miércoles, 30 de octubre de 2013

WHY WAS JESUS LIKE KARL MARX?

Because the doctrines of both work only on paper, since they conflict with the natural self-centeredness of the human individual.
For instance, Jesus said "Give the Caesar (or the Kaiser, or the worldly authority du jour) what belongs to worldly authorities, and give God what belongs to God".
It would be wonderful if ambitious and/or hypocritical clerical authorities had not started to covet, then to get, then to abuse worldly power.
Which brought the end of the tolerant, individualistic, and epicurean Hellenistic worldview. Medieval universities became male-exclusive, unlike their Age-of-Empire counterparts. Clever women and open-minded thinkers (Hypatia was both!) were persecuted, prosecuted, and subsequently executed.
Then the world changed. The lieges of nobles (kings, kaisers, czars, electors) ironically also helped the process of putting an end to the Dark Ages when they claimed the power and lands of the feudal gentry.
In those unpredictable days, somewhere in the Thuringian Forests, in the Electorate of Saxony, a dapper young student of Law at Erfurt was struck by lightning.
This incident was, for Martin L., like leaping down the rabbit hole. He was merely returning from a visit to his own hinterland birthplace when a thunderstorm surprised him in the middle of the woods.
He made it to Erfurt. He left university for a religious order. Then, Friar L. was sent to the Curia (the Pope's court) in representation of the Saxon Augustines.
It (the Curia) was Sodom and Gomorrah. No joke.
Upon returning home, Martin L., having discovered the darkest side of Catholicism (which still exists to this very day), left the cloister with some crystal clear ideas. For instance, that popes, cardinals, and their cronies do not live up to what the Bible says, for instance to the precept "Give the Caesar (or the Kaiser, or the worldly authority du jour) what belongs to worldly authorities, and give God what belongs to God".
He wanted the Bible translated and services to be given in Germanic languages.
Both the Pope and the Kaiser wanted his head on a platinum platter.
The Elector, however, saved his life and conveyed him to the safety of the fortified Wartburg. Some years later, Martin L.'s translation of the Bible was printed in Leipzig. The translator had obviously made use of a nom de plume not to be recognized by imperial authorities.
He encouraged Europeans to read and to sing, and to see Earth as a glen of smiles rather than a vale of tears. A revolution had just broken out, and it spread through Northern Europe like wildfire.
You know the rest: the Catholics counterattacked through the Society of Jesus and the Inquisition, a war broke out because the Kaiser wanted to convert or massacre his Protestant subjects, said war lasted for three decades and left it all in ruins, then the ideals of the Hellenistic period reappeared in the Northern nations with a name that had to do with light...
Minorities like women, children, foreigners, disabled people and non-human animals were empowered and given equal rights. The Church loosened its grip on both the State and the common people. And the long-forgotten words "rara temporum felicitate" (i.e. "due to the strange happiness of these times [when one can say whatever s/he pleases without risking penalty]") were resurrected, to live on to this very day.
Today, Northern Germans are celebrating the moment when Martin L. nailed his famous and notorious rant to a certain church door.
In his spiritual retirement, an elderly former Kaiser Charles V, reduced to kaiser of clockwork making and beer drinking, is said to have said: "Why didn't I kill Luther?"
It was already too late.
And, should he have had the reformer executed, I bet His Imperial Majesty would have fallen in battle against the electors and their vassals, seeking revenge for the death of their spiritual leader.

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