Merry Christmas Dear Friends!
It seems to me, today might be a good time to reflect on the goods that Christianity has brought the world, including but not limited to, ending slavery as a matter of course, the Enlightenment, the scientific method, the idea that all people are created equal and our moral code. Those goods have also been perverted. Our empathy has been turned against us with woke ideology, our anti slavery mindset is used against us when we are accused of complicity in slavery, because people who shared our skin color owned slaves a century and a half ago, our pity of the poor is screwed into Marxism, as well as our belief in the scientific method, perverted to worshiping the demi god, the Science. Yet, even with those perversions still plaguing us, our lives today are astounding by any standard.
The Jesus of the Holy Bible, taught us to love one another as we do ourselves, treat others as we would be treated and pick up our cross and carry it without complaint. Love thy neighbor as oneself is an amazing bit of metaphysical innovation. It begs us to step outside ourselves and behold another as our self. Perspective is demanded because without perspective, we cannot even see the other, let alone love them. The Golden Rule is premised on the idea that the best way to judge our actions and what another would like, or dislike, is to query ourselves. Few like to be burned, but many like to be fed, so in the aggregate, no other measure is as accurate. Pick up your cross… we all have burdens, we all carry them in whatever way we do. Some loudly, others quietly and a few, thankfully.
Compassion, reciprocation and servitude were a big part of his message. Compassion was epitomized in Jesus’ plea that we love one another as he has loved us. He loved and loves us so much he was willing to die on a cross to lift the burden of our sins from us. He carried them himself instead so we wouldn’t have to. We don’t deserve it, but we got it, salvation. Jesus gave that to us because he so loved us. All he asked is that we love one another. Have some compassion for what another is going through. Reciprocate when someone does a good deed to you. Most of all however, be a servant to mankind. Most of us would rather be served, than serve, but remember, Jesus himself washed the feet of slaves. The son of God and Mankind, the greatest of us, led by example in serving the lowest.
Jesus didn’t see people as his enemy, he saw principalities and Satan as his foes. People can be deluded, misled and manipulated, by principalities, ideas and Lucifer. Few people are malevolent, most believe, even when they do incredible evils, they are the good guys. Even psychopaths justify their crimes in their own heads. Every single genocide, slaughter and crime against humanity would have been avoided, had the perpetrators listened to Jesus’ words, and followed them. Instead of exploiting other’s belief to evil ends. The Holocaust couldn’t have happened if the Nazis followed the Golden rule. Tamerlane’s slaughter of Hindus wouldn’t have been possible had he loved his neighbor as himself, and Mao would not have been so arrogant had he been a servant, instead of an omelet maker.
It’s hard to believe the birth of a lowly child in a small town, a couple of thousand years ago, would have changed the fate of mankind so dramatically. Had he not been born, or had Herod the great killed him as a child, we would still be riding horses, huddled by fireplaces and eating peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, as our ancestors did of old. Slavery would be the norm. If we were fortunate, a new Roman type empire would have arisen and conquered the known world, and imposed peace. If only through oppression. Because, without the unimaginable philosophical leap that Jesus Christ of Nazareth brought into the world, when he was born, our lives would be unremarkable to someone from the Bronze age. His morality, humanity and godliness has allowed us to live remarkable lives.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
