
Originally Posted by
Fredrick
I basically agree with most of your words, Mikal. Yet when I view this from the overall level I discover some flaws (as one would suspect from someone who believes incompleteness is the highest principle). The placement of one above the other is inherently consumed in Christianity, and as such I consider it the flaw that has created a lot of misery. It is in the normalization of Jesus that we can find redemption. It is with the specialty of Jesus that we enslave ourselves. Please note that in Buddhism we are all considered Buddhas, yet this idea contains also the possibility of our not recognizing ourselves as a Buddha. That makes it a better religion, because there are still gradations, but it is void of the enslaving aspect. Fundamental equality is delivered, even when not all live by this principle.
Okay, I am going to give you a roadmap, and I believe I am making use of the same insights as Moses had when he established the ten commendments (please note, I do not know this for a fact, I believe this). They are just 5 actions, not 10, because the principles are already covered by 5 (but can indeed be extended to 10), and I also do not call them commendments but challenges. As challanges they can at times be easy or hard, as challenges one or some can be harder than the others. Also, I believe Moses started out with the second as the first, so recognize the addition of the very first challenge.
Challange one is to be yourself. You can see why Moses would not dwell on this, because it was in no way beneficial for him or his tribe. This could be a very easy challenge, but the hard part is to extend this one into the world at large. By recognizing you and others as having the god-men features, you allow yourself to also be yourself at that level as a free man.
Challenge two is to accept the inner duality.
Challenge three is to respect another, the other.
Challenge four is to do what is needed.
Challenge five is to be wise, to be smart about it all.
Simple guidelines that are easily swept aside as totally unimportant or not that special, and the fact they seem quite casual is exactly why they are challenges.
We all know that, when Moses came back to his tribe, all his fellow men were into worshipping idols. Worshipping idols is easy to do, and it can bring one into extacy quite easily. But it has as negative aspect that it is enslaving. It makes one person better than the other person; it can make one consider oneself as less than another, as a slave, as just a regular guy in contrast to the super guy, as someone who does not have (certain) powers. As reaction, it can create personalities trying to get to that same level the idol has. Yet the idol's location is not within our reality (it is in heaven), and any actions to get to that level are warpings away from being oneself. Worshipping idols should at all cost be avoided because it warps our being on this planet and that warps our societies on this planet. Though hierarchies can be beneficials, hierarchical thinking is also the same foundation for slavery. A line in the sand must be drawn to avoid slavery of any kind. Free people will live in a free society because they will break down the walls of slavery, and free people will even break down the remnants of the walls of slavery. If you live in a society with winner-takes-all the walls of slavery have been breached, but only to the extent that some (too many) can still get trapped behind the remnants.
The Jewish tribes were living under foreign rule (in Egypt and for a long time in Israel under Roman occupation), and we should understand that Jesus lived at a time when slavery was quite an easy thing to see. We live in different times and can therefore not use Jesus as the example, because our circumstances are not the same. When using Jesus as an example in our circumstances, we actually self-enslave ourselves in a new manner, because we must somehow see a society around us that has been captured by foreign forces, as viewing us not in our own homeland, not in Jerusalem, or anything of similar grandeur that is not our actual reality. To preach the gospel of Jesus is to establish (physical, mental) conditions that are not reasonable in parts of our world. Naturally, if you live in China, you would do good by believing in Jesus, for that belief should ultimately lead you to break down the walls of slavery in China. But if you live in a nation with a two-party democracy, the walls were breached already, and it is 'just' that the remnants are still in place. Ultimately, only when all nations in the world are based on fair representation (proportional representation of some kind at the highest level), then we will live in a free world.
I'll leave it at that, Mikal. I hear your spirit is in the right place, but there are a few nuts and bolts in the message on which we disagree. Thank you though, for making me go here. But as you may notice, I drew a line in the sand.