Aussiescribbler
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Assuming that Jesus was a real man, is it possible to give a real world interpretation to his life and philosophy?
Central to that philosophy is saving us from sin.
What is meant by the term “sin”? Leaving aside any examples which require reference to God, let’s look at gluttony as an example. Gluttony is being selfish regarding food. If we look at other things which are considered “sinful”, they always come down to some form of selfishness. Even in the contentious matters which can’t be interpreted on a purely inter-human level but refer to thoughts or actions which are contrary to the wishes of “God”, we can still see that selfishness is the essence of the matter because putting one’s own desires before those of a deity in which you believe can reasonably be defined as a form of selfishness.
Selfishness is clearly a major problem for the human race. If we were not selfish, would there be war, poverty, rape…? If we were to solve the problem of human selfishness, it is unlikely that there is any other problem facing us which we could not solve.
So the problem of “sin” is the key problem.
How did it begin?
The Old Testament gives us the myth of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
I won’t go into paleo-anthropology because it isn’t something I understand well enough. Let’s just say that there is the possibility that our ape-like ancestors might have lived relatively peaceful cooperative erotically-uninhibited lives like the bonobos.
In the story of Adam and Eve, a dangerous predatory animal - a snake - causes a woman - Eve - to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. A man - Adam - follows suit. This leads to a curse from “God”. Adam and Eve notice that they are naked and clothe themselves out of shame.
If our ancestors were loving and cooperative, they would have had no example within their society of what would later come to be known as “evil”. If a predatory animal such as a leopard ate one of their babies, however, this would stand in stark contrast to their own behaviour. And it would be a threat they needed to address. Since the women were the primary nurturers, the job of protecting against leopards, and trying to understand them, fell to men. Fighting leopards requires the cultivation of talents which run counter to those of the nurturers. The competitive and generally rowdy behaviour of the male hunters was bound to cause friction back in the village where it clashed with the nurturing priority. So morality began with the women’s insistence that men moderate their behaviour.
So we can see that predatory animals (the snake) caused women (Eve) to see the need for some system of morality (eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil) and impress that need on men (Adam) also.
Why did this lead to a curse?
This system of morality gave birth to idealism - i.e. characterising some forms of behaviour as “good” and other kinds of behaviour as “evil” and then using forms of self-discipline or social discipline to encourage the former and discourage the latter.
On the surface this doesn’t seem unreasonable, but the problem is that, over time, idealism undermines self-acceptance. The more insecure we become in ourselves as a result of accumulated feelings of guilt, the harder it is for us to behave in a cooperative loving way. As a result we are open to more criticism and more guilt. It is a negative feedback loop. An unjust sense of condemnation from idealism makes us angry. The more insecure we feel the more egotistical, i.e. ego-embattled or selfish, we become. And the more insecure we become the harder it is for us to think truthfully.
The story of Adam and Eve recognising that they were naked and clothing themselves out of shame symbolises the origins of lying. Nakedness is a symbol for honesty. In the absence of idealism we were comfortable to be seen as we were - warts and all - but once we were exposed to the unforgiving gaze of idealism, we felt ashamed and adopted a false persona to try to hide our imperfections.
What came to be known as “God” was a false amalgam of nature with idealism. We are products of nature. Our ancestors no doubt experienced themselves as an integral part of that system, but the corrosive effects of idealism must have undermined this sense of identification, leading eventually to a paranoid relationship to nature. First would come fear of being punished by nature, and the need for some kind of appeasement rituals. But nature does not reflect idealism, so in time the embodiment of idealism would have to become otherworldly. Thus supernatural religion came into being - a collective paranoid psychosis complete with “magical thinking”.
It is into a world completely dominated by this psychosis that Jesus is born. Telling people that they are all nuts is not going to get him anywhere. If he is going to save them, he has to find a way to free them from their underlying selfishness problem while accommodating the fact that they are living within a collective psychosis. Because such delusions are fear-driven, the last thing you want to do is to attack them directly. This makes the psychotic person more frightened and thus more desperate to cling to the delusion.
So - while showing his knowledge of scripture, using terms like “your Father in Heaven”, etc. - he expressed a philosophy aimed at repairing the damage which had been done by idealism and returning people to the natural capacity for loving cooperation characteristic of life in “the Garden of Eden”.
Selfishness is the natural self-directedness of the insecure or suffering individual. The insecurity arises from guilt. Hence the emphasis on “judge not that thou be not judged” and that “God” forgives “sins” which are “confessed”, i.e admitted. Releasing people from feelings of guilt is necessary if they are to become less selfish.
Encouraging honesty is also important - “The truth will set you free” - because the maintenance of lies requires self-directedness and lies do not provide a commonly acknowledged framework of reality for us to come together.
The idea that those who believe him “won’t die” doesn’t refer to physical death, which comes to us all, but the spiritual death which selfishness entails. I use the term “spiritual” not in a supernatural sense but as a way of referring to the emotional experiencing of having meaning. Meaning arises through relationship. Think of a letter of the alphabet. It may have no specific meaning on its own, but meaning arises when we place it with other letters in a word. In the same way our own lives have no meaning except the meaning which arises out of our relationship with others. Selfishness excludes us from experiencing the rich emotions which can accompany that meaning.
In many ways, selfishness is self denial. We deny ourselves the true pleasure of life itself - we turn away from life to nurture our feelings of idealism-inflicted self-hatred. The irony is that what we need to heal that canker lies all around us.
