I do not separate religion from philosophy. Religious ideas can be rationally analyzed like any other philosophical idea—even the esoteric and mystical ones. From my perspective, religious ideas do not have to come in whole packages—as if Christianity or Buddhism are trademarked and it’s illegal to mix them together. I say we pick and choose the best religious ideas and discard the bad ones.
I’ve really been enjoying thinking about Christian philosophy and wanted to share some highlights. I don’t know enough to say which of these ideas are heretical and which are canon, so I can’t say whether these are “really” Christianity.
The Primacy of Love
Love is the meaning of life. It’s the whole point of everything. There’s a whole bunch of religious blabbering in the world, but if you triangulate from all the beliefs, they point towards love at the center. When asked which commandment was the most important, Jesus says:
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.”
And, “Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.”
Sounds right to me. The point of the religious laws is to get closer to love.
Love is Divine
Divinity is a good concept. There are forces which exist “above” humans, “governing” their affairs. Love is a real part of our universe, but it does not exist as a biological entity. It can be instantiated by biological entities. It’s a force so powerful that it can totally control your life, whether you like it or not.
To humans, love can be a more powerful force than death—those possessed by love will give up their lives for it. And it’s worth dying for.
You are not responsible for the love you feel, for the love you have been shown, or for the love you show. We do not give ourselves the power to love. There is a system outside of ourselves which generates love.
The fact that we live in a universe which generates love—when it could have been otherwise—is so extraordinary that it borders on the absurd.
The Relationship between Suffering and Love
Cause has effect. Actions have consequences, which means at some point, somebody is going to suffer.
Like most people, I see madness in the world. Anger, hate, lies. I also observe that people spend enormous amounts of energy trying to avoid the consequences of their action. They have bad habits (say, alcoholism), and they try to escape the consequences of their bad habits by indulging more.
Insecure men who were abused and berated by their fathers repeat the pattern on their own children. People who experience the pain of sexual abuse are more likely to abuse others—as if they are trying to escape their pain by inflicting it on somebody else.
So perhaps here’s the principle: the only way to break the cycle of suffering, necessarily, is by some people bearing the suffering without inflicting it on anybody else. Quiet suffering, to stop it from spreading.
In the story of Jesus, he predicts and ultimately accepts his suffering. The society at the time was corrupt—the religious leaders were a lying “brood of vipers”—and somebody will eventually bear the consequences. Jesus accepted that his fate was to be crucified. The man went around telling the truth, and for that, he was crucified.
Why would Jesus accept his own unjust crucifixion? Because of love. That’s the output of the love-mindset. His love was so great that he accepted the worst form of torture.
The Divine Logos
In the Old Testament, Moses has an encounter with God at the burning bush and asks for his name. God responds:
“I Am that I Am.”
Or other translations say “I will be what I will be.”
In my own interpretation, I understand this as saying, “I am existence itself.” Or, “I am reality.” Or, “I am the being.”
That’s a very nice philosophical idea. There’s a lot of things in the world that don’t seem to be fundamental—e.g. physical objects are composed of molecules, which are compose of atoms, which are composed of sub-atomic particles, etc. The question is: is there anything fundamental?
Plenty of things might not exist; is there anything that must exist?
Yes, and that thing is God. It is the fundamental thing that is. The necessary being.
If this is true, then God has a certain logic to him. As I say in Square One, logic and existence are inseparable. Everywhere there is something, there is something logical—there is something that is. It is logical, because it is itself.
That sounds a whole lot like the “Logos” idea philosophers have been talking about for a while.
An Individualist Relationship with God
In Christianity, individuals have a direct connection with God/the truth/Jesus/love. The connection does not need to be mediated by a priest.
This seems true. The connection between you and the truth is more important than any other connection. There is nothing more sacred, nothing more personal, and it does not involve anybody else. If you are skeptical of organized religion, this is wonderfully anarchic.
There are no human authorities that come between me and God/reality/the truth. Human authority is nothing in comparison to the real authority “in heaven” (i.e. compared to the power of Nature outside ourselves; the system in which we live; the rules that govern reality). This perspective makes it easy to refuse to kiss the ring, no matter who wears it.
An Individualist Relationship with “Jesus”
For purposes of this article, let’s say that “Jesus” is “the mindset of love.” There was a human that walked around 2000 years ago, possessed by this mindset. The human person of Jesus embodied the mindset of love.
That mindset still exists and possesses people today. To the extent you embody love, you are embodied by the same spirit that embodied the human Jesus.
