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2.03.2020
The church hates Jesus. Every time he pops up they crucify him again. No s***. As excited I am about rauschenbusch and the Social Gospel, as I am about Tolstoy in giving me the Clarity and confidence to believe in the man Jesus, his teachings and example, that I have always known. And rauschenbusch, the unvarnished truth that he shared, and the Social Gospel, has been culturally destroyed just as Jesus has been by the church.
2.02.2020
Here's the history. Civilization has been destroyed by Christianity, by destroying what might have saved the species, the truths distilled by the man Jesus.
This is the Theologian and theology that sparked young Martin Luther King jr. back toward the pulpit having decided he was not going to follow his father there.
James, why are you harping on this? For the same reason that Tolstoy did. For the same reasons that if I craved the truth about physics and yet all history had very distorted perverted contorted the discoveries of Einstein I would with my last breath try to discover, uncover, what Einstein really had to say. And also, because Christianity is a gigantic historical fact and ongoing Force. A horribly perverting force the profoundly rare exception proves the rule. James has so often stated and written and Lived he finds the idea of reforming Christianity an ultimate death trap. He has personally seen it destroyed the most promising Souls. Wiza care deeply about the few and Humanities that can be brought to joyful life or have that choice protected, that child's likeness, we can ill afford two things, ignorance of what the moral Einstein really had to say, and Ignorance of the force, the church, that continues to pervert burry destroye cripples that.
This young turn of the century Theologian finally give James the authoritative Clarity, understanding, history of the atrocity that is the church from the beginning, along with a even much richer understanding of what it was Jesus was showing and telling us. this finally after James has spent thousands and thousands of hours with other scholarship which was helpful but not nearly so complete, historical, clear. That Einstein of morality.
"Jesus always spoke of the Kingdom of God. Only two of his reported sayings contain the word " Church," and both passages are of questionable authenticity. It is safe to say that he never thought of founding the kind 131 132 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL of institution which afterward claimed to be acting for him. Yet immediately after his death, groups of disciples joined and consolidated by inward necessity. Each local group knew that it was part of a divinely founded fellowship mysteriously spreading through humanity, and awaiting the return of the Lord and the establishing of his Kingdom. This universal Church was loved with the same religious faith and reverence with which Jesus had loved the Kingdom of God. It was the partial and earthly realization of the divine Society, and at the Parousia the Church and the Kingdom would merge. But the Kingdom was merely a hope, the Church a present reality. The chief interest and affection flowed toward the Church. Soon, through a combination of causes, the name and idea of " the Kingdom " began to be displaced by the name and idea of " the Church " in the preaching, literature, and theological thought of the Church. Augustine completed this process in his De Civitate Dei. The Kingdom of God which has, throughout human history, opposed the Kingdom of Sin, is today embodied in the Church. The millennium began when the Church was founded. This practically substituted the actual, not the ideal Church for the Kingdom of God. The beloved ideal of Jesus became a vague phrase which kept intruding from the New Testament. Like Cinderella in the kitchen, it saw the other great dogmas furbished up for the ball, but no prince of theology restored it to its rightful place. The Reformation, too, brought no renascence of the doctrine of the Kingdom; it had only eschatological value, or was defined in THE KINGDOM OF GOD 1 33 blurred phrases borrowed from the Church. The present revival of the Kingdom idea is due to the combined influence of the historical study of the Bible and of the social gospel. When the doctrine of the Kingdom of God shriveled to an undeveloped and pathetic remnant in Christian thought, this loss was bound to have far-reaching consequences. We are told that the loss of a single tooth from the arch of the mouth in childhood may spoil the symmetrical development of the skull and produce malformations affecting the mind and character. The atrophy of that idea which had occupied the chief place in the mind of Jesus, necessarily affected the conception of Christianity, the life of the Church, the progress of humanity, and the structure of theology. I shall briefly enumerate some of the consequences affecting theology. This list, however, is by no means complete. 1. Theology lost its contact with the synoptic thought of Jesus. Its problems were not at all the same which had occupied his mind. It lost his point of view and became to some extent incapable of understanding him. His ideas had to be rediscovered in our time. Traditional theology and the mind of Jesus Christ became incommensurable quantities. It claimed to regard his revelation and the substance of his thought as divine, and yet did not learn to think like him. The loss of the Kingdom idea is one key to this situation. 