Jesus Resigned being Messiah

One of the most compelling arguments offered up by Jews, to slap the faces of their Christian friends, is that Jesus was not the Messiah because, well, he never became a Messiah, that is, King of a Jewish Nation that would expand into an Empire that would have ruled the World.  What the Jews expected of their Messiah was a kind of a Genghis Khan who was just a fraction more successful.  After all, if a Mongol Tribesman with no help but from the Devil can almost conquer the World, than why couldn’t we expect a smart Jew to do just a bit better, having the help of God?

Well, the Jews kind of do have a point.  Jesus, while presenting all the evidence of being a World Class First Magnitude Saint, was, well, a complete failure as a Messiah.  While he was able to head up a relatively small band of missionaries, with some who quarreled and some who actually betrayed him in the end, well, he never even began to put together any kind of a foundation for National Kingdom or World Empire.

Perhaps the timing was bad.  I read the translations of Anne Catherine Emmerich’s “Life of Christ”, she being this wonderful visionary mystic during the life of Napoleon or there abouts.  What she says was that God had a particular schedule for the Messiah, but that the Jewish People continuously slowed things down by being, well, unworthy.  The time for the Jewish Messiah, historically, would have during a lapse between Empires, perhaps when Assyria, Egypt and Nineveh had fought each other into dysfunction and poverty, then a small tribal nation might have rose up and took over the whole game, much as Islam had been able to take advantage of the collapse of both the Roman and Persian Empires.  Anne Catherine Emmerich supposes that David had been meant to be Messiah, but that his naked dancing, cowardice with the Arc of Covenant (he abandoned it after one of its caretakers had died in an Arc accident), and his constant womanizing, and husband killing, put a hold on all that.  We can look upon David as having been the Bill Clinton of Messiahs, for which God had impeached him.  A Purity Campaign put in place by Elijah the Prophet, who was not even Jewish, eventually solved the problem, but it took 7 generations, and by that time the Greek World had conquered all of Near Asia, and Rome had a firm hold on the West – both were Dominant Civilizations still in their prime and at the top of their Political and Economic Powers.  Even the Powers of God could hardly push through all of that.

But there Jesus was and he had the Power and Blessings of God and especially His Angels.  While God is Great in His Heaven, down below there are the Angels who do all of the heavy lifting.  And the Angels were behind Jesus 100%. 

I think that Jesus began to realize the difficulties of actually taking Power.  As I alluded to above, Jesus would not just be taking over from within a Power Void, that is, reasserting Order from amidst the collapse of dysfunctional and obsolete Civilizations – gathering up the Lost Sheep lost in Chos.  He would have to give destructive death blows to Civilizations at the peak of their relative health and vitality – saving people from their happiness and success, rescuing people who are unaware that they have a problem.  And Tens of Thousands of people would have to die or maybe more… and, hey, let us not euphemize it… people would have to be murdered to achieve, well, purely political ends, even if they were to have some eventual Religious result.   Nowadays that seems okay to a great many people, that while private murder is still considered wrong, that somehow it is okay to kill people if one can conjure up some vague political excuse, such as, well, here is one from our current newspapers… the police break up a ‘peaceful’ protest that is turning ugly and violent, no doubt because the horrible police were acting provocatively, and so the peaceful protestors are now justified in taking up arms and slaughtering the police, with the blessings of both the American State Department and the British Foreign Office.   But we must understand that such lame excuses make for Horrible Religion.  Any Religion conceived in Violence and that uses Violence to advance its Cause would be forever stained by that terrible precedent, and that forever after, every Religious Zealot, even from within its own Fold, would think it proper to resort to Violence.  Look at Islam.  Islam resorted to violence, and today cannot get past it.  It’s entire History is one of waves of New Ignorant Tribesmen riding out of the hills to kill kill kill kill for their Newest Fundamentalist View of what they think Islam should be, always repeatedly returning Islam to the most Barbaric and Simplistic Terms, guaranteeing that Islam can never develop into a mature and blossomed Civilization.  It rose up on Violence, but Violence will always keep it down.  But I think Jesus was smarter than that.  He would rather have a failed Christianity than an Islam that can never be more than half successful.  

Oh, but Jesus did start down that road.  He caught himself, but not before taking a few steps in that direction.  We see him turning angry and getting ready for the Big Fight.  Remember how he, on his way to Jerusalem, blasted that poor fruitless fig tree, for being fruitless.  Yes, that would help it.  Jesus got angry, pure and simple.  And it would have made for Lousy Religion.  Are we to ‘blast’ people for ‘fruitless’ periods in their lives?  Why, no!  We even have a parable from Jesus, spoken when he was in a better and more religiously reflective mood, which praises the Farm Worker for nurturing a tree or vine that had been in a bad way and bringing it to Fruitfulness.  So, no, Jesus acted out of his better character by rendering violence to a tree, and I can bet he realized it and regretted it.

Then he got to Jerusalem and practically the first thing he did was go to the Temple and start flipping over Vender Tables and chasing the venders around with a whip.  Now, we can guess what was going on.  Even today the big Cathedrals and Pilgrimage Stops have Gift Shops, and they contribute to the cost of, well, running everything that needs to be run.  Everything costs money, after all.  And here Jesus is striking people with whips and ruining merchandise… hardly befitting a Jewish Messiah.   And I am sure Jesus realized the shame of that violence just as he realized it had been wrong to blast that poor tree.

He realized that the Purity of his Religion of the Kingdom of Heaven had already been sullied by his inappropriate behaviors.  He had only one choice – to resign.

Then we have Jesus in the Garden praying to God to “Take this Cup away from me”.  This is largely interpreted by Christians, ancient and modern, to mean that Jesus was being a Coward and asking God to not have him Crucified.  Well, Jesus was not a coward.  In fact, he was doing the exact opposite.  Jesus was giving up the Protection and Help of the Angels, surrendering the Position of Messiah to become an ordinary citizen, and ordinary Human Being – vulnerable to being beaten up, tortured and crucified.  He asked for it!  While he could forgive others of sins that they had repented, he could not really forgive himself.  Well, maybe he could have.  He could have apologized.  But then there still existed his Wisdom and Vision, his awareness of the Larger Situation, that his Kingdom of Heaven could not be instituted without a War on the bloodiest of scales, to found a Religion that would be useless as a Religion given the terms of Violence it would need to rise up on. 

Without a Moral and Peaceful Foundation, that will forever after be its own Shining Example, a Religion would be worse than useless.  A Religion founded on Violence and Immorality does more harm than good.  Bad Religion only stand in the way of Good Religion, and then it Bullies and Fights to get its way.

When Evil can be so mean and nasty, well, Good really doesn’t stand a much of a chance, does it?  So, you know, Jesus was right to give up.  You can’t push a Messiah on people.  You have to wait until things are so bad, generally, for everyone, that every man, woman, and child is crying, moaning and begging for One. Until then it is better to just let humanity go to blazes.