous years critical Christmas piece, examines the contradictions in Matthews gospel which reveal a struggle between fundamentalism and reform in the early Jewish church (the manuscript emerged in several stages and was heavily edited and comes not in its original form).

The Conservative/Liberal dichomtomy and the creation of the Bible ... even some of Paul's letters seem to have been written by liberals or even leftists ... tension exists in the Bible between these two opposing philosophies...

The lost political significance of the Easter story ... Caesar crucifies slaves, but God raises slaves from the dead...last years Easter protest writing, continues the tradition...


Recent Critical commentaries...
Homosexuality and the Bible

Catholic church joins backlash against Canada's gay marriage law ... does Catholic Canon law agree with 'Natural Law' on the subject of both monogamy and homosexuality?

Is the Bible Hate Literature?Canadian Parliament debates C-250 ... is the promotion of racism and genocide 'hate literature'...not when its in the bible...

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.

Principles of Evolution: A Study in the Evolution of Bedbugs