Modernizing Christian Concepts, like Honor, for Progressives. It´s Multi-disciplinary, eg with Historical Sociology

(Based on a post reflecting on an interview with a Chinese woman...) Thanks to the author for another interesting interview, and opportunity to reflect on an interesting topic around the Bible and Jesus. At this progressive site, we honor progressive deconstruction of doctrines, which Jeff actually acknowledges briefly in their widespread succumbing to secular and other forms of materialism. On that issue, I noticed a while back a few things, first as I considered my spiritual identity and the possibility of becoming a Christian. I was an interfaith spiritual seeker, and perceived that Jesus taught love. Was love in any exclusionary, justify such common attitudes as "No other spiritual-religious teacher and figure matters except Jesus!"? In fact, the NT is rather sparse on many issues, and requires a lot of interpretation. In that case, it was clear to me already that love involves learning, and love thy neighbor as thyself, until thy enemy" places Jesus in a powerful interactive position. Clearly many Christians have difficulty integrating things that way, since integrating issues requires literacy in human behavior to understand processes and "open doors and windows," not just walls and labels for them. Thus, the interpretation that "love" is exclusionary is based on a historical context. Many people might find it easy to recall that the Roman Empire had conflicts between Imperial pagans and pagans in general on one side, and Christians who refused imperial worship on the other. Most people may not really have been oriented to how uniquely the Western Roman Christian church was when the Western Roman Empire collapsed as the last Emperor was replaced by a tribal commander who merely became the King of Italy. The Western Roman church was already being separated from the Eastern Constantinople church in an amazing process of contrasts. For Rome, it meant a new kind of society was being built. from a Western Christian church network with monasteries. The invading tribes were wreaking some havoc as they conquered areas. Christian missionaries were sent out with success, incredible as it seems to put it clearly: the invaders were converted by the conquered to the religion of the conquered. Aryanism lived on, despite central Western church doctrines. By the time of the Frankish king Charlemagne, his granddad Charles Martel had stopped the invading Moors in 732 AD. Charlemagne then dealt with longstanding conflicts with the pagan Saxons, and then the Aryan Lombards. Charlemagne´s reestablishment of a unified Europe for Rome didn´t revive the old Roman Empire, and it was only nostalgia prominent in the name "The Holy Roman Empire." That refers then to the church´s capital, not the political capital, in Aix-le-Chapelle (Aachen) of Charlemagne, at first. That detail began to shift in time. It was a new society, to reemphasize, in which first invaders´ tribal religions had been converted by missionaries. Later battles followed. Not Roman paganism, but tribal paganism had become most recently transformed by post-imperial Roman Christianity. Islam had higher levels of civil strife than Christian areas, and by 1150, Christians had developed monastic schools into early modern Universities, and in a hundred years, the monk Thom Aquinas accomplished the Great Synthesis, Christianizing and empiricizing Aristotle and ancient Greek philosophy. The power unleashed by modern philosophical education and scholarship with empiricism led to merchants, soldiers, and politicians leading global European colonialism for "God, gold, and glory," along with the educated monk Luther´s inspired 95 Theses and the Protestant Reformation. The Enlightenment followed Descartes and Hugo Grotius et al to naturalist explanations, and to secularization to avoid denominational and general religious conflicts. Naturalist methods in and secularization of education went with colonial powers spreading it and its availability to developing peoples. That accompanied the US´s constitutional democracy and Civil Rights, Gandhi´s education and experience, and FD Roosevelt´s vision and legacy of the UN and human rights proposed to the world after WWII, and negotiated. Gandhi´s education as a lawyer channeled into his spiritual education sparked by meeting interfaith theosophists. His experience in South Africa then forged his spiritual practice and activism as a foundation for the movement he led in India. Historiography is a basic method of tracking the details of history. Sociology and psychology involve identifying processes at work as individuals operate in society, including the use and abuse of power, privilege, and pleasure. Transpersonal psychology as a subdiscipline represents an advance in recognizing orientations of individuals beyond themselves, as in social action and spiritual-religious activity. Piaget´s pioneering and legacy in developmental psychology help conceive how individuals are not ready-made or predestined in their development nowadays. That also applies to historical development. By watching history, we can see how modern University-based society developed as people learned things in Jesus´ legacy. We aren´t alive 2000 years ago, and naturalist and secularist methods have neglected modernizing spiritual-religious knowledge. That all goes far in extending how the author´s recognition of "honor" represents a value beyond the popular one of "freedom." In progressive Christianity, people begin the process of honoring Jesus´ commandments for God to love by grasping its modernized meaning, and well called "spiritualized" and no longer anachronistic. Thanks to the author for another interesting interview, and opportunity to reflect on an interesting topic around the Bible and Jesus. At this progressive site, we honor progressive deconstruction of doctrines, which Jeff actually acknowledges briefly in their widespread succumbing to secular and other forms of materialism. On that issue, I noticed a while back a few things, first as I considered my spiritual identity and the possibility of becoming a Christian. I was an interfaith spiritual seeker, and perceived that Jesus taught love. Was love in any exclusionary, justify such common attitudes as "No other spiritual-religious teacher and figure matters except Jesus!"