What it means to be moral

Being moral isn’t about persecuting people. It’s about living an ethical life, being fair and opening your heart to those in distress as Jesus did. His is the way, and those who walk in his footsteps shall inherit the Earth.

You can’t walk in Jesus’ footsteps and be meek. The guy was judgmental - remember who he threw out of where and how hot he was then - confrontational, challenging, outspoken, dynamic, broke with tradition even if he said he was simply fulfilling it. I agree with your main point, however, that in general he was not using his sense of morality to show he was better than other people. And he did not seem to be someone who would be impressed by the form of correctness rather than what someone had in their hearts. But if he was God on earth, he had behind him THE LORD, and in this case we do have someone who tacitly accepts the persecution of sinners, for all time. IOW he could walk about and cure people of conditions - that arguably he had created himself in his God form - and preach kindness and non-judgmentalness, all the while, at the same time as THE LORD sitting in as harsh as possible judgment of people and sending many to Hell.

At no point we know of, for example, did he ever say - God was too harsh on Sodom and Gomorrah, let alone, for example, the enemies of the Jews. He reserved his ideas about casting stones for the moral majority - pun intended - down on earth.

And that is where those you want to chastize get their mixed messages…

should they be like Jesus (was sometimes) or should they be like THE LORD? Hence they suffer from multiple personality disorders with brutality and kindness, judgment and forgiveness all mixed up together.

But how could one be otherwise if one takes THE WHOLE BIBLE AS THE PERFECT WORD OF GOD?

Ha. Good luck! I’m on your side 100% so far, but I find I don’t get a very warm reception here with such thoughts! People keep telling me that living a life of love isn’t the essence of Christianity, although nobody seems willing to suggest an alternative or even show why I’m wrong…

What you call love isn’t love. Or to be more fair. Some of what you call love is not love and much of the Bible does not fit with your version of Christianity. Certainly the God presented there doesn’t.

I believe this means those who do not seek the materialistic things of this world, will receive what is required to enjoy a life of this world. That is to say what Glorifies God through it’s use through need as one endeavors who try to live in righteousness for God.

MoreSillyStuff,

The most violent act Jesus ever commits is tearing up the marketplace… And your reading of God as a punitive God is just one of the many readings possible… So where I read the whole Bible in terms of love (or as a revelation of love), you take for granted the most popular and obviously inconsistent readings (or conceptions of what it means to be Christian) and then exclaim what a hotbed of contradiction the Bible is!

What have I said about love that isn’t love? The fact that love gives? (That’s all I’ve really said; namely ‘love gives’ and ‘Christians love everyone’…)

Consider the following:

‘Meek’ then, as spoken by Jesus, means moderated strength. The ‘meek’ man He refers to is the man who has mastered the savage beast within, who has become moderate in his excercise of strength.

Yet, he was radical enough for the Jewish establishment of the day to want him crucified. I think doing what you say would have simply led to an earlier death.

The evangel of Jesus was His way of living- he refrained from persecution yet carried the favor of the LORD, proving that nevertheless his life was holy. In short, he showed the best way to please the LORD. If you don’t look to follow in His footsteps, you’re not really a Christian.

Sure, but the original quote includes this notion that the ‘meek’ will be these people. Jesus was not meek. Generally to follow in someone’s footsteps means to do the same things as the one one follows. One cannot follow Jesus in this sense AND be meek.

One of the problems Nietzsche had with Christianity and what he meant when he said there was only one Christian: Jesus.

Which obviously what I was referring to and clearly was not meek. jesus was not meek, which was my point.

If you do not believe that God sends people to Hell for all time, good for you. I do know there are Christians who do not believe this. If you do not believe that God destroyed towns or gave the Jews the right to kill, even the injunction to kill others, good.

One thing that is not love is your judging, using the Bible as support, others as unloving when they are not as forgiving as you think they should be. This stance and judgment on your part is unloving and yet you think you think that it is loving to tell people, regardless of their situation, that it is loving to forgive their abusers. This act on your part is not loving.

edit: and, hey, look, I am certainly unloving at times. We are all human. My point is not that you should be more perfect. It sounds like your ideals are already rather strict. My point is that the ideal itself, not some act on some particular day, is unloving. I am going to drop this issue with you because there is no point in going back and forth with it. I will say that I have wondered if you have ever lived with a romantic partner and if you are young. Certainly people who are married can have the same ideals, but it is a little harder to not notice what these ideals actually do if one lives with a spouse and children. What these ideals really do to the soul. How the ‘loving and forgiving person’ either feels used because the ideal as you concieve it is self-abusive, or they feel judgmental and holier than thou to the other person. ‘Why can’t you sacrifice and be as loving as me?’ What a lot of people who have this kind of self-abusive ideal do not realize or want to notice is what they are actually feeling and cannot understand why they get the reactions they get from people. ‘But I was being so loving’.

