Karen Armstrong

[omar]

I just saw some of the interview she did with Bill Moyers. She said:
“I wish that you would help with the creation, launch and propagation of a Charter for Compassion – crafted by a group of inspirational thinkers from the three Abrahamic traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and based on the fundamental principle of the Golden Rule.”

Let me just go and bash her dreams a bit. The idea is good but it ignores the character of the rule in the first place…at least through the Abrahamic traditions. As someone once said: We have the ability to love everyone…so long as there are enough left for us to hate. Let’s take judaism for example. In Exodus 34, we read:
“The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, 7 maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.”

God is “compassionate”, as the term may apply to God or as it was applied in those days. Today we would label such a God as “merciless”.
In Leviticus 19 we encounter variations of the Golden Rule:
“18 " 'Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.”

…“one of your people…”, your “neighbor”. It is the neighbor whom you ought to love as yourself- your people. Until the day comes when all people become “my people” the Golden Rule will remain a tribal expression of camaraderie. Pick his fleas as you wish that he in turn removes your fleas, as any ape, however unevolve may know. Further down the text reads:
“33 " 'When an alien lives with you in your land, do not mistreat him. 34 The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.”

…"love him as yourself…“for you were aliens in Egypt”- surely a clear instruction from the Golden Rule! But of course they are aliens living on your land, on your terms…this is not compassion so much as assimilation.

The Golden Rule in Abrahamic traditions does not get any better than this. The biography of Yahweh does not allow it to. Remember that He was first and foremost a tribal God, a God of the mountain, the Land. It was only through the dislocation of the people from the Land that Yahweh was forced to evolve into a more universal God, not just of the Israelies. However Yahweh always retained that strain of Judgment, and all three believe in the Day of Judgment. Where is the Golden Rule at that point? Where is God’s compassion?

Armstrong has to answer Moyers answers, which she does by a call to finding ways to allegorize, reinterpret challenging and difficult passages that as of today have been taken literally. So shall we now forgive God instead of God forgiving us? We now have to be compassionate with God? We have to cleanse the Bible of what is rather disturbing? That is a tall order and then what remains? Is it a divine revelation or a revelation from our more compassionate age? The Bible then stands as a work of it’s enviroment and the men, men who wrote it from a simpler understanding. However the force of these texts resides in the fact that they are not the works of men but the words of God.
We might in the end admit that the Bible is a product of it’s age, but what about ours? Are we that arrogant to think that history has ended with us? Or will another age look at our reinterpretations and offer new updates as well because the work they inherit is not compassionate enough? What use will be left for the word “sin” or “sinner”. Who will stand to be judged after all our reinterpretations have left God like the teacher that says: We are all winners so long as we do our best. Very compassionate.
I am not saying that such projects as hers are wrong, only that the Golden Rule is a social mechanism. Love thy neighbor, love thy in-group. Hate thy enemy, hate the out-group. The love within the in-group determined directly by the constrast provided by the out-group. The closer the enemy, the greater the love.

In the Star Trek mythology, mankind knew no peace, until the day that they discovered that there was intelligent life in other planets. Within 50 years all war was ended, and I would have added that the Golden Rule ruled this planet. Like I said: We have the power to love everyone as long as there are enough Others for us to hate, and in the case of aliens from other worlds, what greater constrast is possible other than gods?
To use another example: In the Watchmen the world is moving towards nuclear holocaust, just as always, impending doom looms near, just as Armstrong believes. She is not alone. She is not saying something new, yet there is war and intolerance all around us. How did comic books super-heroes approach this problem? She does it by gathering intellectials, I call them “outsiders” from each faith and draw a two page document like a declaration of human rights. The super-hero frames one of his own for a crime he did not commit to give the world a different target at which to aim it’s aggression. He gives them a scapegoat upon which every illness is blamed on and which is then cast out of the tribe. I sometimes wornder which is truly a work of fiction.

[Hegemon]

You’re right… which is unfortunate.

People will always have problems with love simply because it is impossible to love everyone. Love needs hate, or at least dislike to exist. If everyone loved everyone equally, there would be no love, only apathy.

Star Trek, Enders Game, and most other space stories come to the same conclusion, that war and hate can only be conqured by fear or hate of another outside power. In this instance, nothing has really changed, humans are simply not fighting humans anymore, but some other life form.

Universal love can never exist in humans. Perhaps god can love everyone, but we are not gods.

