Christian Anarchism

And what exactly is Ceasar's?
What is god's?

Is that statement meant to convey that ceasar in fact owns nothing(property can't be owned, only occupied) as everything is god's and everything on the planet is placed there for the use of all mankind and not just the elite or does it mean that god really has no interest in human affairs such as empires and kingdoms(for his kingdom is not of this world), or does it mean that christians have a mandate to increase god's dominion over this world and decrease ceasar's(satan is ruler of this world kind of thing) and all wannabe demigod's who have come before and after ceaser?

A scripture verse is not enough, please clarify what it is that you are actually trying to convey.

 

I don't put faith in wiki, it's an encyclopedia. The ideas were around before wiki(you haven't heard of leo tolstoy?), wiki is just a useful tool to summarize for me.

I don't care who is an anarchist and who isnt, i haven't asked if anybody is an anarchist. All i've asked is whether a particular faith is compatable with anarchist theory of self-governence.

Why all the Qs?

 

Even if you think god owns everything, that doesn't make any difference to the facts of economics as they pertain to the distribution of wealth in this world. Millions live on less than a dollar a day. The euro lottery jackpot last week was 83 million pounds.

Ceaser represents wordly power. The government. The militaristic money men who control the world.
Ceaser was emperor of Rome - so what is Ceaser's is the empire - wordly dominion and power.

In the verse I quoted jesus is saying don't resist, pay up your tax money for Roman 'protection' (Ceaser is also a mobster). So even civil resistance is discouraged - never mind revolution. Just be good boys and girls, realize that this world is only a place of misery and suffering and hope for your reward hearafter. Don't upset the government. Just think yourself lucky to escape eternal hellfire.

Later it was another Ceasar, Constantine who turned the christian cult into a state religion, and from then on, c/anity has always been an establishment religion which has sought to be at the heart of political power.

In WW I for example, millions of brits, my own great grandfather included, march off to be machine gunned down for 'GOD, KING & COUNTRY'.
Note how 'god' has become by the early 20th c intimately connected with the power structures of the dominant human culture of the day.
Silly Germans thought the same thing.....

Anyway - hope that helps make my thoughts on this more lucid.

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On a lighter note - maybe he told them to pay Ceasar his tax money because he realized the improvements to human civilization the Romans invented. But somehow, I doubt it. As will many christians sitting in their centrally heated homes after a hot bath and a shave.

 

Isn't that assuming that Jesus was speaking only in an economical sense, a topic he never addressed other than blessed are the poor?

And doesn't that interpretation of the text (don't upset the elites they keep you safe and fed) kind of go against the clear implications of his other sayings (such as: You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Matthew 20:24-28)?

 

Well, he said it when they asked about money and even looked at a coin to see whose head was inscribed on it, so it relates to economics. And economics is intimately bound up with systems of government, power etc.

If jesus contradicted himself - or rather, if contradictory words were put into the mouth of jesus by the writers of the gospels, that's just the nature of the beast.

If you were in the Roman empire and didn't go along with the order of the day, the penalty was death. Jesus and some followers were ready to die. Ok - they believed they would get a wonderful afterlife. and leave the world to it's troubles pretty well. Or in jesus case, he thought he was saving the world by dying. However, things haven't really changed that much as a result. His death did nothing to bring down the Roman empire. Even if that had been desirable.
If we want to change the system of government to whatever - anarchism, marxism, or indeed, do anything at all in the world, then throwing our lives away can't help. Political theory is concerned with the living, not the dead.

Anyway - if christians only do what god tells them and don't respect worldly powers then it would be OK if we could be assured that they have some line of actual communication from god. Since all they have is a text of ancient date and illogical structure which contains many untrue things and say they rely on that, I think we have to be very careful. And de facto the christians are the worldly power anyway.
Look at the pope and how much they must spend to kit out the old nazi as they do - meantime in Senagal, a 12 year old dies because they can't pay a few dollars for retro-viral drugs.(never mind they'll say, the child will soon be in paradise - assuming it was baptized)
The thing is a sham. A ploy to fool the masses of 'sheep' and keep them in fear and under control. And fleece them on a regular basis.