If you are older and are or have been married and still have these beliefs than probably nothing will change them. If you are young and have not been married or been in a live together relationship than you may find yourself called on for things you think you are not doing. Let us know.

Peace.

This was a strong point. Well done.
But then people are not following in Jesus’ footprints, still.

I was not suggesting that Jesus should have been less or more meek - in either meaning. My sense is that Christians do not follow in his footsteps. They tend to worship him as a symbol, but do not live as he lived. Some exceptions: liberation theologists in South America, Martin Luther King. People who follow the core thrust of his teachings and apply the best of it, even when it means going against both secular and religious authorities. Which Christ did.

The best way to please the lord would NOT BE then to support organized religion. It is to take oneself very seriously. To follow one’s intuition. To use one’s gifts. Jesus chose to move amongst the weaker in society, the poor, the outcasts. This too is rarely done and when done it is solely in the helper mode - charity - whereas Jesus lived and socialized with these people. They were his social circle, his friends and students. He reinterpreted scripture and did not agree with rabbis. IOW he trusted his own authority. He even allowed himself to perform what we would call magic. He became outraged, in at least one instance, by what he considered immoral practiced and in a rage threw things around. He was not violent against people, but he was hardly polite.

He lived simply and did not amass material things. He repeatedly put himself in situations where he could have been physically attacked. Take the situation where he confronted the people who wanted to stone the adulteress to death. Here he was going against local moral practice.

These things one must do also if one is to follow in his footsteps. It is not just about not judging and being loving. We are talking about someone who placed tremendous faith in himself even if this brought him in conflict with tradition, religious authority, secular authority, individuals. He trusted his vision and his intuition.

Those are deep footprints.

Dare you follow in those?

Yes, well, as already discussed to me forgiveness is a species of love, so if we find ourselves in a situation where forgiveness is possible but we don’t forgive then we aren’t practicing love. My judgment isn’t that the person is wrong or bad, but yes, just that they were unloving in those moments when forgiveness was denied… Sorry if that’s callous, but logic often is!

I agree but disagree. Indeed we are all human, but isn’t part of being human being possessed by an insatiable desire to better ourselves, assuming we haven’t given up on life? (Kind of like the desire Adam felt in the garden of Eden?) I’m not trying to be strict; rather I want to free humankind to be what it will, to “live like the lillies of the field” who live without worry. I want to strictly apply love, this is for sure, but only because I believe it enables a state where fear and anxiety have no hold and we’re all free to pursue our own betterment and life fulfillment.

I’m young (26 yo) but have lived with someone for three years now. I do know the feeling of being used, and I’m highly aware of love’s vulnerability to parasites… (I think the threat of being taken advantage of is our primary motivation not to love, and is the reason why Adam was cast out of Eden…) But as for feeling “holier than thou” that’s just a sign of hypocrisy. Love requires no return; it’s free… So if you love and then guilt others into reciprocating then you were never loving in the first place…

Indeed though; the life of love is hard, as these obstacles attest.

Well said, but I believe organised religion need not exist in the offensive mode that Jesus riled against. For example, the Catholic Church during the Renaissance which Martin Luther (the 16th century priest, not the 20th century civil rights activist) mistook as being corrupt and immoral. Luther himself was a perfect example of the kind of priest Jesus loathed.

I endeavor to at all times, and I believe that people who do so successfully find it very rewarding.

The Catholic Church in the Renaissance was responsible for the Inquisition. I am not sure how Martin Luther felt about it in general, though he was not pleased with it when it was aimed at him, of course. But I believe the Catholic church was certainly immoral for this process in general. And I did not, repeat did not make any mention of Martin Luther. I mentioned Martin Luther King. So your thoughts about what Jesus would have thought of Martin Luther really mean very little to me in this context.

There are very few people who actually try to follow in the footprints, and those who do tend to get attacked - in one way or another - by other christians. I appreciate your OP’s suggestion that judging was not Jesus’ path. Many Christians seem to think being Christian empowers one to judge others that that this is being moral. But this is only a small, however important, part of what Jesus’ ‘path’ was. It was not simply what he did not do, but what he did and how he valued himself where real challenges lie. Most people reading a post written by someone mentioning Jesus and having a crucifix as their avatar are not going to realize how different you are from the vast majority of Christians.

Forget Christianity. Live a life of Truth, of which love is a part.

But it has no choice. In order for organized religion to defend its irrational “revelations” over the centuries against the revelations of science and techonoloy, it must of necessity resort to greater and greater departures from rationality. I believe this departure has reached the breaking point and has put the organized religions into a general retreat. Would that the blind faith in the religion of socialism meet a similar popular epiphany.

That bolded portion is not very Jesus like. Those moments can go on for years. Certainly in cases of sexual abuse by a not having remorse parent…Contact with people who see this ‘not forgiving’ by the child as not loving is abusive.

The lilies of the field do not forgive. Nor do they blame. Nor to most people think they remember. Me, I’m a pagan so I’m not so sure about those last two.