[omar]

I was thinking this morning: Charter of Compassion. Good. But who comes up with that idea? A monotheist freelancer. As a freelancer you can use as a foundation only the Golden Rule, because the other details, which for others matter most, to you, as a freelancer (I am talking about Armstrong here), are of little consequence.

[alyoshka]

I understand, Omar, your insistence on a vengeful God, but do you not recognize a decline in God’s violence throughout the Bible? i.e., Can’t you see God’s conscience developing as the text progresses?

For example: Initially God destroys indiscriminately (in the story of Noah). Then God destroys selectively (in the story of Moses and the Egyptians). Finally God doesn’t destroy at all (in the stories of Christ).

The same holds for punishment (which is really the same story since the decrease in violence corresponds to an increase in forgiveness). In the passage you cite, God condemns to “the third and fourth generation”. Later on, although I can’t recall where exactly, this condemnation of the sinner’s progeny is revoked. And finally, in Christ, sinners find immediate, unconditional forgiveness…

@omar

Love thy neighbor, love thy in-group. Hate thy enemy, hate the out-group.

No, this is not the Golden Rule at all. Christ says love your enemy. Nowhere does Christ say hate. Even the Leviticus passage you cite says to treat aliens as you would your kin and kind. Recall, Omar, that nomadic cultures tend to be hospitable cultures… (Isn’t there something called the law of the desert that says as much?)

More precisely, don’t you recall Abraham being visited by the three strangers? Did he show hate to them? Did he try to “assimilate” them as you say? No, he simply offered them rest, water, and food… It was the Sodomites who tried to “know” them…

@omar

The super-hero frames one of his own for a crime he did not commit to give the world a different target at which to aim it’s aggression. He gives them a scapegoat upon which every illness is blamed on and which is then cast out of the tribe.

Have you read the Watchmen or just watched the film? This isn’t exactly what happens in the text… The nuclear explosion is pinned on a fictitious alien invader, not on Dr Manhattan… So while I’m not denying your main take, since the story indeed depicts humanity uniting in the face of a common enemy, I wanted to point this out since it changes the details of your comment here. You should really read the text if you haven’t. The film was a superficial (although very meticulous!) representation of it… Too much was lost… The director didn’t take enough license when converting novel to film to get the points across…

ANYWAYS, the point is I don’t think fear is the only way to love, as you seem to be saying. I think, if anything, the rule you describe applies to (although I hate to use such gross terms!) the masses and their manipulation… i.e., Recent American history shows that the creation of a public fear enabled the government to move on an insidious agenda. Beyond this local example fear has regularly been used by those in power to maintain or increase their power… Fear, in the same vein, can be used to create communal love (where I stress communal, so as to exclude outsiders from the love just as you describe).

So ultimately all you’re saying here is that fear can be used to manipulate people, to make them support wars, communal peace, or whatever else is on the manipulator’s agenda! But this isn’t the Golden Rule, at least it’s not the rule being spoken of in the Bible… God doesn’t want to unite humankind through fear of Him. If this was the case Christ would have been depicted as a terrible warrior or something else fear inspiring. But no, instead Christ is a healer, a helper, a teacher…

Christ embodies love, and his love transcends the communal barrier your Golden Rule establishes. Christ shows love even to his worst enemies, not only to his family/disciples. In fact he criticizes those who only love their own, i.e., “Even murderers love those that love them. What credit is that to them?”

I grant your reading is tenable if confined to the older tBiblical exts, but if we presume Christ was working with the same texts, and that his teachings are in line with their teaching, then I think your reading is ruled out. i.e., God isn’t inspiring unity through fear. God is inspiring unity through love and love alone; a love that transcends all fear and hatred and brings insider and outsider together.

[omar]

Hello Alyoshka:

