Love thy enemy
The seemingly humane edict: love thy enemy, if it was practiced as well as preached by Jesus, reveals him to be more hypocritical than any of the many people he called hypocrites, are of using twisted language. "Love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you," is also passive aggressive, as we recognize in those Christians who say the "pity" their enemies and sneeringly say, "I will pray for you." Any God willing to hear such prayers is beyond contempt.
"Love thy enemy" as practiced by Jesus pragmatically means, "slander your enemy." This is clearly the case, since the very term Pharisee has been so thoroughly bastardized by the career of Jesus that we think it refers to somebody who is hypocritical or bad -- though history does not bare out this characterization of the Pharisees. Jesus' willingness to call them vipers, unmarked tombs, white washed tombs, liars, hypocrites, hell-bound, hell-worthy, illustrates exactly what he meant by "love your enemy": egg them on until they hurt you. After all, then you can play the "innocent" martyr.
In the especially legendary gospel of John, Jesus even ascribes the Jews as a race as "children of Satan."
The Church fathers and Christians throughout history have picked up on his lead, talking endlessly of their love and Jesus' love, the whole time damning anybody who disagrees or believes differently, of calling the gods of other peoples -- older gods -- demons, and the practices of Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Mormonism, even their parent religion Judaism as damnable, hell-bound, demonic, and gross.
When a Pharisee or other challenger hit Jesus left cheek, metaphorically speaking, challenging his authority and right to teach, Jesus never turns the other cheek, but arranges things to look clever and to shame his opponent. The people often remarked upon Jesus' tendency to outsmart and shame the religious teachers, and were impressed.
As a man judges, so he is, for a man's humanity is exposed in how he characterizes his enemies, and those ready to condemn the world are the chief destroyers of the world's innocence and beauty.
So how are we to address our own enemies, if we take this hypocritical passive aggressive teaching to be our enemy? How do we take these men and women who shamelessly spit on high spiritual beauties in favor of their mass-produced, ready for the market religion?
Shall we treat them as they've treated the ancient Mystery Religions, where they learned the idea of a dying and rising God, of baptism, and the Eucharist, only to damn who they took from? They invented all sorts of tabloid stories about what went on in the "mysteries" -- all of it ugly and none of it true? The lies they invented about the Jews -- claiming they killed Christian infants to make a demonic Eucherist of their blood, and many other evil lies coming from evil imaginations -- not only lead to over a thousand years of violence against them, but fueld the propaganda of WW2 (the writings of Luther, for instance, were highly relavent). Or how about the way the early Christians characterized the Gnostics, a rival Christian sect? What dark lies they told about their brothers! And wherever anything is secret, such as with the Freemasons, they invent the most dastardly balderdash -- not to mention damning each other in their sectarian warfare. How do we, who are humanists, who don't necessarily believe in "loving thy enemy" but do believe in respecting his humanity, take the Christians?
We understand that certain pitches of zealously are impossible without utilizing the human-all-to human instincts to cruelty. They spread because they were cruel, and hypocritically cruel, calling their cruelty love. Yet most the believing world is beyond that mindset -- unless provoked?
We take it all as human, sometimes lamentable, but not all too surprising, as history is replete with similar intersectarian warfare. Most importantly, though we too believe there are eternal consequences, we also know that there is a limit to how much damage they could do with their doctrines, and therefore, if the hell they imagined really existed, they would no more deserve than their enemies (they they do deserve it more than their enemies). The Universe structures herself in such a way that we all grow up and grow out of our mistakes -- including them. They are still valuable and despite the ugliness of some of their doctrines, there are praiseworthy aspects in other of their doctrines. Their cruelty, and cruelly inspired violence must be limited by humane laws and the reasonableness within and outside of their groups. This, it seems, is the best way to control an ugly thing.
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-- perfectidius.com --
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