Haggis_McMutton wrote:1.
Where are you getting this individualism from? The entire central point of western religions is that humans are worthless pieces of shit who need to constantly grovel before a higher power, or suffer for eternity.
The whole concept, that you're tainted from birth, condemned to death as it were, and no action you take can ever save you, except for admitting your worthlessness and begging god to forgive your imagined crimes. This is the most extreme form of dictatorship imaginable.
What are the powers of the state or the priest compared to this? Any form of human dictatorship is vastly preferable as at least your suffering is limited by death. Not so with god though, he is there forever. Grovel or burn. Greatest love story indeed.
Your understanding is lacking.
Remember back to the days before Jesus. There, the individual could not, was not allowed to commune with God. Whatever God that individual may have worshiped. From Zeus, to Jupiter, to Isis, to Mithra or whatever you wish to look at.
The Pharaohs along with their priests interpreted the word of God. The average Egyptian wasn't even allowed to learn to read hieroglyphs let alone have a relationship with their God.
The Greeks had to defer to an oracle.
The Jews were not allowed to set foot into the holiest of holy's, only the high priest could do that.
The Pope's of old told the flock what God wanted, read from Bibles written in Latin where the flock had no ability or knowledge to even read. It was punishable by death to write the Holy book into any other language that the masses could read themselves.
The Romans replaced God with The State.
The Pharisees strode around the cities telling who was and who was not righteous. Interpreting ill fate as punishment from God and demanding sacrifice to make amends while not even understanding the true wisdom of their own holy books.
Religious leaders of then and even now issue orders, Fatwas, edicts and expect the believers to obey without question as if individuals had no intellect of their own.
Jesus changed all that. But those in religious power were not easily swayed to relinquish that power.
Jesus taught that each individual, sinner or saint, righteous or not, could have a personal relationship with God. Jesus taught that that even the lowest of those in life were like Kings to God and the Kings were like the lowliest of servants before the Creator.
Jesus taught that it was the
spirit of Mosaic law that mattered, not a strict, rigid adherence to the letter with no thought of circumstance and just plain bad fate.
Would you not pull your <ass> (donkey) from the pit even if it were the Sabbath?
Jesus taught a new way to look at life, a new way that at the time was truly mind shattering. To treat people, even if they were not of your tribe, of your land, gentile or Jew, treat them all as you would have yourself treated.
Jesus did not come to topple Kings and Empires. He came to free our
minds.
We today cannot appreciate that message for the truly awe inspiring difference of thought that the people of those times had. The very idea of a "Good Samaritan" or the story of Jesus and the Roman Centurion would have been beyond troubling to the people of the day. The message that even the hated Roman could have a relationship with the very God that the Jews worshiped, that the same promise God made to the chosen people was extended to all of the Earth if they but understood the wisdom. Because the Pharisees of the time did not understand that truth, that wisdom that promise was extended to all the peoples of the Earth.
It is
not irrational to want to work out differences between people, societies, cultures, individuals without bloodshed and violence.
It is not irrational to treat people fairly, honestly and justly.
It is not irrational to see people not like yourself and understand that they are in many ways the same as you.
It is not irrational to love, to show kindness.
Where do you think these things came from?
Who do you think taught this message at a time and place in history where it could actually spread across the globe?
Even the vast majority of the great thinkers of the Renaissance era were deeply religious and yet they had the courage to pursue their God given gifts of intellect and art despite possible punishment from the religious leaders of the day. Where do you think the basis of their courage came from?
That despite what the Pope may say, or the Iman, or the Rabbi, or the preacher may say, those individuals understood that we were all men looked at the same by God as Jesus taught. That even if they were to have their lives taken or their freedom stripped, that they would be vindicated by God and by history in the end.
Look at the most evil of men in history and see what they have in common. The complete lack of acknowledgment of the rights of the individual. That the State, in whatever form it may be, knows better what the people need than the individuals themselves. That those same human beings in power know better morality than the individual could know themselves.
Jesus taught us a better way to view ourselves. A view not at all widely held during his time and not widely held enough in our age.
It
is the greatest love story ever told. And it changed the world in ways that those who are blind with prejudice or ill informed perception could never understand.