— I understand, Omar, your insistence on a vengeful God, but do you not recognize a decline in God’s violence throughout the Bible? i.e., Can’t you see God’s conscience developing as the text progresses?
O- Oh I recognize it, but not as a progression of the mind of God, but a reflection of the decline in Israelite power and also the advance of other ways of understanding reality. When the Torah is written, it is remembering at a time when it is now in power. It traces back it’s success to a sacred history and places a sense of inevitability and blessedness, a blessing that is however placed on slaughter and conquests of lands. How different is the tone of the Torah from the tone of the psalms…
In that time of power and confidence, all was attributed to God and His omnipotence. It was a clear story, because it was a revision of history. The psalms, the prophets, these come after the dislocation of the people from the land, and of course, a loss of confidence in the covenant, in the revision of history, in the narration of their history. The question of evil is answered by the Hebrew as God being unknowable, mysterious, but nonetheless Omnipotent. The vision remains there for a return a sacred fate, a day of reckoning, where things will be as they were for the writers of the Torah, a position of power and confidence. As the time passes, this day is moved further and further away, giving God time to get around his mysterious ways to do as He used to do.
The day came but they are liberated by the hand of another, not of their own. They lay this capricious event at the feet of divine necessity. Cyrus is a puppet of God, just as we all are. But history would not be kind to the Hebrews for the next few thousand and so new reinterpretations must be given to history to account for God’s lack of action of to understand, in other words, His mysterious ways. Enter the Messiah.

Each time, God becomes more long-suffering and His “patience” increases, and it seems as if God has become more compassionate when in fact histore has become less sacred and more difficult to explain in the face of an Omnipotent force with whom you have a covenant. The becoming of God has coincided with the increase in guilt and self-flagelation, thus we have become more wicked and God more tolerant of our wickedness, choosing to punish us with occupations than to wipe out towns with fire or floods as He once world in remembered history. This is a construction that allows the illusion of omnipotence to continue. Yahweh has no need for compassion. He strikes not only the sinner but his children as well to the third and fourth generations. But this cruelty could be forgiven by the success of the empire. The hebrew mind measures the blessedness of a king by the worldly success he possessess. Military defeat is tied immediately with moral error and incurring the wrath of God, and military success, however distateful and bloody, as given to kings by the hand of God. Once the hebrews were no longer capable of inflicting cruelty upon their pagan neighbors, God Himself becomes unwilling or uncapable to inflict His power upon the pagans, thus He becomes, or is reinterpreted, as more benevolent, as evolving, as you suggest, but make no mistake, it is not about what God is doing, but what a people no longer could do.

— Later on, although I can’t recall where exactly, this condemnation of the sinner’s progeny is revoked. And finally, in Christ, sinners find immediate, unconditional forgiveness…
O- You are thinking Ezeckiel.

— More precisely, don’t you recall Abraham being visited by the three strangers? Did he show hate to them? Did he try to “assimilate” them as you say? No, he simply offered them rest, water, and food… It was the Sodomites who tried to “know” them…
O- In fact, Lot offered his daughters to them, that they may be sodomized. That is following the Golden Rule in their treatment of your women…

[alyoshka]

I guess we see God’s fundamental quality differently. To me power is not God’s defining feature; rather it is what God does with God’s power. What does God do? Crudely put, God creates good things and destroys evil. More precisely God follows the Golden Rule, which is to love, simply to love. (Pace your gross addition of hating outsiders.)

@omar

O- In fact, Lot offered his daughters to them, that they may be sodomized. That is following the Golden Rule in their treatment of your women…

Yes, Lot was loving in this scene. Unfortunately though it seems back then that children were a father’s property, as if his daughters were no different than his goats or gold, other than in importance. The point of this scene is Lot was willing to give what was dear to him in order to save the strangers. And that’s just it; Lot saves the strangers, he does not hate them as you say in your version of the Golden Rule.

[omar]

The story suggest that Lot himself was an outsider, and so his natural community was with strangers, aliens, like himself.

[alyoshka]

@omar

The story suggest that Lot himself was an outsider, and so his natural community was with strangers, aliens, like himself.

I don’t understand. Of course Lot was not a native Sodomite. So I agree Lot was himself an outsider in Sodom. Nevertheless the two strangers are outsiders in relation to both Lot and the Sodomites, and Lot shows love to them. I’m not sure what Lot being an outsider in relation to the Sodomites has to do with it…

More importantly though I just don’t see your version of the Golden Rule here. Where does Lot show hate to outsiders? If anything he shows hate to his family, i.e., his daughters, in order to save the outsiders.

[alyoshka]

Nevermind the above, I see your point now.

So if the Sodomites are outsiders to Lot, and by your Golden Rule this means he must hate them, then why does he choose to live in their city? Why doesn’t he show hatred toward them or at least keep his distance like Abraham does?

[omar]

@alyoshka

Nevermind the above, I see your point now.

So if the Sodomites are outsiders to Lot, and by your Golden Rule this means he must hate them, then why does he choose to live in their city? Why doesn’t he show hatred toward them or at least keep his distance like Abraham does?