Love does not leave room for parasites. Guilt does. (if one has the power to leave the situation, it is not love that stays there.)

I was concerned you would take the long term relationship example as being an example of how it is hard. That is not my issue. I have moral ideas and goals that are very hard. My bringing up the ltr was that it can, though not necessarily always will, reveal ‘what is really going on’ when ideals like yours are adhered to. So to be very clear I was not in any way saying ‘Oh, but in a relationship you will find these things tough and you’ll think twice.’ Nah. I have things I do and face that are tough. It was merely that the other person, that close, increases the liklihood of showing you power games, smugness, guilt, manipulation, etc., masquerading as love. Unfortunately this can be missed in any situation.

I say it because logically, given the notion of love I’m defending, I must. Would I call anyone unloving knowing it would hurt them? No. Would I let this logical fact in any way prevent me from showing anything but the sincerest desire to help to an abused child? Of course not. I would not call the child (or anyone else) unloving even if logically speaking this is the case, nor would I let it change the way I treat them. Does that make sense? The point I’m arguing is logical, not ethical. Ethically speaking, by which I mean in real life where it really matters, I would show nothing but love no matter what the other person is doing or has done.

The lilies are a remnant of the paradise long past and a sign of the paradise to come. When we’re living like the lilies of the field it’s because we’re loved. There is no reason to cast blame or forgive. There is nothing wrong to warrant such things!

Beware all forms of hypocrisy!

Yes, but I think Son of Richard is on the right track with what he said:

The Germans have robbed Europe of the last great cultural harvest it ever reaped — that of the Renaissance. Does one understand at last, does one want to understand, what the Renaissance was? The revaluation of Christian values, the attempt, undertaken with every means, with every instinct, with all genius, to bring the countervalues, the noble values to victory … So far there has been only this one great war: there has not been a more fundamental interrogation than that undertaken by the Renaissance — the question it raised is the same question that I raise. There has never been a more thoroughgoing attack, nothing more direct, and nothing more forcefully unleashed along the entire frontline, and upon the enemy’s centre! To launch an attack on the decisive point, on the very heartland of Christianity, placing the noble values on the throne, I mean, bringing them right into the instincts, into the lowest needs and desires of those who sat there… I see in my mind’s eye an uncannily fascinating possibility — it seems to shimmer with a trembling of refined beauty; there seems to be an art at work in it so divine, so devilishly divine that one might search the millennia in vain for another instance of it; I envisage a spectacle so ingenious, so wonderfully paradoxical at the same time, that it would have moved all the gods of Olympus to an immortal roar of laughter — Cesare Borgia as pope … Am I understood? … Well then, that would have been a victory of the kind I desire today: with that, Christianity would have been abolished! — What weny wrong? A German monk, Luther, came to Rome. This monk, with all the vengeful instincts of a shipwrecked priest in his system, was outraged in Rome against the Renaissance … Instead of understanding, with the most profound gratitude, the tremendous event that had happened, the overcoming of Christianity in its very seat, his hatred understood only how to derive its own nourishment from this spectacle. Luther saw the corruption of the papacy when precisely the opposite was more than obvious: the ancient corruption, the original sin, Christianity, no longer sat on the papal throne! Life sat there instead — the triumph of life, the great Yes to all heightened, beautiful, reckless things!.. And Luther restored the church […]

-Nietzsche, The Anti-Christian, 61

I couldn’t help but notice that Jesus is not in fact hanging on the crucifix in his avatar. This speaks to me of true Renaissance Christian style- the image of God hanging on the cross curses life.

No. He was on the wrong track. For some reason you two seem to think I care about Martin Luther. I do not. I have no interest in defending Martin Luther. I mentioned MARTIN LUTHER KING.

And while what you quoted here might be interesting in some other context, Nietzsche is not saying anything that exculpates the Catholic Church from the Inquisition.

You are Son of Richard are way off track here. The point of the thread is how to follow in the footsteps of Jesus. The Catholic Church in the Renaissance was not doing this, no matter what a poopyhead Martin Luther was.

The Liberation Theologists in the 20th century included some Catholic priest who actually did follow in the footsteps of Jesus which is why I mentioned them along with Dr. King.

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Yes, it is a nice soft version of the symbol for Jesus willingly letting people arrest him and nail him to wood where he supposedly died. A whitewashed image or an honest one. I cant see the difference, but all really rather tangential.

What do you mean by “ethical life”, “being fair” or even “opening your heart to those in distress”?

I’m well aware that you yourself were talking about Martin Luther King. You also said that organised religion is bad, and I referred to the Renaissance and Martin Luther because they are relevant in regard to that topic. The passage quoted by Impious is interesting because Nietzsche’s understanding of that period is in many ways similar to my own.

And regarding your comment about the inquisition, I would have to agree with you that it was wrongful. I will also say that it was the Catholic people, moreso than the Catholic Church itself, which was impressive during the Renaissance. Sorry to make it sound like I believe the Catholic Church in that period was perfect, because I don’t.