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The way we perceive the entire concept of ”war” is very different today from how it was perceived only 200 years ago, nonetheless 1000 or 2000 years ago. War today is generally condemned, but throughout history, it was a place of virtues like honor, strength and courage. The old testament is full of it — God not only tolerates war, but commands it. Jesus said he came not to abolish the law, but to fulfil it. Not once did he condemn war as a concept. His messages of peace and love were always about the individual, never about the collective. “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” (Matthew 10:34)

RedTailHawk 9mo ago 💬 1

The Golden Rule is about meeting people where they are. That means using language they understand, situations they are prone to experience, everyday situations, etc. Loving your neighbor as yourself means learning about your neighbor, then lovingly tailoring your interactions with your neighbor in ways based on your accumulated knowledge of them.

When someone really pays attention to you and shows you how well they see who you are as a person, that is a display of love. You feel loved when that happens. Everyone does when they feel truly seen and accommodated.

That said, Jesus's use of those terms like peace and sword in Matthew 10:34 is largely symbolic, although the use of peace is fairly applicable.

The sword Jesus brought was the sword of truth. St. Michael knows a thing or two about those from what I hear. If a person, say...a Pharisee at the time of Christ...was a total egotist who thought his mommy and his daddy were the super bestest human beings in the history of ever and that he was the pinnacle of human evolution...studies the Torah super hard...Karens everyone about pedantic law violations...boisterously offers sacrifices at the temple so everyone notices...all that "look at how pious I am" stuff.

People like that are not going to respond well when they are told they are preaching the wrong stuff. They're going to feel drawn down upon. They're going to feel like you're pulling your sword when you correct their teachings. They're going to feel like you've violated their peace of mind. They're going to feel like you're subverting their status in society and that threatens them at a deeply psychological level.

Pretty much it's only sigma personalities who are both competent enough and apathetic enough to roll solo. The apathy is directed towards the pack's (society's) bullshit hierarchy games. Sigmas don't care to play that. Everyone else plays for their own reasons. Most of them play because they're too incompetent to roll solo so the prospect of being booted from the pack constitutes a serious degradation of their prospects for survival, succession, and general flourishing.

So, psychologically, a lot of these people literally felt fight or flight responses when confronted by Jesus regarding their teachings. Their perspective that Jesus was "drawing down upon them" with a sword was essentially in the same category, neurologically speaking. The same neurochemicals are pumping in both cases.

Swords of truth have a tendency to garner reactions like that. Mark Twain understood that when he said "It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” Likewise, it's easier to get people to believe false things than it is to convince them that they already believe false things. The bread and butter of the ego is the sunken cost fallacy.

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Discussion

Börje 9mo ago 💬 1

If Jesus truly is God, not separate from God, like the Church have always claimed through the doctrine of the trinity, his moral character must be consistent across time. The same God who commanded war in the Old Testament cannot suddenly declare all warfare inherently evil without violating His own nature. That would render God internally contradictory.

Thus, it makes much more sense to interpret the peace oriented teachings of Jesus to be directed to individuals rather than the collective/organisations. His message is about peace among individual human beings, not about political pacifism.

This is precisely how Augustine framed it in the just war tradition. Ultimately an approach to warfare which forms the ethical framework in all of modern warfare.

RedTailHawk 9mo ago

Everything is God...Jesus...you...me...Earth...your keyboard...your touchscreen...the steak you ate yesterday...it's all God.

I can't put this clearly enough: if a person's understanding of Christianity has been derived from any modern mainstream Christian teachings, that person's understanding of Christ's teachings is heavily distorted.

The Doctrine of the Trinity is echoed in every religious and esoteric wisdom tradition. Embody characteristics that are penetrative or emissive like Wisdom, Power, and Victory. These are the "masculine" traits of the Divine. The Divine also has "feminine" traits which may be characterized as "receptive". This includes things like Understanding, Mercy, and Glory.

Just like Yang and Yin, Shiva and Shakti, Victory and Glory, Power and Mercy, Wisdom and Understanding, Ka and Ba, Alpha and Omega, the Doctrine of the Trinity is about how anyone gets to go to heaven, to use parlance Christians would be most familiar with.

To go to heaven essentially requires enlightenment which is what Matthew 10:16 is talking about. In order to do that, one must embody, balance, and unite the Divine Masculine and Divine Feminine characteristics.

What happens when you unite the Divine Masculine with the Divine Feminine?

You get a Divine Child, or what has become translated as a "Son of God".

Jesus came to teach us how to become Divine Children. He'd already done that before so he came back here to show us how it's done. We gotta love our neighbors unconditionally, expecting nothing in return. We need to speak truth. We need to respect free will. We need to serve others.