copy of "The Siege and Destruction of Jerusalem Under the Command of Titus" (D. Roberts) 


Good day, readers. A public apology is in order. It turns out that I was mistaken about who had sent me the link in my last post. I exchange emails with 3 David's and it turned out I had the wrong one. But the right David sent me a thoughtful response to my critique of the "Christmas is Bullshit" song, and I have posted the most important part below. 





From my friend, David, (not my cousin, David): 



I did take notice of a couple of things you said and would like to briefly comment. In your reply to "sooutthere", you say, in reference to Jesus (whom we know absolutely nothing about outside of the 4 gospels):
 
"And he did see clearly down the corridors of the centuries that if the weapons kept improving and the belligerent nature of some people stayed just as belligerent as it was in Roman times, the story could have only one ending. Human annihilation. "
 
That is sheer speculation on your part, Dwight, as there is no indication in the gospels, or anywhere else, that Jesus held those sentiments.  On the contrary, there is a huge amount of data that demonstrates that Jesus expected the Kingdom of God to appear on Earth within the lifetime of his disciples.  The end was at hand, and that belief was supported by all the writers of the New Testament (again, the only record that exists on Jesus' life.)




I sent a reply back to the right David this morning. It said the following: 

I value your insights so I wonder if you could give me your thoughts on the ideas below. 

I am inclined to believe you when you say that Jesus was likely not thinking two thousand years ahead. He was probably expecting an apocalypse and then a new heaven and a new earth within a generation of his time. But then again, we really don't know. We know little about him. He may have been looking ahead in the way I described.

However, what fascinates me and what I see as an important insight is his belief that people learning to love each other was vital to our being what he called "righteous". That was crucial. If we didn't have that, we could not, in his view, find our way into heaven.

But then ...his view gained more and more followers because, over the long haul, it worked. It caused societies that even roughly tried to live closer to his way to multiply and spread. What I'm saying is that his way was what made Western-style societies, with their giant market places and industries, possible. Commerce can't grow up to what economists call "scale" - where unit prices for goods come down and nearly all workers can afford a decent life - until the mass of people, including workers and managers and owners -deal honestly with each other. Graft and corruption just eat up all of the spare capital otherwise, and creative ventures never get tried. This is the minimum level of Jesus' way. If you love people, you don't cheat them or lie to them or rob them or bully them. 

It isn't politically correct to say so, but the evidence for this view can be seen around us today. Countries where graft and corruption at every level are just basic to daily life don't grow economies that really work. They tag along after the West, cursing us all the way, and their big industries get taken over by transnational corporations that run in Western ways. And some corporations will cheat too if they can, I know, but people in the West who analyze and police commerce bust them all the time and the honest, gradually, over decades, win out. (Volkswagen is losing millions of Euros a day right now.) Commerce depends on rule of law and rule of law depends on mutual respect and trust. Fear of getting caught and punished is not nearly enough. If, in a given society, most people most of the time will cheat if they can, then that society can't keep enough policemen to even begin to get an efficient economy of scale going.  

If I'm right about all of the above, that means that Jesus' way is still around because over the course of two thousand years, nations that lived by his way, at least roughly ...those nations rose to power. In short, decency and sense aren't just nice; they are the strongest way for humanity over the long haul. They work. The most effective ideas inform some ways of life and those ways of life keep getting stronger because they enable the people who follow them to multiply and spread.

The larger insight, for me anyway, is that all abstract principles have concrete consequences. The consequences just sometimes take a while to arrive. A lot more than one or two lifetimes. This would also mean that my saying Jesus' ideas about how society could and should run do apply to the arms race and to international politics. In a way, he did see down the corridors of history, in the sense that he saw how humanity would have to think in the future if it was to survive at all. He probably believed that some kind of divine intervention would take place before the new earth was realized. I think the intervention will come, but only inside of human hearts. But it will come. That I believe. The only real question is whether or not we will have to have a WWIII and the extinction of 95% or our species before we smarten up. 

For my grandchildren's sake, I hope not. Desperately. 

  
                                       ICBM's in military parade - People's Republic of China