Jesus wants what Trump wants! It’s been scientifically shown!
Just like he do
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11 responses to “Just like he do”
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He has access to files that could bring down the entire Catholic Church, does he? Who’s his advisor on church matters? Dan Brown?
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Being omniscient, and a fully paid-up member of the Holy Trinity, Jesus could have beaten Albert Einstein to the equations of Relativity (General and Special) any time he wanted to. He could have blown Rome to smithereens with an A or H bomb while he was out for a stroll on the Mediterranean Sea around 2,000 years ago.
Whatever dirt Trump has got on the Pope, Jesus will know from on high all about it. So, Trump had better watch out. Jesus could well dish The Donald a dose of the same treatment as was had by the money-changers in the Temple.
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His habit of signing off unhinged rants with the formula “Thank you for your attention to this matter” is something I will never stop finding hilarious.
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To be fair, as I have previously commented on elsewhere, I actually think the Biblical God (depending on your interpretation of the doctrine of the “Trinity”, either Jesus’ father or Jesus himself) is the closest analogy, personality-wise, to Trump in all of world fiction. All the other great fictional villains – from MacBeth to Michael Corleone, and from Palpatine to the Joker – were too much in the “worthy opponent” category. Only Yahweh even comes close to reflecting the total unworthiness of Trump.
It also seems to me like Trump has unwittingly provided another reductio ad absurdum of a common Christian trope, popular especially among believers of a more moderate, liberal persuasion:
Regardless of whether or not you think Jesus was the son of God, at least we can all agree that it would have to take a totally unique person to have such an impact on his followers.
Well, then count me out of “we all”. Leaving aside the fact that Jesus’ alleged impact* is entirely based on the same texts as his alleged miracles, when we look at some of the people – even today, or within living memory – who have managed to gain the unquestioning loyalty and blind obedience of millions of fanatical followers (Adolf Hitler, Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, Kim Il Sung…), have miracles attributed to them (Jim Jones, Peter Popoff, Sathya Sai Baba…), and even convincing their followers to lay down their lives for them (Jim Jones, David Koresh, Joseph di Mambro & Luc Jouret, Marshall Applewhite, Joseph Kibwetere…), I think we can safely conclude that being worshiped is not proof of anything, at least not in a good way! But at least Hitler had an undeniable talent as an orator, Jones did (at least in the beginning) appear to be sincerely committed to racial integration (he even adopted a black child and raised him as his own son before killing him in Jonestown), David Koresh was considered quite handsome and “charismatic” (whatever that is supposed to mean?) etc. By contrast Trump is as ugly on the outside as he is on the inside, doesn’t even pretend to be honestly committed to anything other than himself, and to this day the closest he has ever gotten to an eloquent formulation was “covfefe”.
* Arguably Paul had a far greater impact than Jesus himself. We probably wouldn’t have heard of the latter at all if Paul hadn’t went “a little funny in the head” a couple of decades after Jesus’ death.
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Bjarte: ” Only Yahweh even comes close to reflecting the total unworthiness of Trump.”
I confess (no mea culpas) that I have never read any of Trump’s ravings – I mean writings – but I have read a fair slab of the classic KJV.
Talk about a setup.! God the Father creates the Universe, and the Garden of Eden as part of it. Then, possibly as a prank, he creates that damned talking snake, who leads first Eve who in turn persuades Adam to take a hefty chomp out of the Forbidden Fruit. That was The Fall, for which that original sinning couple were turfed out of the Garden.
It got worse. Perhaps on reflection, God thought He was a bit hasty. So, he waited until late in the Roman conquest of the known world, and had Himself conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary in Joseph’s paternal line of Abraham, even though poor old Joe had been cuckolded by the Holy Ghost, so that Mary’s son Jesus could claim descent from that powerful line. Sort of.
Then St Paul realised that the main reason for the creation of Jesus was so he could be sacrificed by Roman crucifixion to pay God off for all the sin (war, crime, lust, flood, fire, famine, lust, disease, murder, lust, practical jokes gone wrong, and lust (did I mention that?) that has happened since God decided to create that damned talking snake.
The crucified Christ, as depicted on every Catholic crucifix and major artwork by a great master painter, is always looking skywards and, nails and cross notwithstanding, in a relaxed and holy prayerful posture. But as the famous medical missionary and writer Dr Paul White once explained to me in a one-to-one conversation, death on the cross was the result of blood draining from the muscles, inducing widespread to whole-body cramps. The Romans’ numerous public crucifixions were intended to be as painful as possible for the victims, and thus to serve as a warning to all Roman subjects not to rebel. Moreover, the nails commonly went straight through major nerves in the ankles and wrists. The victim would die screaming and writhing in a long and drawn-out agony.
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Omar
Of course if Yahweh was omniscient, he must have known all along what was going to happen, and not only that: He must have wanted it that way since he choose to create everything in that exact way in spite of this pre-knowledge.
Since reading (Norwegian philosopher) Peter Wessel Zappfe’s analysis of the text as a work of blasphemy, my favorite book of the Bible has been the Book of Job. God himself tells the Devil that Job is perfectly righteous at the very beginning of the book, so we know from the outset that Job is not being punished for any actual sins on his own part. Instead all his suffering is motivated by God’s (very Trumpean!) desire to win a bet with Satan.
