GLOBAL GOVERNANCE

In sci-fi movies and television shows, the earth and other planets with intelligent life-forms are either part of  a federation of planets or galactic empires.   If Earth is included in such fantasies, there is the question of how we humans became unified enough to form a global governing entity that eons from now could belong to a federation of planets.  The hinted or suggested answer is that it took some natural or man-made disaster to get the remnant of humans who survived to realize that we needed each other (what I have referred to in earlier posts as the Impulse of Religion) to create a form of governance that permitted us to speak as one planet within a federation of planets.  The other suggestion is that as a planet we were faced with a hostile extraterrestrial threat from another planet in a different solar system or galaxy.

What I find interesting in such sci-fi fantasies is the accepted insight that global governance is hypothetically possible but largely made so because the nations of the world finally woke up to the fact that failure to get along with each other as independent nations would lead to the annihilation of human life on this planet.  This awareness, however, is not something that writers of science fiction came up with.  The idea of nations coming together to establish some form of global governance has been around since the early20th century as response to the devastation to civilian life caused by wars.   The League of Nations, the Geneva Conventions, and the establishment of the United Nations were all a response to the increasing threat of global annihilation caused by war.  Today we face an immanent threat to our mutual wellbeing, climate change.  

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While climate change is not new to our planet, its cause being linked to human activity is and that cause is not merely linked to spewing carbon from fossil fuels and the mass production of methane gas and other chemical being released into the atmosphere which are all factors, but what gives rise to these factors is the drive to accumulate wealth; in short, money.  In my last post, I suggested a new form of economy, Survivalism; named so because the survival of life as we know it on our planet should be and must be given the highest priority of every nation. Unfortunately it is not and that it is not largely due to the conflict it runs into with monetary economics which, as I have mentioned in my last post, has weakened the will of nations and corporations to effectively do something about climate change.  The pursuit of monetary wealth is a will-killer.

Survivalism as an economic system requires governance.  As the world needs to switch its focus from economic wealth to planetary health as the goal of a global economy, there is also a need for global governance.  This begs an important question, "If we can't get along now, how can one ever expect to get along enough to switch both economic and political gears to act as a unified people who sole purpose is the preservation of life on this planet?"  

The movie and television industries have done their share of producing movies and documentaries presenting us with a doomsday scenarios of what will happened if we don't immediately start addressing the host of problems that exist because of climate change; such as, mass migrations, food shortages, and the specter of world war.  It is only after such situations decimate most of the earth and its human, other animal, and plant populations will a remnant of those who survive start to rebuild a new and hopefully much different world.  

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The Book of Genesis and other ancient religious writings talk about natural cataclysms that reduced the population of the world to a mere handful of people.  The book of Genesis also tells us how an attempt to global governance fell apart as people tried to build an empire that would reach heaven and the very throne of God.  Of course, such stories are myths, but they reflect an intuition about the result of human hubris that ultimately leads to global chaos. I would venture to say that such mythic stories are based on long forgotten historical facts that only survive in their mythic retelling.   

Anthropologists are consistently finding remains of civilizations that predate what was thought to be the earliest remnant of the beginning of civilizations as we know it.  We also know from anthropology that there may have been a period of time when our species faced extinction in the distant past, some 120,000 years ago, when it was estimated that there were approximately only 1,300 humans who lived after a world wide population of hundreds of thousands suddenly disappeared.  Anthropologists do not know what might have caused such a drastic decrease; climate change, food depletion, or a pandemic.  We don't know how such an experience might have led to the mass migration of survivors and their offspring to venture into new areas in search of a more life sustaining environment.

The fact that we do not know anything about them, how they created monolithic structures such as Gobeklitepe in Turkey and elsewhere throughout the world long before we thought humans were capable of making such structures, should give us pause to consider what conditions led to their being lost to human memory.  Why did their stories fade away, only to emerge in the ruins they left behind?   As much as we feel too advanced to succumb to a like fate, the reality is it could happen to the world as we know it today by any number of natural or manmade disasters.   

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Mutual self-destruction is a topic I addressed in a series of posts entitled, "Mutual Self-Destruction and the Pursuit of Peace" back in 2017.  In those posts, I addressed the obsolescence of war and the embarrassing lack of motivation to address the human causes of climate change; especially, amongst industrialized nations like the United States, China, and India.  There are some nations trying to make a concerted effort to mitigate the human causes of global warming and climate change, the nations who are making such efforts are for the most part small nations; such as, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, the Netherlands, etc.  

