There are two types of Christian:
[i] “the Ned Flanders”—offers you his lawnmower to borrow when you move in, might enquire if you’ve possibly finished with it 7 months later; wears a large jumper, owns a guitar—filled with slightly nervous energy, feels strongly that we are all children of God, worries a lot (is known to hold the hands of old ladies and for tears to form in his eyes as he does so—“In those last days, I could tell she was very near the Lord”).
[ii] “the Bullfrog”—puffed up with respect for and fear of the Lord, of whom he is an avatar; always seems inflated like a large balloon, keen to practice “love” on you, quick to remind you that “Christian love” is a stern and firm rebuke for deleterious behaviour and not a cup of milky sweet tea (“No, no I’m not passive-aggressive, I’m not dominating you—this is love, properly understood.”).
The first type is associated with Tony Blair and the kumbaya-type Christian, milky and wet. This type comes about because they interpret Christian agape, the love of a master for a servant, the stern reproof, as being God’s masterly love for us all—in this view, we are all servants of God, all children of God, and so we enjoy his stern yet gentle protection and reproof and are in comradely relation with each other, that is why these Christians are so terribly nice.
Imagine that you are on an estate in Latium, you’re in the slave quarters and you turn to your fellow slave and say, “Oh Marcus, I do give thanks for this bread and wine our noble Lord has provided for us—such is his generosity and care for us.” “Aye, that’s true, Tullus, bless and keep him always, bless and keep Our Lord.”
Said noble Lord appears on the marble white balcony of the villa, distant but just visible from the slave quarters. “Praise be! Praise be to our Lord!” shouts Tullus, and he enjoins the other slaves to rise from their benches and salute the Lord—said Lord gives a vague wave of acknowledgment back. “Verily hath He seen us,” says Tullus, eyes dewy with gratitude.
The problem with this type of Christian, a type that has an origin in blood-based character no doubt, is how to practice “love thy neighbour” on your neighbour—in this vision, we are all equal beneath the LORD and so we’re all sort of chummy and comradely and in the same boat together, so we should all be sweet and nice to each other, sickly sweet, since we are in God’s generously endowed playpen (slave quarters).
Indeed, as noted in the last article but one, Christians hate life, see it as a vale of tears, and that is why they have to have two strict injunctions: 1. You must not kill yourself—to escape our fallen state to heaven, so you hope, in a premature fashion; 2. You must reproduce, be fruitful—even though you are bringing more life into the vale of tears through the damnable act of sexual intercourse (try not to enjoy it, but if you do—just know you’re going to hell).
Those extra two absolute commandments have to be erected by Christianity because the religion is so anti-life, is so down on this fallen world, that without those injunctions people divert into non-reproductive Gnostic sects or groups like the Shakers—the logical conclusion people draw is “let’s just not reproduce if it’s that bad, let’s end it as soon as possible (escape the slave quarters)”.
But Christians aren’t really against suicide per se—they’re against autonomy. So if you provoke the authorities so that they kill you—and you know they’ll kill you for that provocation—then it’s not suicide, on the contrary, it’s martyrdom. You go straight to heaven, even though what you really did was suicide by cop—the authorities said, “Pack in this Christian business, or it’s the lions for you,” and you refused and then they killed you.
That is acceptable because, like a slave to God, you were killed in a passive way—like an Extinction Rebellion protester run over by a white van.
It is acceptable to goad someone into killing you, to act in such a way that you know you will be killed, but it is not acceptable to, like a true Roman noble, like a Seneca, choose the time and place of your own death—that is forbidden, it’s prideful and aristocratic. The Christian must be static and await their fate, go to it without complaint.
So it’s not the suicide itself that perturbs the Christian—it’s the autonomy.
And, in the end, because they won, they ran out of martyrdom opportunities, at least until the wars of religion—so there was no chance to end the vale of tears early, for the most part.
As noted elsewhere, Christianity is a static religion—its heaven is not the cycle of souls, the cycle of reincarnation, that it replaces; rather, it is fixed forever and ever; and, in the same way, Christendom, in its 1,000-year reign on earth, was static—nothing changed, nothing developed.
