This is the season in which many
celebrate the birth of Jesus or perhaps realistically the birth of
Christianity. What I want to address
today is the boy and man and as much as possible the claims he made. I want to do this in light of my conjecture
in which we recognize GOD as the governing authority for the colonization of
Earth with human beings able to implement agriculture in order to properly
terraform the place. Unsurprisingly this
mission is meant to be completed and it is reasonable that from time to time a
teacher would be encouraged to engage in forms of social engineering aimed at
speeding things up in a predictable manner.
Without question, the emergence of Christianity has been a remarkably
successful piece of direct social engineering that ushered in the modern world
after reforming the barbarian culture of Europe
particularly.
All this begs the question of
just what can we say about Jesus?
He was a genius class individual
born into a prosperous Jewish culture then impacting with the antique Roman
empire consolidating and opening up the Mediterranean basin to cultural
exchange. He obviously had a
photographic memory as demonstrated as a twelve year old and this was remarked
and is passed down to us. This obviously
led to the young man finding himself on what passed for the academic fast track
and this surely led to studies of languages and other scriptures at other
foreign centers.
When he returned, he came
believing that he had been chosen to introduce new teachings into his
society. Curiously he appears to have
felt empowered and he speaks of direct communication with GOD and of been his
child which we assume to be metaphorical.
The end result was that he quickly stopped trying to redirect the temple
hierarchy and went out to teach the masses and develop his own cadre of
teachers.
His impact was obviously
significant and this earned him a pretty quick trip to the cross. His startling reemergence and departure a few
weeks later was sufficient to establish his cult of immortality and the
importance of the immortal soul. Those
actions and the enthusiasm of the apostles led to the emergence of a canon of
teachings under Constantine
So do any of the oral traditions
and written materials that were produced soon after his lifetime tell us
anything? They outline his doctrine as
simply as it can be made and his claim to divine descent from GOD. This assumes an authority that he then shares
with his apostles. He certainly was a
change agent.
The unusual aspect of his
ministry was the ability to induce apparent divine intervention on demand to
convince followers that his claims regarding personal divinity were real. This is important because without all that he
just was another human speaker in the eyes of his listeners. Thus the only tangible evidence of direct
contact with GOD that comes down to us and would have been convincing are the
series of miracles actually listed including the resurrection.
We have to leave it at that. He was a classic genius grade intellect who
had absorbed the available literature in several languages and had reached a
range of conclusions that he introduced as teachings in his homeland. That alone made him important. Yet he lived in a world in which the only
method of communicating was word of mouth.
To handle that he shaped his message in a form that his apostles could
replicate and repeat to produce succeeding generations of teachers without any
mystical or racial baggage. No where
does he mention the chosen people idea at all.
This omission is significant because it is blinding and unexpected. Of course, it may well be that it all ended
up on the cutting floor under Constantine
The only evidence that we have
that GOD was promoting a bit of social engineering is the apparent sequence of
miraculous interventions in support of the message that what Jesus was saying
was important. It certainly was the
outcome and we can reasonably assume a number of failures also happened over
the years.
Miraculous intervention continues
to be part of the ongoing development of Christianity and we likely need to pay
much more attention to this aspect rather than simply dismissing the subject as
we are all encouraged to do.
The thesis that GOD promotes
Christianity through judicious divine interventions is hardly new and a part of
it from the beginning. It is still
unexpected to find it a natural corollary of a tangible GOD that is apart from
local authorities since the foundation.
The mythological idea of the
Second Coming that is wrapped all around this and is open to a full
reinterpretation which I will save for another time.
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