Jesus: I died to lead you to build our father's Kingdom on Earth of universal loving. Church has been embezzling all that resource for itself two thousand years now, to fatten itself on some snake oil real estate in the sky deal.

As soon as the Church moved out into the Greek world, a process of assimilation began which left little of the real Jesus in sight. The......

As soon as the Church moved out into the Greek world, a process of assimilation began which left little of the real Jesus in sight. The......

historical research of the last forty years has written a new chapter about the sufferings of Jesus. Imagine him coming into a Gnostic

True wealth is only, only... the childlike soul in every human being, all but dead under the tyranny of head and flesh. Let's devote Our Lives to liberate it, for joy.

Here's the history. Civilization has been destroyed by Christianity, by destroying what might have saved the species, the truths distilled by the man Jesus.

This is the Theologian and theology that sparked young Martin Luther King jr. back toward the pulpit having decided he was not going to follow his father there.

Tolstoy despised the church, He adored the man Jesus for what he represented and taught. Same with Jesus James.  Gandhi said, there would be no Hindus if Christians would practice their faith. And, I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians, they are so unlike your Christ.

James, why are you harping on this? For the same reason that Tolstoy did. For the same reasons that if I craved the truth about physics and yet all history had very distorted perverted contorted the discoveries of Einstein I would with my last breath try to discover, uncover, what Einstein really had to say. And also, because Christianity is a gigantic historical fact and ongoing Force. A horribly perverting force the profoundly rare exception proves the rule.  James has so often stated and written and Lived he finds the idea of reforming Christianity an ultimate death trap. He has personally seen it destroyed the most promising Souls. Wiza care deeply about the few and Humanities that can be brought to joyful life or have that choice protected, that child's likeness, we can ill afford two things, ignorance of what the moral Einstein really had to say, and Ignorance of the force, the church, that continues to pervert burry destroye cripples that.

This young turn of the century Theologian finally give James the authoritative Clarity, understanding, history of the atrocity that is the church from the beginning, along with a even much richer understanding of what it was Jesus was showing and telling us. this finally after James has spent thousands and thousands of hours with other scholarship which was helpful but not nearly so complete, historical, clear. That Einstein of morality.