When I say “hate”, I can as easily use “dislike” without losing my point about the Golden Rule. Many people share Rush Limbaugh’s desire to see Obama fail. he dislikes Obama. But you don’t see Rush leaving the country out of necessity and the assurance that this country will one day be rid of Obama’s and democratic leadership. The political example is a good one also because it shows how the in-group/out-group dichotomy is not necessarly exclusive to border towns but even within the borders of the town because human beings are stratified in more ways than just tribe or nation but also by color of skin, language and even belief.

In any case Aly, you and Karen Armstrong are very much alike- monotheist freelangers, or free-agents, who take what you conceive as essential and “allegorizing” all the rest which is unessential, in your view and damaging to the credibility of the faith as that which you conceive it to be. So for example the Golden Rule can be expressed as “Love thy enemy as you wish your enemy would love you”. This could be motivation behind Jesus’ saying about loving thy enemy. But the truth is that Jesus believed in Hell, in my opinion, a Day of Judgment and place to send those judged unfavorably against, enemies of God’s state. So the Golden Rule as followed by God Himself is. Reward with Heaven those who believe in me and send to Hell those who do not believe in me. Those who like God are liked by God and those disliked, or who hated or who are otherwise enemies of God, are likewise disliked by God and hated by God.

[alyoshka]

@omar

When I say “hate”, I can as easily use “dislike” without losing my point about the Golden Rule. Many people share Rush Limbaugh’s desire to see Obama fail. he dislikes Obama.

To me love and hate, to be meaningful, must be acted upon. For Limbaugh to truly hate Obama he must act hatefully toward him. I don’t think hate, as an emotion, is at all uncalled for. It is natural. It’s going to happen. What matters is whether we act on it. When Jesus says love your enemy, he means act lovingly toward them even though you hate them (as everyone surely hates their enemy).

@omar

who take what you conceive as essential and “allegorizing” all the rest which is unessential

I think the Bible is highly allegorical, sure, since it is a piece of fiction after all. I’m not trying to strip anything away from it though if that’s what you mean. I want to take God in God’s entirety; I don’t want to neglect the hellish consequences God mentions or God’s destructive acts or anything else. But yes, I do want to identify the essence of God’s action, and perhaps this is a foolish presumption, that God has an essential act, but thinking so certainly doesn’t mean I want to strip anything away.

As for the rest you say, you got it right when you say “In my opinion”… I agree Jesus believed in Heaven and Hell, but both are consequences of our actions, not something God actively condemns us to… The difference between our views is subtle, but oh so important! Anyways, to each of us our own opinions…

[felix_dakat]

And so it goes…the pursuit of transcendence. It requires the we go beyond our concept of God to possess/be possessed by God. “God beyond God” Tillich termed it. To embody the spirit of Jesus, Christians must go beyond their tradtional understanding of who is in and who is out. I think Armstrong is on the right track.

[omar]

Hello Alyoshka:

— To me love and hate, to be meaningful, must be acted upon. For Limbaugh to truly hate Obama he must act hatefully toward him. I don’t think hate, as an emotion, is at all uncalled for. It is natural. It’s going to happen. What matters is whether we act on it. When Jesus says love your enemy, he means act lovingly toward them even though you hate them (as everyone surely hates their enemy).
O- Not at all. Jesus in fact does the opposite of what you say and demands not just a politeness about what you do, not just the performance, as the Pharisees are very good at that. He wants most of all the inside emotion as well. It is not just the man that screws around that is moraly wrong but even the man who is unfaithful with his mind, who fantasizes of scapades with other women etc, and as Paul also tells us, circumscision alone is not enough- that is just an operation. You must have a circumscised heart. Or to dig deep into my repertoire of analogies, it is not enough to show a vampire a cross- you must have faith for that to work on him.
Simply put. Jesus does not mean that we should be polite to our enemy, but to love our enemy, that God may love you as well. The enemy does not deserve your love, but you give it nonetheless. God’s love is also undeserved, and that is the point, that we forgive much to others for we have much to be forgiven for ourselves. Treat others as you wish God to treat you.

— I think the Bible is highly allegorical, sure, since it is a piece of fiction after all. I’m not trying to strip anything away from it though if that’s what you mean. I want to take God in God’s entirety; I don’t want to neglect the hellish consequences God mentions or God’s destructive acts or anything else. But yes, I do want to identify the essence of God’s action, and perhaps this is a foolish presumption, that God has an essential act, but thinking so certainly doesn’t mean I want to strip anything away.
O- You seem to have backed away from some of your most radical beliefs.

