Bush's Armageddon Obsession

It is indeed frightening when a regime sees war not as a dirty means to an end but
as something approaching a duty. This is very rare in history -- the most obvious
precedent is Nazi Germany, where the destruction of war was seen as cleansing and a
fitting overture to the thousand-year Reich.

In the case of Bush, the key to it is his intellectual limitations. People who begin
a study of religion usually assume that there must be a personality type which is
attracted to it. Surprisingly, there isn't, but if you know that someone is a
churchgoer, studies show that there is a statistical link between IQ and education
on the one hand, and denomination. The rule is that the better the former, the less
fundamentalist the individual is likely to be -- it's a question of cognitive
subtlety.

Since Bush was actually chosen by big business as someone who could be relied upon
to do their bidding without having any thoughts of his own, he is not well equipped
to deal with the present situation and is bound to cling to the old 'certainties'.
He has also, to be frank, probably relied upon simple religious precepts to help him
with his former alcohol problems. However, a summary of modern biblical scholarship
might go something like this.

Jesus was seen in his lifetime as a healer, prophet and spokesman for the wisdom of
God.  Even on the day of Pentecost, the faith which Peter declared was that Jesus
was a man through whom God had worked signs and wonders (Acts 2.22).  Greek-speaking
followers gave him the title of khristos, meaning anointed - usually with oil but in
his case with the Spirit.  However, as tradition developed in the decades after the
crucifixion, Jesus came increasingly to be thought of as the incarnation of God's
wisdom, message or word (the means by which God brings about his will), and the idea
of his sonship of God, which was originally based on obedience and close
relationship, took on a biological sense with the stories in Matthew and Luke of
divine conception.  On examination, these are clearly creative writing and arose
easily within a Greco-Roman tradition where such stories were common.

In their grief after the crucifixion, the followers of Jesus opened themselves to
the Spirit and found him there.  With no other language available to them to
describe their experiences, these encounters were literalised.  As to the alleged
unfairness of the ministry of Jesus being available only at a specific time and in a
specific culture, the Cosmic Christ is ceaselessly active throughout the universe,
so could not have been exclusively resident in the person of Jesus, which would have
been in any case contrary to Trinitarian monotheism.

There is an undeniable gap between an understanding of God that is intellectually
satisfying and one that is emotionally or spiritually satisfying.  For example, if
God creates all life forms, then that must be as true of the microbe as of its
victim, and the answer is that it is up to us to be in harmony with the energy which
is the wellspring of our existence by healthy living, spiritual development and
enlightened medical practices, so that our immune systems, which are strongly
influenced by mental and organic vigour, can best resist.  If we fail, then others
will survive and the cosmic dance will continue.  This may seem harsh, but a God who
intervened sometimes, perhaps to please or impress, but stood idly by while millions
were exterminated in the Holocaust is not a God that many people would want to
believe in today.

Please circulate this to anyone who might be interested to read it.

Robert Napier