frslblg-0045comments

In the night I wake up sharing middle-eastern peoples' pains. I hear Iraqi women crying over their husbands and children massacred and Iraqi men moaning over their families mutilated or missing. In a region which I might add is that where Jesus was martyred. Jerusalem isn’t this far from Baghdad—the distance between Paris and Nice—. There was no such religion as bloodthirsty Islam then, which the pope mentioned in Ratisbon. Jesus had not killed or threatened anybody, but he had preached some expectations of substituting love, forgiveness, peace and free intelligence for religion and government. Which the mighty have forever considered as an evil, an act of folly against "the nature of things", liable for a worse chastisement which, worse than the killing, is the deprivation of the rights of human justice—Just take a look at Guatanamo jails where among real murderers a few magnificient idealists are almost certainly rotting.
Frère Michel avec Chapeau et Lunettes Soleil

Frère Michel avec Chapeau et Lunettes Soleil

But something still worse than justice once denied a crucified man hastily executed may occur: The second killing that religion would administer on Jesus, three centuries later, by nailing him not to a cross, but to an enormous lie. Religion, though it was having a new look, the church, had been unsuccessful in blotting out the appalling bad memories of an iniquitous hideous crucifixion performed by religion. Some churchmen thought that they should make people believe, through an unprecedented tall story, that instead of the umpteenth triumph of evil Jesus’ passion had been quite the contrary the extreme good, the divine plan to save all of men, otherwise the people would end up fulfilling Jesus’ appeal for love and freedom and it would be the end of the dominators (27/9, 28/21, 29/2), their powers, treasures and privileges. The tall story, that halted the growing of real christianity, is that of God embodied and crucified so the world’s sin be atoned for once and for all, but a lot of similar tall stories, religious, political or cultural, have been rife all over the planet.
We have taken up the challenge not to begin a debate about that tall story, but simply to resume the achievement of christianity where the people had left off in the 4th century. We are still very small David facing still standing big Goliath, but our sling does not propel arguments or violence. It propels love, forgiveness, peace, freedom, the arms that, The Revelation of Ares reminds, give good instead of evil, Life instead of death.

copyright 2006