One factor that these nations share is that they are not as obsessed with preparing for international conflict as they are for preserving the planet.  On the other hand, the economic/industrial nations like the United States,  China, and India continue to show blatant disregard to the survival of the planet we all live on as their attention is focused on economic and military security.  Economic and military security are real concerns as the war in the Ukraine and elsewhere in the world demonstrate.  I am not trying to downplay the importance of economic and military security, but they are largely treated as national concerns that distract attention from the one overriding global concern that every nation large or small should be focused on at the moment and that is planetary survival.  

To be humbly honest, the one species our planet could live without, is probably our own, as we have largely contributed global warming which has accelerated climate change and is threatening life on this planet.  The good news in all of this is that we can do something about it if we collectively put our minds together to do so and to do so quickly.  The bad news is that amongst the largest nations, which are also the largest contributors to global warming, there is not much of an effort to do something about it due to being caught up in their endeavors for world prominence, if not dominance.  All of which makes the case for the need for some form of global governance that overrides the interests of any nation who steps out of line in preserving our shared planet home.  

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That economic sanctions are the most often used international response to a country that is stepping out of line by being an aggressor of some type, points to monetary economics as a contributing factor to such a nation's aggressive behavior.  That is why I began this series of posts on planetary survival talking about the need for a moneyless global economy, but how is that accomplished?  I made some vague suggestions in my last post because offering vague, broad ideas is about all I am personally capable of suggesting.  It will take well-versed and competent economists to tackle the enormous task of converting the global economy to a moneyless one and convincing the nations of the world of its necessity.  

The world, as we know it, is largely a world of our making.  Nations need to come together to decide what are the basic necessities and the unnecessary blockades to preserving life on this planet.  The world needs the equivalent of Global Constitution that defines global governance in the preservation of life on Earth.  To that end, the first order of business would be to abolish the necessity of war and the means to wage war, which I can honestly see leading to world war due to the immense distrust that exists among nations.  Such a massive goal at disarmament would require the utmost diplomatic effort and offerings of goodwill to those most reluctant. Political diplomacy will be vital to establishment of a new type of leadership that is both powerful enough to ensure action and humble enough to avoid demagoguery and capitulation to populist democracy that could easily engage in global denialism.  This is not to say that democracy is to be abandoned, but rather that democracy as a governing tool, in this case, must be designed to refine and fine tune governmental processes in attaining the well-being of our planet home and its recovery from the human effects that contributed to global warming and climate change. 

The second order of business is world-wide conversion from the use of fossil and carbon based fuels to clean energy sources.  As such, it will likely require that all life-giving endeavors will fall directly under global governance.  Free-enterprise, which is so valued in the industrial nations today, must give way to government control for the sake of planetary preservation.  With survivalism as an established economic reality and the foundation of global governance, credit (income) leveraging, if carefully monitored and policed  should ensure no one should become credit-rich nor credit-poor since credit is given for the life and livelihood of all life on our planet home.

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Today's world seems lightyears away from even considering the notion of global governance.  The world, as a whole, is too polarized as nationalism is on the rise and nations are polarized within themselves to think beyond their borders, much less open them and their collective minds to need of breaking down the barriers of borders and evolving from the tribalism inherent in nationalism to seeing the value of embracing a one world government.  The notion of a one-world government is too heretical a notion to be given any possible consideration, given the immediate concerns of the most powerful nations to be the most militarily and economically powerful nations in the world.  

As unlikely that all the nations of the world would consider coming together under a binding global constitution, there has been recent examples of a willingness to do so in the creation of the European Union which can be understood as a preliminary if not a tentative step  towards global governance.  The greatest fear associated global governance on a national scale is the loss of power and the money that fuels power and influence.  This is why there must be a fundamental shift away from the value of monetary wealth in the long run.  

In the short run, however, it is important that the monetary wealth of nation is focused on eliminating the human causes of climate change.  The Paris Accords was a vital first step, but there needs to be much more done.  The world is literally on fire in many places, which is only fueling climate change even faster.  The chances of reversing a world-wide cataclysmic event that will cause food and water shortages, mass migrations, and open warfare is passing us by.  Should such disaster continue to occur on a global scale, the chances of any national government surviving will be unlikely, as human populations will be drastically reduced and the likelihood of human extinction becomes a probability.

