GRAVE OF THE CROSS


 

It is unfortunate that common sense needs a guidebook. It is baffling that humanity, with common birthright above other beasts, should require a reminder of the responsibility of that status. It should appear an insult, to creatures endowed with reason, that proper conduct would not also be commensurate.

But it's not easy, being human. It's not just reason which steers our ships. We are buffeted by the adverse whims of emotion and ego. Our common sense is hostage to those other qualities of our composition. Animals have no art; it takes all their time just to live. That is their life. Our advanced genes allow for consideration beyond mere survival -- we have the ability to think of more than mere existence.

Two thousand years ago, when inequity and its ugly sister, iniquity, competed against the rights of reason, a guidebook was conceived and promulgated. In time, everyone applauded the wonderful message within its pages. Everyone acknowledged how obvious and simple it all appeared. And somehow, in their hearts, everyone knew they'd already known this before. From time to time, they just "forgot." Yet reason would beckon the obvious truth: if they could kill someone, that someone could also kill them. "Do unto others" was a most obvious concept. Indeed, it beats in the heart of all religions.

 

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What could not be guessed, but which was contingent upon the Do Only Good precept, was the unprovable reward of a mysterious Paradise after one had ceased to count in the world of the living ... an implied, though bogus promise: cease to exist ... and you'll begin to "exist."

Yet, how could that ever have been a convincing promise: Die first ... and then you can have what you were denied in life? To a human -- one of reason, of logic, of common sense -- this should appear a false carrot of inducement, a dissembling argument designed to make people civilized by the false hope of promise irredeemable --
better be good or you won't get dessert.

We've all heard the slogans, seen them on bumperstickers ... "Let go -- Let God," "Kingdom of Heaven," "Fear of God," and so forth. The underlying impression commonly implied in these and other such capsule concepts is that one's problems can be solved by a mysterious "Other;" that one need only have a proper attitude of respect and fear of this Other in order to qualify for such protection and other gifts; and that one cannot hope to enjoy a better life after death without such blind faith.

It should be realized, however, that such beckoning blanket of "grace" was a necessary construct of religion's early summons. Without such blind belief, the Faith would have gained no foothold. There would have been no Catholics, no Protestants, no Christians of any stripe. Without the early coercion of proselytizers and evangelizers for the "new" religion, there would have been no Christians at all.

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Rome was God, once. Accomplished emperors wanted such deification and were accordingly afforded that lofty status to equate them with established stars of the pagan pantheon. Anyone who refused to burn respectful incense before such human "gods" would pay for this treason. Pagans were tolerant of imperial vanity, but Christians had focused on only one in that pantheon and knew that men were not gods, even if they were kings. Many died for this resolve. Lion food.

With ultimate irony in a strange reversal of convictions, what once was anathema now became fashionable ... in 313 A.D., Emperor Constantine himself was converted to Christianity and, by extension, all of Rome. In those days this meant, effectively, all of the world, for Rome controlled that world.

But the new faith was still a baby; no one yet knew what it meant to be a "Christian." No worry. There were many who would eagerly assume the role to so instruct. They didn't know, either, but personal credit would later be ascribed to those of most forceful imaginings.

A few centuries before Constantine, Justin the Philosopher rewrote scripture to posit the existence of demons ... which tindered the fires of later fantasists who, with equal invention, gave evil a distant, identifiable source. Nearly three centuries later (a few decades after Constantine) a new state-sponsored voice would add his own legacy of damnation -- Augustine of Hippo, after unsuccessful denial of his own lust, took it upon himself to paint all of mankind with his own tainted brush:

 

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everyone was a sinner. His ambition in the newly-formed religion was sanctioned by the government and Augustine's detractors, though reasonable men, were condemned as heretics for refusing to support Augustine's fantasies of sexual desire as the sin corrupting humans at conception since the time of Adam.

To this day, we have suffered the result of Augustine's sanctimony: 1600 years of damnation as hopeless sinners from birth, with promise after death of a decent life reserved for only those who had been good in this one.

Reason now begs reformation. The legacy of religion has not achieved its intended noble aim ... we are not better for it. We are still the children of cruelty in every "godly" country. Our various faiths inevitably forget their common basis of love and compassion in a delusion of supremacy. Centuries of polished rhetoric, varied only by region, vie for support from a foundering flock.

We are not faithful to humanity because of our religion; our loyalties lie only with the puffery of a Church grown old and still ineffective in its vacant promise to make us better people. The time is past for such posturing which seeks to keep us obedient as dogs or babies, attendant to its false promise, gratefully kissing the tattered robes of ritual. The time is now to restore the faith we'd so long misplaced, to honor ourselves and each other for the stronger bond of common heritage ... to resurrect mankind from the grave of the cross.