Francis Berger
  • Blog
  • My Work

Our Attitude Towards Power

5/29/2022

7 Comments

 
Who was more powerful? Jesus or the worldly power that crucified Him?

I ask the question because many have reached the erroneous conclusion that the Christian faith is weak, passive, and powerless.

Note that I say Christian faith and not Christianity because if one equates Christianity with contemporary Christian institutions and organizations then one may well be justified in the discernment that Christianity is indeed weak, passive, and powerless.

Worse, one can readily observe that all nearly all forms of organized Christianity have submitted to and are complying with global totalitarian evil. What does this say about organized Christianity and its relationship to power?

Those who see the Christian faith as weak, passive, and powerless misunderstand the latent power within the Christian faith. They pine for something more robust and vigorous -- something more testosterone-laden. Hence, they abandon Christianity altogether and set out to find power in other spiritual possibilities. Excuse the vulgarism, but they essentially yearn for a god "with balls". Hence, the current interest in neo-paganism.  

The small but growing interest in neo-paganism is a response to the question at the top of this post. Those who seek neo-pagan spiritual solutions to our current challenges certainly believe the worldly power that crucified Jesus was more powerful than Christ. 

This is an error of the most grievous kind. Nevertheless, it does shed light on the need for Christians to re-examine and re-think their attitudes towards power lest they fall into passivity, despair, or mistakenly wander down the same dead-end road. Nikolai Berdyaev once noted that: 

"Without a radical and spiritual transformation of our attitude towards power, in awareness and in action, we will remain in a condition of servility." 

Our attitude towards power -- about what it truly is and what it truly does -- has rarely been more critical than it is now. 

So, ask yourself -- Who was more powerful? Jesus or the worldly power that crucified Him?

Your answers will reveal much about your attitude towards power and, possibly, the work you still need to do personally.   
7 Comments
bruce charlton
5/29/2022 09:24:15

Reading this, I realize that it probably needs mention of the scope of consideration.

If we consider only power in the context of this earthly mortal life - then it is rational to regard the crucifiers as more powerful than the crucified - as seemed the case to most people in Jesus's time.

It seems that the Jews expected their Messiah to be a Man of ultimate this-worldly power - thus to be crucified meant that Jesus was not the Messiah.

Even the evangelists Matthew and Luke seem partially to subscribe to this assumption, because they insist that Jesus will return to exert his ultimate power on this mortal world with a *second* coming.

So, I think your argument requires that we consider the spiritual as well as material, and eternity as well as the duration of this mortal life.

Of course, most people believe this is nonsensical childish (or manipulative) wishful-thinking; but only on such a basis can we understand how the crucified really is more powerful than the crucifiers.

Reply
Francis Berger
5/29/2022 21:00:26

@ Bruce - "So, I think your argument requires that we consider the spiritual as well as material, and eternity as well as the duration of this mortal life."

Yes, that would be part of "the radical and spiritual transformation of our attitude towards power." I don't consider this to be an argument but an imperative.



Reply
Lady Mermaid link
5/29/2022 23:18:13

What the right wing neo-pagan miss is that pagan revival has already been tried and has led to the mess the world faces today. The Italian Renaissance began glorifying the pagan civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome at the expense of Christendom. This continued w/ the Enlightenment. You will read plenty of praise of the glories of Rome and Greece and how Christianity ruined those great civilizations w/ its superstition from Enlightenment writers. While it pains me as an American as I love my country, the United States was modeled after the pagan Roman Republic complete w/ a Senate and hostility to monarchy. Look at the classical architecture as opposed to medieval gothic. The Enlightenment thinkers believed that they could rebuild a new classical world by rejecting Christianity. Yet, we ended up w/ guillotines, two world wars, destructive ideologies of Communism and Nazism, wokeism, secularism, soft totalitarianism, etc.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying there was nothing good about ancient Greece and Rome. In fact, Christianity can be viewed as paganism plus as C.S Lewis stated. However, I don't believe it is truly possible to return pre-Christian paths. The resurrection of Jesus Christ fundamentally altered the cosmos in ways that we still don't fully comprehend. While paganism served man in the past as partial view of the good, the resurrection brings a new reality of a redeemed man and cosmos. Trading that in for paganism will only lead to destruction. It's not possible to become a child again.

