Christianity has failed to…


I claim that the Christian religion has failed to teach empathy; one of the most important moral concepts we have.

There are various definitions of empathy given by various individuals but almost all of them point to the same meaning. Empathy is defined as the ability to understand the feelings, thoughts, and beliefs of another person. Empathy is often characterized as the ability to “walk in the shoes of another�, i.e. to acquire an emotional resonance with another.

In his classic work about modern art, “Abstraction and Empathy�, Wilhelm Worringer provides us with a theory of empathy derived from Theodor Lipps that can be usefully applied to objects of art as well as all objects including persons.

“The presupposition of the act of empathy is the general apperceptive activity. Every sensuous object, in so far as it exists for me, is always the product of two components, that which is sensuously given and of my apperceptive activity.�

Apperception—the process of understanding something perceived in terms of previous experience.

What does in so far as it exists for me mean. I would say that something exists for me when I comprehend that something. Comprehension is a hierarchical concept and can be usefully considered as in the shape of a pyramid. At the base of the comprehension pyramid is awareness that is followed by consciousness. We are aware of many things but we are conscious of much less. Consciousness is awareness plus our focused attention.

Continuing with the pyramid analogy, knowing follows consciousness and understanding is at the pinnacle of the pyramid. We know less than we are conscious of and we understand less than we know. Understanding is about meaning whereas knowing is about knowledge. To move from knowing something to a point when that something is meaningful to me, i.e. understood by me, is a big step for man and a giant step for mankind.

My very best friend is meaningful to me and my very worst enemy must, for security reasons, also be meaningful to me. The American failures in Vietnam and Iraq are greatly the result of the fact that our government and our citizens never understood these ‘foreigners’. We failed at the very important relationship—we did not empathesize with the people and thus failed to understand our enemy. It is quite possible that if we had understood them we would never have gone to war with them.

If we had empathy with Germany in the 1930s would we have stopped Hitler before he forced us into war?

If we had empathy with Germany before August 1914 would we have prevented WWI?

Do you agree that we understand our best friend and that we must also understand our worst enemy?

That is because you are not empathic and do not understand the relationship of the inner being to the outer projection.
You can't understand another until you first know yourself.

Christianity is within each person. What exists now with the label Christianity is church-vanity. Humanity has yet failed to reach the level of Christianity.

Hitler never forced anyone to do anything, humanity created Hitler.

If we were empathic WWI never would have happened nor any war.

That would be to understand yourself...

Isn't that called "sympathy" (as in: "I feel your pain") as opposed to "empathy" (as in "I understand your pain")?


I don't understand, Joesus. So, you do believe in the Christian fairy tale? I thought you were Buhdist. Not to re-start one of those antagonistic arguments we used to get into. But, do you mind clarifying your religious perspective once more?

To understand another person I need to acquire information (about them): their life history, what circumstances brought about their current situation etc.

To walk in someone's shoes (empathy) seems to be to sweep all preconceptions & history under the carpet, see them as a fellow human being and go from there.

Understanding someone and being empathic seem to be two different things.

Do I need to understand my worst enemy? Sure. The history maketh the motive. So by understanding through means of information gathering - it'll help.

Do I need to be empathic toward my worst enemy? To engage in the act of empathy toward another, all preconceptions and redundant labels (ie 'worst enemy') need to be swept away / forgiven & forgotten. Once that has been stripped away, and before you is no longer a worst enemy, then empathy can begin.

Regarding Christianity, you said:

Then don't look to a few thousand year old religion to give guidance for todays people. Empathy might be one of our important moral concepts, but it might not have been so high on the list those many years ago. Or just provocative topic title?

I don't call myself a Buddhist nor a Christian, but what I teach has roots in both because they both speak of the same thing, the consciousness that binds us all together and Self realization of a greater Self than the temporary individual self of the ego.

What Jesus the Man taught, is what I teach. What Siddhartha Gautama or Buddha taught, is what I teach.
What I teach is from my experience. What people learn from me is that they can experience themselves.
They then in turn, must take the initiative to experience themselves as they are, not as others tell them they are or they think they are after every changing experience.

Christianity has become just a word. That word stimulates many different thoughts and feelings in many different people but it is not the word Christianity that defines Christianity it is the people who define Christianity, and then apply their beliefs and judgments on those who call themselves Christians. This is not only delusional it's unintelligent.