The main part of the book consists of the suffering and dying Job challenging his “friends” to come up with some justification for what has happened to him. They in turn try to argue that God has the power to do whatever he wants to whomever he wants, and there is nothing anyone can do about it (also Trumpean as Hell), that all of Job’s suffering doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, that Job must be punished for the sins of his ancestors etc., but Job refutes all their arguments and points out that none of that has anything to do with actual justice.
Finally, when, as Zappfe puts it, God can no longer stay away without loss of face, Yahweh himself shows up, and everything descends into pure parody (Yahweh holding up the the hippopotamus as his greatest creation etc.). As Zapffe points out, it is unclear to say the least why Yahweh sees the need to reprimand Job’s friends when his own (hyper-Trumpean) self-justification amounts to little more than a repetition of their main points: that it’s all about Gods power, and justice has nothing to do with it etc.
According to Zapffe, Job’s “concession” in the end must be understood as a recognition, not of God’s “quantitative greatness” (Job never doubted that for a second!), but of his “qualitative pettiness”. Religious apologists have always essentially argued that “no matter how cruel this might seem to us, it’s actually both moral and just for reasons that are only known to God, and of no concern to us” (the “inscrutable ways” defense). The moment God opened his mouth Job expected to hear a justification so profound that it would instantly put all his complaints to shame. Instead God turns out to be too simple-minded to even understand the issue. No point arguing with this over-sized toddler. You might as well be describing colors to a blind person.
The book famously ends with Job having his health and property restored as well as getting a new wife and children to replace the ones
he lostGod killed (how typical of Yahweh to think that as long as the numbers all add up in the end, nothing has been lost!). As Zapffe points out in the end, if the Devil of the story is as much of a simpleton as God himself, then sure, the Devil lost the bet. If, on the other hand, he is a cunning Mephisto, he and Job now share a secret far more devastating to God than a lost bet. -
He must have wanted it that way since he choose to create everything in that exact way in spite of this pre-knowledge.
I was once driving back from a job site with a colleague (and friend) who was a creationist Christian with a strong bent toward pre-destination. He was explaining to me how everything that happened was God’s will, that it was planned exactly as it is, and that God wants it that way. It is not for us to question.
At that moment, we were driving through Midwest City, OK (If you are not familiar with it, MWC is the armpit of Oklahoma – it’s not a nice place to live). I asked him if God had intended all those millennia ago for Midwest City. He didn’t answer.
Since reading (Norwegian philosopher) Peter Wessel Zappfe’s analysis of the text as a work of blasphemy
Do you know if that is available in English? It sounds like my sort of book, and I’d love to know what book it is if it’s in a language I can read (and English is the only language I can read, other than Pig Latin which I learned out of self-defense).
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For me MWC stands for Monod–Wyman–Changeux.
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Knowing what Jesus would have wanted makes Trump even omniscienter than God!
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Rabbinic Judaism calculated a lifespan of Moses corresponding to 1391–1271 BCE; Jerome suggested 1592 BCE, and James Ussher suggested 1571 BCE as his birth year … (Wikipedia.)
Genesis 2:9: “In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” The latter bore the forbidden fruit.
Genesis 2:15-17 sets the terms re the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The Greeks were great mariners and inter-island traders, and were thus adept knowledge-gatherers. They had created great public architecture, the literary epics of Homer, and the Minoan and Mycenean civilisations, just to name two. They went on to create world-class philosophy, which study includes both science and mathematics. (Think Archimedes and Pythagoras.) Religion on the other hand, is based on the pronouncements of some prophet, often the founder of school, church or tradition. If we read for “the knowledge of good and evil,” the understanding of them, of what makes something good and something else evil, we are of course right smack bang into philosophy.
So, I see the Original Sin as set out in Genesis in that light. Moses was making the most fundamental of intellectual distinctions: between religion on the one hand and philosophy, based on reason, on the other. The Original Good was the pronouncements of God, as delivered by His spokesmen, such as Moses himself. The Original Bad (Original Sin) was the individual thinking for himself or herself, exemplified brilliantly by Adam and Eve. Thus the Original Sin was philosophy.
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iknklast
Zapffe’s analysis of the Book of Job is just a small part of a much longer book (quite possibly the longest I have read in my life!) dedicated to the rather esoteric question of what makes something “tragic” in particular, as opposed to just “sad”. According to Zapffe the essence of what makes something tragic is “greatness leading to disaster”. The great heroes of tragedy all have some quality we’re meant to find admirable in some way (e.g. Hamlet’s insistence on questioning everything and refusal to settle for easy answers), and this very quality becomes the source of their ultimate destruction. Zapffe argues that many of the heroes of tragedy might have been able to save themselves, but in order to do so they would have to betray their greatness.
Of course Zapffe wasn’t just making an esoteric point about literature. His main argument was that the human species as a whole had thus far chosen this latter option (i.e. saving itself by betraying its greatness). Humanity’s greatness according to Zapffe is the same as Job’s, i.e. insisting on a deeper meaning and ultimate justice in a universe that’s totally indifferent, amoral, and without any apparent purpose. This makes life unbearable and should have led to a tragic outcome for the species as a whole. Instead, however, most individuals have chosen to rescue themselves by deliberately reducing the content of their consciousness through various suppression techniques like isolation (deliberately pushing frightening or disturbing thoughts out of consciousness), anchoring (clinging to certain fictions that provide a false sense of security as long as no one asks too many questions), distraction (keeping consciousness within the critical limit by feeding it a constant stream of external stimuli), and sublimation (channeling one’s despair into artistic or intellectual endeavors). The title of the book is Om det Tragiske or, in English, On the Tragic. It appears to be available on Amazon.
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