Jesus's Family Values

[Originally posted December 10, 2008, and inspired by this Newsweek cover article by Lisa Miller.]

The Biblical patriarchs had as many wives and concubines as they could afford. In fact, polygamy was (and I daresay is) the ideal for People of the Book (and having multiple wives, technically, is polygyny -- "The More You Know"!). Poor people tended toward monogamy solely because they couldn't afford more bitches. (And I use "bitches" in this post only because the Bible treats women on par with female dogs: as a male's property. Hell, only a handful of women in the entire Bible are even bothered to be named. You get maybe a thousand male names from all the chapters/verses regarding all the begetting and begetting and begetting, but essentially no female names. And the begetting was a lot tougher on them.)

I fervently believe traditional marriage must be restored. Still, I'm a modern guy. I bend with the times. I don't think we have to go back to making women chattel. Also, I don't get money mixed up in my relationships. Especially now that I, personally, don't have any to speak of.

Tacks (brass): I want ten wives (starters) who pay for anything and everything I want to do/to have/need/merely want.

But that's me. A real traditionalist.

But I know a lot of people out there are fighting for traditional marriage as taught by Jesus: a union of one man and one woman.

The problem being that Jesus never said, never gave any indication, that this is what marriage is supposed to be. In fact, since Jesus was a Jewish man of his times, he would have been more than OK with polygamy.

Jesus believed the end of the world was at hand. By example, he taught celibacy. He did so, in part, likely because in a nonexistent world a family doesn't need kids to ensure its prosperity. As part of this apocalyptic view, Jesus encouraged people to leave their families to follow him and, generally, not to care about these families because they were earthly things, soon to be rendered unimportant by God's appearance on earth, which he did often say was at hand (as in during his lifetime or shortly thereafter).

So Christians who follow Jesus's actual teaching should desert their families, if they have them, (but not get divorced). And if they don't have families, they shouldn't marry at all.

The family values Christianity currently teaches are the exact opposite of those Jesus taught (in essence: the family has no value whatsoever). Preachers go on and on about the family being the bedrock of civilization.

Such preaching couldn't be more anti-Christian.

If Christian preachers get what they want -- Jesus's family values imposed on America -- the result will be the annihilation of our concept of family.

Personally, I don't need nor want that. I'd be fine, simply, with ten wives.

...At least for starters.

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My Apartment Is A Prison

I'm at the coffeehouse I so often go to, but haven't been to since I began my current pain-management regimen.

I've stayed away because I haven't wanted to aggravate the pain in my legs by walking the four block round-trip to here and back home. I also thought it would be a bad idea to go to a noisy place that could do nothing but exacerbate my ever-present migraine.

But I'm here today. I came out... To discover that, as always, I'm right.

Today I awoke to a studio apartment that felt like a jail cell -- or, better, a holding cell. I've been in quite a few of those, so it's better for me to make a comparison to one of those since I know how it induces claustrophobia and the desire for -- to the exclusion of all other desires -- escape.

So I put a hat over my greasy hair and bellowed a Braveheart FREEEEEDOM! as I locked my apartment door behind me as I left.

My stilt-y, unbending legs tottered me here and I ordered my usual sixteen ounces of coffee, to which I added a quarter-ounce of half-and-half, seven heaping teaspoons of Sugar In the Raw, and two taps of powdered cinnamon.

I scored a spot on the love seat, but was bothered by the noise the few, but loud-talking -laughing -moving -breathing -existing, people made. So I moved to an outdoor table, where I sat and smoked until I couldn't take the annoyance of the line of people that qued up to ask me for a cigarette. (See this post for how I feel about would-be cig-bummers.)

back inside, it had quieted down in the time it took me to smoke two cigarettes. So I finished my coffee and got a refill to try to remedy my lethargy (which you can read about in my previous post).

Then the place filled in and the people who took the table behind me began playing dominoes or something like it. Something that involved blocks or tiles that someone was always hammering into the table or shuffling with enough force to crack to tabletop.

...Ug.

It's best for me to go home and lock myself safely back into my apartment.

...How long will I have to jail myself? Methadone: Take me away! ...Er, Set me free!

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The Methadone May Be Starting To Work...

...because I'm feeling very lethargic -- again. I also think my pain may be -- maybe -- reduced from where it was Monday, when I began taking Methadone.

So I'll be posting short, new, posts like this one when I can, and otherwise updating the blog with stuff from Essays About Anything (see the post below this one) when I don't feel up to writing new stuff.

