To break the silence

May we resolve that in this New Year, with courage and integrity, we will speak out clearly and firmly against ignorance, against bigotry, against superstition, against falsehoods and apathy.

Martin Luther King, Jr. once used a phrase in a sermon that said it all:

“A time comes when silence is betrayal. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth…the human spirit moves with great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought. But we must speak…we must break the silence of the night…we must speak.”

Due to fear and apathy and vested interests the sin of silence is everywhere today. It is in the clergy. It is in the state and national chambers of politicians. It is with the ordinary citizen talking over the back yard fence. It is in the office of editors making decisions on what to say and what to print, whether to bite the bullet and say it like it really is.

With colleagues of the clergy I find it contemptible. The sin of promoting falsehoods in order to hold their job. The sin of not sharing with a congregation what they know to be true and factual about the bible and Christianism. Those members of the clergy who have graduated in religious studies from major universities and every major theological seminary that is independent of Christian financial pressure know certain facts to be well accepted.

They know that:

• The entire bible is saturated with common mythological themes, from the creation and flood myth to virgin birth and resurrected hero mythology.
• The stories of the patriarchs in the Old Testament are known as “temple legends” and are mostly fiction, not to be taken literally or historically.
• The gospels were not written by anyone who knew Jesus personally.
• The “Christ” mythology and formulas are direct copies of Zoroastrian and Egyptian myths adopted by the Jesus cult through mythological diffusion. Read more

The age of Aquarius

Some “experts” in astrology believe we are already in the age of Aquarius. Many other astrological “experts” believe that we enter Aquarius today, January 1, 2012.

It is an age, a period, that will celebrate the human spirit. They tell us that this age means concentrating on love, on an elevated human consciousness, on the “acceptance” of one’s individual worth. I love the Age of Aquarius. It speaks to us in words that we ignore at our own peril.

It is an Age of man, not the material, an Age of human beings, of people, of the human spirit, not the machine and technology. As the song puts it: “Peace will guide the planets. Love will steer the stars.” Harmony and understanding, sympathy and trust will abound and not more falsehoods or derisions, but revelations and the mind’s liberation. Certainly a noble vision and a challenge to our view of man and man’s place within the natural order of things and a warning to us, a lethal warning, that we must re-define progress if we are to survive.

Do you not agree that we have become trapped in the pattern of putting practically everything ahead of people, of persons, of human beings, of Homo sapiens, and to become aware of the trap is the first requirement for survival?

Laws and rules have replaced people. Technology has replaced people. Institutions have replaced people. Doctrines, Creeds, Theology and Ideology have replaced people. Beliefs, traditions and moralisms have become more important than people, and the needs of human beings. And lest we forget, for those who follow the nomadic Rabbi named Jesus, the church is being rejected today as never before as an institution where doctrine, structure and institutionalism have become far more important than serving the needs of the people.

What do the people become within institutions? The masses. The masses are but a term for a crowd of individual people, of individual and unique spirits. They are but “clay” for the agitators, the “sounding board” for dictators, the “full house” for actors, the “few good men” for military leaders, the “flock” for the presumptuous clergy and religious professionals. What more derogatory term, than a flock of sheep! Masses are the “statistics” for the sociologists, the “statistics” for the civil servants; the people are degraded to the masses for those who would coerce and manipulate and control. For how many have archaic rules and archaic laws and institutions replaced people?

For those who look to the Rabbi teacher of Nazareth to point the way toward truth, of course nothing so aroused his anger and fury as putting “tradition” and rules ahead of the needs of people. “The Sabbath was made for man, NOT man for the Sabbath.” It was against the law to feed a person, or heal a person, on the Sabbath. The law had become more important than the needs of people. The law had become a yoke around the necks of the people, a yoke imposed on the individual by orthodox authorities, orthodox teachers, pious parents and fixed tradition The Rabbi named Jesus said clearly that only people are sacred, and not laws, institutions, days, theology, policy, nation, bible, doctrines… nothing. Read more

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