2. The distinctive ethical principles of Jesus were the direct outgrowth of his conception of the Kingdom of God. When the latter disappeared from theology, the 134 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL former disappeared from ethics. Only persons having the substance of the Kingdom ideal in their minds, seem to be able to get relish out of the ethics of Jesus. Only those church bodies which have been in opposition to organized society and have looked for a better city with its foundations in heaven, have taken the Sermon on the Mount seriously. 3. The Church is primarily a fellowship for worship ; the Kingdom is a fellowship of righteousness. When the latter was neglected in theology, the ethical force of Christianity was weakened; when the former was emphasized in theology, the importance of worship was exaggerated. The prophets and Jesus had cried down sacrifices and ceremonial performances, and cried up righteousness, mercy, solidarity. Theology now reversed this, and by its theoretical discussions did its best to stimulate sacramental actions and priestly importance. Thus the religious energy and enthusiasm which might have saved mankind from its great sins, were used up in hearing and endowing masses, or in maintaining competitive church organizations, while mankind is still stuck in the mud. There are nations in which the ethical condition of the masses is the reverse of the frequency of the masses in the churches. 4. When the Kingdom ceased to be the dominating religious reality, the Church moved up into the position of the supreme good. To promote the power of the Church and its control over all rival political forces was equivalent to promoting the supreme ends of Christianity. This increased the arrogance of churchmen and took the moral check off their policies. For the King- THE KINGDOM OF GOD I35 dom of God can never be promoted by lies, craft, crime or war, but the wealth and power of the Church have often been promoted by these means. The medieval ideal of the supremacy of the Church over the State was the logical consequence of making the Church the highest good with no superior ethical standard by which to test it. The medieval doctrines concerning the Church and the Papacy were the direct theological outcome of the struggles for Church supremacy, and were meant to be weapons in that struggle. 5. The Kingdom ideal is the test and corrective of the influence of the Church. When the Kingdom ideal disappeared, the conscience of the Church was muffled. It became possible for the missionary expansion of Christianity to halt for centuries without creating any sense of shortcoming. It became possible for the most unjust social conditions to fasten themselves on Christian nations without awakening any consciousness that the purpose of Christ was being defied and beaten back. The practical undertakings of the Church remained within narrow lines, and the theological thought of the Church was necessarily confined in a similar way. The claims of the Church were allowed to stand in theology with no conditions and obligations to test and balance them. If the Kingdom had stood as the purpose for which the Church exists, the Church could not have fallen into such corruption and sloth. Theology bears part of the guilt for the pride, the greed, and the ambition of the Church. 6. The Kingdom ideal contains the revolutionary force of Christianity. When this ideal faded out of 136 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL the systematic thought of the Church, it became a conservative social influence and increased the weight of the other stationary forces in society. If the Kingdom of God had remained part of the theological and Christian consciousness, the Church could not, down to our times, have been salaried by autocratic class governments to keep the democratic and economic impulses of the people under check. 7. Reversely, the movements for democracy and social justice were left without a religious backing for lack of the Kingdom idea. The Kingdom of God as the fellowship of righteousness, would be advanced by the abolition of industrial slavery and the disappearance of the slums of civilization; the Church would only indirectly gain through such social changes. Even today many Christians can not see any religious importance in social justice and fraternity because it does not increase the number of conversions nor fill the churches. Thus the practical conception of salvation, which is the effective theology of the common man and minister, has been cut back and crippled for lack of the Kingdom ideal. 8. Secular life is belittled as compared with church life. Services rendered to the Church get a higher religious rating than services rendered to the community.-^ Thus the religious value is taken out of the activities of the common man and the prophetic services to society. Wherever the Kingdom of God is a living reality in 1 After the death of Susan B. Anthony a minister commented on her life, regretting that she was not orthodox in her beliefs. In the same address he spoke glowingly about a new linoleum laid in the church kitchen. THE KINGDOM OF GOD 1 37 Christian thought, any advance of social righteousness is seen as a part of redemption and arouses inward joy and the triumphant sense of salvation. When the Church absorbs interest, a subtle asceticism creeps back into our theology and the world looks different. 