Man is a divine soul imprisoned in an untamed animal; and both need be fed.
While we are not alive by bread alone, it certainly is a good thing to live in a world, where very few people experience the anxiety of having no food on their table. That, however, is not our world, is it? Ever growing masses of people, all across the developed societies and beyond, are dependent on the government handouts and food banks for their sustenance. The amount of the poor is on the rise and coming to your once well-shielded neighbourhood, the courtesy of central banks and their fiendish money printing spree. The devil’s work they’re doing; the terrible end we all shall meet. So much for the feed for the body.
As we are entering the Easter holidays it appears to be more than just a proper thing to touch upon the most famous execution in the modern history, the death of Jesus Christ. If a lie told a thousand times can become the truth, it must go the other way as well. Profaned by the time, science and yes, the church itself, we came to ignore the importance that this event holds to our lives, so much so, that we can see nothing in it except some old fashioned rite of the ever declining religious order – the Christian Church.
The story is short and widely known. Christ was brought to the Roman court as a rioter against the Empire and the blasphemer against the God of Israel. He was sentenced to death by means of crucifixion, the execution reserved for the worst of those times. Sentenced by the Roman governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate, for the crimes which he had not committed nor said he had committed, Jesus Christ accepted his ordeal without any remonstrances, claiming that his dying at cross was the ultimate reason he had come here in the first place. He was thus put to death and three days after he had been laid in a tomb by his followers, he was resurrected and shortly after that he ascended back to the heavens whence he had come.
Putting the purely Christian perspective aside, the story of Jesus’ crucifixion carries far more universal message than that limited to the Christian faith. Egyptian myth of Osiris, his death, dismemberment and resurrection, tightly connected with the cycle of fertility and new life in nature is yet another expression of the same theme – the mystery of life. These ancient teachings are reminding us of the fact that as the death is followed by new life in the vegetative and biological cycles here on the Earth, so there is another life beyond this life, for our ever living soul.
The teachings that our soul is eternal and does not perish together with the death of our body is absolutely crucial for the functioning of the human society and our existence as such. If there is no continuation after this life, there can be no morals, no ethics, no concept of justice, no reason to do the good and avoid the evil. It is the acceptance of the afterlife, which gives our lives here their meaning and helps us bear all our troubles to their bitter end. For he who believes that we live only once, will never be happy. He might be rich and successful for some time, but in the end he will always ponder about his past, thinking what he could have or should have done differently; or he will not restrain himself from doing evil deeds so long as they add to his benefit and well-being.
The Jesus man (the soul) was brought to the Roman court (the reason) to be tried for things he had not done; and the court stated the same. Jesus was exonerated and was to be released, when the pressures from the crowds on Pontius Pilate to execute “the King of Israel” started mounting, and so, to appease the mob (the animal), he washed his hands of the case, and handed the innocent soul to the beasts to do with him as they found fit. And they tore this soul to pieces, with the help of the Roman law, thus giving the world the story to be remembered and contemplated upon from various points of view. For, among others, it was the story of treason, cruelty and injustice delivered by the institution established to fight against the same, so that even people, to whom this story is just that – a story, can relate to it in one way or another; because to some, the story may be fabled, but the tragedy is forever ours.
What else can be said in conclusion to this story of treason, where the Jews had their Messiah killed, despite the fact they had been expecting him for many a long century? That Jesus was not the One? That he was not God’s son come to earth to absolve us of our sins, if we wished to be absolved or to save all human souls, if they desired to be saved? Those questions belong to religious thought, and I leave those to them as they can make up their mind on them. But to all of us one human feature is not to be forgotten, which is, that in the name of a dream, we are ready and willing and well capable of killing the very thing we have been dreaming of.
Sparrow's English Reader 