The leaders of the world must face the gloom and doom of such a real-life scenario in order to put aside their national self-interests and embrace the goal of human and planetary survival.

Until next time,  stay faithful.

Norm

SURVIVALISM - THE NEED FOR A NEW ECONOMIC MODEL

In this post, I am venturing into a topic that is rooted in religion; the effects of monetary economics on the wellbeing of our planet and the preservation of all life forms that depend on it   Let me begin with a disclaimer.  I am not economist by any stretch of the imagination.  At best, I am idealist when it comes to discussing economy and at worst someone who absolutely has no clue about the working intricacies of modern economics.  That being said, I have nothing to lose by expressing my thoughts on the need for exploring a new economical model for a world in crisis due to climate change, migration, and the disparity in wealth that is creating a global concern regarding the survival of life on our planet home.

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"Money - Can't live with it, can't live without it" or so the saying goes.  

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What is money?  Money has no intrinsic value in itself other than the symbolic value assigned to it.  In biblical terms it was referred to as mammon, which basically means the same thing.  Money is simply a means to measure the value assigned to something which today is usually the a result of supply and demand.  The idea that money isn't worth the paper it is printed on is literally true of all of the world's currency because paper money or coinage is nothing more than a symbolic representation of the value placed on goods and services.  In fact, money as a physical artifact of value is becoming increasingly rare, as the transfer of one's monetary wealth throughout most of the industrial world no longer requires the actual physical transfer of currency.

Money is an interesting human invention.  It serves a purpose that most take for granted and without giving much consideration to what it actually is.  On some level it is treated as being similar to the air we breath.  Just as we can't live without the corrosive effects of oxygen which eventually takes a toll on our physical well-being,  we seemingly can't live without the corrosive effects of money has on our sense of security and wellbeing.   Whereas oxygen is a necessity of our survival, one has to question if there is something other than money by which to base one's sense of security and wellbeing on.

As I have been writing about the need for Christianity to have a Copernican type of revolution; that is, a non-violent reorientation to what is central to a christian's understanding of Jesus and God, so too is a non-violent reorientation to the economic value of life on our planet is needed as the world's monetary-based  economics seems to be the largest obstacle in solving a host of problems facing our world today.  The unspoken anxiety associated  with solving so many of the dangers facing human existence is expressed by the question, "How much will it cost?"  Denial is a potent placebo to mitigating the anxiety this question causes. 

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The summer of 2023 has been the warmest on record in the United States.  This should not surprise us as scientist have been warning us for some time that there is a need to do something about the human causes contributing to the rise in global temperature due to carbon emissions.  The most alarming fact about the rise in temperatures this summer is that scientists were surprised by the rapid increase in temperature.   

Highly industrialized economies appear reluctant to switch gears swiftly.  I can only presume that reluctance to be based on the fear of losing investors and the cost of investments related to transitioning to alternative sources of energy in order to preserve earth's hospitable environment for a host of life forms on this planet, including our own.  Capitalism has been an effective means to creating general wealth since the 18th century.  It did much to create a burgeoning middle class in the 19th and 20 centuries.   

Industrialized nations have all come around to realizing its effectiveness, including communist nations, like China.  Nevertheless, by the late 20th century, the middle class was declining and in countries;  such as,  the United States are seeing increasing  disparity in wealth and income, with the vast majority of personal wealth in the possession of the top one percent of the population.  Unfettered capitalism is not self correcting, unless by correction one is referring to revolution which is likely to occur if governments do not step in to alleviate the disparity in personal wealth that now exists in industrialized democracies.  

Industrial democracies are struggling to find the will to move quickly in order to avert a global disaster that has the potential of being as devastating as a nuclear war and which may, in the short run, lead to such a war as large swaths of the human population are running short of necessities caused by nonsensical internecine warfare between countries which divert time and energy from addressing the urgent need for all nations to come together in order to put the necessary resources toward averting a cataclysmic global climate crisis that is literally on the verge of spinning out of control.

In the short term, industrialized democracies must work with the economic systems they have, which broadly speaking is capitalism.  Lawmakers throughout the world must take the lead and enact measures to mandate immediate conversion to carbon free technologies and the production of products that eliminate or greatly reduce the human imprint on global warming with a sense of desperation and with the determination of avoiding a global cataclysm that a worldwide nuclear war would cause.   In the meantime, thought must be given on avoiding the likelihood of backtracking on such endeavors once the short range goal of averting a climate catastrophe is accomplished.  