9. When the doctrine of the Kingdom of God is lacking in theology, the salvation of the individual is seen in its relation to the Church and to the future life, but not in its relation to the task of saving the social order. Theology has left this important point in a condition so hazy and muddled that it has taken us almost a generation to see that the salvation of the individual and the redemption of the social order are closely related, and how. 10. Finally, theology has been deprived of the inspiration of great ideas contained in the idea of the Kingdom and in labor for it. The Kingdom of God breeds prophets; the Church breeds priests and theologians. The Church runs to tradition and dogma; the Kingdom of God rejoices in forecasts and boundless horizons. The men who have contributed the most fruitful impulses to Christian thought have been men of prophetic vision, and their theology has proved most effective for future times where it has been most concerned with past history, with present social problems, and with the future of human society. The Kingdom of God is to theology what outdoor colour and light are to art. It is impossible to estimate what inspirational impulses have been lost to theology and to the Church, because it did not develop the doctrine of the Kingdom of God and see the world and its redemption from that point of view. 138 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL These are some of the historical effects which the loss of the doctrine of the Kingdom of God has inflicted on systematic theology. The chief contribution which the social gospel has made and will make to theology is to give new vitality and importance to that doctrine. In doing so it will be a reformatory force of the highest importance in the field of doctrinal theology, for any systematic conception of Christianity must be not only defective but incorrect if the idea of the Kingdom of God does not govern it. The restoration of the doctrine of the Kingdom has already made progress. Some of the ablest and most voluminous works of the old theology in their thousands of pages gave the Kingdom of God but a scanty mention, usually in connection with eschatology, and saw no connection between it and the Calvinistic doctrines of personal redemption. The newer manuals not only make constant reference to it in connection with various doctrines, but they arrange their entire subject matter so that the Kingdom of God becomes the governing idea.
2.01.2020
1. 30.20 2 primary but two enabling elements today. Cycling. Constant velocity, stair step, but also roiling including upward, and patients during the gap.
It seems that these last 2 have been unconscious competence in recent weeks or achieved in some other way. This almost 2 hour journey today with James carrying himself plus about 750 pounds, this journey began acceptably in the 1st hour but certainly no magic except for the end of that hour
Dialogue on Facebook today regarding getting Trump out of the White House.
S. I know someone who actually spent a very long time in front of the White House. James Mcginley might have some helpful advice…
Jm. Trump and his goons are a proud International Crime Mob and they love nothing more than to torture and kill people. The Millions would have to welcome the torture and murder he would unleash on them deputizing his assault weapons toting mob. And Ice. They both believe that they've won, and I think correctly, and they know that if they lose its
Rauschenbusch writings were the spark that Lit Martin Luther King jr. It is always a great and wonderful thing when a young spirit enters into voluntary obedience to God and feels the higher freedom with which Christ makes us free.
Even more than Tolstoy, in this book and in Christianity and the social crisis he lays bare the 2,000 years of Destruction that the church has waged on the teachings, the gospels, of Jesus. It is the history of the church that I have my whole life. How useful. But as a young person my soul knew that something was horribly horribly wrong. My religion is expressed quite well in all but a few sentences of the gospel and distorted by most of the rest of the Bible and virtually all of the church..
And yet he works within the church. Is it inslavement ment? Is it lack of courage? Probably it is strategic in the same way that Tolstoy uses the word Christianity. Both of them saw service to humanity by utilizing the deadly monster that is the Christian church For good by moving it for good.
It is the view of James that this has always been a deadly mistake. History kind of proves it. The founder or rather the rock to which the church at least points never did this period it replaced Judaism it did not seek to reform it or improve it. The church is a commercialization for personal and private gain of empires of individuals of church hierarchy. It is an incredible abomination and may single handedly have destroyed the human species and the planet by robbing it of the only medicine that might have saved it, the pure morality distilled in the teachings and life example of the man Jesus
As yesterday I witnessed the funeral of long-dead US democracy brought to my mind this morning this great soul. Killed by the Nazis because he would not enter their army this Austrian farmer said, how can we know what is good if no one lives in that direction? Paraphrase. I wish to be one of his sign posts. This essay, from many at this site is almost the entire must read book, peace and nonviolence, by Edward guinan. I put it up years ago. Do we owe the future Generations anything less? They keep telling me, James, send us lsgiabeing.com.
Including the special elections in Arizona and Georgia, Republicans will be defending 23 seats in 2020, while the Democratic Party will be defending 12 seats. Democrats will need to pick up three or four seats to gain a majority in the Senate, depending on which party wins control of the vice presidency.
