Quote:
Originally Posted by Undertoad
Jordan Peterson has fucked me up. I claim to not be religious. He would claim that I'm deeply religious and deeply Christian.
Impossible, I say. I don't believe in the divine resurrection. I don't believe in metaphysical miracles. I don't believe in a located Heaven and a located Hell. I believe these are all inventions of mankind.
But Peterson points out that Jesus is a representation of what we should be aiming at: a "divine hero archetype" showing us how to be, how to act; and actually being effective whether we believe in his divinity or not. Pretty powerful mojo. Since we are western, Jesus is within us, and has deeply changed us, regardless of what we believe of the myth.
The power of Christ is that He implored humanity to reach for higher levels. And we have done; and it is Good. And when we do, we become divine and immortal. We have concern for future generations of us, more than we do for ourselves. We create their future. And so we are God.
We are certainly Gods to the people of 2000 years ago. We extend our own lives, we become harder better faster stronger, we defeat suffering, we create amazing beauty that we can magically summon on demand. But we can only do it because all the humans before us believed in reaching for higher levels.
So yes: I am a Christian. I believe in the transformative power of Christ. The divine individual is nothing short of the salvation of humanity. It IS a miracle.
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Well, I left the Church but apparently am still a Christian and a Buddhist and every other positive piece of our crazy human culture... I'd say that's good.
I read this last night.
“There shines forth fleetingly the ever threatened truth that each and every man, on the foundation of his own sufferings and joys, builds for all.” -Camus