Jesus is a failed apocalyptic prophet from the iron age. He wasn’t resurrected, and the narratives written by the biblical authors had their own agendas. The scholarly consensus remains that the OT and NT are not univocal, not divinely inspired and not inerrant. It’s a historic work, but is not a strong chronicle of history but of mythology, like The Illiad.
But ministries are always going to take advantage of common mythologies and ideologies to manipulate the people. They are, after all, for-profit institutions in a capitalist market, or before were a nexus of political power. They remain places that serve themselves, not the people.
We can even note that the message of Christianity has changed with time to serve the ministries, to reflect the mores of the culture at the time, though in the 20th century, there was an active effort to shift Protestant Evangelical Christianity in the United States towards American Exceptionalism, far-right conservatism, anti-communism, pro-patriarchy and pro-hierarchy, resulting in the Christian nationalist movement we are facing today. The movement that wants to purge LGBT+ and non-Christians, and force women to become breeding mares is the product of decades of willful manipulation. As some sociologists and historians who are Evangelist, themselves have observed, this may well kill Christianity as we know it today, making it the de-facto bad-guy the way Nazis (the old German Reich ones) have been for the last century.
In the meantime, the poet is doing something different. In this case, it serves the same role as other internal mentors and heroes. In Dialectical Behavior Training (DBT, related to CBT – the other CBT) imagining what Wonder Woman, or Captain America, or Obi-Wan Kenobi, or Jesus Christ might say to you taps into that part of you that loves you unconditionally, beyond the fear that you don’t fit into mainstream society. Jay Hulme is seeing within himself someone that loves and regards him and accepts him for who he is, which is a critical step for all of us, especially those of us who didn’t have others to do the job.
(This can also be applied to other media that celebrates the love of Jesus or the love of a mentor, such as I Don’t Deserve You by Plumb or The Wind Beneath My Wings by… two songwriters – Jeff Silbar and Larry Henley – and performed a whole lot of artists)
Jesus is a failed apocalyptic prophet from the iron age. He wasn’t resurrected, and the narratives written by the biblical authors had their own agendas. The scholarly consensus remains that the OT and NT are not univocal, not divinely inspired and not inerrant. It’s a historic work, but is not a strong chronicle of history but of mythology, like The Illiad.
But ministries are always going to take advantage of common mythologies and ideologies to manipulate the people. They are, after all, for-profit institutions in a capitalist market, or before were a nexus of political power. They remain places that serve themselves, not the people.
We can even note that the message of Christianity has changed with time to serve the ministries, to reflect the mores of the culture at the time, though in the 20th century, there was an active effort to shift Protestant Evangelical Christianity in the United States towards American Exceptionalism, far-right conservatism, anti-communism, pro-patriarchy and pro-hierarchy, resulting in the Christian nationalist movement we are facing today. The movement that wants to purge LGBT+ and non-Christians, and force women to become breeding mares is the product of decades of willful manipulation. As some sociologists and historians who are Evangelist, themselves have observed, this may well kill Christianity as we know it today, making it the de-facto bad-guy the way Nazis (the old German Reich ones) have been for the last century.
In the meantime, the poet is doing something different. In this case, it serves the same role as other internal mentors and heroes. In Dialectical Behavior Training (DBT, related to CBT – the other CBT) imagining what Wonder Woman, or Captain America, or Obi-Wan Kenobi, or Jesus Christ might say to you taps into that part of you that loves you unconditionally, beyond the fear that you don’t fit into mainstream society. Jay Hulme is seeing within himself someone that loves and regards him and accepts him for who he is, which is a critical step for all of us, especially those of us who didn’t have others to do the job.
(This can also be applied to other media that celebrates the love of Jesus or the love of a mentor, such as I Don’t Deserve You by Plumb or The Wind Beneath My Wings by… two songwriters – Jeff Silbar and Larry Henley – and performed a whole lot of artists)