 

Kind of goes to the heart of the issue, doesn't it?

Is it the teachings of jesus that fool the masses and keep them in fear and under control, or was/is it the usurpation and distortion of jesus's teachings by the elite and the power hungry that keep them in fear and under control?

If the history of religion tells us anything it's that one man's feminine, pascifist teachings on tolerence and love(jesus, buddha, ect) can often be manipulated into a masculine, violent institution of intolerance and hatred.

Is the fault with the teachers of peace and understanding or their illegitimate successors?

For every religious person that you can bring up highlighting organized religion as a tool of oppression, i can bring up a spiritual person of the same vein of belief who used that belief as a tool for the benefit of the oppressed, outcast, and downtrodden and who used that belief as a tool against oppressors and fleecers.

 

There are deep questions here. I'll try to give a few thoughts, but obviously, it's impossible to see every angle of the thing, and there is much we don't know regarding the alleged life of jesus.

The churches and so on like to portray jesus as the 'prince of peace' etc, and the general idea is that the ethics he taught would, if taken up by all, lead to a peaceful world.
However, there are reasons to doubt this on several grounds.
First off, many of the commandments given in the sermon on the mount are actually the ethics of conflict seen from one side.
It is the persecuted man who is most blessed - so it is necessary to have a persecutor for this ethic to be valid. In a utopian society, there would be no persecution.
'Love thine enemies' - that's one which needs a huge amount of qualification. A deadly virus attacking my body is an enemy - it seems to me that if I think to myself 'I must love this enemy, and not offer it any violence' I am actually a candidtate for a mental hospital.

Similarly, having worked hard to achieve something, one should be prepared to defend it if necessary. If we were to take jesus literally, we in the west would have to just surrender to the forces of militant extremist Islam, and discard our cultural values. That would be an end to c/anity. Turning the other cheek to al queada though doesn't seem to be on the agendas of many christians. They are forced to be realists.

So in these and many other points I think jesus ethical system is outmoded and not practicable. In effect, christian countries have all been violent places engaged in frequent destrucive warfare, and often internal persecutions, even of christians of slightly different views.
One can say that they're not following the teachings, but another of the contradictions is the verse 'I come not to send peace upon the earth but a sword'.

As to the spiritual content of jesus teaching, it is really pretty abysmal. Either believe in the whole thing of a god who demands a bloody sacrifice to appease his wrath, or this 'god of love' will cast you into eternal torment because a mythic being called adam 'sinned'. That is the unfortunate basis of christian spirituality. It is a cult of fear. Fear of god, fear of hell, fear of life, of the body, of sex, fear of nature, fear of anarchy.


Sometimes, someone comes along who has a certain charisma. It is easy for them to make a big impression on others, and they are gifted with communication skills above those of their contemporaries.
It seems that if jeus did exist, he must have been such a charismatic being.
Hitler too had charisma, and many were bowled over when they saw him speak. There is always danger in giving away one's power to another - jesus, a priest, a guru, hitler, or anyone else.
For my part, I don't need a man nailed to a tree to save me from anything. I don't need a preacher or a 'leader' to tell me how to live or connect me to what is inside. If someone tries to fuck with me, I will retaliate. I am quite honest about that. I make no pretence, as do many christians that things could be otherwise among semi evolved primates. If we start out with dishonest ethics as christians do, there's no chance we can work things out harmoniously.

 

The reason that Jesus told His folowers to render the tribute to Caesar was because if He didn't, his whole mission would have got sidetracked onto the path of a wordly revolution. He wanted to change people's hearts, and thereby change the power structures.

When He said, 'I came not to bring peace, but a sword', the context He was speaking in, if you read the rest of the passage, is that the 'sword' separated those that received His teaching from those that didn't. He clearly stated that He gave His peace to those that received it, which was a supernatural peace-the 'sword' separated those that did and didn't receive it.