— As for the rest you say, you got it right when you say “In my opinion”… I agree Jesus believed in Heaven and Hell, but both are consequences of our actions, not something God actively condemns us to… The difference between our views is subtle, but oh so important! Anyways, to each of us our own opinions…
O- I wonder how you tackle Paul and his letter to Romans. If Hell is a consequence of our actions then we “earn” Hell through our actions. But this also lead to the conclusion that Heaven is also a consequence of our actions, something that we earn through our actions. God is merely a door man, but we already have the key to the palace. Fine. But then why did Jesus have to die?
Paul’s answer to that question is that God loved Jacob and “hated” Esau before either was even born, before either had a chance to do anything or earn anything, either heaven or Hell. Heaven is a gift from God not something that is owed to us. And Hell is not earn, but is God’s prerogative to create people solely for the purpose of showing off, and so there are people right now being born, according to Paul, whom God has created just to populate Hell. And this does not strike Paul as terrible, or merciless, he simply takes it as part of God’s mystery. God shall have compassion and mercy on whomever God decides to have mercy and compassion but it does not depend on the will of men.

[alyoshka]

@omar

Jesus in fact does the opposite of what you say and demands not just a politeness about what you do, not just the performance, as the Pharisees are very good at that.

I think the problem with the Pharisees is hypocrisy. They preach the law, they adhere to ritual, but their lives, where it matters most, are very unloving.

There is adherance to love and there is adherance to ritual. The first is all that matters. Like Paul’s message: Circumsision/ritual alone isn’t enough; what matters is you have a circumcised heart. The Pharisees adhere to ritual (they talk the talk) but they don’t follow through when it counts (they don’t walk the walk).

I think Jesus would prefer we love, both emotionally and actively, but I think actively loving takes precedence over the emotion. The very fact that Jesus speaks of ‘loving enemies’ shows that he’s proscribing action that conflicts with emotion, and that he is well aware of this fact…

To stop feeling hate, that’s just impossible. But to show love despite our hateful feelings, that’s what I call divine. What you say at the end I completely agree with:

@omar

The enemy does not deserve your love, but you give it nonetheless. God’s love is also undeserved, and that is the point, that we forgive much to others for we have much to be forgiven for ourselves.

However the emotion, again, is not enough for the love you speak of here. An emotion is a whispy, useless thing. There’s no sacrifice involved; nothing of substance really… Emotional love is unproven love; it remains confined to the interiority of the lover… It cannot reach the beloved except through words, which are nice but again rather whispy and useless, or deeds, which are obviously what I want to focus on… But the point is: loving deeds don’t require emotional love to come about. And this is why Jesus says “love your enemies”, because he knows that sometimes we’ll hate, and that these are the times when loving deeds are especially important.

@omar

O- You seem to have backed away from some of your most radical beliefs.

I think I’ve been maintaining the same basic position! All I’ve ever really been against in our conversations is the notion that God actively punishes, which I’m still against! I’m not denying the passages that lead to this interpretation, rather I’m construing them as ‘God stating consequences’ rather than ‘God actively punishing’. But please let me know what radical beliefs I’ve left behind… Certainly wouldn’t be the first time I’ve messed up!

@omar

If Hell is a consequence of our actions then we “earn” Hell through our actions. But this also lead to the conclusion that Heaven is also a consequence of our actions, something that we earn through our actions.

Earn? Hmm. Not sure I like that language… Heaven and Hell are indeed brought about by our actions though. To me Heaven is when we find ourselves supported by loving hands. Hell is when we’re faced with cold indifference or even violence. On a grander scheme, Heaven is the world where everyone loves and Hell is the world without love…

@omar

God is merely a door man, but we already have the key to the palace. Fine.

Hah. God isn’t the door man… Rather God shows us the way.

@omar

But then why did Jesus have to die?

I don’t think he had to die. Well, more precisely I don’t think he had to die the way he died… Jesus was simply a victim of hateful action, no different from any other execution. Jesus died because of a lack of love…

@omar

Heaven is a gift from God not something that is owed to us.