"Jesus always spoke of the Kingdom of God. Only two of his reported sayings contain the word " Church," and both passages are of questionable authenticity. It is safe to say that he never thought of founding the kind 131 132 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL of institution which afterward claimed to be acting for him. Yet immediately after his death, groups of disciples joined and consolidated by inward necessity. Each local group knew that it was part of a divinely founded fellowship mysteriously spreading through humanity, and awaiting the return of the Lord and the establishing of his Kingdom. This universal Church was loved with the same religious faith and reverence with which Jesus had loved the Kingdom of God. It was the partial and earthly realization of the divine Society, and at the Parousia the Church and the Kingdom would merge. But the Kingdom was merely a hope, the Church a present reality. The chief interest and affection flowed toward the Church. Soon, through a combination of causes, the name and idea of " the Kingdom " began to be displaced by the name and idea of " the Church " in the preaching, literature, and theological thought of the Church. Augustine completed this process in his De Civitate Dei. The Kingdom of God which has, throughout human history, opposed the Kingdom of Sin, is today embodied in the Church. The millennium began when the Church was founded. This practically substituted the actual, not the ideal Church for the Kingdom of God. The beloved ideal of Jesus became a vague phrase which kept intruding from the New Testament. Like Cinderella in the kitchen, it saw the other great dogmas furbished up for the ball, but no prince of theology restored it to its rightful place. The Reformation, too, brought no renascence of the doctrine of the Kingdom; it had only eschatological value, or was defined in THE KINGDOM OF GOD 1 33 blurred phrases borrowed from the Church. The present revival of the Kingdom idea is due to the combined influence of the historical study of the Bible and of the social gospel. When the doctrine of the Kingdom of God shriveled to an undeveloped and pathetic remnant in Christian thought, this loss was bound to have far-reaching consequences. We are told that the loss of a single tooth from the arch of the mouth in childhood may spoil the symmetrical development of the skull and produce malformations affecting the mind and character. The atrophy of that idea which had occupied the chief place in the mind of Jesus, necessarily affected the conception of Christianity, the life of the Church, the progress of humanity, and the structure of theology. I shall briefly enumerate some of the consequences affecting theology. This list, however, is by no means complete. 1. Theology lost its contact with the synoptic thought of Jesus. Its problems were not at all the same which had occupied his mind. It lost his point of view and became to some extent incapable of understanding him. His ideas had to be rediscovered in our time. Traditional theology and the mind of Jesus Christ became incommensurable quantities. It claimed to regard his revelation and the substance of his thought as divine, and yet did not learn to think like him. The loss of the Kingdom idea is one key to this situation. 2. The distinctive ethical principles of Jesus were the direct outgrowth of his conception of the Kingdom of God. When the latter disappeared from theology, the 134 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL former disappeared from ethics. Only persons having the substance of the Kingdom ideal in their minds, seem to be able to get relish out of the ethics of Jesus. Only those church bodies which have been in opposition to organized society and have looked for a better city with its foundations in heaven, have taken the Sermon on the Mount seriously. 3. The Church is primarily a fellowship for worship ; the Kingdom is a fellowship of righteousness. When the latter was neglected in theology, the ethical force of Christianity was weakened; when the former was emphasized in theology, the importance of worship was exaggerated. The prophets and Jesus had cried down sacrifices and ceremonial performances, and cried up righteousness, mercy, solidarity. Theology now reversed this, and by its theoretical discussions did its best to stimulate sacramental actions and priestly importance. Thus the religious energy and enthusiasm which might have saved mankind from its great sins, were used up in hearing and endowing masses, or in maintaining competitive church organizations, while mankind is still stuck in the mud. There are nations in which the ethical condition of the masses is the reverse of the frequency of the masses in the churches. 4. When the Kingdom ceased to be the dominating religious reality, the Church moved up into the position of the supreme good. To promote the power of the Church and its control over all rival political forces was equivalent to promoting the supreme ends of Christianity. This increased the arrogance of churchmen and took the moral check off their policies. For the King- THE KINGDOM OF GOD I35 dom of God can never be promoted by lies, craft, crime or war, but the wealth and power of the Church have often been promoted by these means. The medieval ideal of the supremacy of the Church over the State was the logical consequence of making the Church the highest good with no superior ethical standard by which to test it. The medieval doctrines concerning the Church and the Papacy were the direct theological outcome of the struggles for Church supremacy, and were meant to be weapons in that struggle. 5. The Kingdom ideal is the test and corrective of the influence of the Church. When the Kingdom ideal disappeared, the conscience of the Church was muffled. It became possible for the missionary expansion of Christianity to halt for centuries without creating any sense of shortcoming. It became possible for the most unjust social conditions to fasten themselves on Christian nations without awakening any consciousness that the purpose of Christ was being defied and beaten back. The practical undertakings of the Church remained within narrow lines, and the theological thought of the Church was necessarily confined in a similar way. The claims of the Church were allowed to stand in theology with no conditions and obligations to test and balance them. If the Kingdom had stood as the purpose for which the Church exists, the Church could not have fallen into such corruption and sloth. Theology bears part of the guilt for the pride, the greed, and the ambition of the Church. 6. The Kingdom ideal contains the revolutionary force of Christianity. When this ideal faded out of 136 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL the systematic thought of the Church, it became a conservative social influence and increased the weight of the other stationary forces in society. If the Kingdom of God had remained part of the theological and Christian consciousness, the Church could not, down to our times, have been salaried by autocratic class governments to keep the democratic and economic impulses of the people under check. 7. Reversely, the movements for democracy and social justice were left without a religious backing for lack of the Kingdom idea. The Kingdom of God as the fellowship of righteousness, would be advanced by the abolition of industrial slavery and the disappearance of the slums of civilization; the Church would only indirectly gain through such social changes. Even today many Christians can not see any religious importance in social justice and fraternity because it does not increase the number of conversions nor fill the churches. Thus the practical conception of salvation, which is the effective theology of the common man and minister, has been cut back and crippled for lack of the Kingdom ideal. 8. Secular life is belittled as compared with church life. Services rendered to the Church get a higher religious rating than services rendered to the community.-^ Thus the religious value is taken out of the activities of the common man and the prophetic services to society. Wherever the Kingdom of God is a living reality in 1 After the death of Susan B. Anthony a minister commented on her life, regretting that she was not orthodox in her beliefs. In the same address he spoke glowingly about a new linoleum laid in the church kitchen. THE KINGDOM OF GOD 1 37 Christian thought, any advance of social righteousness is seen as a part of redemption and arouses inward joy and the triumphant sense of salvation. When the Church absorbs interest, a subtle asceticism creeps back into our theology and the world looks different. 9. When the doctrine of the Kingdom of God is lacking in theology, the salvation of the individual is seen in its relation to the Church and to the future life, but not in its relation to the task of saving the social order. Theology has left this important point in a condition so hazy and muddled that it has taken us almost a generation to see that the salvation of the individual and the redemption of the social order are closely related, and how. 10. Finally, theology has been deprived of the inspiration of great ideas contained in the idea of the Kingdom and in labor for it. The Kingdom of God breeds prophets; the Church breeds priests and theologians. The Church runs to tradition and dogma; the Kingdom of God rejoices in forecasts and boundless horizons. The men who have contributed the most fruitful impulses to Christian thought have been men of prophetic vision, and their theology has proved most effective for future times where it has been most concerned with past history, with present social problems, and with the future of human society. The Kingdom of God is to theology what outdoor colour and light are to art. It is impossible to estimate what inspirational impulses have been lost to theology and to the Church, because it did not develop the doctrine of the Kingdom of God and see the world and its redemption from that point of view. 138 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL These are some of the historical effects which the loss of the doctrine of the Kingdom of God has inflicted on systematic theology. The chief contribution which the social gospel has made and will make to theology is to give new vitality and importance to that doctrine. In doing so it will be a reformatory force of the highest importance in the field of doctrinal theology, for any systematic conception of Christianity must be not only defective but incorrect if the idea of the Kingdom of God does not govern it. The restoration of the doctrine of the Kingdom has already made progress. Some of the ablest and most voluminous works of the old theology in their thousands of pages gave the Kingdom of God but a scanty mention, usually in connection with eschatology, and saw no connection between it and the Calvinistic doctrines of personal redemption. The newer manuals not only make constant reference to it in connection with various doctrines, but they arrange their entire subject matter so that the Kingdom of God becomes the governing idea.