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The enticement of unfettered access to money and a return to unfettered capitalism is likely unless there is a shift away from capitalism and monetary wealth as we know it.  This would be an unprecedented undertaking that perhaps would realistically occur only should a global catastrophe occur, the magnitude of which would result in placing the human species at risk of extinction.  Only then might Homo Sapiens be in a position of rebuilding a stable social environment as the human population begins to grow.  It would take generations to get to such a point.  

NOW is the time, if not past the time, to make drastic changes that would decreases our dependence not only on fossil fuels but also on unfettered on consumerism; that is inherent in the selfishness of libertarianism and the tribalism of nationalism. 

It is past time that internecine and global warfare is taken off the table as a solution to anything.  The human and technical resources pumped into increasing sophisticated weaponry should be dedicated to mitigating the human causes of climate change and the development of technologies that eliminates the need for carbon based energy.  We know that such technologies are available, but the timeline for their proliferation throughout the world is stymied by capitalistic concerns related to free enterprise and the creation of a new sources of monetary wealth.  

I am the first to admit all of this strikes me as an impossibility, given the the political climate of democratic governments being subject to ill-informed populism, the world's economic dependence on capitalism and its dependence on consumerism, and the isolationism of nationalism all of which permits people to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to the darkening realities our world is facing as they double down on denialism and work towards entrenching systemic failure in almost every civil institution.

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The preservation of our planet must be the ultimate measure of economic success; that is,  the preservation of every form of animal and plant life must be monitored to gauge the effects of human consumption in all the domains pertinent to life on this planet.  All nations must come to the table to battle climate change.  They must unite their resources in reducing the effects of pollution and carbon emissions in order to preserve the poorest of the poor who for all practical purposes are the canaries in the atmospheric mine we find ourselves living in.  If great value is given to the most vulnerable lives by which to measure economic security, there may be a chance to avoid a natural catastrophe that will destroy the world as we know it.  If there is an economic value to saving human life on this planet, it must measure how well the needs and care of the most vulnerable amongst are met, in order to preserve and enhance their sense of security and wellbeing.  

As long as the illusion of money and the acquisition of the wealth it represents holds sway on the endeavor to preserve our planet, precious time needed to make productive changes will pass us by.  Politics is the biggest block to addressing climate change due to the undue influence of wealth on the political will of politicians to make effective laws and provide the adequate funding needed to change things quickly.  

The negative effects of accumulating monetary wealth on the will of people and nations to make a concerted effort to address climate change requires a new economic model geared to solving the overriding lethal problems the whole world is currently facing.   The supply and demand aspect of classic capitalism is a proven model for measuring economic health in terms of wealth, but where classic capitalism fails is ironically in using supply and demand to create economic wealth rather than facilitate economic health, which as I have attempted to demonstrate is not synonymous.  Instead of creating wealth, economies should be geared to creating health; the health of our planet home and wellbeing and security of all living things, as humanly possible.  Such a new economic model must transcend all monetary systems; that of capitalism, socialism, and communism.  

Take the United States, for example.  Universal health care for every citizen is considered prohibitive because of monetary cost and the loss of profit to those invested in the health care industry.  Conversion from fossil fuels to clean energy is inhibited by the time and cost of investment it would take to transition to new technologies that would create a comparable profit margin currently enjoyed by the fossil fuel industry.    In short, money is a will-killer because, like coal, money is needed to fire the engines of political campaigns that law-makers, especially here in the United States rely on.  The need for monetary support to run campaigns has polluted the atmosphere of effective politics at this most critical time.  This is not just a problem in the United States but is a political problem throughout the world.

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The question becomes, how do we replace the concept of money?  

How do we balance supply and demand based on both human needs and desires, provide incentives to foster creativity, and discourage waste without the use of a monetary system? 

Do we wait until the time comes when money has no pragmatic value because demand outstrips supply to the point where there isn't enough money or money isn't worth the paper it is printed  to purchase the basic necessities of life; the point where everyone is on their own to forage and fend for themselves?  

We have witnessed this is places that have been decimated by war and natural disasters; where the cost of basics like food and water, clothing and shelter are sold and  bought at exorbitant prices; to the point of causing people to go without and succumb to the effects of extreme heat, cold, and starvation.   In such isolated cases,  economically secure nations of the world and their monetary systems have worked together quite well in meeting short-term economic and social concerns of people and countries in need.   