See, this is why I didn’t like the “earn” language! Heaven or Hell aren’t owed; they aren’t justly doled out by God… A lover may experience Hell (as Jesus’ example shows) just as a hater may experience Heaven (recall: love even your enemies…). Our actions bring about Heaven or Hell, but they don’t guarantee us a place in either/or… Perhaps an important clarification? Our loving action brings about Heaven for others just as our hateful action brings about Hell for others… Our actions do not, at least not directly, determine whether our own lives will be Heaven or Hell…

I tend to not agree with Paul though, but I need to study him more. I really don’t like the idea of predetermination that you describe here and I can’t come to the conclusion that the will of Man is irrelevent… The will of Man is everything to me, and Man has free will (that’s one standard Christian belief I won’t let go of!).

[Jayson]

The reality is that Religion is a reaction to the existence.

Existence is not the reaction to the Religion.

This means that if one states anything as an absolute in some form counter to what literally can be observed, then it becomes more difficult to justify the logic of this probability the further from the literally observed it becomes.
This is in part why, in our present western era, relativist religious views are becoming the larger moving theological forces instead of the absolute concepts.

[omar]

That is fine Stumps if not for the still absolute materials which westerners possess. For example, K. Armstrong might be a theological relativist, or as she might prefer, a “freelancer”, however Jesus, in John, is not- Jesus is an absolutist that makes absolute claims. She can soften up the text a bit, but can only perform that feat from outside of the faith, or a given faith, because they reflect the absolutism of their founders. Since she cannot get rid of such materials, or revise the canons, she wants to re-interpret them. Great! Her basis would be the Golden Rule, one of the few aspects that most religions hold as a conerstone. Fine! But the absolutism is in the core, not in the corner. Islam, and even Judaism, would be easier to relativize than Christianity, and that is by far the dominant religion in the west.
But there is hope.
She need not worry about comming up with subtle or clever reinterpretations, allegorizations etc, because ignorance, apathy, and democracy might just do the trick of bringing people to a more tolerant perspective.

[Jayson]

I don’t know much about who this is actually, so I don’t know what she says or thinks.

I can only remark that I think Christianity is fairly easy to us in relative form, and indeed several sects do.
It starts where one begins to attempt to place the Bible into context of it’s culture and reads under that vantage.
The other approach is to read the Bible only in the metaphoric form fully; meaning that even Jesus’ status is metaphoric.

Those are the largest two methods of the relative form of Christianity.

As to the removal and alteration of what the cannon says:
Any Christian that knows the history of the Bible cannot seriously take it so seriously as to think that the Bible is without the ability to be altered.
The simple deviation between which books the cannon contains in Greek, Catholic, and Protestant forms is enough to show that changes can and have been made; removal.
The LDS shows addition.

It also shows a relativist that the warning in Revelation, if one is concerned with curses, that the Bible is not the, “book”, unless all Protestants and either Greek or Catholic Orthodox (depending who’s history you prefer) are damned for abiding by the wrong Bible.

[Bob]

Hi Omar,
I’m just rising out of the hole I am in to say that I find your approach rather negative and destructive … and misleading.

Let me just go and bash her dreams a bit. The idea is good but it ignores the character of the rule in the first place…at least through the Abrahamic traditions. As someone once said: We have the ability to love everyone…so long as there are enough left for us to hate.

I know human beings as well as anyone else, and I also know myself quite well. I believe that the golden rule (which is: “do unto others as you would have done to you” or “don’t do unto others what you don’t want done to you” and not the twofold law of love) is quite adequate to propagate a “Charter of Compassion” and I think that your view of human beings is biased by bad experience and misunderstanding. You take here a text which has cultural influences on it that we do not know, and presuming you accept that the voice of God in the text is superimposed on the image and in fact the voice of the author, we are here confronted with an imagery that has indeed developed – or rathered been overlayed by experience – throughout time.

Let’s take judaism for example. In Exodus 34, we read:
“The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, 7 maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.”

God is “compassionate”, as the term may apply to God or as it was applied in those days. Today we would label such a God as “merciless”.

Obviously you have chosen a translation that makes your point – but it may be less exact. Using a different translation the following appears:
(7) keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and not leaving entirely unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on sons, and on sons of sons, to the third and to the fourth generation.

A number of translations are possible for “pâqad” (visiting): avenge, charge, commit, count, deliver to keep, hurt, do judgment, lack, lay up look, punish, reckon, (call to) remember (-brance), set (over). If we assume that God is not the benevolent Father that Christians would have us believe in, perhaps a non-personal force, principle, law or whatever else you can imagine that could be neutral, but deliver the consequences, could take the place of that one image. To me, the suggestion that God is a loving or hating personality avoids the point in question. I suggest that forgiveness is “in the eye of the beholder” (or the heart of the beholder) and available to all who are themselves forgiving and as such avoid the consequences, whereas those who are not forgiving subsequently bring harm upon their children, and children’s children.