Rauschenbusch writings were the spark that Lit Martin Luther King jr. It is always a great and wonderful thing when a young spirit enters into voluntary obedience to God and feels the higher freedom with which Christ makes us free.

Even more than Tolstoy, in this book and in Christianity and the social crisis he lays bare the 2,000 years of Destruction that the church has waged on the teachings, the gospels, of Jesus. It is the history of the church that I have my whole life. How useful. But as a young person my soul knew that something was horribly horribly wrong. My religion is expressed quite well in all but a few sentences of the gospel and distorted by most of the rest of the Bible and virtually all of the church..

 And yet he works within the church. Is it inslavement ment? Is it lack of courage? Probably it is strategic in the same way that Tolstoy uses the word Christianity. Both of them saw service to humanity by utilizing the deadly monster that is the Christian church For good by moving it for good. 

It is the view of James that this has always been a deadly mistake. History kind of proves it. The founder or rather the rock to which the church at least points never did this period it replaced Judaism it did not seek to reform it or improve it. The church is a commercialization for personal and private gain of empires of individuals of church hierarchy. It is an incredible abomination and may single handedly have destroyed the human species and the planet by robbing it of the only medicine that might have saved it, the pure morality distilled in the teachings and life example of the man Jesus

"If sin is selfishness, salvation must be a change which turns a man from self to God and humanity. His sinfulness consisted in a selfish attitude, in which he was at the centre of the universe, and God and all his fellowmen were means to serve his pleasures, increase his 98 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL wealth, and set off his egotisms. Complete salvation, therefore, would consist in an attitude of love in which he would freely co-ordinate his life with the life of his fellows in obedience to the loving impulses of the spirit of God, thus taking his part in a divine organism of mutual service. When a man is in a state of sin, he may be willing to harm the life and lower the self-respect of a woman for the sake of his desires; he may be willing to take some of the mental and spiritual values out of the life of a thousand families, and lower the human level of a whole mill-town in order to increase his own dividends or maintain his autocratic sense of power. If this man came under the influence of the mind of Christ, he would see men and women as children of God with divine worth and beauty, and this realization would cool his lust or covetousness. Living now in the consciousness of the pervading spiritual life of God, he would realize that all his gifts and resources are a loan of God for higher ends, and would do his work with greater simplicity of mind and brotherliness. Of course in actual life there is no case of complete Christian transformation. It takes an awakened and regenerated mind a long time to find itself intellectually and discover what life henceforth is to mean to him, and his capacity for putting into practice what he knows he wants to do, will be something like the capacity of an untrained hand to express artistic imaginations. But in some germinal and rudimentary form salvation must turn us from a life centred on ourselves toward a life going out toward God and men. God is the all-embracing source and exponent of the common life and good of PERSONAL SALVATION 99 mankind. When we submit to God, we submit to the supremacy of the common good. Salvation is the voluntary socializing of the soul. Conversion has usually been conceived as a break with our own sinful past. But in many cases it is also a break with the sinful past of a social g... 

"Jesus in his teachings alluded with surprising frequency to the use and abuse of intrusted wealth and power. In the...