If the pandemic taught us anything, it is how fragile a natural disaster such as it has on economic security and the health of millions of people.   We should consider it a mere foretaste of what lies ahead as the effects of climate change will be experienced in ways too numerous to list here.   More importantly, however, the pandemic also illustrated what happens when there is a concerted effort on the part of nations to find a solution. The one weakness in that endeavor was an unwillingness on the part of some pharmaceuticals to share information globally, which was likely due to both mistrust between nations and the control of any financial benefit such pharmaceuticals were likely to have.

What the world needs is a global economic system that is based on the survival of all; a system that ensures that no living thing on this planet goes without; in particular, that no human being is denied the basic necessities of life, food, clothing, and shelter; that no human being or corporation has unlimited wealth potential whereby to influence the fragile economic equilibrium that is required; that there is a leveraging system that ensures that the essentials of food, clothes, comfortable housing and person security and wellbeing is provided for all; that no nation is capable of enacting wars or enacting policies that endanger the environment because what happens in one part of the world has a direct effect on the whole world.  

World-wide health care for all, education for all, personal security for all;

If the use of monetary currency is retained, it should be time stamped with an expirations date.  "Use it or lose it" should be stamped across the top of currency along with an expiration date.  In such a monetary system, Universal Basic Income must be given to every human being.  Monetary wealth must be closely monitored to ensure that no one person, corporation or nation can monopolize the accumulation of wealth.  Such an undertaking would requires an extraordinary commitment on the part of every nation, every corporation, and every individual, especially the most wealthy in each category who would be subjected to a titrate approach in order to level the amount of monetary wealth they possess to others in said categories.

The landscape and infrastructure of every nation would be drastically changed.  For example,  public transportation might be the only transportation allowable, but would be free to all.  That auto industry would be carbon free and limited to commercial use only.   The hoped for result of such a complex system would be that as the overall environment of the earth improves, the overall quality of everyone's life improves. 

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But is continuing a monetary economic system the only choice we have?  

If money is a will-killer, what will awaken people to the fact that the value of life should not, at any level, be subjected to a monetary value?

If  monetary wealth is a man-made illusion and poverty is a man-made reality,  how do we reconcile such a conundrum?   

Free credit as an acknowledgment of someone participating in the production of something; in this case, the preservation of the planet is a consideration.  Universal Basic Income (UBI); as in, Universal Basic Credit (UBC), which UBI ultimately is can slowly lead us towards monetary independence and a transition to a world-wide monetary-free economy based on preserving our planet home.  The value of monetary currency can be transitioned to a one-time set credit rate of exchange which will be purposely low in order create credit leveraging - balancing the disparity between monetary wealth and monetary poverty while preserving and creating incentives for creativity and productivity.   

The significance of UBC as a credit system is that it does not require monetary payback.  It bestows value as credit or paying forward without requiring paying anything back monetarily. The payback is in the mutual creation of healthy planetary environment and a healthy economic outlook for all.  Each individual has value in their being which entitles them to UBC on whatever basis (let's say) the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund determines as equitable world-wide.  [Yes - the UN and the IMF are the systems currently in place that should play a role in this transition.]

SURVIVALISM concerns all of us.  

The notion of finding a less polluted, less exploited planet such as Mars or the Moon will only retain the current economic imbalance.  It will result in an Orwellian or a Huxleyan mindset described in their literary works  in which the value of human life and life on the planet will be subject the type of Social Darwinism of the 1920's and 30's in which only a select few will be deemed worthy to start a new world on another planet.  Realistically speaking, while the science is there, the evident reality is that the time needed is not there to see it come to fruition.  There is no realistic way of transporting the near 8 billion or more people living on this planet to another planet within the next 100 years.  It is unlikely that such an endeavor is even being given any thought at all.   

While I believe space exploration is necessary to find a deeper understanding of who we are and find new discoveries that may help us preserve life on our planet by learning how to survive on less hospitable terrains; such, as the Moon and Mars, we need a system that can quickly and effectively preserve life on this planet by taking seriously the science of climate change and recognizing its relationship to unfettered consumerism fostered by the world-wide monetary system based on capitalism.    

At present, the world is unlikely to transition to a UBC system any time soon.  It is too utopian for consideration at the present time, and I am not idealistic enough to believe that it would be given any consideration the economic climate of today.  The world needs a much quicker fix to the climate change catastrophe that every nation in the world is dealing with.  