God is therefore compassionate to the compassionate and merciless to the merciless, even if it is the children, and children’s children who suffer. They have in effect inherited the same illness that their Father had – until they discover compassion, mercy and forgiveness. On the other hand, there are those who are compassionate, merciful and forgiving who suffer – when this happens, human beings call out for justice. Funny people we are …

Shalom

[omar]

Hello Bob:

— I think that your view of human beings is biased by bad experience and misunderstanding. You take here a text which has cultural influences on it that we do not know, and presuming you accept that the voice of God in the text is superimposed on the image and in fact the voice of the author, we are here confronted with an imagery that has indeed developed – or rathered been overlayed by experience – throughout time.
O- What voice is heard in the Bible, and more precisely, in the command to kill women and children? Is it God or is it men? And if it is men’s voice then where else is man speaking and not God? Is the idea that Jesus died for our sins but the opinion of men trying to make sense of a senseless death? Or is it the revelation of God?

— Obviously you have chosen a translation that makes your point – but it may be less exact. Using a different translation the following appears:
(7) keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and not leaving entirely unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on sons, and on sons of sons, to the third and to the fourth generation.
O- I love translation games but it is not what was said but what was done that determines the understanding held by a set of people.

— A number of translations are possible for “pâqad” (visiting): avenge, charge, commit, count, deliver to keep, hurt, do judgment, lack, lay up look, punish, reckon, (call to) remember (-brance), set (over). If we assume that God is not the benevolent Father that Christians would have us believe in, perhaps a non-personal force, principle, law or whatever else you can imagine that could be neutral, but deliver the consequences, could take the place of that one image.
O- If we consider God as a non-personal God then what Karen offers here is humanism and does not need the blessing of religious intellectuals. How do these intellectuals regard God? Do they too think of “It” as a non-pesonal “Force”?

— To me, the suggestion that God is a loving or hating personality avoids the point in question. I suggest that forgiveness is “in the eye of the beholder” (or the heart of the beholder) and available to all who are themselves forgiving and as such avoid the consequences, whereas those who are not forgiving subsequently bring harm upon their children, and children’s children.
O- But again, God would then be inconsequential and this romancing of the religious would be for nothing. I will say it again, for you may not have read that bit: I don’t find what she is doing to be wrong in spirit, but wrong in approach, because she imagines that such a charter of compassion would change anything when in fact it shall change nothing. You have this idea of the Golden Rule that has dominated human interactions since who knows when, but in the fashion I have described, even within religions. The Golden Rule is an adaptive behaviour explainble by evolutionary process, and in religion, by sociological models of in/out group interaction.

— God is therefore compassionate to the compassionate and merciless to the merciless, even if it is the children, and children’s children who suffer.
O- And you say this with a straight face? Merciless even in the face of a newborn baby?! How can such a Being be called in any way that is important “compassionate” or merciful, when He denies mercy on those who are most deserving of mercy= infants, who are by the way our measure of “innocense”.

— They have in effect inherited the same illness that their Father had – until they discover compassion, mercy and forgiveness.
O- Inherited? A child inherits genes, for example but we do not hold a child responsible for what they could not have chosen, such as what they biologically were determined to inherit. If it was discovered that homosexuality is indeed beyond reasonable doubt a condition that we inherit, then no one would be able to condemn them morally. So it is a bit counter-intuitive to speak of inheritance and deny compassion based on that inheritance.
Again, you stand outside of mainstream religions and that is why uniting them under the banner of “Compassion” seems such an achievable goal to you, because you do not believe in that which sets them apart as they believe in them. Preaching a Charter to men like you or Karen herself would be easy but this is possible because you are not deep rooted in the dogmas that make each religion what it is and not another.

[Bob]

Hi Omar,

What voice is heard in the Bible, and more precisely, in the command to kill women and children? Is it God or is it men? And if it is men’s voice then where else is man speaking and not God? Is the idea that Jesus died for our sins but the opinion of men trying to make sense of a senseless death? Or is it the revelation of God?

