The tendency of people to sanctify the dead illustrates their inability to accept and grapple with the complex realities of human life. It is an avoidance of reality. It betrays the discomfort people feel with honestly and courageously facing themselves with an open mind, of challenging their beliefs and assumptions.
Is it wrong to kill, or is it only wrong to kill those deemed worthy of life? Who is so presumptuous as to think they can judge who falls into that category? That’s a slippery slope. Who is it that knows and understands what we call “life” and “death” so well as to “play God” that way? It all seems to come from value. What we value dictates our motivation, which dictates our beliefs, and then our actions.
A person who is flawed, who is conflicted and struggling with life should not be valued any less than one who is judged to be virtuous, for there does not exist a person who is above the realities of life that challenge us all—only those who try to avoid and deny them. He who chooses to acknowledge and struggle honestly with these realities deserves love, not derision, just as he who hides from the realities of life deserves love, not praise. (This is something Jesus knew and taught. It is too bad so many people do not learn the lesson.)
Perhaps the reason people feel the need to sanctify or vilify others is that they are uncomfortable with confronting their own mortality, their own contradictions and complexities. They feel they are unworthy of love unless they are pure and perfect, and this is a major problem. It is a fact—and this is something that many “alternative” people have understood throughout time—that is it not right, it does not make someone a good or better person, to try to follow and live up to what has been deemed “virtuous” by repressed, confused, and ignorant people in some position of authority.
How much suffering has been caused by the repression of that which has been deemed evil, impure, or unworthy, for the ultimate purpose of crowd-control by those who are too weak and cowardly to control themselves, and who are themselves quite repressed and living in denial?
This is where the horrible idea of “sin” comes from, and it is what is wrong about the concept of sin. Even the “sinner” is worthy of love. This is what Jesus taught. But that is just a beginning, not an end, which is what Christianity has done with it by way of simply telling people to acknowledge that they are imperfect, and thus less worthy, less than divine, and when they admit this, that is all they have to do, and they are forgiven (forgiven for being human!).
“Sins” are not to be washed away, or taken away from the “sinner” by the murder of Jesus; rather, what people call “sins” are objects of examination, opportunities for self-examination, self-awareness.
To decide what is “virtuous,” what is right and wrong, and to judge oneself and others accordingly is to miss the point. The point is to realize the folly of judgment—for who but a fantastical god could have the right to judge others?
The point is to look within, with a brave, open, and seeking and loving mind and heart for answers; not outside, not from someone or something else, especially not from those who would have the audacity to claim to speak for some “god.”
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From my personal notes, 5/27/00