Jesus in his teachings alluded with surprising frequency to the use and abuse of intrusted wealth and power. In the.... WHAT TO DO 381 parables of the talents and pounds ^ he evidently meant to stewardship V define all human ability and opportunity as a trust. His sWp.°^"^^" description of the head servant who is made confident by the continued absence of his master, tyrannizes over his subordinates, and fattens his paunch on his master's property, is meant to show the temptation which besets all in authority to forget the responsibility that goes with power.^ His portrayal of the tricky steward who is to be dismissed for dishonesty, but manages to make one more grand coup before his authority ends, not only shows the keen insight of Jesus into the ways of the grafter, but also shows that he regarded all men of wealth as stewards of the property they hold.' The parable of the peasants who jointly rent a vineyard and then try to do their absent owner not only out of his rent, but out of the property itself, was meant by Jesus to condense and dramatize the whole history of the ruling class in Israel.* The illustration of the fig tree which has had all possible advantages of soil and care without returning fruit, and which merely gets a year's reprieve through the hopeful pleading of the gardener, expresses the indignation of Jesus against the waste of intrusted opportunity.^ The terrible invective against the scribes and Pharisees is directed against teachers who had misused their influence to darken truth and leaders who had treated their leadership as a chance to get profit and honor for themselves.® The fact that Jesus in his diagnosis of wrong moral relations so often puts his finger on trust abused and betrayed, is proof of his penetrating social insight. Nearly all powers * Matthew 25. 14-30; Luke 19. n-27. * Matthew 21. 33-46. ' Matthew 25. 45-51. * Luke 13. 6-9. * Luke 16. 1-15. ' Matthew 23. 382 CHRISTIANITY AND THE SOCIAL CRISIS in society are essentially delegated powers. The more complex society becomes, the less will it be possible for the individual to attend to all his needs himself, and the more will he have to intrust others with specialized functions and powers. When

12 sentences. THIS IS JESUS, the first I've ever seen it spoken, in all my years.

Beyond the question of economic distribution lies the question of moral relations; and beyond the moral relations to men lies the question of the religious communion with that spiritual reality in which we live and move and have our deep- est being — with God, the Father of our spirits. Jesus had V realized the life of God in the soul of man and the life of man > in the love of God. That was the real secret of his life, the well-spring of his purity, his compassion, his unwearied courage, his unquenchable idealism : he knew the Father. But if he had that greatest of all possessions, the real key to the secret of life, it was his highest social duty to share it and help others to gain what he had. He had to teach men to live as children in the presence of their Father, and no longer as slaves cringing before a despot. He had to show them that the ordinary life of selfishness and hate and anxiety and chafing ambition and covetousness is no life at all, and that they must enter into a new world of love and solidarity and inward contentment. There was no service that he could render to men which would equal that. All other help lay in concentric circles about that redemption of the spirit and flowed out from it. No comprehension of Jesus is even approximately true which fails to understand that the heart of his heart was religion. No man is a follower of Jesus in the full sense who has not through him entered into the same life with God. But on the other hand no man shares his life with God whose religion does not flow out, naturally and without ^ effort, into all relations of his life and reconstructs everything — that it touches. Whoever uncouples the religious and the social life has not understood Jesus. Whoever sets any bounds for the reconstructive power of the religious life over THE SOCIAL AIMS OF JESUS 49 the social relations and institutions of men, to that extent denies the faith of the Master.

Focused on loving soul for joy all day long. Best day in many many weeks. Lifted almost all other factors. And this makes sense. Soul is the seat of all goodness and attention and learning and acceleration and capacity-building are all the best thing that any of us can do.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1a4ugngBwua9S5EAhqWHWIxvLXJq4OeELPACs3wbsTSs/edit?usp=drivesdk

Like all the greatest spiritual teachers of mankind, Jesus realized a profound danger to the better self in the pursuit of wealth. Whoever....

Like all the greatest spiritual teachers of mankind, Jesus realized a profound danger to the better self in the pursuit of wealth. Whoever.... will watch the development of a soul that has bent its energies to the task of

the [Kingdom of God] in the sense in which Jesus and his audiences understood it almost completely passed out of Christian thought as soon as Christianity passed from the Jewish people and found its spiritual home within the great Graeco-Roman w^orld. The historical basis for the idea....

