Good and Evil: The Immortal Battle

I don’t read the Bible as often as I should. I tried to read both the Old and New Testaments, after my Mother died. I couldn’t get through the Old Testament. It’s scary. The God depicted there is directly involved with his creations, and sets off a series of plagues. He asked Abraham to sacrifice his son to test him.

But I did read the entire New Testament. Jesus Christ is a far different figure from the God of the Old Testament. I can understand why the Christian Identity Movement was started. It’s easy to see them as different Gods. The New Testament is full of hope. The Immaculate Conception. The Sermon on the Mount. Jesus overturning the moneychangers’ tables. The conversion of the very bad Saul into Saint Paul, on the road to Damascus, thus teaching us that no one is beyond redemption. My favorite Biblical quote is from Jesus himself, who declared, “It’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” Now, I’m probably the only Christian who does love that verse. The rest stumble all over themselves to explain that Jesus didn’t actually mean that literally. Born Againers are especially adept at interpreting what Jesus did or didn’t really mean. The Deeper State: Insi... Maginnis, Lt. Col. Robert Best Price: $2.08 Buy New $11.77 (as of 03:31 UTC - Details)

Jesus also spent a lot of time criticizing the Pharisees. It seems strange for the King of the Jews to focus on the Jewish leadership as if they were an outside entity; i.e., not like him. I recently read a discussion about the question of the Jewishness of Jesus on a conspiracy forum. Well, where else would you find such a discussion? Certainly not on The Kenneth Copeland Houror whatever. The point was made, and I’ve heard it before, that the term “Jew” is a relatively recent one, some 500 years old or so. Now, I have no way of knowing whether this is true or not, much as I cannot definitively establish whether or not some ingenious Black inventor first came up with lemonade at some point in time. The Bible certainly uses the word “Jew” quite a bit, but could that have been inserted in there over the centuries, during the many translations? Most good Protestants rely on the King James version as their Bible. Period. Certainly the language is poetically inspired, but did the good king have it translated literally?

The New Testament starts out with a delineation of Jesus’s genealogy, to demonstrate that through his father Joseph, he was born into the House of David. Except that Joseph wasn’t really his father. God was. So if any lineage was germane to Christ’s humanity, it would have been Mary’s, his human mother. Sorry, I can’t help but be a questioner of things. Growing up Catholic, the priests (at least then) didn’t stress Jesus’s Jewishness quite as strongly. But they mentioned that the Jews were responsible for his death. Many times. This is the primary reason Hollywood’s most devout Catholic, Mel Gibson, caught such flack over his self-financed film Passion of the Christ. I think it’s unfair to hold Jews responsible, 2,000 years after the fact, for the Crucifixion, but it’s certainly fair to hold the Jews of his time accountable, as it seems they’ve been for most of recorded history, especially by the Catholic Church.

But while few question that Jesus was a Jew in the flesh, the “Woke” world is apoplectic that Christians like me still envision him as a blue eyed White man. That was the image of Christ that has been used throughout the ages. The notion of him being a Jew, but not possibly being a pathetic White (I actually heard one radical Black disparagingly proclaim that “Jesus was not no motherfucking White boy” during some heated racial television debate decades ago- maybe on Morton Downey), is part of the narrative. The canon of the secular elite who at heart don’t believe in him. Or at least don’t serve him. They like to call him Rabbi, although it’s a certainty he wasn’t paid what the average Rabbi is- I detailed all that in Survival of the Richest. But he was so brown, so indubitably nonwhite, that you must not question it. Portraying him as White, with those disgusting blue eyes, is White Supremacy 101.

It seems to be very important for those who run this society to depict Jesus as nonwhite. Remember, these are people who largely don’t accept his divinity. And most atheists will admit Jesus existed historically, but was just a Jewish philosopher. Rabbi Jesus. The Antisemitism Awareness Act puts parts of the New Testament in legal jeopardy, inferring that they are “anti-Semitic.” Was it the verse where Matthew talks about the Jews, still at that time, spreading the story that Jesus’s body had been stolen from the tomb? As an incomprehensible being, God should be above racial considerations. This is why so many of us have trouble with the notion that he had a “chosen” people. The way that the Bible talks about the Jews, it seems those who wrote it didn’t think they were “chosen.” I can have strong faith and still wonder. The references to “the apostle Jesus loved,” for instance. At the very least, the wording there is very peculiar. But that doesn’t cast doubt upon the reality of God and Jesus.