? In fact, the NT is rather sparse on many issues, and requires a lot of interpretation. In that case, it was clear to me already that love involves learning, and love thy neighbor as thyself, until thy enemy" places Jesus in a powerful interactive position. Clearly many Christians have difficulty integrating things that way, since integrating issues requires literacy in human behavior to understand processes and "open doors and windows," not just walls and labels for them. Thus, the interpretation that "love" is exclusionary is based on a historical context. Many people might find it easy to recall that the Roman Empire had conflicts between Imperial pagans and pagans in general on one side, and Christians who refused imperial worship on the other. Most people may not really have been oriented to how uniquely the Western Roman Christian church was when the Western Roman Empire collapsed as the last Emperor was replaced by a tribal commander who merely became the King of Italy. The Western Roman church was already being separated from the Eastern Constantinople church in an amazing process of contrasts. For Rome, it meant a new kind of society was being built. from a Western Christian church network with monasteries. The invading tribes were wreaking some havoc as they conquered areas. Christian missionaries were sent out with success, incredible as it seems to put it clearly: the invaders were converted by the conquered to the religion of the conquered. Aryanism lived on, despite central Western church doctrines. By the time of the Frankish king Charlemagne, his granddad Charles Martel had stopped the invading Moors in 732 AD. Charlemagne then dealt with longstanding conflicts with the pagan Saxons, and then the Aryan Lombards. Charlemagne´s reestablishment of a unified Europe for Rome didn´t revive the old Roman Empire, and it was only nostalgia prominent in the name "The Holy Roman Empire." That refers then to the church´s capital, not the political capital, in Aix-le-Chapelle (Aachen) of Charlemagne, at first. That detail began to shift in time. It was a new society, to reemphasize, in which first invaders´ tribal religions had been converted by missionaries. Later battles followed. Not Roman paganism, but tribal paganism had become most recently transformed by post-imperial Roman Christianity. Islam had higher levels of civil strife than Christian areas, and by 1150, Christians had developed monastic schools into early modern Universities, and in a hundred years, the monk Thom Aquinas accomplished the Great Synthesis, Christianizing and empiricizing Aristotle and ancient Greek philosophy. The power unleashed by modern philosophical education and scholarship with empiricism led to merchants, soldiers, and politicians leading global European colonialism for "God, gold, and glory," along with the educated monk Luther´s inspired 95 Theses and the Protestant Reformation. The Enlightenment followed Descartes and Hugo Grotius et al to naturalist explanations, and to secularization to avoid denominational and general religious conflicts. Naturalist methods in and secularization of education went with colonial powers spreading it and its availability to developing peoples. That accompanied the US´s constitutional democracy and Civil Rights, Gandhi´s education and experience, and FD Roosevelt´s vision and legacy of the UN and human rights proposed to the world after WWII, and negotiated. Gandhi´s education as a lawyer channeled into his spiritual education sparked by meeting interfaith theosophists. His experience in South Africa then forged his spiritual practice and activism as a foundation for the movement he led in India. Historiography is a basic method of tracking the details of history. Sociology and psychology involve identifying processes at work as individuals operate in society, including the use and abuse of power, privilege, and pleasure. Transpersonal psychology as a subdiscipline represents an advance in recognizing orientations of individuals beyond themselves, as in social action and spiritual-religious activity. Piaget´s pioneering and legacy in developmental psychology help conceive how individuals are not ready-made or predestined in their development nowadays. That also applies to historical development. By watching history, we can see how modern University-based society developed as people learned things in Jesus´ legacy. We aren´t alive 2000 years ago, and naturalist and secularist methods have neglected modernizing spiritual-religious knowledge. That all goes far in extending how the author´s recognition of "honor" represents a value beyond the popular one of "freedom." In progressive Christianity, people begin the process of honoring Jesus´ commandments for God to love by grasping its modernized meaning, and well called "spiritualized" and no longer anachronistic.