ROME - Pope Benedict XVI presided over the Good Friday night Way of the Cross procession at the Colosseum during a driving rainstorm but did not carry the cross as planned during the tradition, which was dedicated to religious freedom this year.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23748185/

I would submit to you that such power maintenance is nearly universal in all religions. I only use the word ‘nearly’ because there might yet be one that does not, although I haven’t come across it.

Religion gives people the false authority that its particular believers are better than everyone else. “After all,” they reason, “we know the truth, and they don’t.”

It seems like most Christians still look to the Bible for moral answers. Just yesterday I heard a “moderate” Christian saying that the ten commandments are God’s word. This is the main reason I *fight* religion rather than condone it, the Hypocrisy.

I do not claim to have the right answers on the cases I raised, but I will no longer let Ancient script CLOUD my judgement on these vital issues WHATSOEVER. Nor do I think it wise for you to advocate ignorance.

I say that as a Chritstian.

The Maundy Thursday sermon I heard took the trouble to explain the connection between our sins and Jesus dying.

The insight that formed the basis of Jesus’s teaching could have kept him out in the wilderness, as it has for so many hermit-theologians before and since. But after only a month or so, he decided to take his message into the streets, to try to make a positive difference in the world. Because his message resonated with the people, and began to shake existing power structures, he became a threat. Maintaining order meant silencing him, and the expedient way at that time was execution.

The sermon was to Christians, who take it for granted that following Jesus can save people from their sins. You’ve probably had more experience with people whose Christianity actually locks them into destructive patterns of behavior, rather than releasing them. So have I. But I’d like to explain how the actions of Jesus might have freed a few people in his time, and then make a slightly weaker argument involving iteration.

You’ll have to bear with me here, because this may be difficult to imagine, but the religion Jesus was born into was corrupt, and its leaders maintained their power by scapegoating unpopular groups. Furthermore, it was full of arbitrary rules with little basis in reality; the enforcers of those rules had rigged the system for their own gain, at the expense of the powerless.

Being a shrewd fellow, he also noticed that scapegoating undermines the natural incentive that causes sane people to behave well: members of persecuted groups have no chance of being regarded as good people by the mainstream, no matter what they do. So, in a prisoner’s dilemma situation (cf. Axelrod on arbitrary identifiers, Harnessing Complexity), they can generally assume that fellow agents are unlikely to trust them, and so the rational choice is usually the most selfish one.

Jesus offered them an alternative: “Yes, I’m a Samaritan, so I do have some Palestinian heritage,” a follower of his might say, “but now I’m a subject of the Kingdom of Heaven. I’m not loyal to my Philistine ancestors, but to [euphemism for YHWH], the only true King. I saw this guru last week, and he told me ‘turn away, and sin no more’. So that’s just what I did.” And if they actually behaved well, there was half a chance that other residents of Judea would, in fact, begin to trust them.

The same schtick worked for other outcasts, whom economic circumstances had forced to, e.g., sell their bodies, or worse, to do business with the filthy gentiles in the occupational government. Even a few people whose leprosy had progressed to the non-contagious stage could re-join polite society, if the guru was willing to touch them, and if they promised they’d be good people afterward.

Saul of Tarsus, in a decision that was controversial at the time, decided to offer this same radical re-identification to the uncircumcized and (ceremonially) unwashed masses. History has mostly justified this decision, though the jury is still out on his choice to co-opt the Egyptian afterlife symbology from the Cult of Isis. At any rate, he taught people to reject the identity of “sinner”, and, if Roman records are to be believed, his students worked very hard to treat people well.

Now let’s say there’s a member of 20th century society, call him Mr. X. Being a member of a scapegoated group, he isn’t trusted, so the most rational way for him to make money is by selfish, criminal activity (though he doesn’t break into houses where the bathroom light is left on…he might later advise people to leave the light on while on vacation, to prevent burgularies….). He’s caught by the police, and in prison he’s offered the chance to adopt a new culture, to radically change his identity. He gets this idea from many sources, including Yeshua of Nazareth. This action forces society to give him a second chance, to suspend their disbelief in his trustworthiness. This might allow him to become a respectable citizen, and to earn his living honestly, which might be seen as “salvation from sin”, if seen from a spiritual perspective. If he encourages others to take this same action, it will deprive the existing powers of a valuable pool of scapegoats, and threaten the existing power structure. It being the 1st milennium AD, not the more-enlightened third millenium, in which we live, such a man might be killed to end the threat.

Wait, I changed my mind…the last inital is too formal. Use a first name instead, like…uh…Malcolm.

But yes, the message that a person can re-create their identity (even if that identity is one they’ve been saddled with from birth) is a message that Jesus decided to spread, even though preaching it caused authorities to execute him. And even to this day, that message allows people to start over, to change their evil ways.

As a Christian, I’m committed to spread that message. Anyone who really follows Jesus’s example would lay down his life to save others from the scapegoat-based politics of Fred Phelps, Strom Thurmond, George W. Bush, or Louis Farrakhan…in my opinion. Most of the people who identify as Christian in this country seem to define that word differently. And I can’t blame you for following the popular usage of the term.

I also can’t blame you for seeing “Jesus died to save us from our sins” as a non sequitur, when that’s how most preachers present it. But it really isn’t, in my humble opinion.

I am still thinking and pondering about a post.