It is imperative that the nations of the world and their monetary systems must pool their monetary resources to engage on an endeavor for survival by dealing with of climate change, migration, poverty and the wellbeing of our planet home.  Should they do so and should they succeed, only then could and should consideration be given to creating an economic system that avoids the exploitation of life and the planet with the establishment of world-wide economy based on continued planetary survival.

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Until next time, stay faithful.

Norm

MYTH, TRUTH, AND THE CHRISTIAN MINDSET

 

This last post in this series on "The Mythic Jesus" brings us back to what I started to write about a year ago this past August; the need for a Copernican Revolution within Christianity.  At the center of this revolution is the question that haunted Jesus throughout his ministry, "Who am I?" or to put it in the question Jesus asked his disciples, "Who do people say that I am?  Who do you say that I am?"  

An attempt to answer those questions was given some 300 years after Jesus' time on this earth, in 325 CE in the second article of the Nicene Creed:

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father.  Through him all things were made.  For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven:  by the power of the Holy Spirit  he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,  and was made man.  For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried.  On the third day he rose again  in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.  He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no end."

This particular article of the Nicene Creed has defined what it means to be a Christian for the past seventeen hundred years.  It is the creed of the Imperial Church of the Roman Empire and it has remained the litmus test for identifying a true Christian believer ever since Christianity was proclaimed the one and only religion of the Roman Empire in 381 CE.  

A lot has happened since that time.  

The world is not the same place it was in the fourth century, but Christianity, for the most part, has not changed.   The Church has had its schisms and reformations throughout its history, but there has been no fundamental change to its doctrinal position about Jesus.  The Imperial Church which continues through the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Churches, the original Protestant denominations, and the increasing number of smaller independent denomination and individual churches that have branched off of them have not made any significant changes to the doctrinal position of the Nicene Creed, even though many of the later Protestant denominations and independent churches rarely use the Creed in their services.  Jesus remains the only-begotten Son God, the Christ or Messiah who will come again to judge both the living and the dead.  As such while many Christians claim to have a personal relationship with Jesus, Jesus remains remotely distant in heaven, seated at the right hand of the Father.

What has been lost or, better yet, who has been lost these past seventeen hundred years is Jesus, a first century Jew living in Galilee.  The mythic Jesus of the Gospel of John, for example, stands in stark contrast to the historic Jesus found in the Synoptic Gospel, who is depicted as a devout Jew who possessed a unique understanding of Judaism; a compassionate human who, as a Jew, was amazed at the faith demonstrated in people who were not Jews.   Jesus' understanding  and vision of justice and righteousness was eons ahead of his time and, to be honest,  remains ahead our time.  Yet, it is belief in the mythic Jesus that has become the basis for Christian faith rather than the teachings of the historic Jesus, which literally receive lip service in all Christian denominations, but play second fiddle to the teaching about Jesus.

The difficulty with the myths about Jesus is that the truth they promote in the minds of most Christians is Jesus being the only begotten Son of God; that Jesus is God.  And the problem with that premise is that it diminishes the idea that Jesus is one of us, a pure human prone to both brilliance and error. To follow Jesus is to follow his radical teachings and seek the direct relationship he had with God.  

 Myths are contrived stories to convey spiritual or transcendental meanings or truths that cannot be proven in any demonstrable fashion.  As such, myths are not bound to a particular truth.  Myths can generate other ideas and other truths.  The doctrines which have defined these myths, have set particular meanings in stone, as it were.  

For example, Christians belief in the concept of Absolute Truth is rooted in the doctrinal insistence that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God; that what it says is to be believed literally as fact which of course has been proven by scientific, historical, and anthropological data not to be the case.  Metaphor and myth abound throughout the Holy Bible.  Christianity 's most sacred doctrines and rites are based on these myths.

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There is a growing amount of evidence that Christianity is a hybrid religion that is not only emerged from Judaism, but also emerged from the mythic mindset of of the polytheistic religions of ancient Egypt, Greece, Persia, and Rome.  Christianity survived and thrived in the early Roman Empire due to the likelihood of its ability to co-opt and adapt the beliefs and practices of other religions and reframing them within a Christian context, thus making Christianity appealing to a broad spectrum of individuals living in the cosmopolitan world of the Roman Empire.

