Reply #148: People do not dictate morality

[PATRICK]

to other people since being completely moral or holy or whatever the proud term is would hardly ever be accepted by the best individuals you would automatically place in that category. It is worse for the "believer" to presume he is perfectly moral and righteous even to pass it off as some sort of blanket coverage by the Redeemer, because it is a double presumption about oneself and what one terms God.

The term crutch implies some heroic individuals don't need props which shows a technical superiority for the decent atheist who does not have the danger, thank God, of lying both about himself and his God in the safe assuring breath. the reason we are in big trouble is because the best of humans are not good enough, perhaps not good enough to overcome and survive. At least not based on our false presumptions and lack of real effort. Thinking a historical pattern or past outcome will automatically rescue us- without effort- is a bizarre departure from the virtue needed to stave off total destruction.

People who think in terms of needing a title and organization debase what ethical religion is right at the start and veer from there toward immoral judgment and judgment of any sort in Christianity is cautioned against and the sole prerogative of God mostly for the Great Sorting Out when this mess is over. Yet the GOP must have power and judgment and especially punishment now and so the divergence from Christianity and morality itself in energy required to propel this split profoundly repels ordinary logic and non-religious mammalian decency. Thew Kingdom that Jesus brought to earth- NOW- was not that type of moral pose at all, but one one the perfect love and service that a perfect world would have- without power, angels, torture, glamor or the material bounty of prosperous mammon. And sadly a cross to bear for all our decent efforts thanks to the "moral minority" of hypocrites.

Organized religion need be no better or worse, than civil government or any human organization for the common good and the highest values with compassion for the least individual. organization itself can be diseased. The libertarian concept of killing the idea of organization easily becomes contradictory and vain in creating a lazier form of moral contradiction. This easy way out that also ends up with the destruction of the moral community and the isolation of all of us imperfect people.

In two thousand checkered years that would only have surprised Jesus with their endurance and longevity in the face of countless aberrations and missing the point the Christian organization has experienced just about everything except the best for the most. If the organization has not so much to brag about then the saints would concur that individuals are neither so hot individually or collectively whatever revolts or changes occur.