Today's Religious Right is completely out of touch with the thinking of our esteemed "Founding Fathers" and with the nature of our Constitution, which "was written and ratified by a coalition of Enlightenment rationalists and evangelical Christians equally fearful of entanglements between religion and government... the men of faith who helped frame the Constitution were confident enough of the strength of their religion that they did not feel obliged to enlist the aid of government to promote their personal beliefs." [Apparently today's evangelical Christians are less confident in the strength of their religion to hold its own without the benefit of unconstitutional government support!]

My comments: The RR always likes to believe that the Founding Fathers were a group of pious traditional Christians, which is so much bull-dookey: they included Deists, Unitarians, and other "unorthodox" types. Most importantly they were not interested in creating a theocracy: far from it! They were products of the Enlightenment, and they were champions of the separation of Church and State.

8:37:22 PM  |  This is Post #155  |  Permanent URL:   |  

I hate to be giving any attention whatsoever to this repulsive spectacle, but Spong's words are so intelligent and right-on that I can't help but repeat them!

Once again, Gibson is reading the gospels through the lens of medieval piety. In the early church, especially in the writings of Paul, the death of Jesus was likened to the believer's act of being baptized. The believer in baptism was united with Christ in his death so that he or she could live with Christ in his resurrection (see Romans 6:1-11 and Col. 2:12). But Gibson turns this into a sadomasochistic scene of pain inflicted and suffering endured. It is so long and violent that it qualifies this film for an "R" rating, "for adults only."

The earliest Christians knew that crucifixion was not unique to Jesus. Thousands of people had died this way at the hands of the Romans. To the Jews crucifixion was particularly associated with shame and embarrassment, since the Torah said that one who was hung upon a tree was "accursed" (Deut. 21:22, 23). The fetish about the cleansing power of the blood of Jesus was again a pious devotional technique that ultimately attributed a sacred meaning to suffering and made cruelty an attribute of God, both of which are strange, even unhealthy theological concepts. Yet Gibson has developed these ideas to a fine art. His interpretive work may engender a guilt-laden piety but we need to recognize that it is not biblically accurate.

This reminds me of a discussion I had yesterday with my grandmother. She's a very independent woman, not particularly religious, a feminist in her not terribly enlightened way. Anyway, I'm not sure why she mentioned it, but I said that I have no desire or intention to see it, and that it's supposed to be horribly violent. I went a little bit into how disturbing I find it that the Christian symbol is an instrument of torture, and had to explain to her (she's not the swiftest arrow at 74) in more detail after mentioning that there was a group of people who would wear little electric chairs around their necks to highlight the disturbingness of having an instrument of torture and execution as your religious symbol. It's just so horribly morbid! They really should have gone with something else: a dove, a fish, anything!

It really is such a disturbing, twisted, unhuman, inhumane, fucked-up theology! That not only would the Divine permit suffering It has the ability to stop at any time at Its whim, but that It would actually demand suffering. That the Divine, the Spirit of Creation of the Universe, the Earth, all of life, humanity, sunsets, rainbows, and newborn babies would seek to punish anyone. What is this obsession with punishment? I find the concept so bizarre and repulsive. I do not comprehend how people think anyone has the right to punish another human being (as with prisons, and even punishing children). Punishment is a sick and twisted concept. (To jump back to children, I am a firm believer in firm and structured parenting, a critic of children who are out of control, but I don't believe that physical violence or "punishment" have any proper role in the parent/child relationship. I certainly believe in "discipline" in the sense of order and routine and structure, but not in the sense of "punishment". Actions have consquences, and wrongs require apology and restitution, but punishment is a sadistic, unhealthy, unloving concept I strongly reject.)

The Deity I know and love and worship is One of Infinite Love. You can reject this Love, fail to see it, turn away from it, but you cannot escape it. The whole conservative Christian focus on "free will" (with regard to explaining sin, damnation, etc.) I find absurd. It completely ignores the way virtually every human being feels towards their children, essentially making human beings more loving and compassionate than their God. There is nothing, absolutely nothing a child can do to make a parent stop loving them. There is nothing that can cause an ultimate rejection. There is no time, no matter what they've done or how they've hurt you, that you wouldn't welcome them back into your arms with love. That's the nature of parenthood! But this Christian "Father" God is apparently a pretty shitty parent, because He's willing to abandon some (arguably most, according to many Christians' beliefs) of His children to eternal torment. Christians defend this saying that He has no choice because of His infinite goodness. What an utter load of bullshit! Your God is a sadist, a bigot/ethnocentrist (look at how He prefers one group over others in the OT), and a really horrible parent!

4:42:01 AM  |  This is Post #152  |  Permanent URL:   |