When a person speaks of their experience as Jesus did, listeners formulate their own ideas based on what they can grasp and integrate into their own belief systems and experiences. As they then pass their understandings down to others they have taken their distortions and beliefs that have been overlapped onto the original and spoken of their understanding and how they experience the understanding of the original. Take that reality and apply it to 2000 years of story telling and interpretation and what do you get?

Every Religion begins with an experience. What Jesus spoke of was Christ Consciousness, Union of spirit and matter, the immortal soul and its relationship with the absolute and matter. He was, as was understood by his teachings, "Christed," anointed with knowledge. He wasn't a Christian in what most determine Christians or followers of Christian faith to be today. Nor did Siddhartha teach Buddhism, which today references the current understanding of the Buddhist Faith. Both were enlightened.

In terms of history and symbolism Buddha represents knowledge and Christ represents application of knowledge in action and life. First comes Knowledge and then comes direct application of knowledge.
Humanity was first introduced to the knowledge and then to one who lived the knowledge. Both events were divinely interwoven into the tapestry of human evolution. What has resulted from the events is blind followers of belief according to best guess and interpretations of reality within a narrow confined moment of time and space. The time and space of personal experience squished between birth and death of the expected mortal life of the ego, not the eternal life of the Conscious soul as it lives in the realm of spirit.

That, (eternal life) has been set aside thru interpretation and belief as a reward for good behavior while living a miserable existence in servitude to some heartless God who has every expectation that the mortal man follow rules that are widely misinterpreted and distorted by those who would tell you they are the ones who know God and you can't.

Once you know God, and anyone can, life automatically transforms as you realize how intimately connected to everything you are. Until then you are learning to understand yourself. Just as a parent is willing to allow leeway in behavior according to understanding of their growing child but still presents guidelines for their behavior until they master their own ability to stand on their own, God has always provided a voice for guidelines in living and study for those who wish to master their relationship with the spirit and body.
Until man masters this relationship he creates, discord, discomfort, sickness, suffering and death.

If I were to say "I know God" I might think I was fooling myself.

You know or you don't know. But in reality most just ignore what they can or already know in favor of habitually turning attention towards something else, creating a hypnotic delusion.

I might know or I might not know, but I don't say.

You don't have to say anything. If you know it resonates with those who do know like a tuning fork that vibrates and activates another of the same design/resonance.

A Ritual To Read To Each Other

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider?
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give, yes or no, or maybe
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.
-William Stafford

Then I will speak: be kind to one another.

Good idea, Rick. Over two thousand years ago, Jesus said something similar. He put it this way: "...Love--That is, respect and be gracious to--one another."

Suddenly I'm reminded of his tirade in front of the temple where he turned over the tables of the money changers and sellers of sacrificial animals..

Religion speaks constantly about love. What actions does one take in order to love someone? I claim that empathy is a necessary step toward loving someone. Religion has a problem with intellection; religion wants to focus on emotion. Reason is necessary for empathy; if so, it is necessary for love and thus religion fails when reason fails. Therein lay the paradox of religion.

Love is misunderstood as it was originally stated in scripture as an emotion. It is not an emotion it is a condition-less energy, a supportive potential conducive to environments which supply everything that is needed for growth in evolutionary awareness of reality.

If a Bowyer could not build a bow that could store energy it could never propel an arrow. An Archer must be able to utilize the bow and its capability to store enough energy for it to send the arrow to its target.
The Love that is available to the human that wants to reach a target is unconditioned energy, pure, without negatives or positives, without anger, hatred or emotional attachments of any kind. It is boundary-less, without beginning and without end.

To utilize it you have to see it in its purity rather than in duality. When a man casts love from duality he sees it in forms and shapes that have boundaries and conditions. He attaches it to his family with special conditions and values that he mourns when it is lost. When he attaches it to his enemies he rejoices when his enemies are vanquished. Through emotional attachments love is twisted into psychological boundaries that vary from ego to ego. From the ego love is an emotional and psychological condition.

When one gives love with conditions one gets love back with conditions. In a dual universe this type of action is is like a circle, the mind places itself somewhere on the circle creating its fantasy of a beginning and an end in reference to some point on the outer ring of the circle. Not giving any consideration to reality being anywhere outside of the circle the ego scrambles to find new beginnings and points of reference somewhere other than where it thinks it began when it experiences suffering to change its conditions in experience. But what the ego always retains is identity with only what is in the circle, until the circle is broken by something greater than the ego and its attention to the circle. More than often the ego reformulates the circle out of habit again transmitting love through past memories and conditions.