Authentic Christianity is not a 'cult of fear'. It was, quite the contrary, intended to be a 'cult of love'. Christ made it clear that if we didn't love each other as He loved us, even our enemies, we wouldn't go to heaven. It's not just about 'faith'. It's about love, first and foremost. St. John said that he that feared wasn't perfected in love, and that perfect love casts out fear. Without love, first and foremost, Christianity is meaningless.

 

He failed then, as niether people nor power structures changed very much. His followers replaced one set of superstitions with another.

That sounds like nonsense to me. Utter nonsense. You don't need a sword to separate people who hold different ideas unless you intend some form of violence. And christians have certainly been into their violence since the start of the thing.

So if he said we'll not go to heaven - by which he meant we'll go to hell, that is meant to engender 'fear of god' - fear of judgement. Do as your told or you'll be punished. A strange kind of love which could even concieve of such a ridiculous scheme, and then create a special place of eternal torment for those who don't 'love' enough.

 

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4312730277175242198&hl=en

 

Couldnt have said it better but I still want to add a principle to all this..

Far too often Christians spend too much time and energy trying to extrapolate on what a particular lesson or passage 'could also imply' or 'also mean for us'.
Critics love that even more (even seen here) because it certainly is focusing on the doubtful outer limits and not on the plain and obvious truth we are given.
Meh.
Here is what we do know from the text(s):
Jesus is being set up for pretty nasty 'no-win yes or no' trap question.
We do know that he managed to walk right right through the middle and leave all sides standing unsprung.
At least he does for the time being.
So if nothing else we know He was able to outwit his opponents snares and that testifies to his 'honest cunning'.

We also know that he did not favour a physical rebellion/sedition to start with the socio-economic system of the world.
Instead,
We find out he had a much more powerful and effective strategy in that he would change individual peoples hearts.
Change the system from the 'inside out' if you like.

What can you say?
He rolls through this beautifully and while it would be really neat to know just exactly what logical implications could be extrapolated to the whole economic system between Judeans, their tithes, taxes and tributes to Caesar for the next several decades until it all becomes a moot point anyways - we just dont need to know and we still have the plain things and the main things we do know.

- as much as beliefnet makes me cringe sometimes, I liked Borgs take on this:
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/20/story_2000_1.html

 

Is the truth here plain and obvious? I don't think so, given what christians have done over the centuries

Well, given the facts of history, his strategy has clearly failed. People are just as agressive, dominating and arrogant as they ever were - and in the case of many chritians, more so, as they think they've got 'god on their side'.
I don't think social reorganization was ever really on jesus agenda. I don't think either he, or many others at that time had such a concept in their heads even. It's more about avoiding judgement in a posited next life.
People are encouraged to accept their oppression here, so that they'll get a greater reward in heaven.

The things we do know don't amount to much. And really, none of it makes much sense.
But don't get me wrong. I actually think the Roman empire was a necessary developmental step for western civilization - it was certainly far superior to either the culture of the ancient jews or that of medieval (ie christian) europe.

 

The reference is to the plain and obvious ideas that are communicated in the text itself.
If you are going to just grab any individual words you see in a post and then make some 'yeah right' comment about an entirely different concept (based on a word you saw) then consider joining the 'total retard' forums.

Its as if you have absolutely no idea what happened in history or when or where or who.
In fact, brutal rome and barbarian europe enjoyed a whole lot more peace and freedom as Christianity and its principles spread throughout the peoples.
Alot of us will agree that maybe the worst thing to happen was when Christianity got taken up as any sort of 'official state religion' though.
But in spite of that it was a Godsend to Europe thats for sure.

Yes and no.
The bottom line is that you cannot lose the more people decide they want to go towards changing their heart and embrace love and self control.
We dont know who does or who says they do but the more we do the more things change for the better.

