Message 10

Hello, friends. Recently I've been writing alot about politics, current events and such. In January of this year it looked like a "fake alien invasion" was about to occur. It didn't, obviously. Whole thing was forgotten. Wonder why.

But now I'll turn again to religion and the esoteric. One thing that has been bothering me for a long time now is this whole "sissy" Jesus image and culture. Tell you right now, based on all information I've seen, I don't think that's the real "Jesus". Actually, not even close. I used to think the same things, years ago, that the traditional "feminine" Jesus was true. But when I started to read the NT in an accurate modern translation, I saw that that wasn't what was really there, in the original ancient writings. The opposite, in fact--what I saw was a "gritty" and "salty" personality, not an effeminate one, a hard personality, which dealt with really hard and difficult and terrible realities, and grappled with life's worst and most terrible issues. Death. Pain. Horror. The dreadful and tragic and ruthless. Maybe because that was the kind of world the Israelites of that time lived in--under the ruthless hegemony of the Romans, in which they could be tortured, executed, sent to the slave galleys, and such, for hardly anything, because they didn't say "Hail, Caesar!" with enough enthusiasm when Roman troops marched by. Those people really had a bad lot as a subject nation of the Empire. Their lives had little value to it, it appears.

So out of this world Yeshua came, as maybe the last hope of a people who probably felt forsaken by Hope itself. Who were down to their last reserves of optimism, confidence, good cheer. The Messiah, a mighty, conquering hero, long predicted in their scriptures, who would crush Israel's enemies under iron chariot wheels, tread them down, like grapes in a wine press, their blood in rivulets on the ground--put them to the sword, without pity or mercy, another Joshua or David, was perhaps their last card, that they could play. This wasn't a world of "wimps", or weaklings. Or "girlymen". It was a macho world, and it had little choice but to be that. You had to have all the machismo you could muster, just to survive.

And Yeshua, who was claiming to be that "Messiah", had to fit this bill, live up to these expectations. It was a tall order. It would take a special kind of person, I think, one of unusual strength and self-confidence, of absolute courage, to even dare to put his own name in the same sentence with that legendary phrase, the Messiah, and be taken seriously, even for one second. So I figure Yeshua had been subjected to many tests of character, and passed them, for anyone of that time, Jew or Roman, to have become one of his followers. I don't see an effeminate, weak "girlyman" as ever having been able to build a following among the people of that time. Such a thing just wasn't in the script, the "narrative" of that time, that culture.

So, since the original ancient writings strongly suggest otherwise, and many details in the NT give a very different picture, I think the "sissy" Jesus image and culture grew up in later centuries, probably being a product of the early Catholic Church. It arose from misinterpretations of some of the phrases in the NT, which would have seemed strange and incomprehensible to people in Dark Age Europe, since they didn't know the original context in which those words were spoken. So everything gradually got twisted around and warped, I think, and the end result was a completely different picture of Yeshua and his movement, and the original was lost right up to this day. I've long suspected that the original and real Jesus Christ never lasted beyond the Third Century A.D. and the establishment of the Roman Empire's version of him and his religion, which became known as the Roman Catholic Church. The basic story we see in Catholicism, based on the facts recorded in the NT, I think is accurate, but interpretations of many of those facts, and of many of Jesus' sayings, I think are radically false (don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the Gospels and other NT books are false, not historically accurate, no, I'm confident they are true, and were written by who they've for centuries been believed to have been written by, i.e., Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, etc. I'm not one of those who think those texts were written 150 years later by unknown persons. I think people of NT times were smart enough to know what occurred in their own day).

