(Art by Michel Horsley))

First, if Christianity means social and cultural Christianity in various sects, there may be some sects that do not refer much to the Old Testament, but if I do not know which ( Marcionite The thing did not take off).

On a wider scale, the question is: How important is the Old Testament to understand and find faith in Christ?

The basic word is like a unique word, it is really either/or. If I have to say either yes or no, I will say it is not necessary. But if I can put it on the spectrum, I will say it helps, but it also does not help.

This is what Jack Ell writes Sabotage:

If God wanted to give us a philosophy, he would have gave us a coherent book and not the vital bonding of the Bible. . . There is no logic in the biblical revelation. There is no “or” only “and”. . . . We have to realize that everything in the Bible is contradictory. However, there is no revelation except where the contradictions are made together. . . The truth consists of actual contradictions. Each aspect of the truth is only true because it is linked to its radical reversal.

The Bible consists of contradictions and you have to collect these contradictions together.

The cognitive dissonance of holding two things opposes, at the same time, to allow this A different kind of awareness. This is the real Transition The reading of the Bible allows it.

In this context, then, I say the Old Testament He is necessary. Which means that I have already returned myself; It is suitable. It is essential and unnecessary.

The fact that the Old Testament is easy to reject because of some things in it, is a great example of this principle.

You do not like this version of God? Imagine how hepsy hair!

When God tells Abraham the sacrifice of his son, God tells Abraham to do what cannot be conceived, and Abraham must think about the matter. He must think so much that he is ready to do so.

Not because he wants it, but because his faith in God is absolute.

Then God says, “Do not do that.”

The easy explanation is that it was a test, just as the easy interpretation of the job book was that the job was tested. But this opinion depends on the existence Division From humans and God, instead of allowing continuity.

I think this is a better way to understand: There is a series connected between God and human beings.

In the Old Testament, it is a series connected between the Lord and the chosen people. In the New Testament, it is a series connected between God the Father and God the Son, Jesus Christ, and Christ in a series connected with his messengers, and thus with the entire humanity.

There is a continuous series between God and all human beings, although God is transcendent.

The fact that God is transcendent means that God goes beyond anything human. Therefore, with the same distinctive symbol, Humans are also outside the human being.

With the story of Abraham, something inside Abraham is fighting: He is still his own interest, or his own interest, although he is the highest thing-the father’s love for his child-is still a form of self-interest compared to the service of God with all his heart, spirit and body.

His parental self -interest is struggling with this other, divine The necessity of it, which says “abandon everything and follow me” (as Jesus said the rich man).

There is a painful period in which Abraham believes that he may have to kill his child to prove his loyalty to God For himself (The child’s sacrifice was a very real thing at the time), followed by the perception of dawn that he did not do Ownership To prove this.

for him Prepare to do this It is the evidence, not doing that actual.

Preparing to do something like this is a kind of sacrifice experience. To be ready to sacrifice what one cherishes in the world is the way to test it.

What is tested is one’s association with everything it is, which makes it essential to abandoning self -will, because it was essential to sacrifice before Abraham.

The people who believed in God themselves asked, “What is the most valuable thing that we can prove our love for God through sacrifice?” So they killed their newly born male children. (There is more than this, but this is a certain angle.)

It is a kind of pathological behavior, of course, because it is a heat for something that does not need to be literal.

Ibrahim’s story shows the same diseases and move towards the mind. It is a lack of understanding is also the beginning of understanding.

that it turning pointWhen the feeling of an external god turns, it requires sacrifice to the experience of an inner god, with mercy.

God is within us – or we are inside God – so God does not need any external offers to obey.

If God is inside us and we know him and move with God’s move and trust in our own movements, of course, God will not kill a child. (God will not be if he does.)

But humans who have fear of God have been.

The entire Old Testament fights with this problem, the right and the left side of the brain, the local awareness of the ego, the tribal identity, the mind of the group, the unconscious awareness of the Lord, the power of life, the spirit, and what is further than that, what is beyond that, what is beyond that, and what is beyond that, The Holy Spirit in its previous repetition.

If we want to understand Jesus, we must understand the Lord and how the opposites are also the ends of the spectrum.

This spectrum is the spectrum between God and man.

As much as a person was brutal, primitive, brutal, and ignorance of God, then God himself, God sameI took this nail, as mirror Through it, this chosen people – a specific part of humanity can begin She sees herself.

Then the mirror is suspended for the rest of humanity, through the Bible.

The people chosen then become a kind of scapegoat within this largest body. They become an embodiment old Humanity, from primitive, twisted, demonic.

As long as they are still clinging to the identity of the “chosen people”, and they insist on the basis of worldly power like Israel, they become, embodying the worst humanity.

Street Jew.

“Note” is noted that our confessional association with ancient sacrifice rituals.

No, it is the short answer. But it is “no, but” or “yes, but.”

No, but: in the same way as a man is as it was when he was a child.

Yes, but: at different stages in the development of human awareness and understanding.

Very different views of the divine. He almost opposes, but not actually opposed, because it is in the same continuity.

Whatever was lowered in the patriarchs, fictional or not – Abraham and Moses, and others – as LordLater, like Jesus Christ, anointed, will be saves in that subsequent period.

We are trying to tie that circle, to achieve a balance between opposites.

Terminology is a problem. The word “Jews” is a problem. The words “chosen people” are a problem.

Let’s say this: Once, there was a tribe of people. . .

Say that; until Which – which It seems a problem. Start again:

Once, there was part of the planet where a new type of consciousness began to appear, inside humans in small groups.

This is now the first historical narration recorded for the transcendent or higher power, which is the unknown principle, the highest principle in all existence, and comes to human consciousness.

And called the Lord called, and through the Holy Books, he became associated with “the chosen people of God”, the nation of Israel, etc., and so on.

As with Jesus, there was a historical turning point that was recorded – with any degree of sincerity – and the Old Testament became; Then later, new.

In both cases, there was the crawl of Chinese whispers, from the experiences of Ibrahim, Yaqoub, Joseph, Musa, and the prophets, to the way in which it was behaved, understood, written, and the method that was interpreted.

While what is in the Old Testament – and even the new – is very far from the historical truth, he still has the nucleus of the truth in it.

The nucleus resembles the mustard seed of the Kingdom of Heaven.

This question answers himself. The “chosen persons” were not supposed to be the “national identity”.

Imagine the irrigation system, moving across the entire overall object of the planet and the entire human species. The water should appear somewhere before it floats on the surface everywhere. It will not come out evenly, throughout the planet, through all human beings everywhere. It will start from a specific point within this system.

It happened that the water in Palestine would float a few thousand years ago, through different individuals, no matter how many. Then they were written by the followers or their grandchildren, such as Ibrahim, Jacob, and so on. Whether the accounts are historically accurate –Or even you are supposed to read this wayThe power of God appeared locally before its spread.

This is the origin of the idea of ​​the so -called “chosen people”.

It is a bad idea, as much as the source of the water It has nothing to do with any specific point where it is emittedBecause the source is under the ground and everywhere.

One can argue that it is Weaken On the ground where the water pressure can penetrate it, in a spring.

People chosen refer to the first point of penetration.

The first should be the last.

(This piece was based on part of the next Bosordoub“Cognitive dissident” # 11, in which I work a little at JQ and other biblical lines. Hold it next Saturday.)