1.31.2020
The most important book regarding the features, nature, and development of morality in Western culture is this rauschenbusch routing Bush book, Christianity and the social crisis. He is unable to see entirely past the church but almost. It is extraordinarily insightful and helpful. It is so clear that it would unleash the Soul and Spirit and energies of a young Martin Luther King jr. As it did.
The most important book regarding the features, nature, and development of morality in Western culture is this rauschenbusch book, Christianity and the social crisis. He is unable to see entirely past the church but almost. It is extraordinarily insightful and helpful. It is so clear that it would unleash the Soul and Spirit and energies of a young Martin Luther King jr. As it did.
Breathtaking insights that I have seen nowhere else and are very useful and empowering for me.
The clarity that he provides at how laws are worse than useless and unsustainable unless they reflect a social morality that has already been established. He seems to think that that can only be established by a Christian Church which is so sad and patently ridiculous. But the process is absolutely correct and there is no greater failing on the part of the legal left than their wielding of laws to do what only the long-term work of sewing a new Morality In The Souls of men, revealing the Morality In The Souls of men, liberating it from the tyranny of head and flesh, can do.
Among the many gifts of reading this is this particular treasure for me. That the most joyful task is to unleash within ourselves and thereby plant in others the seeds of Joyful living for others, LSGIA being, with the certainty that it may take years or centuries to grow, if it grows at all. That's how it works. Let's get on with it.
And yes, yes, yes it is centuries and Aeons too late to save the human species or the United States but it is not too late to save the quality of life of the poor souls that survived Downstream and to unleash the quality of life, to unlock it, among one or several of our fellow creatures today.
Breathtaking insights that I have seen nowhere else and are very useful and empowering for me.
The clarity that he provides at how laws are worse than useless and unsustainable unless they reflect a social morality that has already been established. He seems to think that that can only be established by a Christian Church which is so sad and patently ridiculous. But the process is absolutely correct and there is no greater failing on the part of the legal left than their wielding of laws to do what only the long-term work of sewing a new Morality In The Souls of men, revealing the Morality In The Souls of men, liberating it from the tyranny of head and flesh, can do.
Among the many gifts of reading this is this particular treasure for me. That the most joyful task is to unleash within ourselves and thereby plant in others the seeds of Joyful living for others, LSGIA being, with the certainty that it may take years or centuries to grow, if it grows at all. That's how it works. Let's get on with it.
And yes, yes, yes it is centuries and Aeons too late to save the human species or the United States but it is not too late to save the quality of life of the poor souls that survived Downstream and to unleash the quality of life, to unlock it, among one or several of our fellow creatures today.
"Jesus in his teachings alluded with surprising frequency to the use and abuse of intrusted wealth and power. In the...
Jesus in his teachings alluded with surprising frequency to the use and abuse of intrusted wealth and power. In the.... WHAT TO DO 381 parables of the talents and pounds ^ he evidently meant to stewardship V define all human ability and opportunity as a trust. His sWp.°^"^^" description of the head servant who is made confident by the continued absence of his master, tyrannizes over his subordinates, and fattens his paunch on his master's property, is meant to show the temptation which besets all in authority to forget the responsibility that goes with power.^ His portrayal of the tricky steward who is to be dismissed for dishonesty, but manages to make one more grand coup before his authority ends, not only shows the keen insight of Jesus into the ways of the grafter, but also shows that he regarded all men of wealth as stewards of the property they hold.' The parable of the peasants who jointly rent a vineyard and then try to do their absent owner not only out of his rent, but out of the property itself, was meant by Jesus to condense and dramatize the whole history of the ruling class in Israel.* The illustration of the fig tree which has had all possible advantages of soil and care without returning fruit, and which merely gets a year's reprieve through the hopeful pleading of the gardener, expresses the indignation of Jesus against the waste of intrusted opportunity.^ The terrible invective against the scribes and Pharisees is directed against teachers who had misused their influence to darken truth and leaders who had treated their leadership as a chance to get profit and honor for themselves.® The fact that Jesus in his diagnosis of wrong moral relations so often puts his finger on trust abused and betrayed, is proof of his penetrating social insight. Nearly all powers * Matthew 25. 14-30; Luke 19. n-27. * Matthew 21. 33-46. ' Matthew 25. 45-51. * Luke 13. 6-9. * Luke 16. 1-15. ' Matthew 23. 382 CHRISTIANITY AND THE SOCIAL CRISIS in society are essentially delegated powers. The more complex society becomes, the less will it be possible for the individual to attend to all his needs himself, and the more will he have to intrust others with specialized functions and powers. When
"we have an exaggerated idea of the importance of laws. Our legislative bodies are the greatest law factories the world has ever seen. Our zest for legislation blinds us to the subtle forces behind and beyond the law. Those influences which really make and mar human happiness and greatness are beyond the reach of the law. The law can compel a man to support his wife, but it cannot compel him to love her, and what are ten dollars a week to a woman whose love lies in broken shards at her feet ? The law can compel a father to provide....
