Pursuant to the thread on time travel and the messiah, where the messiah is defined by the universal acceptance of UNDERSTANDING as being the saviour of all, I thought it only fair to start a thread about the Anti-christ.
The Anti-christ must be seen as those things most prominent in society which give rise to misunderstanding. In this respect the antichrist can never be said to be one specific thing, although clues always seem to point to measurement (the assertion that THIS is intrinsically evil, and that THAT is intrinsically good) as being the source of all misunderstanding. Essentially, one should never eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which means that all things are intrinsically are sacred, and that the belief in absolute evil or absolute good is itself the root of all misunderstanding. The one thing in our society that gives rise to misunderstanding is money.
In the story of Jesus, the 12 disciples should be seen as the 12 tribes of Israel united in a common cause, and where the Judas Iscariot character is actually money itself. Conjecture on this point could lead to many interpretations, but the important point to the story of Jesus is that it was money that betrayed him by corrupting the disciples, or maybe by corrupting the followers of Jesus’s teachings…. It had certainly corrupted the Pharisees and the Romans, and in the end the overall message is that the desire for wealth or recompense is what corrupts us all. This is why arranging contract fees before services or goods are exchanged are fundamental to Jewish society (and also why non-Jews unfortunately hold anti-semitic beliefs that Jews are greedy), in the sense that Jews never become slaves to the money. Islam also has very clear guidelines based in Islamic morality and Law (Shariah) about the ethics of making money out of people. In the west, the problem is that business tries to circumvent the law at all possible stages, and is not governed by codes of conduct based in morality, but rather does the bare minimum to conform to the law. This is why capitalism (a term which essentially means “to capitalise on previous gains”) is in such a state. Everything is about profit, and people feel enslaved to the notions of capitalistic excess. The misunderstanding that money is what will allow us our happiness is precisely the misunderstanding that ensures we will never be happy no matter how much money we have. Money when we don’t have it is a measurement of our own suffering…. When we do have it, it becomes a measurement of the suffering of others in the sense that our money could alleviate their suffering, but because society demands that our measurement of success is measured largely by our economic success, we are led to believe that we should not share the wealth. In doing this…. The less fortunate in the world misunderstand things even more, and the breakdown of society’s values is ensured. Money itself is not intrinsically evil, but it leads us to think and act in such a variety of detrimental ways that we cannot see past it (and I’m talking on a government level here Mr G W Bush… who won’t do anything to harm the US economy… not even on green issues).
The anti-christ is misunderstanding. Sin literally means “to miss the mark” or “to misunderstand.” Nothing more.
What do people think most gives rise to misunderstanding in this world???
My Top 5 is:
- Money
- Religious Politics
- War
- Lack of respect for women’s rights
- Ignorance of modern society
DG