the [Kingdom of God] in the sense in which Jesus and his audiences understood it almost completely passed out of Christian thought as soon as Christianity passed from the Jewish people and found its spiritual home within the great Graeco-Roman w^orld. The historical basis for the idea was wanting there. The phrase was taken along, just as an emigrant will carry a water-jar with him ; but the water from the well of Bethlehem evaporated and it was now used to dip water from the wells of Ephesus or from the Nile and Tiber. The Greek world cherished no such national religious hope as the prophets had ingrained in Jewish thought on the other hand it was intensely interested in the future life for the individual, and in the ascetic triumph over flesh and matter. Thus the idea which had been the centre of Christ's thought was not at all the centre of the Church's thought, and even the comprehension of his meaning was lost and overlaid. Only some remnants of it persisted in the millennial hope and in the organic conception of the Church, The historical study of our own d

Beyond the question of economic distribution lies the question of moral relations; and beyond the moral relations to men lies the question of the religious communion with that spiritual reality in which we live and move and have our deep- est being — with God, the Father of our spirits.

The young Martin Luther King was not going to follow his father into the pulpit. He had little use for the Christian church. Then he read this book.

Beyond the question of economic distribution lies the question of moral relations; and beyond the moral relations to men lies the question of the religious communion with that spiritual reality in which we live and move and have our deep- est being — with God, the Father of our spirits...... . Jesus had V realized the life of God in the soul of man and the life of man > in the love of God. That was the real secret of his life, the well-spring of his purity, his compassion, his unwearied courage, his unquenchable idealism : he knew the Father. But if he had that greatest of all possessions, the real key to the secret of life, it was his highest social duty to share it and help others to gain what he had. He had to teach men to live as children in the presence of their Father, and no longer as slaves cringing before a despot. He had to show them that the ordinary life of selfishness and hate and anxiety and chafing ambition and covetousness is no life at all, and that they must enter into a new world of love and solidarity and inward contentment. There was no service that he could render to men which would equal that. All other help lay in concentric circles about that redemption of the spirit and flowed out from it. No comprehension of Jesus is even approximately true which fails to understand that the heart of his heart was religion. No man is a follower of Jesus in the full sense who has not through him entered into the same life with God. But on the other hand no man shares his life with God whose religion does not flow out, naturally and without ^ effort, into all relations of his life and reconstructs everything — that it touches. Whoever uncouples the religious and the social life has not understood Jesus. Whoever sets any bounds for the reconstructive power of the religious life over THE SOCIAL AIMS OF JESUS 49 the social relations and institutions of men, to that extent denies the faith of the Master.

So impoverished, joyless, living life as one's own, instead of belonging to the poorest souls.

I have lived the Paradox that the fewer I am friends with the more I can be friends to, now all creation. Never alone do I feel.

Tolstoy as quoted by Sorokin. "Christ founded no church, established no State, made no laws, imposed no government, or exterior authority; he simply set himself to write the law of God in the hearts of men in...

Christ founded no church, established no State, made no laws, imposed no government, or exterior authority; he simply set himself to write the law of God in the hearts of men in.... order that they might govern themselves. The doctrine of Christ is based on the metaphysical principle of love, the supreme law, that should guide us in our daily life and which admits of no exception. When you can say with entire truth and with a whole heart: “ Lord God, lead me wherever Thou desirest,” then, only, do you deliver yourself from servitude and become really free. Do what you have to do in life according to divine will, and in that way you will improve the lives of everybody.
Sorokin. The ways and Power of Love. Free download archive.org

My Religion? Being loving propagating loving in the world, for Joy. Same as Jesus. Propagating hating is the alternative.

You will be known by your fruits: Loving or Hating

Correction: Loving is not the ultimately rewarding experience. Loving to make the world more loving is.

BTW, the white male supremacist guy that hijacked my name 1700 years ago, is everything I died to save you from.

Commandments I did not give you, but the laws of Joyful lifing I showed you, as Einstein showed you laws of physics.

.. . The Christian right is a “crisis cult.”...

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/onward-christian-fascists/

... These believers find in Donald Trump a reflection of themselves, a champion of the unfettered greed, cult of masculinity, lust for violence, white supremacy, bigotry, American chauvinism, religious intolerance, anger, racism and conspiracy theories that define the central beliefs of the Christian right....

... The greatest moral failing of the liberal Christian church was its refusal, justified in the name of tolerance and dialogue, to denounce the followers of the Christian right as heretics. By tolerating the intolerant it ceded religious legitimacy to an array of con artists, charlatans and demagogues and their cultish supporters. It stood by as the core Gospel message—concern for the poor and the oppressed—was perverted into a magical world where God and Jesus showered believers with material wealth and power....

... Imperialism and war became divine instruments for purging the world of infidels and barbarians, evil itself. Capitalism, because God blessed the righteous with wealth and power and condemned the immoral to poverty and suffering, became shorn of its inherent cruelty and exploitation.