Was Jesus the Son of God? Does Emperor Constantine Mean that Christianity Failed?

Mark Rego Monteiro I think there are a lot of helpful comments here. Myself, I just found my way to Jesus emerging from an atheist humanist upbringing. I balanced my spiritual practice and seeking with eco-social justice activism. I eventually learned that education is best seen as the result of spiritual practice, although it has been turned into a secular technician´s task. Thus, learning about Taoism, Buddhism, shamanism, and modernized developments like therapeutic psychology and the 12 step groups, I´ve been focusing on Jesus. The incredible development of Western Civilization is what we see, and its globalization. That´s how ideological materialism in profiteering businesspeople´s activity has created globalized capitalism on top of constitutional democracy and Civil Rights, with FDR envisioning the UN human rights into position, negotiated with the world in context. No matter how wrong profiteers have gone, they have used genuine tools in philosophical knowledge that was originally spiritual. None of that was possible without key developments by Christians acting in the loving integrity of Jesus, say, like the monk Thomas Aquinas. Jesus´ legacy of loving integrity has been influential to an unprecedented degree, with his two loving Commandments. The meaning of spiritual healing can be modernized in terms of "medically attested, medically impossible healing with spiritual-religious testimony." All of that creates the context of Jesus as someone of incredible importance, centrally. Empirically. Yet, humans as profiteers, soldiers, and politicians have misdirected the fruits of Jesus´ legacy as part of Western Civilization. All forms of ideological materialism have been taken up, no less in that. So, now, I´d say that Jesus certainly seems to have been the Son of God and Man, but desperately needs people to wake up to his teachings to "clean the cup on the inside" and "go and learn", and "shine your light in front of others with good deeds to honor God", and appreciating the value of his own legacy in University-based and Jefferson´s Freedom of Religion, and learning about the benefits of spiritual practice in Hinduism like the interfaith lawyer Gandhi and Buddhism´s profound Four Noble Truths, with grains of salt where necessary, is all profoundly necessary. Don´t worry about the Bible itself. 2000 years later, Jesus´ legacy has spawned so many resources, we need to get clear about Jesus´ loving integrity in modern society. That´s how we have the intellectual tools to sort through the assertions that fall, and those that stand by all comers. Mohammed Yunus´ pro-poor, pro-women Grameen Bank from Bangladesh and beyond, up to 19 branches in the US already, is an amazing testimony to how a Muslim with a western education puts to shame America´s right wing ideologies for profit. And that links to Jesus´ legacy in UN human rights community. Jesus rocks. Let Buddha, Gandhi, etc show how much. Reply 11h Macey MorcomAuthor Mark Rego Monteiro I wish I wasn’t such a pessimist, but when I look at the influence of Christianity I tend to see more of the bad than the good. It’s been used as a weapon against others for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years, all in Jesus’ name (though I’d say that would be blasphemy). Sure, good has come from it, but through my lens the bad far outweighs whatever good has been done, and in the same sense I think that good people would do good and loving things even if Jesus’ influence never reached them. The Roman Empire, ironically, is what really spread the religion. Without Constantine, I don’t think it would have gotten as big as it did. All of this is to say that I’m in no way trying to argue with you or invalidate what you said, I just wanted to give my perspective of it 😊 Reply 22h Mark Rego Monteiro Macey Morcom Well, it´s key to ask yourself if you actually understand Jesus. And human beings. And how churches that talked, and talk about Jesus didn´t actually disavow in the past their human tendencies to indulge in the abuse of power, privilege, and pleasure, and neither did the rest of the world. While right wing "sin" is overdone and misdirected, human evil is universal in basic terms, violence and enslavement. Genghis Khan´s Mongols killed up to 60 million before he became known as a "tolerant" shamanic guy. China´s Hongwu emperor killed tens of thousands, for one. India´s King Ashoka became a Buddhist out of remorse for the violence he participated in. Africa´s O Equiano was a prince whose chief father had slaves, and Queen Nzinga of Ndongo was a slave´s daughter. Jesuit M Nóbrega