That is the Christian ideal; and, just as you have no autonomy over your own life or mind, so also it is forbidden to think, it is forbidden to know, it is forbidden to have your own volition—these are the real crimes, not suicide or euthanasia in and of themselves.
So here we all are, all equal slaves before the LORD, but how then do we practice love towards each other? We’re all nothing, remember, we’re all equal—so the most we can do is be kindly, like Ned Flanders. Terribly nice.
Unfortunately for these Christians, they are held up to ridicule and treated with contempt. Why? Because that is how man treats kindness and niceness—man is repulsed by weakness, and he walks all over it (as he scoffs at it). That’s why Ned Flanders is mocked in The Simpsons—because people like that are mockable, you don’t get no respect by being nice.
The Reverend Ian Paisley or Oliver Cromwell, on the other hand, get fear and respect. How so? Because they take on the role of the LORD, they become as Him unto their fellow man—how? Well, they assume the role of the LORD and then they gently but firmly reprove and correct their neighbour—and that makes them much stronger, more redoubtable, than the milky young vicar with his guitar (or the American youth pastor who “just wants to find out where you’re at”—gives awkward punch on the arm).
This position is stronger, because you take on the aspect of the LORD—you’re not a slave under him, your fellow man isn’t your slave comrade, rather you are an avatar of the LORD.
The problem with this approach is that it can make you puffed up and pompous—you’re always looking down on your fellow man, because you are, after all, the LORD; or, rather, an aspect of his personality—expressing His love for His creation. It makes you a bit distant and pompous, but, on the other hand, at least you get respect.
The limitation in this approach is when two such men come into contact, because they both look down on each other, in a stern and gentle way, and try to reprove each other—express their love for each other, a Christian might say. But it’s impossible because “a man cannot serve two masters”, and so you get this awkward tension between each man—and this leads to the passive-aggressiveness often seen between Christians, because both men want to be in charge (gently but firmly “and I would recommend you to the Rev. Cook’s superlative pamphlet, which addresses just such questions about euthanasia…”).
The Ned Flanders Christian, meanwhile, comes to dislike “that type of Christian” because he seems presumptuous and isn’t just about being a slave to the LORD and acting in an equalitarian way with his fellow slaves, who are lucky to have such an all-loving LORD. It seems more like the Bullfrog Christian doesn’t understand Christian love at all, and is in fact harsh and unfair.
St. Augustine says you should love yourself before you love your neighbour—a point CG Jung picked up on—and obviously correct, although I think Jung interpreted that to mean “accept everything about yourself, even your darkness” whereas Augustine would say it means to act as a kindly master to yourself and gently and firmly rebuke and correct yourself.
It’s because Jung is really influenced by the Gnostic or alchemical tradition—Taoism, ying-yang etc—where good and evil complement and balance each other and have to be accepted as the interplay of life, whereas Augustine is a strict dualist and so the goodness needs to push down the badness, though not in a harsh way. This is another reason why Jung isn’t a Christian—he really works in the suppressed Aryan tradition of India and the East, whereas Augustine is more about Semitic dualism (with one exception, which I’ll do an article on later).
Well, anyway, the Bullfrog Christian does get some respect—he’s more formidable, he’s one of those “judgemental” Christians people talk about. But remember that he’s not the LORD in all his wrath—he’s the stern but gentle reprover, not the God who incinerated Sodom (although some men who go down this road begin to think they are that).
He gets more respect, but because he can only be a firm but gentle reprover there’s a limit to his power—more aggressive men can ride over him in many cases, because he can’t go crazy like Jesus with the whip in the Temple, that isn’t really part of the brief for Christian love, even firm love, even if Jesus did it.
Well, there you have two Christian types, the slave of God and the man who takes on the aspect of God—both have obvious limitations; and what both reveal is that Christianity emerges from the slave quarters, where what you hope for above all is a stern but fair and gentle master—and that is what some men try to emulate, but the LORD is the god of a slave people, the Hebrews, imposed on an aristocratic people, the Aryans, who have a different psychology. And that is a problem.