...As it is, I can't even muster the energy to play video games.

And that, friends, is the very definition of lethargy.

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The Good News Of Judas Iscariot

I watched a program on the Gospel of Judas. In response to whether this noncanonical gospel is important, a priest/reverend responded with this (paraphrase): I can't imagine anyone wanting or needing more than Mark, Matthew, Luke and John. He made it seem preposterous that a noncanonical gospel would have any value or worth.

(Further detail: This priest/reverend -- whatever he's called depending on how his religious hammer hangs -- holds televised Mass or whatever you call it, and has been doing so for what seems like decades. He has full, gray hair, a not-overdone tanning-booth complexion, and great teeth... His native habitat must be a PoliGrip commercial.)

About one hundred gospels and other texts regarding Jesus (that we know of) were created in the second, third and fourth centuries. All were made for the purposes of preserving, in writing, what Jesus taught.

Aside: The stories, teachings, etc. that eventually comprised individual gospels and other texts were taught, spread, and popularized orally before they were committed to papyri. Which is to say that all gospels/other texts included in and excluded from the New Testament were guaranteed to have errors, embellishments and the like.

A game of telephone with twenty people can't pass one sentence intact.

Back to it: The reason we have MML&J in the New Testament instead of or alongside the Gospel of Thomas, Mary Magdelene and/or many others is that the Catholic Council of Hippo circa 390 chose what books, from then on, made up the New Testament. The gospels of MML&J were included, and at least twenty (gospels) were excluded.

In the program I watched a scholar stated that MML&J are the narrative gospels. They are stories: Jesus did this, did that, was crucified and resurrected. As such, the scholar noted (most likely with a British accent -- the possession of which increases one's credibility at least twofold), they are the gospels that are most easily understood.

However, MML&J contradict one another and differ in extremely important ways on extremely important things. Noncanonical texts could, possibly, help explain these contradictions and differences.

(Long example of the canonical gospels differing: Only Matthew and Luke wrote that Mary was a virgin when she conceived and gave birth. And Matt's and Luke's gospels differ in many ways many times regarding Jesus's birth.

Still, Matt and Luke began their gospels with Jesus's birth, so it makes sense that they would discuss the birth's circumstances. Mark and John began their writings with Jesus's baptism, and so don't mention Jesus's birth. Didn't bother to shoehorn in a mention of the only virgin conception and birth that ever occurred. To dedicate even one verse to something that cannot and has not been done, except in the case of Jesus and Mary, not just for humans, but virtually all multicelled organisms.)

Many of the noncanonical gospels deal mostly or wholly only with what Jesus said. The Gospel of Thomas is a perfect example: It's structure is: "Jesus said: yadda yadda yadda. Jesus said: yadda yadda yadda." Again and again, then abrupt end.

Many of these gospels do not mention Jesus's crucifixion. Far more gospels aren't concerned with Jesus's death than are. (Christianity being based largely on MML&J is, in part, why Christians celebrate Jesus the miracle man-god and freely disregard the fact that Jesus only cared about poor people and was a radical pacifist. The US's outgoing president is considered one of the most religious POTUS-es in history. Obviously: Following Jesus's example, W. got the US into a war on pretenses he knew to be false, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths, is bailing out financial-services firms with billions of dollars -- and those firms currently are giving employees billions of dollars in Christmas bonuses -- while allowing these firms' victims, the poor, to lose their homes -- and torturing people in violation of US and international law. Et cetera et cetera etc.)

At least one noncanonical text deals with Jesus's "missing years": the time in Jesus's life between his birth and crucifixion. Thirty years.

All of the above makes me wonder how a person like The PoliGrip Preacher possibly be satisfied only with MML&J? These four gospels disagree, contradict one another, don't account for almost all of Jesus's life, and on and on.

A priest/reverend is supposed to be an expert on Jesus's life. If a historian chooses to become an expert on Abraham Lincoln, it seems PoliGrip Preacher would suggest the historian only take into account Abe's birth and the year up to and including his death. Wanting more information would be just just plain silly.

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Warning: This Post Contains Objectionable Material If You Object To Reality

Last night I watched a PBS show about stress.

Stress.

But just before the show began, words on the teevee screen and an announcer announced: "This program contains material some viewers may find objectionable."