Uh no they do not in this case.
Judea had all sorts of economic situations going on (try that link) and it wasnt too many years after our 'give unto caesar' incident that the entire system gets wiped right off the face of the earth.
Im not sure if you heard about that.. its when Rome stomped, razed and annihilated them off the map?

What 'doesnt make sense' to you anyways?
Giving Caesar his coins and paying their Tithes?
Whats confusing about this to you?

Rome was a magnificent world power and governing force for the very effective reason that it was a brutal.. amazingly brutal force on the earth.
You sure as hell didnt have any 'Iraq' problem with these guys.
When they decided to take over your nation - none of this 'rebuilding' shit from them.
They stomp it into the ground and then build it the way they want.
Thats on day one!

Superior to Israelites?
Errr... well I dont know how you would conclude that but ok.
Superior to Christian Europe?
Now that is hard to make sense of since 'Christian Europe' is not exactly separated to easily from its forebearing roots and influences.

The 'Dark Ages' are a bitch but then again much maligned in popular culture anyways.
(where Im sure you got the concept from)
but,
The age of Romance was simply fantastic and the Renaissance and ages of Scientific Enlightenment are the cats ass my friend.
Actually, the 'New World' really has been amazing and so many great things to say about it.
Yes, it does indeed seemed to have declined 'in spirit' the last half century but ups and downs.

 

Elproximo is a muslim in favor of female circumcision and males . that about rounds him up completely .

 

More christian insults!! It's what I expect given the recored of christianity, which given the comment

you are not very familiar with.

Why resort to personal insults? Is it because you can't defend the cristian cult in any other way?

It was a disaster in most respects - not much point in giving many examples, but just consider the effect that idea of man as having a right to dominate all life on this planet as taught in the OT has had.
Also the glorification of throwing one's life away has played well into the hands of christian rulers who wanted to fight their wars of self aggrandizement

But c/anity hasn't changed people in sufficient numbers to be an effective force. Many christians are just as screwed as the next person, and often, keen to attribute 'hate' to thier critics, which shows they haven't learned a thing.

The whole illogial structure of the cult makes no sense to me.

Sounds a bit like america today.

The Romans were clean, they bathed regularly - medievel monks thought lice were 'god's pearls' and were gratified if they had them.
The Romans lived in nice, centrally heated villas - the medieval's lived in filthy conditions in either castles, which they needed to defend themselves from other christians, or what were little better than mud huts.
The list of Roman advances is a long one. Our western culture has only caught up with the Romans during the last couple of centuries.

The romantic age was started by the likes of Byron and Beethoven - nothing at all to do with c/anity. Romantic philosphers such as Voltaire, and poets such as Shelly were clearly very much against c/anity.
In the renaissance, the christians were still burning their Brunos and tormenting scientists like Galileo. And as any student of history will tell you, it was largely a resurgence of pre-christian pagan ideas that sparked off the renaissance.

 

The greeks were far more advance than the romans. but wars and invasions destroy the delicate elite class.

 

Yes - in some ways they were. But the Romans made advances in things like engineering etc (eg inventing the arch) which surpassed the greeks. Greek culture was though far 'sweeter' than that of Rome.
I'd better cover my ass here, and say too that I'm aware of the brutal nature of some Roman cultural practices - gladiators, cruel punishmnets etc. But today in europe and the USA the same thing goes on a kind of sublimated level. Gladiatorial fights have been replaced by violent videos - an advance which has more to do with scientific than moral progress.
The cruel and inhumane punishments still go on in many palces, but in a more 'sterile' form.

 

Many of the elite greeks left and went to Rome SINCE the roman army was larger "Italy was also a much larger realstate than the greek islands" and the romans quickly pick up the greeks work. were roman power was the greeks were found "Egypt was a classic example" many tombs of greeks were found in egypt along with they'r butt buddies the Romans.

 

Not video games = Football, or mechanize death like Auto racing .

 

The Spartans might had sweet love affair among them self and young teen boys. But in general this guys were far from sweet.