The Born Againers especially stress the Jewishness of Jesus, as much or more than the atheists do. Our neocon foreign policy is supported by these Zionist Christians, because they believe that to question anything Israel does is to question God. Again, the whole “chosen people” thing. And so, they justify the atrocities in Gaza, all the Palestinians killed by the Israelis- financed by our tax dollars- because it supposedly fulfills Biblical prophecy. They are awaiting Armageddon with bated breath. How do you possibly promote peace in the Middle East when millions of Christians believe that this would be going against God? I may have been a lowly blue collar worker for fifteen years, but it seems to me that God would approve of peace. If you take this prophecy being fulfilled far enough, then you reject the concept of Free Will. Free Will, Predestination- Christians have invented dogma that contradicts itself.

So I’m not a literalist, in terms of believing that every word of the Bible is inviolate. The literacy rate in Europe until the later Middle Ages was very low, probably twenty percent or less. So few parishioners of any church could read the Bible, even if they wanted to. The printing press wasn’t invented until 1440. Before that, books were hand written manuscripts. Obviously, it would have been hard to mass produce them. So, the faithful invested their trust in the priests, to interpret the Word for them. I don’t know if some of the early priests and popes were as bad as the court historians tell us, because it must always be remembered that the court historians lie about everything. And they certainly have a very strong anti-Christian, and especially anti-Catholic bias. But it’s always best to see for yourself. Religious officials, like politicians or business leaders, have too often been lacking in integrity.

Despite this, I can feel the eternal truth in much of the New Testament. Blessed are the meek. Love thy neighbor as thyself. The whole Passion Play. Most profound of all, turning the other cheek and loving thy enemy. Does any other religion teach that? The Golden Rule is the essence of Christianity, and became the foundational moral building block of western civilization. And, of course, the Resurrection. Without that, we wouldn’t be talking about this over 2,000 years later. Jesus is the Light and the Way, and performed miracles no mortal magician could dream of, including fantastically rising from the dead three days after dying on the cross. Resurrection was a big part of Catholic catechism. We await the Resurrection of the dead, after he comes again to judge the living and the dead. This is different from Protestant belief. The Born Againers discarded the Catholic Purgatory and brought us the Rapture.

Big Intel: How the CIA... Waller, J. Michael Best Price: $11.01 Buy New $15.79 (as of 03:36 UTC - Details) But regardless of the difference between Catholics and Protestants, the Tribulation, the antichrist, forgotten Catholic concepts like Limbo, the way the Book of Revelation is interpreted, the important thing is that every Christian accepts Jesus Christ as their savior. I certainly do. He is God and I believe in the Holy Trinity, even though like most Catholics I can’t begin to comprehend it. There’s a powerful majesty in making the sign of the cross. I think it’s no accident that Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, used Catholic symbolism like the crucifix, and the holy water from Mass to represent the only weapons against the decidedly ungodly vampire. Maybe I’ve watched too many movies, but in Haiti, where the populace believes that zombies are real, they supposedly chant, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,” if they see one. Jesus, and Christianity, represents the Good in this world to every hopeless sinner.

Now, organized religion is hopelessly corrupt. The Vatican has unimaginable wealth, and once boasted a mobster, Bishop Paul Marcinkus, as the head of its bank. This was during the period when they killed Pope John Paul I. Servants of God shouldn’t participate in assassination. The televangelists, like multi millionaires Joel Osteen, or prostitute aficionado Jimmy Swaggart, aren’t the only ones getting rich off of religion. The average protestant pastor gets a home and a decent salary. They are caught committing adultery, or engaging in sinful financial shenanigans, far too often. That whole “tithing” thing, by the way, really isn’t in the Bible. It’s unfortunate that too many Christians follow their flawed pastors and ministers more faithfully than the words of Jesus. You shouldn’t preach to others when you aren’t walking the walk. But them not walking the walk shouldn’t turn us away from God.

The Good has quite a powerful foe in the Evil. That Evil is spearheaded by another incomprehensible being, Satan. Lucifer. The Devil. The Bible demonstrates quite clearly that Satan has dominion on this earth, by its passage revealing that he tempted Jesus by offering him all the kingdoms of the world, if he would fall down and worship him. On the surface, this looks like Satan had power over all those kingdoms. You can’t very well offer something you don’t have. But as always, Christian leaders interpret this differently. The Bible, after all, gives dominion of the earth to Adam, not Satan. Clearly, Satan is engaged in an epic struggle with God for the souls of all of us. Selling your soul to the Devil for earthly rewards has long been a popular theme in literature. It explains the success of too many people better than anything else can.

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