we have an exaggerated idea of the importance of laws. Our legislative bodies are the greatest law factories the world has ever seen. Our zest for legislation blinds us to the subtle forces behind and beyond the law. Those influences which really make and mar human happiness and greatness are beyond the reach of the law. The law can compel a man to support his wife, but it cannot compel him to love her, and what are ten dollars a week to a woman whose
1.29.2020
1.28.2020
the Church has never been able to get entirely away from the revolutionary spirit of Jesus. It is an essential doctrine of Christianity that the world....
the Church has never been able to get entirely away from the revolutionary spirit of Jesus. It is an essential doctrine of Christianity that the world is fundamentally good and practically bad, for it was made by God, but is now controlled by sin. If a man wants to be a Christian, he must stand over against things as they are and condemn them in the name of that higher conception of life which Jesus revealed. If a man is satisfied with things as they are, he belongs to the other side. For many centuries THE SOCIAL AIMS OF JESUS 9I the Church felt so deeply that the Christian conception of life and the actual social Hfe are incompatible, that any one who wanted to live the genuine Christian hfe, had to leave the world and hve in a monastic community. Protestantism has abandoned the monastic life and settled down to live in the world. If that imphes that it accepts the present condition as good and final, it means a silencing of its Christian protest and its surrender to "the world." There is another alternative. Ascetic Christianity called the world evil and left it. Humanity is waiting for a revolutionary Christianity which wiU call the world evil and change it. We do not want "to blow all our existing institutions to atoms," but we do want to remould every one of them. A tank of gasolene can blow a car sky-high in a single explosion, or push it to the top of a hill in a perpetual succession of little explosions. We need a combination beween the faith of Jesus in the need and the possibility of the kingdom of God, and the modern comprehension of the organic development of human society. We saw at the outset of our discussion that Jesus was not a mere social reformer. Rehgion was the heart of his life, and all that he said on social relations was said from the religious point of view. He has been called the first socialist. He was more ; he was the first real man, the inaugurator of a new humanity. But as such he bore within him the germs of a new social and political order.... N
1.27.2020
12 sentences. THIS IS JESUS, the first I've ever seen it spoken, in all my years.
Beyond the question of economic distribution lies the question of moral relations; and beyond the moral relations to men lies the question of the religious communion with that spiritual reality in which we live and move and have our deep- est being — with God, the Father of our spirits. Jesus had V realized the life of God in the soul of man and the life of man > in the love of God. That was the real secret of his life, the well-spring of his purity, his compassion, his unwearied courage, his unquenchable idealism : he knew the Father. But if he had that greatest of all possessions, the real key to the secret of life, it was his highest social duty to share it and help others to gain what he had. He had to teach men to live as children in the presence of their Father, and no longer as slaves cringing before a despot. He had to show them that the ordinary life of selfishness and hate and anxiety and chafing ambition and covetousness is no life at all, and that they must enter into a new world of love and solidarity and inward contentment. There was no service that he could render to men which would equal that. All other help lay in concentric circles about that redemption of the spirit and flowed out from it. No comprehension of Jesus is even approximately true which fails to understand that the heart of his heart was religion. No man is a follower of Jesus in the full sense who has not through him entered into the same life with God. But on the other hand no man shares his life with God whose religion does not flow out, naturally and without ^ effort, into all relations of his life and reconstructs everything — that it touches. Whoever uncouples the religious and the social life has not understood Jesus. Whoever sets any bounds for the reconstructive power of the religious life over THE SOCIAL AIMS OF JESUS 49 the social relations and institutions of men, to that extent denies the faith of the Master.
Being friends with is a deadly empowerment of my head and flesh. For my freshman year in college this was miraculously avoided and I was friends to everyone. But then it stopped in the miracle ended and I didn't know why. Similar thing last night. I have more and more respect for the early monasteries. Going to create a place of sanity.
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