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IN
THE EAST
long before the time of Buddha
there had been ascetics,
men and women who gave up most of the delights of life,
who repudiated marriage and property
and sought spiritual powers
and an escape from the stresses
and mortifications of the world
in abstinence,
pain and
solitude ...

Buddha himself
set his face against
ascetic extravagances,
but many of his disciples
followed a monkish life of
great severity ...

Obscure
Greek cults
practised similar disciplines
even to the extent of
self-mutilation ...

Ascetism
appeared
in the Jewish communities
of Judea and Alexandria
also in the first century
B.C. ...

Communities of men
abandoned the world and gave themselves
to austerities and mystical
contemplation ...

Such
seems to have been
the sect of the
Essenes ...

Throughout
the first and second centuries A.D.
there was an almost world-wide resort to such repudiations of life,
a universal search for 'salvation'
from the distresses of
the time ...

The
old sense
of an established order,
the old confidence in priest and temple and law and custom,
had gone ...

Amidst
the prevailing slavery,
cruelty, fear, anxiety,
waste,
display and hectic self-indulgence,
went this epidemic of self-disgust and mental insecurity,
this agonised search for peace
even at the price of renunciation and
voluntary
suffering
...




THIS
it was that filled the Serapeum with weeping penitents
and brought the converts into the gloom and gore of the
Mithraic
cave ...

ON
THE OTHER HAND
the Jews were persuaded that G*D,
the ONE G*D of the whole world,
was a righteous g*d,
but they also thought of him as a trading g*d who had made a bargain
with their Father Avraham
about them,
a very good bargain indeed
for them,
to bring them at last to predominance
in the earth ...

WITH DISMAY
AND OFTEN ANGER
they heard Yeshu 'sweeping away' their
dear securities .......

G*D,
HE taught,
was no bargainer;
there were no chosen people
and no favourites in the
Kingdom of
Heaven!

G*D
was the loving father of ALL LIFE,
as incapable of showing favour as the
universal
sun .......

And
ALL men
and women were brothers and sisters -
sinners alike and alike beloved sons and daughters of this
divine father/mother ...

In the parable
of the Good Samaritan
Yeshu cast scorn upon that natural tendency we all obey,
to glorify our OWN people and to minimise
the righteousness of other creeds and
other races .......

In the parable
of the Labourers
he thrust aside the obstinate claim of the Jews
to have a special claim
upon G*D ...

ALL
whom G*D takes into the kingdom,
HE taught,
G*D serves alike;
there is no distinction in his treatment,
because there is no measure to his bounty .......

FROM ALL,
moreover, as the parable of the Buried Talent witnesses,
and as the Incident of the Widow's Mite enforces,
he demands the utmost .............

There are no privileges,
no rebates and no excuses in the
Kingdom of Heaven ...

But it is not only the intense tribal patriotism of the Jews that Yeshu outraged ..............
THEY were a people of intense family loyalty,
and he would have swept away all the narrow and restrictive family affections in the great flood of love of G*D .......

The whole kingdom of heaven was to be the family of his followers ...

We are told that,
"WHILE he yet talked to the people, behold,
his mother and his brethern stood without, desiring to speak to him.
THEN one said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethern stand without, desiring to speak with thee!
BUT he answered and said unto him that told him, WHO is my mother?
and who are my brethern?
AND he stretched forth his hand towards his disciples, and said, Behold,
my mother and my brethern!
FOR whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven,
the same is my brother, and sister and mother ..."

liefdesverdrietverliefd
engel
09 jul 2004 - bewerkt op 12 jan 2008 - meld ongepast verhaal
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