I understand the problem you have – can the voice of a man be the voice of God? Can the compassionate God command such atrocities as has often been done? I believe that we have to accept that God remains a mystery, no-thing, and non-human, the “other”. Communications of this phenomenon are human, experiences and visions conveyed are human, scriptures are human. They are all fallible – even if we believe that God is not. But to perceive that God commands to kill sometimes, with all of the aversion we have against such statements and all of the guardedness against madmen who imagine that their madness is obedience to some higher deity, it is true that sometimes these deaths are horribly necessary.

Jesus died because of our sins, not for them, and wept at Gethsemane that if there is another way, he wants it. Many people die because we are all caught up in sin, even the smallest children. Not that it is something that we can say is their fault; it is just a human condition that we can only overcome when we understand it. It is like an auto-immune reaction that has gone out of control, the ego gone wild and goaded on by the mob shouting “crucify” – throughout the ages. The righteous are so often the victims because they are free of the madness of the world, and have died to that insanity that cries inside and has us blown to and fro like a leaf in a breeze, tossed back and forth, desirous and clinging on to prevent ourselves from falling into the depths of freedom.

It is a paradox that we are living, and up is down, left is right, inside is outside – all a result of our duality and desire for one and not the other, although we create the other when we choose the one, we create bad by naming something good, we make the poor into thieves by calling something they cannot have desirable. The revelation of God causes conflict within us, contradicts us in everything we know so that we can finally give in and surrender to ignorance. The Torah is to be followed until we understand that we cannot follow it. Rationality rules until we see that life is non-rational. Morality rules until we return to before morality …

If we consider God as a non-personal God then what Karen offers here is humanism and does not need the blessing of religious intellectuals. How do these intellectuals regard God? Do they too think of “It” as a non-pesonal “Force”?

I don’t know, ask them. But perhaps it has always been our problem that we think of God as personal, but he is not. At the same time he is not non-personal. It is a paradox that causes head-aches but which is more than humanism. It is a kind of compassion that is not human, not self-serving but which serves others. This is where we find Jesus and Buddha, and where we find the Prophets of the OT with all of their dramatic symbolism and threats, unable to do anything but stammer out the conflict that has lead them to see.

I will say it again, for you may not have read that bit: I don’t find what she is doing to be wrong in spirit, but wrong in approach, because she imagines that such a charter of compassion would change anything when in fact it shall change nothing. You have this idea of the Golden Rule that has dominated human interactions since who knows when, but in the fashion I have described, even within religions. The Golden Rule is an adaptive behaviour explainble by evolutionary process, and in religion, by sociological models of in/out group interaction.

If the answer to our dilemma is anything, it is simple. It is so simple that the ancients found it thousands of years ago, although we have not managed to follow the Way all of that time. That must mean that, however simple it may be, it isn’t easy. If it was adaptive behaviour then we wouldn’t have the dilemma, because we could just adapt. It is however the result of a conflict and requires a death. It confronts us and demands atonement. Only then can we find freedom in our midst, whilst all the time being in chains.

And you say this with a straight face? Merciless even in the face of a newborn baby?! How can such a Being be called in any way that is important “compassionate” or merciful, when He denies mercy on those who are most deserving of mercy= infants, who are by the way our measure of “innocense”.

Innocent, not to blame, without guilt is any newborn baby. Does that baby remain in that condition? The Bible believes that it does not, but with adolescence a transition takes place and that child is thrown out of Eden. He is thrown out for choosing morality over innocence; for choosing knowledge over ignorance; for choosing duality over at-one-ment.

Inherited? A child inherits genes, for example but we do not hold a child responsible for what they could not have chosen, such as what they biologically were determined to inherit. If it was discovered that homosexuality is indeed beyond reasonable doubt a condition that we inherit, then no one would be able to condemn them morally. So it is a bit counter-intuitive to speak of inheritance and deny compassion based on that inheritance.

When I say that “compassion is in the eye of the beholder” (or something similar) then it has nothing to do with morality. Like spirits become one and that is what at-one-ment is about. The conflict leads us to surrendering and falling into the arms of the compassion that had the face of an avenger. It leads us to the choice: trust or perish.

Again, you stand outside of mainstream religions and that is why uniting them under the banner of “Compassion” seems such an achievable goal to you, because you do not believe in that which sets them apart as they believe in them. Preaching a Charter to men like you or Karen herself would be easy but this is possible because you are not deep rooted in the dogmas that make each religion what it is and not another.

You are probably right, I am outside of mainstream religion, but I am in the lap of God. I think that if the worst thing in the view of others happened to me, I would have to confess that I have reached fulfilment – if only I can let go ….

Shalom