Christianity conceived as the only hope for the humans
October 26, 2009
I have this continuing hope for the world. Somehow I just can’t give up on it. [Likely this is what Buddha says I must be rid of, this desire for victory and meaning of existence.] I keep thinking that there has to be somewhere a hope for the world. Somewhere it must be lurking.
The atheist world will be rejected, I predict, and people will be confronted, as I am, to choose Jesus or Buddha, for they are the only two rational ways out of this never-ending hell called earthly existence, into the Kingdom of God or acceptance and extinction, respectively. Those I am now very confident are the only two rational choices for the human race. [Thus Islam will fail as a choice, for it denies the human his dignity and makes a miserable slave out of him and where “moral†eventually is listed in dictionaries as a synonym with “quaintâ€. “Believe me, I am going to do anything that I think is even just a hint of a command of God. You bet I am going to do it and without question, even it should tell me to kill you, my most precious and beloved brother†(from some book on Islam, on the fanaticism that naturally pollutes the moral sense). Even the hint, for I shall do as mighty Abraham did: I shall obey even the hint of a command, and no questions asked. For I am to be the icon of submission.â€*
[* Now this is not the only interpretation of the Islamic tale of Abraham, for it could easily be that Ishmael was the goal of a loving father, to send his precious son to an immediate paradise and avoiding all the heartaches and thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to. This interpretation would be radical for Islam, however, for it conveys that God rejects the immoral act. By appeal to what today would be considered as insanity, we can see how this is all done for the sake of his son, for his benefit, and that he would not have done it if Ishmael had not have submitted.**]
[** This is the distinction, where Abraham would have murdered his son (against his will), and where Abraham loved Ishmael more than himself, being willing to deprive himself of the presence of Ishmael, but knowing that Ishmael will forever praise God for having him be the son of Abraham, the luckiest kid on the block. So this approaches the love of Christ and this turn would be provocative to the Christians. The model of the Great Slave planning to kill Ishmael one way or another, is the scary interpretation of the text.***]
[*** Such a remorse thought occurred to me once, where I have Abraham talking Ishmael into opting for the death (which is a fascinating picture) in order to avoid the difficulty in subduing him.]
In short, we will not opt for Islam for we will not be slaves to anyone. We will not exist as robots where there is no dignity and no moral, and merely a blind submission to current scholarly interpretation.
Christianity will be purified, somehow (a miracle is needed), in order to provide a reasonable hope, namely where progress can be made toward the moral world. The actual hope, I think, is Kant’s Moral Religion as can be exemplified in the restoration of Paul’s Gentile Christian, the follower of Jesus beholden to no man but the Lord Jesus and whose unfailing guide is the law of neighborly love.
This Jesus, as Kant observes, should not be doubted. We have no reason to doubt that a perfectly righteous man should have actually live, for we all know that we ourselves are duty bound to live exactly that life, and so there is no reason to doubt his existence and his righteousness. Kant uses the term “descended from heaven†to describe the common awe at such a righteous person.
So the Paulians can provide a practical expression of Kant’s Moral Religion. Whether they will or not, I can only hope, namely that the homosexual be accepted into the society and we can then get on with the Paulian rectification of the world order.
I happen to believe that Paul admired the commune of Jerusalem but doubted that the gentiles were prepared for that at the time. Surely the New Jerusalem will be communalist where no one counts anything his own. Like the ideal marriage and family and church and society. The Paulians would be able to assume time and take that time to wean the world over to communalism, in anticipation of the New Jerusalem where the city coming from the heavens matches the world at that time as it had become. Kant would like this because it would be the onus on humans to strive for that perfect and promised society.
The safest bet for the unbiased auditor of debate of Christian and Buddhist is probably to take the Buddhist approach for here he is guaranteed to get out of his eternal misery by going out of existence, but he will then miss out on the victory of the good (as Kant put it) and universal happiness.*
[* As hellfire seems so gruesome, especially after the imaginative depictions of the Muslims, that I think it were better to use the expression to represent a certain state of mind continuing through eternal life. Jesus told those who followed him that they would feast together on his Abba’s banquet table while those who refused him would be left together to fend for themselves without any end to meaningless, i.e., suffering. They would be together and each with his own mansion to which he could retreat, if he could defend it, for there would be absolute no law and thus no punishment whatsoever, i.e., an ideal free for all, the ideal of capitalism (where even just is bought and sold). They would struggle for their superiority over others and would vie with each other about who had the most slaves. We could even imagine this hell existing in the same world with a heaven, where, we could say, people were already in heaven and there was plenty for all, but those in hell would not be able to believe that there were plenty, and would spend their existence in trying to hoard more than others, where they couldn’t simply admire the trillions of rubies on the bed of streams, but had to scoop them up before others could think about it. There is a certain moral karma to the idea that we have one chance in time to put ourselves on a certain trajectory and we shall remained forever fixed in a certain state of mind. It would be like Jacky who is color blind (I think) traveling through the colorful autumn leaves and not able to see the flood of bright and new colors which is before his eyes (so to speak).]
So I guess that is my hope, that the world will become Paulian Christian and will recognize, with the nearest and dearest of the Lord Jesus, that the commune is the goal (as it is already recognized in fact in the Christian marriage; where all in the band, Jesus included, gives all that he has) and start working toward that. So, recognize and utilize the homosexual (as we do the left-hander) and begin the World Commune, where all have enough.
I guess I see hope in exactly the opposite way of so most Christians, which is to destroy homosexuality and to promote capitalism. What’s needed then is the completion of the Reformation by accepting the homosexual (and total liberty from all law) and then the construction of the physical Kingdom of God through the commune.