Jesus is Lord, the Messiah, the suffering eschatological prophet who overcame the world!
by Marc Batko
[This article combining theology, history and the sorrows of empire was posted on May 11, 2024. More articles await you at freetranslations.foundation, freetranslations.site and academia.edu.]
God has done what the law could not do – brought people together who were far apart and gave hope where there was only division and war
The universal God had to become particular to be relevant and concrete. Israel was to be the light of the nations. The tribal God became the infinite transcendent universal God.
State intervention is absolutely necessary for building SROs (single residential occupancy) and affordable apartments. Social peace is worlds away from cemetery peace as costly grave is worlds away from cheap grace.
The old downtown post office In Portland, Oregon could have become a village of SROs and affordable apartments. The corrupt state ruled only by capital and idolatrous profit maximization turned away again from the common good! Instead, all we have is a gigantic, vacant parking lot too far from businesses and offices to be useful.
The right-wing counter-revolution dismantled the welfare state. Since the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic, a third of all new wealth has accumulated in the pockets of the top 1%. Socialism for the rich and ruthless uncaring capitalism for the rest of the population! The poor and homeless, victims of the rule of capital and the irrational goal of profit maximization, are denied basic human rights and made invisible.
Hope comes from outside the nihilistic society with its boarded-up businesses, outmoded myths, financial bubbles and permanent wars. More than wishful thinking, magic thinking or empty promises of corrupted politicians is needed to turn skid-rows into livable human communities. Housing, taxation, and bank stability were the first pillars of neoliberalism to collapse. Now security guards bump into other security guards; the walkable city becomes another de-industrialized wasteland. Universities become tentacles of the police state (cf. economist Michael Hudson) or social machines of conformity. Critical thinking, dissent, enlightenment and social relief should be priorities of a society that learns from the past. Tolerance and anti-militarism should be “no-brainers” after the horrors of Vietnam, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Gaza and Ukraine.
Humpty Dumpty has fallen and all the king’s horses and soldiers cannot put the status quo back together again! Babylon the Great, the great whore that devoured the world’s wealth as the self-chosen indispensable empire, has fallen! Two elderly men in dementia battle for the US presidency without discussing indebtedness or enrichment, alternative economics or neoliberal myths!
Jesus laughs at the kings of the earth! Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? Do you expect a reward for your lies, indifference and complacency, for stuffing your pockets while the US empire falls and the global economy stagnates? Do you think other countries will listen when you speak arrogantly and hostilely? Germany and the US threatening China is like dwarfs on steroids or three-year olds bellowing at a heavy-weight champion!
The first will be last and the last will be first! Those working one hour will receive the same as those who worked all day since the enjoyment and salvation of God is the true reward of life! Whoever exalts himself will be humbled and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. Jesus’ parable of the tax collector and the Pharisee is a disappointment for those who believed capitalism was an eternal natural law and its own ethic.
The God Yahweh stands above the four world empires (cf. Dan 2). God himself is the eschatological gift of salvation, wholeness, and happiness. Jesus is the fulfillment of the land promise to Israel, liberation theology proclaims. His sacrifice was to be the end to human sacrifice since God demands justice, not human sacrifices or animal sacrifices. Our challenge is to think spiritually and become post-materialists!
The anti-reign (cf. theologian Jon Sobrino) lives from the blood of the prophets, saints, and martyrs. The US empire has a history of 240 years of war for hubris, resources, power projection and scapegoating! The right-wing counter-revolution is based on resentment and greed, permanent wars and the tax avoidance industry, tax havens and stock buybacks, an anti-social misanthropic agenda oblivious to the rights of coming generations, the rights of the poor, disabled and elderly and the rights of nature.
Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand! were Jesus’ first words in the Gospel of Mark. Jesus in his words and life revealed the merciful forgiving God and was the truth of God in person (auto-aletheia) and the kingdom of God in person (auto-basileia). The whole Christian life should be a life of repentance, Martin Luther pleaded in the first of his 95 Theses (1517).
The ego must die for the self to be born. The aesthetic stage is limited to fleeting, transitory pleasure (cf. Soren Kierkegaard, Stages of Life) as the dietary laws were a stage to the eternal law of love of God, neighbor and self.
God’s Word slays to make alive, said Martin Luther. The choice is faith or talking to oneself. In “One-Dimensional Man,” philosopher and social critic Herbert Marcuse denounced the false needs, false consciousness, and alienation standing in the way of liberation, wholeness and social transformation. The one-dimensional society is only based on fear and intimidation.
The rulers of the world do not know peace, only envy, jealousy and optimizing self-glory and self-righteousness. Peace, peace, peace, they cry but there is only destruction said the Roman historian Tacitus.
We live on the shoulders of the prophets, witnesses, and writers of faith. The unbelieving world denounces the other as the cause of chaos. Neoliberalism destroys curiosity and rhythm and doesn’t know music, wonder, astonishment, resilience or the magnificence of nature and the smallest. Film director Werner Herzog distinguishes mathematical truth from ecstatic truth or truth of nature. Absolutist truth leads to discrimination and dehumanization of others while hatred leads only to blindness, to 240 years of war, and to hatred of Russia or hatred of China.
In “1984,” George Orwell warned that two minutes of hate would be ordered to unite the spiritless country. Donald Trump who calls himself the “Chosen One” or “the Nelson Mandela of our time” or a celebrity after the “Apprentice Show” has given us eight years of hate with the media’s obsequiousness. Calling himself the victim of culture wars and the media, he has poured his venom and scorn on the weakest, immigrants, the disabled and the homeless, denounced leftists as “vermin,” Mexicans as “rapists and murderers,” the Department of Justice (e.g. Obama judges), the Department of Education, the Environmental Protection Agency, women and all the media (e.g. as losers) The victimization deceiver unleashes a torrent of slanders, accusations, name-calling and mud-throwing and is uninterested in policy debates, discussions, human rights, international law, and the struggles of minorities and the poor. The attention-whore mocks democracy and language. Make America Great Again is just a cynical disguise to Make Trump Great Again and keep Trump out of jail for bank fraud, insurance fraud, defrauding New York of a billion dollars, two 2017 tax heists of $8 trillion and pedophilia with Jeffrey Epstein.
Trump is a misanthropic, sociopathic narcissist, who was brought up on a “Kill, Kill mantra”, learned from Roy Cohn never to admit a failure or mistake and blame the weakest. When his Atlantic City casinos went bankrupt, he got a nearly billion- dollar credit and didn’t pay any taxes for nearly a decade! The loose cannon sets himself above the law and declares when you’re a celebrity they let you do whatever you want! Nebuchadnezzar, the destroyer of the Jerusalem temple in 587 B.C., Hitler who repeated the lie “International Jewry was exterminating Germany,” Zelensky and Netanyahu who had razed Gaza to the ground and killed 30,000 Palestinians in a six-month genocide are Trump’s compatriots.
The people are ahead of the government, particularly when the state serves capital and is wedded with the corporate media. The Yes comes before the No in a society mindful of social ethics. In Jesus’ radicalization of the law, stoning adulteresses is prohibited and reaping corn for food is allowed. Telling the truth is a revolutionary act in a corrupt time, George Orwell admonishes us in this time of upheaval and uncertainty.