Jesus Christ—the mindset of love—can be treated as a person within your own psyche, and you can develop a relationship with “him.” That’s a very good thing to do.
So, when people say, “I have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ,” I can interpret that as, “I allow myself to interact with the mindset of love, as if it’s a person I can consult.”
Consider the famous passage from Jesus, where he says:
“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well.”
We can rephrase this to:
“[The mindset of love] is the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to [knowledge of God] except through [this mindset]. If you really know [love], you will know [truth].”
And later he says:
“On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.”
We can rephrase to:
“On that day, you will realize that [the mindset of love] [comes from God/Nature], and you are [within my love], and [the same mindset of love] is within you.”
The Value of the Individual Human Life
Every individual is made in the image of God and therefore has non-zero value. The person of Jesus interacts with everybody from every social position. He heals the sick, helps the poor, dines with prostitutes, and argues with priests. He is not a man impressed with our social hierarchies.
The story about Jesus’s sacrifice (which I’ll get to later) is about your personal redemption. It’s not about a group or a nation. It’s about his personal suffering on your personal behalf. Powerful, and further affirmation of the value of the individual.
Scathing Criticism of Corrupt Religious Authorities
Jesus is epitome of love and compassion. Yet, the guy was highly disagreeable in the psychological sense. He railed against the corrupt, hypocritical religious authorities of his time. Maximum scathe directed towards them, including this classic line:
You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?
And as the story goes, the religious and political authorities were indeed so corrupt, they had him tortured and killed.
The Story of Persecution
Jesus preached a love that was so extreme, it was (and still is) destabilizing to political and religious authorities. So they naturally, inevitably, persecuted him.
To borrow a phrase from my interview with Isaac Deitz about Christianity, the story of Jesus—regardless of the historical veracity of the events—is the story of what happens in our world when Mr. Truth comes to town. Truth and worldly authorities are frequently locked in a battle to the death. In the short run, the authorities often win, but in the long run, truth and love win out.
The historical story of Christianity is a microcosm of this. The early Christians also experienced terrible persecution, and yet, they eventually won. Now the religion is the largest in the world.
Jesus Didn’t Cash In
I’ve been researching about cults lately. You could make the case that Jesus had a cult around him, and yet, he never cashed in. Jesus didn’t become a warlord, a sex cultist, a politician, a consultant, or even gain material wealth. I can’t say that about any other cult leader I have researched. They all cash in at some point.
This wasn’t because of a failed plan. He had the ability to cash in—see the story of his temptation—but he chose not to. He predicted that his fate was to be killed, and he accepted it as part of a divine plan.
The Eternality of Jesus
According to Christian orthodoxy, Jesus existed before his earthly incarnation. He existed as a divine person—that is, a divine pattern—before he was born into humanity.
It makes sense to me. The same can be said for love—it is a divine, eternal, real pattern—that gets instantiated into humans. The pattern itself is not human; it cannot be killed, but the people who embody it can be.
Is Jesus coming back? Well, if he’s a divine person, he never really went away. But he might be instantiated again in the future. (And I’d say, to the extent we manifest love ourselves, that’s the same thing as manifesting the pattern of Jesus.)
The Resurrection
I do not think that the Resurrection is an essential part of Christianity. Jesus’s teaching stands alone without it, but wow, what an awesome conclusion to the story!
So the corrupt authorities end up killing Jesus, as he predicted, and God resurrects him from the dead. At the very least, if we stick to the metaphorical interpretation, we can confidently say that the pattern of Jesus conquered death. There’s no question; we’re still talking about the guy two millennia later.
In the real world, love conquers death. When a parent sacrifices themselves for their children, the pattern of love continues—the child lives and might love, only to sacrifice himself and continue the process. The ultimate fate of this world is life, thanks to love, not death. Life wins, in the end.
Metaphor aside, I keep open the possibility of a metaphysical resurrection. I take a position of radical ignorance about the laws of physics. The world is terrifyingly complex, and I don’t know what happens after you die. Humans are stupid little apes that know approximately nothing about our universe.
I definitely cannot say what happens to you after leading a life like Jesus. N=1. Love is a wild thing when experienced, and it changes your brain. We already know that meditation and psychedelics make real physical changes to your body. What happens when somebody has been tripping on Love for their entire life, then dies in an act of profound love? I don’t know. We might live in a universe where resurrection can happen in a non-metaphorical sense.
There’s more to say, but I will return to the subject later. Merry Christmas!