I watched the show. Didn't see a single bare breast -- nor any exposed genitalia -- nor hear a single swear word. So no nudity, no "bad" words (as though words can, in and of themselves, be bad. Here's this: Fuck. The F-word. I just typed it, you just read it. Did it hurt you? What's wrong with it for fuck's sake?), not even talk of sex (which people spend their lives trying to have and having, but can't stand to have discussed on their televisions).

So their were none of the usual things that cause American teevee viewers to get mad.

...The show focused on how stress affects a certain group of baboons, and reveals that this stress is caused by the extremely hierarchical system the baboons lived under. As one of the researchers on the show put it: Baboons only need to spend three hours a day finding food, so they spend the rest of their time giving each other grief. This "grief" is doled out to establish and maintain their society's hierarchy.

Then the show discussed Britons who worked in the Civil Service, where every worker knows exactly where he/she stands in the hierarchy. Workers are even labeled with numbers: so a two in a certain function knows a three can give them shit, while they cannot give the three shit, but the two can give ones shit.

So Britons in the Civil Service are very neatly analogous to the baboon society.

The baboon researcher concerned himself with the levels of stress hormones in the baboons, and found that the lower the rank, the higher the stress. And the higher the stress, the worse that baboon's health would be. This is exactly the same for the Britons in the Civil Service and humans in general.

...After viewing the program in its entirety, I realized that the "material some viewers may find objectionable" is the fact that humans can learn a hell of a lot from baboons because we're so closely related, genetically, to them. And that this fact is incontrovertible.

The program asked, toward its end: "Are humans brave enough to learn from baboons?"

I interpreted this to be: Can we get religious people who, in Western society's religions, believe in human exceptionalism out of science's way? Will we be able to, one day, run a show about the incredible similarities primates (including humans) exhibit without having to take a bow to religion?

Succinctly: Are humans brave enough to discard religion (or at least completely banish it from the scientific realm because it has absolutely nothing to offer) in the pursuit of scientific truth -- aka truth -- and to allow teevee programs to present this fact: that humans are just another member of the order primates?

And can we grow the fuck up enough to the point where humans don't give a fuck about the casual use of the word "fuck"? Right now there are adults who are afraid to use to use certain words because they are "bad." Grow the fuck up!

...But the above was a way-off tangent. This question is more important to humanity: Can we admit that religion adds nothing to our understanding of the world? Can teevee programs that deal with how life and humans really are be freed from warning people not to watch them because they present the truth? ...Getting rid of these warnings is important because idiotic parents may use them to prevent their children from being presented with the truth of the human condition. Children must be freed from their parents' ignorance.

And we need to admit that our religions have only ever served to obstruct an informed and intelligent understanding of humanity and the world and universe of which we are a part. ...For god's sake, it took until the year 1992 -- nineteen ninety-two! -- for the Catholic church to apologize to Galileo for ruining his life. And he lived circa 1600! Therefore, it took the Church about four hundred years to say that it was OK for Galileo to have posited that the earth revolves around the sun -- which members of the Vatican must have verified for themselves with their own telescopes (since they had the money for them), yet still condemned!

All of which is to say (write): Humans -- especially children with ignorant parents -- should not be warned that they are about to be presented truths that oppose their religious beliefs. These beliefs need to be challenged so they can subsequently be discarded. Religion has no place in the presentation of knowledge since its only object is to hinder it, as it has done since humans invented it.

Hundreds of years ago Galileo proved the utility of the telescope and how inutile religion is. If only the world subsequently kept the telescope and discarded religion. But we wanted to have out cake and the Spanish Inquisition too.

Are we brave enough to accept that baboons are more intelligent than their human primate cousins, in that they haven't invented religions to torture themselves with (literally and figuratively)?

PS regarding my last post: I'm already over getting tired from taking Methadone. And am in extreme fucking pain.

...Of note: Humans knew methadone to be an effective painkiller through its being tested on animals, most importantly non-human primates. And it's the way we evaluate all drugs before their use on humans is OK'd. If humans were exceptional compared to the rest of animals, we wouldn't learn a goddam thing by testing them for safety and efficacy on these non-human animals before using them on humans, because humans would be so radically different from our test subjects.

PPS: I apologize that this post is all over the place. I'm in too much pain to concentrate and put together a cogent argument for or against whatever I'm for or against here.

But there's an argument made somewhere in this post. it's up to you, dear reader, to put it together. It's like a jigsaw puzzle! The parts are there... Even if there are a surplus of them...

Take what's needed, toss out what isn't, until you have a coherent argument!

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