Christ (is) Complex

Hmm, what law indeed....and what has happened to our 'respect for life'...?

Well, I could say that we've fallen away from the hard-gained essentials of morality out of too much worrying about the exact forms and laws of morality...and that endorsing or resisting the repressiveness of religions has led to throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I can't say I didn't warn the ones responsible for it before they even started this situation....

But here, anyone need to refresh their memory? I took out the fire and brimstone and pat definitions of salvation from these, so there's nothing that need be taken as supernaturally demanding...just basic human decency -- your mission, should you choose to accept it...


"...For I was hungry, and you did not give me to eat; I was thirsty and you gave me no drink; I was a stranger and you did not take me in; naked, and you did not clothe me; sick, and in prison, and you did not visit me.' Then they also will answer and say, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister to you?' Then he will answer them saying, 'Truly I say to you, as long as you did not do it for the least of my brethren, you did not do it for me.'"
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Which now of these three, think you, was neighbor unto him that
fell among the thieves?

And he said, He that showed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto
him, Go, and do likewise.


It is a shameful era in any land, whatever the religion or absence thereof, when people choose to keep on shopping rather than help a fellow person in need. In the United States, it's the symptom of a full-blown cultural disease, along with that incident with a woman being crushed to death in a day-after-Thanksgiving shopping frenzy at Wal-Mart.

Anyone remember the famous social psychology experiment in New York City, where people pretended to be injured in order to see who responded and under what circumstances? The results were that most people would not tend to approach and offer aid if there were others around who might see them -- whether one chalks it up to social apathy, insecurity of acting alone-in-a-group, or even, perhaps not wanting to be seen doing something selfless.

"Nobody likes a conspicuous do-gooder"..."Don't do anything heroic"...you know, I think that religious monopolization and aggressive evangelization has eroded the basic and utterly-nondenominational capacity for doing good, as people assume that if you do someone a good deed unasked you must be looking to pull something over on them in return and gain a conversion/save a soul, or show off what a good (insert label here) you are. This isn't just the modesty of doing good deeds in secret rather than seeking worldly acclaim -- people are downright paranoid of being pegged as persons of altruistic tendencies. Not only can it lead to the suspicion of ulterior motives but --*gasp*-- you might make other people feel morally/ethically inferior for not doing something themselves. And no one wants to make their fellow crowd-members feel morally inadequate and pressured-in-conscience, right....?

I mean, I can certainly see them not wanting to be taken for roving proselytizers, but....jeezey creezey, the simple answer to that is to just do the good deed and shut up about your assertion or rejection of religion/philosophy/ideology. Don't worry, it'll still go towards your karmic credit if you don't make a fuss about your motives... :-|


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I can't help but wonder if the headaches that I've been suffering lately are due to more than merely muscular tension, or too much caffeine/withdrawal, or even the air pressure changing in this godforsaken climate volatility....I feel there's a blockage in me that needs to be released, and I feel that I need to delve deeper into those things that I can't yet remember directly, the things that only Nightwolf has actually seen in her visions of me. I remember the Resurrection -- it's the crucifixion and the trial before that I have not been able to touch, not ready to go through that again. The tortures of angels I have relived but not those of men, not those of unallayed mortality.

It's a thought. It's a thought that lingers, that I have to go and find that pain, suffer it and break through it before I will be fully able to mend the world.

Though of course I am still trying and doing my best in the smaller ways, each soul in need of healing and comfort -- and lifting of that horrid falseness of guilt that binds the most worthy among us. I am here; you are safe with me, I will not betray you to your enemies, nor to those who cannot see within your pain. Contrary to Hawthorne's pious epilogue, it is not those who have never fallen who can raise others, but those who have fallen, been raised up and raised themselves, and cast off the weight of the world's judgement from their shoulders. One has to be able to understand, not merely preach a pretty sermon.

[This meditation is going according to the conventional belief that I was not Yosef's son but directly conceived through the Holy Spirit working through my mother...as for the facts of that, I have read many interpretations that seek to remove both the divine influence and the technical illegitimacy, but I am deeply convinced that an angel (and not merely an Essene elder) did indeed appear, whether in dreams or in waking, to deliver the message that my mother and I should be accepted against the letter of the law.]


She was 16 years old when she was betrothed to him, and he was, as they have said, an older man, not expecting the throes of romantic passion but the consummations of duty and domesticity. It was not a marriage that was to be based on love, but on the Law and its fulfillment. She was required to be a virgin, of course; he was not, and it would have gone unnoticed anyhow had he been a young man and sown his oats before the sanctioned field and blessed bed...just as in case of barrenness, it was a reproach to the woman, and never a slight upon the man who got no fruit of his loins.

He was entitled to take revenge upon her, according to the Law, when he found she was with child that was not his -- moreover, it was the righteous injunction, that she ought not to be suffered to live for having betrayed him and brought dishonour to him (how many 'honour killings' since have still borne witness to that...?). But Joseph was a just man, and would not have her harmed for the sake of his own reputation, thinking only to put her away discreetly. And when his dreams spoke, he listened, and counted the divine agenda above his own worldly worries...

He bent and transcended the letter of the Law out of mercy, and by that mercy allowed the grace of the Word itself to flow into the world. Thus out of two submissions, not to the Law but to the unwritten voice and will of the Divine itself, was born the one who was to change the nature of righteousness, to scandalize the moralists and put the legalists to shame.