Michael Patterson
Member
Agreed MP, this phrase absolutely has to have a different meaning - because it's wrong. In my work, I find that the cheater, the surreptitious, the methodical, the greedy, those who harm and derive joy from it, the desire to get something for nothing, those who refuse to work, live only for fueling their intoxication, yet consume and have sex and give not a care to serve anything or anyone who results from it, including their own children... They are the one's inheriting the Earth.
I think that either this quote was incorrectly rendered (to garry's point) or Christ was just not exposed to enough of humanity and was flat wrong. The evil are inheriting the Earth - and they are going to inherit the hell they have earned.
But this begs the question, if a phrase so essential to the philosophy of Christianity can be this dramatically wrong - how are we to regard the other, even less-clear tenets of the doctrine set?
One of the things that facinate me about this forum is the way conversations go off at a tangent from the original show's content. Christianity has done the same thing - if we assert that the essence of Christianity is the teachings of Christ. What, for example, in those teachings is the founding logic for the Vatican? The acorn of deep mystical insight has yielded a mighty oak of nothing of the sort, other than a reference back to the acorn - tenuous at best. I don't think that Jesus gives permission for the Pope, or to the Pope, for that matter.
But if the premise of the faith is other than Christ's teachings, we are dealing with meanings intended to achieve an objective that is not clear to us. It cannot be that Christianity's intent and focus is the imitation of Christ, because it expressly militates against such action. And it would police the interpretation of the essential scriptures with a passion - to ensure there was no misunderstanding or misinterpretation - if that were its mission.
Christianity in the West evolved to perform two functions - to preserve and prosper the organised church, and to preserve and prosper preferred secular powers of government (and all that infers). To do this there must be a compliant followership kept from the deeper truths so that it remains compliant and able to be pointed in the right direction.
John 13 is pretty clear: 34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” The focus of any community leadership should be on (1) "What does this mean?' and (2) 'How do we enact this meaning?' And yet this is exactly what does not happen. So any misunderstanding and misinterpretation that serves to take attention away from this 'command' contributes to the two above functions - which are secular in nature.
I argue that Christianity evolved away from being a truly spiritual movement into one that became essentially materialistic. It intentionally removed the spirits and the magic from its world view and created an intellectual theology with a deity that was little more than a reference point. So it was easy for the materialists to become atheists - because deity inhabited only an intellectual domain, and could be set aside with no adverse consequence - especially when efforts at proof failed to deliver any convincing result.
Spirit is experiential, not intellectual. But once intellectual you can spin arguments to suit your imperative. It does not matter what 'meek' means if you imagine the whole idea of anybody other than a ruling class inheriting anything worthwhile ridiculous. You do not care what 'fear' properly means because the deeply reverential are trouble and it is better to have followers who are afraid - and hence compliant.
So the question of meaning is real, but the encrustation of endless blather of misdirection and manipulation renders it pointless.