Brian’s Reflection: Thursday, April 22, 2010

Men will never be free until the last king is
strangled with the entrails of the last priest.

Denis Diderot


Ah, Diderot! Pithy if not anything. Some people have a way with words – people like Jesus and the Buddha and ….. the list is endless, thank God.

What Diderot reminds us of is that we human beings have a penchant for creating social, theological, economic, or other structures that slyly work against us. And that we hang on to them far too long – until they leap and destroy us before we take notice.

Governing ourselves is a tricky business. Once we get a system in place that eases out distress (like democracy, monarchy, “church”), we tend to stop paying attention. And before we know it, we are slaves to our own creations. “God” included.

It is clear to me that inventing “God” had some very good benefits. Freedom, self-examination, honesty, compassion, etc. But like everything else, “God” can be co-opted by the cleaver in order to gain control over others – and to diminish Life, to crush Joy and Kindness.

We are at this point in the World today. But I think there are more of us who don’t want this to happen than those who have been perverted.

Rise up! Stand your ground. Jesus said that it would be hard to follow His way of Compassion and Justice. But it is made all the harder if we cede control by default to the narrow-minded and the selfish and the ignorant.

Brian+