Reply
lea
5/30/2022 17:24:53

A bit of a simplistic take imho. Paganism cannot be summarized easily, if at all without description and (sub) division. Certain parts of views on animism are almost word for word equal to Advaita Vedanta. While i disagree with most flavors of both those traditions, the word itself barely means anything without context.

Sophia Perennis suggests we tend to argue over semantics more then anything else, on average, and i completely agree with that. Names, shapes and interpretations of God, rather then expression.

We are all tools in the shed, what purpose is served by declaring one more useful then any other.. without context or clarification?

Scope of the potential post firmly in bookshelf, if not library sized dimensions, so i digress. Starting with a binary question that leads into a sandbox just rubs me wrong. No results from this lamp today.

Just to be clear Francis, i love almost everything you do and finding your post on despiritualization was a literal godsend. As it goes, you can only be real (virtual) friends after a fight, disagreement, argument.

As a very philosophically inclined person i can't step over the problems directly tied to all this in the same way i often do while commenting on other things; or simply not writing them myself. It is always easier being a food critic then a chef. Yet i feel like a regular customer at this restaurant and a need to point out some bugs in the soup, before moving to other courses.

Reply
Francis Berger
5/30/2022 21:53:27

@ lea - Read Lady Mermaid's comment above. I'm referring specifically to right-wing types who embrace paganism because they believe it has more balls offers a more "powerful" alternative to Christianity to solve exclusively worldly problems.

The focus of the post is not paganism but Christian attitudes to power and how these must be radically and spiritually transformed to further the development of human consciousness.

As Lady Mermaid put it, "The resurrection of Jesus Christ fundamentally altered the cosmos in ways that we still don't fully comprehend."

Christian attitudes to power form a large part of that incomprehension.

"Sophia Perennis suggests we tend to argue over semantics more then anything else, on average, and i completely agree with that. Names, shapes and interpretations of God, rather then expression."

This is much deeper than semantics. This is about the destiny of individuals, humanity, and the purpose of Creation. Other spiritual traditions offer their believers different motivations and goals. I believe God -- as a loving parent -- provides the believers of those faiths and traditions with what they desire.

At the same time, I do not believe any of those faiths or traditions fulfill the real purpose of Creation, which is to further develop human consciousness and raise men to divinity. Christianity is the only "tool in the shed" that fits that job.








Reply
Anthony Probst
6/1/2022 01:33:18

Actually most of the neo-pagans I encounter in California want a god with ovaries. It's a goddess religion.

Reply
Francis Berger
6/1/2022 07:56:01

@ Anthony - Since you are referring to California, I can't say I'm surprised.

No, I was vaguely pointing to some blokes a commenter mentioned in a previous -- specifically New Right thinkers from France like Guillaume Faye, Alain de Benoist, and Dominique Venner.

Reply

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    RSS Feed

    Blog and Comments

    Blog posts tend to be spontaneous, unpolished, first draft entries ranging from the insightful and periodically profound to the poorly-argued and occasionally disparaging.
     

    Comments are moderated. Anonymous comments are never published (please use your name or a pseudonym). 

    Emails welcome:

    f er en c ber g er (at) h otm   ail (dot) co m
    Blogs/Sites I Read
    Bruce Charlton's Notions
    Meeting the Masters
    From The Narrow Desert
    No Longer Reading
    ​
    Brief Outlines
    ​Steeple Tea
    Berdyaev.com
    ​
    Synlogos ✞ Aggregator
    New World Island 
    ​Adam Piggott
    Fourth Gospel Blog
    The Orthosphere
    Junior Ganymede

    Archives

    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    July 2018
    May 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    June 2016
    March 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    July 2015
    April 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    October 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012

    Picture
    A free PDF is also available in My Work. 
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.