Whereas the teachings of Jesus as recorded in the Synoptic Gospels depict an inclusive message of Jesus' teachings, the Gospel of John and the Epistles speak of Christianity in exclusive terms regarding who is saved and who isn't  While Christ died for all stands as the first credal premise of early Christianity, it is only those who believe that or, more to the point in some New Testament scriptures, only those chosen by God to be followers of Christ who will be saved:  "But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name" - John 1:12.   'He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God "- John 3:18. 

The club mentality of Christianity can be readily traced in letters of Paul: "For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified." Roman 8:-29-30.     "Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular."  1Corinthians 12:27.  

For orthodox Christians, those who affirm the Nicene Creed, these verses are not bothersome and most gloss over the the fact of how exclusive they sound to someone outside of their religious circle.  There is something comforting about seeing oneself as part of Christ's inner circle, as well as, recognizing that those outside of this circle, well... might be lost causes because they were not predestined to be saved or were not called to be justified.  One might think, "What is the point of trying to waste one's time on those who are condemned already?"   

What one needs to understand is that such thinking is not evident in the teachings of Jesus.  This is why the Synoptic Gospels, regardless of the attempts to edit them to conform to the teachings about Jesus found in the Gospel of John and the Epistles of Paul and to make them useful to the power structure of the Imperial Church of the Roman Empire, fortunately, contain what is likely the original teaching of Jesus.

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The dynamics of any religion is the ability to bind people together through ideological beliefs.  It would appear that Jesus, himself, did not set out to form a new religion with him as its leaders. Jesus appears within the Synoptic Gospels (if one sets asides their mythic stories about him) to be in line with the prophets of the Old Testament.  What is unique about Jesus in these Gospels is his reinterpretation or highlighting teachings found in the Old Testament.  His messianic message was not about conquest but rather about realization and revelation of the Kingdom of God that already exists if only people would recognize it in their midst.  

The mythic stories about Jesus are not irrelevant nor should they be set aside.  While we have been indoctrinated to see their intent as proving Jesus is the Son of God; that is, God in the flesh,  they also allow us to examine our own experiences in their light.  As I have mentioned in many posts and in the homilies I have posted in this blog, "What is true for Jesus is true for us and what is true about us is true about Jesus."  Jesus as a human being like us is more important to understanding his teachings and purpose than making him the only begotten Son of God.  

For example, the stories of the birth and resurrection of Jesus are myths simply because they cannot be proven to be factual, but both the birth myth and the resurrection myth have meanings and applications that go beyond the attempt to establish Jesus as the second person of the Trinity.  Every person is an incarnation of God.  Resurrections occur when one is willing to gracefully let go of something that is dear to one's heart especially when letting go is the right thing for oneself and others.  Resurrections occur throughout out lives.  Walking on water is a metaphor for the ability to rise above the chaos of life to bring calm and reassurance to those who are on the verge of being swamped and falling overboard amidst the storms of life.  People are spiritually fed with the little we possess, sharing kindness, like sharing food can give sustenance to others in ways we do not often comprehend. 

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It is vitally important to the survival of the Christian Church that the various denominations take a deeper look at their doctrines regarding the Holy Bible and who Jesus is.  They must re-examine its salvation theology that insists that Jesus specifically came down to earth to become a sacrifice for the sins of the world.  Such a theology and doctrinal stance is contrary to every humanitarian impulse we humans possess. God's biblical mode of operation in human affairs is not to send his Son down as some sort of Greek god, but rather to raise one of us up to be our exemplar, like Moses, Elijah, and Jesus.  Jesus' teachings need to be studied more deeply.  Our scriptures must be critically re-examined.  The notions of inerrancy and infallibility must be discarded as guard rails against heresy and inquiry into the relevance of scripture in the times that we live. 

Truth in religion cannot be concretized against the constant evolving knowledge about the world and universe we live in.  The teachings of Jesus are vital to creating a safe, more caring world.  They are desperately needed to change the course of human affairs which are increasingly detrimental to the earth's environment and the welfare of the vast and various life forms on this planet, which all eight billion people living on this planet are dependent on.  

The Christian mindset is perhaps best suggested in one of Paul's letters which I am paraphrasing to reflect t 21st century understanding:   "Let each of you look to the interests of others.  Let the same mind be in you that was in Jesus who being made in the image of God, did not regard God as something that can be exploited and used to harm others, but emptied himself  to make room for others that all might be abundantly filled and drawn to follow his example.

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Until next time, stay faithful.

Norm