lost a Jesuit colleague to Native cannibalism. Islam had no missionary project except with the sword. Meanwhile and on the other hand, the tribes that invaded the Roman Empire didn´t "get conquered" by Christians. They were converted by missionaries. Now, Constantine did play a role as a military conqueror. The son of an apparent Christian modest origined Helene. And so, that is modernization. On an interesting path to the first heretic executed by an emperor´s order and over the protests of the then pope and St.s Jerome and Martin of Tours, and then the Fall of the Western Empire in 476. There were many decadent nominally "Christian" Emperors who were more Roman than authentic Christian. The Fall in 476 AD left a military commander as King of Italy, and left the church in a strangely unprecedented position in Rome as the head of an ecclesiastical networked religion, with monasteries. In a short while, Clovis the Frank was married to a Christian when he converted, and as King, HE threatened his people if they didn´t convert. Later, Charlemagne forced conversion on the Saxons before 800. They had been in periodic conflict for decades, or so. Your idea about "good people" is a kind of secular materialist myth based on people´s good sides and modern Christianity´s own developments and power. But from China to Africa to Islam and Europe, is violence and slavement somebody´s fantasy? No. There were no UN human rights until FD Roosevelt envisioned it and proposed it, as a Social Gospel Christian with a good education. After WWII, FDR´s legacy did negotiate it with the world, who, after WWII´s devastation and power shows, did finally agree after negotiation to the UN and a human rights declaration. People have their good sides, and so do chimps, but chimps will massacre neighboring groups unlike any other species except humans. Pan t. chimps do it when they can because they are intelligent and can. Human conflict even at the tribal level usually involves shifting alliances, or even tribal splits I recall from the Yanomami. It gets to the meaning of Jesus Christ, and what his legacy in University-based psychosocial studies informs us. Sociologist Rod Stark studied early Christians empirically and identified that they valued babies instead of contextual infanticide by Romans, and they didn´t flee plagues with the masses. They stayed to care for the sick. "Christianity" has become so fruitful that it really requires an education to keep key things straight. Christianity unleashed power in nothing less than University modern philosophy with empiricism, with Thomas Aquinas key, that merchants, soldiers, and politicians really started using as the Age of Navigation began. You have to get clear about the meaning of Luther at that point. It wasn´t even just one Western Roman "Christianity" after the educated monk Luther posted his 95 Theses. It became Western European Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. And Protestant Christianity is only an academic label. Lutheranism spread, Calvinism, and in the English Reformation, Puritanism bubbled up key "innovations." Except, in Christian terms, that means followers of Jesus seeking lifestyles, some more high integrity than others. The American Revolution may not have been perfect, but the Pilgrims had formed the Mayflower Compact, and the founding fathers wrote up consititutional democracy with Civil Rights, just as Quaker-Friends were starting to lead the co-founding of the anti-slavery movement all in the 1780s. Abolitionism in the UK was the pioneering modern social movement as historian A Hochschild points out. Not in China. Not in Islam. Not in India. Nowhere else. Not even in Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Western Civilization has developed in Jesus´ legacy of loving integrity for God in University-based society. It is Jesus´ standard of loving integrity, and his high integrity followers of that loving standard, that exposes the merchant, soldiers, and politicians, and their wayward hypocritical religious supporters. Just War, no less, is not just whipping up war frenzies. WWII was met with FDR´s preparedness efforts over conservative fascist sympathizers and isolationists who have since tried to smear FDR. Since then, the Cold War and its sequel have violated most ethics in what has been whipped up by right wing profiteering businesspeople and militarists equating evil with a scapegoated enemy in the persistent anti-communist, now also anti-Islamic militarism that characterized GW Bush et al´s invasion of Iraq. Bin Laden was in Afghanistan. Reply 16hEdited Macey MorcomAuthor Mark Rego Monteiro I appreciate your time and perspective. Thank you!