So, listen, folks, I think that whole "womanish" culture of Christianity is a misreading. Institutional Christianity, Catholic and Protestant, tends to ignore all the elements in the NT writings that contradict that womanish interpretation. As if they don't see them--they're there, but for some reason they don't see them. I was astonished, a few years ago, to see in one of the NT books an incident in which Yeshua tells the disciples that they need to have a few weapons among them, because things were going to get more dangerous--the Pharisees and other enemies were closing in on them, forces of evil were getting more virulent and threatening, more desperate and determined, so, might try to do them physical harm. The men said they had two swords among them, and Yeshua said that was enough. Just that, no more on that subject, but I suppose it's possible that that issue of physical violence, altercation, came up other times and simply is not mentioned by the Gospel writers. This proves that Jesus Christ was not ideologically opposed to fighting, to war, in all circumstances--there were some circumstances where he did approve of it, so you can't say he categorically opposed the use of all force in all situations. Which is what we've been led to believe by institutional Christian religion for about one thousand, five hundred years. And which just makes me more sure that institutional Christianity, for all these centuries, has been wrong about many fundamental and important issues. I'm amazed that all the Christian religious leaders and scholars, far as I know, have missed things like this. I've certainly never heard any of them mention this scripture--about weapons--ever, anywhere. Why? How could they not? It's right there in their own Bibles which they are constantly waving around. Have they never seen it? I'm just baffled by this. They've been telling us for a thousand years or more that Jesus was a wimpy "peacenik" type who was incapable of any kind of macho action in any circumstances and advocated doing nothing in the face of physical violence and harm to innocent persons, and even forbid any kind of physical retaliation against criminals, attackers, who were doing physical violence to people without any justification, and actually required his followers to allow any enemy or attacker to do them harm, without any resistance. To just stand there and do nothing--and be a sheep going to slaughter. To just stand there and allow someone to kill you--or your family or friends. This has to be the most odious and reprehensible "doctrine" ever thought up by any philosopher, religious figure or political theorist ever in human history. Just madness, I'd say, that goes against every basic principle of life, the most obvious and self-evident ones. The basic idea that it is one's duty to protect and defend oneself and one's loved ones, family, friends, and property and best interests, against any creature that would try to harm them. Has this odious and detestable idea possibly led to the deaths of or harm to many thousands of innocent people, their property, livelihoods, and such, for about fifteen centuries? Maybe even before that. If people believed this in the "Age of Martyrs"--til about 315 A.D.--I'm wondering if maybe many of them got killed when really they shouldn't have, because they believed that "Jesus", Yeshua, demanded that they allow themselves to be killed, forbid them to do anything in their own self-defense, because he categorically opposed any kind of self-defense. Probably because of that infamous "turn the other cheek" passage in the NT books.

Honestly I hate that passage, not because it really means that you're not allowed to defend yourself, but because it has been I think mistakenly interpreted as meaning that. I don't think that's what it means, folks, to put it bluntly. I think it means don't respond to a provocation (I've said this before on this website). A slap in the face was a common provocation or insult in those times. Roman soldiers did this kind of thing, I think, to try to get Jews or others under Rome's boot heel to hit back at them, so they could then arrest them for "sedition or violence against Rome", then drag them away to be flogged or executed. Yeshua told the people how to deal with this tactic--don't hit back right then, that's what they want you to do--offer the other cheek, so they can strike it, too. Because if you do that they can't hit you again, because it's a divine law that they can't. God enforces this with his own power. You just make use, so to speak, of this divine law, which ensures that that tactic of provocation won't work. It's one of God's ways of defeating evil people, that he's given to us. Satan knows of that law, but is hoping you don't. Knows that if you respond to such a provocation, you lose. But that if you don't, he loses.

You need to understand the difference between a provocation and a real attack or threat of one. You do respond to that. You see this in just about every western movie. Watch how Eastwood, Wayne or the Rifleman deal with criminals, outlaws, when there's a showdown in the town street. They always wait to see what the outlaw will do. He usually begins with verbal taunts, insults. But the good guy is careful to not react much to this--he might say a few innocuous words in response, but he's carefully "holding his guns", until the bad guy crosses a certain line. Which is, of course, the real threat, like going for his gun. The second the bad guy does this, he, the good guy, responds, finally, and goes for his gun. And in a split second, the showdown is over--and the villain falls dead in the street. Because the good guy understood that divine law: since he didn't respond to the villain's series of ugly insults and snide remarks, but waited until he actually did something indicating an intent to do physical harm, he, the hero, won the fight. Because, apparently, that law of the provocation always holds. It holds now just as it did in the days of the Old West, and 2000 years ago when Yeshua put it into words: "If someone provokes you, don't respond to it, and just stand and let him try it again--and a second and third time, if he wants to, and wait until he crosses that line and attempts some kind of real harm--if he does that, he's lost the fight, and you've got 'im in the bag...".