I could go into more detail, as I have on my blog : How to Be Free - the blog
Central to that philosophy is saving us from sin.
What is meant by the term “sin”? Leaving aside any examples which require reference to God, let’s look at gluttony as an example. Gluttony is being selfish regarding food. If we look at other things which are considered “sinful”, they always come down to some form of selfishness. Even in the contentious matters which can’t be interpreted on a purely inter-human level but refer to thoughts or actions which are contrary to the wishes of “God”, we can still see that selfishness is the essence of the matter because putting one’s own desires before those of a deity in which you believe can reasonably be defined as a form of selfishness.
Selfishness is clearly a major problem for the human race. If we were not selfish, would there be war, poverty, rape…? If we were to solve the problem of human selfishness, it is unlikely that there is any other problem facing us which we could not solve.
So the problem of “sin” is the key problem.
How did it begin?
The Old Testament gives us the myth of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
I won’t go into paleo-anthropology because it isn’t something I understand well enough. Let’s just say that there is the possibility that our ape-like ancestors might have lived relatively peaceful cooperative erotically-uninhibited lives like the bonobos.
In the story of Adam and Eve, a dangerous predatory animal - a snake - causes a woman - Eve - to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. A man - Adam - follows suit. This leads to a curse from “God”. Adam and Eve notice that they are naked and clothe themselves out of shame.
If our ancestors were loving and cooperative, they would have had no example within their society of what would later come to be known as “evil”. If a predatory animal such as a leopard ate one of their babies, however, this would stand in stark contrast to their own behaviour. And it would be a threat they needed to address. Since the women were the primary nurturers, the job of protecting against leopards, and trying to understand them, fell to men. Fighting leopards requires the cultivation of talents which run counter to those of the nurturers. The competitive and generally rowdy behaviour of the male hunters was bound to cause friction back in the village where it clashed with the nurturing priority. So morality began with the women’s insistence that men moderate their behaviour.
So we can see that predatory animals (the snake) caused women (Eve) to see the need for some system of morality (eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil) and impress that need on men (Adam) also.
Why did this lead to a curse?
This system of morality gave birth to idealism - i.e. characterising some forms of behaviour as “good” and other kinds of behaviour as “evil” and then using forms of self-discipline or social discipline to encourage the former and discourage the latter.
On the surface this doesn’t seem unreasonable, but the problem is that, over time, idealism undermines self-acceptance. The more insecure we become in ourselves as a result of accumulated feelings of guilt, the harder it is for us to behave in a cooperative loving way. As a result we are open to more criticism and more guilt. It is a negative feedback loop. An unjust sense of condemnation from idealism makes us angry. The more insecure we feel the more egotistical, i.e. ego-embattled or selfish, we become. And the more insecure we become the harder it is for us to think truthfully.
The story of Adam and Eve recognising that they were naked and clothing themselves out of shame symbolises the origins of lying. Nakedness is a symbol for honesty. In the absence of idealism we were comfortable to be seen as we were - warts and all - but once we were exposed to the unforgiving gaze of idealism, we felt ashamed and adopted a false persona to try to hide our imperfections.
What came to be known as “God” was a false amalgam of nature with idealism. We are products of nature. Our ancestors no doubt experienced themselves as an integral part of that system, but the corrosive effects of idealism must have undermined this sense of identification, leading eventually to a paranoid relationship to nature. First would come fear of being punished by nature, and the need for some kind of appeasement rituals. But nature does not reflect idealism, so in time the embodiment of idealism would have to become otherworldly. Thus supernatural religion came into being - a collective paranoid psychosis complete with “magical thinking”.
It is into a world completely dominated by this psychosis that Jesus is born. Telling people that they are all nuts is not going to get him anywhere. If he is going to save them, he has to find a way to free them from their underlying selfishness problem while accommodating the fact that they are living within a collective psychosis. Because such delusions are fear-driven, the last thing you want to do is to attack them directly. This makes the psychotic person more frightened and thus more desperate to cling to the delusion.
So - while showing his knowledge of scripture, using terms like “your Father in Heaven”, etc. - he expressed a philosophy aimed at repairing the damage which had been done by idealism and returning people to the natural capacity for loving cooperation characteristic of life in “the Garden of Eden”.
Selfishness is the natural self-directedness of the insecure or suffering individual. The insecurity arises from guilt. Hence the emphasis on “judge not that thou be not judged” and that “God” forgives “sins” which are “confessed”, i.e admitted. Releasing people from feelings of guilt is necessary if they are to become less selfish.
Encouraging honesty is also important - “The truth will set you free” - because the maintenance of lies requires self-directedness and lies do not provide a commonly acknowledged framework of reality for us to come together.
The idea that those who believe him “won’t die” doesn’t refer to physical death, which comes to us all, but the spiritual death which selfishness entails. I use the term “spiritual” not in a supernatural sense but as a way of referring to the emotional experiencing of having meaning. Meaning arises through relationship. Think of a letter of the alphabet. It may have no specific meaning on its own, but meaning arises when we place it with other letters in a word. In the same way our own lives have no meaning except the meaning which arises out of our relationship with others. Selfishness excludes us from experiencing the rich emotions which can accompany that meaning.
In many ways, selfishness is self denial. We deny ourselves the true pleasure of life itself - we turn away from life to nurture our feelings of idealism-inflicted self-hatred. The irony is that what we need to heal that canker lies all around us.
I could go into more detail, as I have on my blog : How to Be Free - the blog
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