“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
~Mark 12:29-31
It's been a while since I have posted, sorry about that.
The world is sick, suffering from a spiritual sickness. I have the disease, you have it. The people who are supposed to be responsible for helping, however, are too busy arguing they are right and that others are wrong. I'm talking about Christians now, though I assume that other religious leaders are just as culpable. Christians have a persistent habit of ignoring what is right in front of their faces. When Jesus is talking to the pharisees, he's not just talking to them. Christians like to think of themselves as the anti-pharisees, and they were once, but that was a long time ago. Christians are the pharisees now.
The ones that aren't busy trying to defend the indefensible, are busy denying that there is anything much wrong with the world. They are in fact, as much a part of the World as the Romans were. The folks who believe that the world was created in a literal seven days are in a sense less far gone than those who don't really think that the world has much of a problem. The world has a problem, and we human beings and our forms of spiritual death are the cause of it.
First things first: the idea that the Old Testament for the most part has anything to do with who God is, is completely indefensible. Moses was not a prophet, he was a mass murderer, the Pol Pot of his age. God did not tell Moses to kill tied up defenseless women, God did not tell Moses to slaughter infants, if Moses heard a voice in his head it was more like the voice of the supposedly satanic dog that urged David Berkowitz on to slaughter than anything divine. Anyone who is still hanging on to the Old Testament as the word of God is deluded, and their belief has nothing to do with God but with rigidly hanging on to something that has gone past obsolete into the ridiculous. To continue to speak of the Old Testament as the world of God is to hang onto something evil.
What is the heart of the law? Jesus said it. Love God and love each other, this is the heart of the law. Everything else is fungible. Our only dogma should be that we should seek God and try to love one another and all creatures. There should be no dogma aside from that.
Why do I say that the world is suffering from a spiritual sickness? First of all, I don't mean by spiritual that it isn't suffering from a literal sickness. Pollution and climate change are continuing apace, the world is reaching its carrying capacity, millions of people all over the world believe that the world is not structured so as to benefit everyone but rather only to benefit the few. The pervasiveness of money as a value in life threatens to overwhelm all other values, including ultimately maybe life itself. If it is a spiritual sickness, it has physical symptoms. But most damaging of all, and the ultimate cause of the other problems, is the lost condition of humankind. Meanwhile their supposed shepherds are either in denial that the problem exists, or are fighting over doctrinal issues. Blind guides.
What will happen, ultimately, while we are all in denial? I am speaking of those who call themselves leaders of God's people. Redemption will happen even so, in the streets, in the gutters, in the back yards and crackhouses, but it will pass you by. Jesus was in the street and was hungry, and you fed him not. Jesus was in the street and was naked, but you gave him no clothes. While you fiddle, we all burn. Woe to those who call themselves Christian leaders in these days.
As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. ...you did not
recognize the time of God’s coming to you.”
~Luke 19:41-44
Ultimately, if there will be healing we will all have to do it ourselves, one little bit at a time. Those backyard and back-alley redemptions of the soul. And there is no law, only love God and love all creatures. These are the only commandments.