Original scripture speaks of seeing unconditional supportive energy in all objects, to take them back to what they were created out of, not what they were created by or through in emotional attachments and skewed visions of ego reality. To give love that is unconditioned to receive the reflection of what is behind the conditions. To clear the nervous system and the mind of conditions and then move awareness into creation.
In the beginning:
For a lack of a better word relative to conditions of the ego filled with distaste for anything not conducive to personal judgment, the word was of God or the word was God. Pure intelligence without conditions and without need but with potential and with direction that is ever expanding in the experience and awareness of God/intelligence/absolute.

When we choose to look outside of ourselves with conditioned eyes we see things the way we want to see them. Want meaning the way conditioned response narrows vision from reactive behavior and lifetimes of habit.
Religion speaks of prayer which originally is a form of communion or meditation. It is clearing of the mind of its conditions to reach the underlying nature of reality so as to experience duality from its point of origin. The more one sees the clear underlying nature of reality the more one learns to live the clear underlying nature of reality and realizes the structure of nature as being built to accommodate the multiple layered universe that allows Billions of egos to experience the universe with their own identities and projections intact. The universe becomes the clear mirror of intellect in all of its projections and imaginings.
It allows ego to be motivated by fear and it allows the soul to experience life without fear and without identification with the ego. It allows one to experience life as it can be in any form, and life without formulated conditions.

Based on ones personal state of mind and internalized stress, what one gives in love is layered with those stresses and conditions. Generally speaking when one gives love to receive love, it is the love that is missing inside of them that inspires them give what they have, in order to get what they don't.
Energetically this is a hopeless situation because one must know complete love of themselves, in themselves, in order to get a return that is complete and whole. This is simple enough to understand in that energy returned is not usually greater than that which was initially produced.
One in need gives energy with the need attached, what comes back is love with need attached.
Dual relationships seek to balance one another out where one is missing the pieces of psychological and emotional attachments. Hence the romantic notion of "You complete me." But then if that one is taken away one suffers again from having the energetic piece removed from the puzzle created by self identification of the ego, and it will seek to replace the missing pieces until it gives up or dies ever identifying with its limited nature of itself.

Religion is based on the love of God, the unbounded absolute potential of energy that supports the energetic repercussions of intelligence at all levels of its developing awareness and intentions, the development of soul and its imaginary stages of growth as if it had a beginning and an end.
One can witness any point along the thread of souls, one just need give attention to the channels of energy conducive to experience. The only conditions are those that you place before yourself according to how you receive and give love according to how you know yourself.

The mechanics are simple enough, and it is a science that can be easily grasped. Religion however is often established through emotional attachments and the need to fill gaps in psychological identification with ones self and the environment.
Every historical event that has been labeled as religious, is and always will be, predisposed by an emotional cry for help from those who sincerely believe they are victim to a greater power than their own Self.
This inspires the conditions to manifest one who is whole unto himself and the universe, with the keys to move through time and space as if they were the intelligent matter themselves.
This is always like bringing a Neanderthal to a screening of Starwars. The conditioned mind can't disengage from its own limited awareness and circle of values to grasp what it sees and hears without applying layers of superstition and fear of a power so strange and bizarre that it can only imagine itself as worthless and helpless in comparison to such a God.

Coberst, if you mean that many Christians have failed to practice what they preach--the basic teaching of Jesus--I agree. Hypocrisy, your name is Nominal Member (of any of the world religions) and you love to organize and institutionalize things.

JESUS WAS NOT A MEMBER OF ANY FORMAL RELIGION
================================================
It is my opinion that the Jesus--that is, the Jesus I read about in the New Testament was not the founder of what we call--and there are oh so many different kinds--the Christian churches. IMO, he lived and died as a Reform Jew. To the chagrin of the institutional Judaism into which he was born, he practised being inclusive and universal.

I strongly suspect that if Jesus were to attend a gathering today, which included the prophets of Judaism, the first founders of Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc., he would be very empathetic. In no way would be demand to be worshipped as God, or even the Son of God. It is my understanding that he looked for and sought to bring forth the GOD-like character in everyone.

Very good points, coberst

[quote name='Lindsay' date='Feb 21, 2008, 09:56 PM' post='88064']
[quote name='coberst' post='87965' date='Feb 18, 2008, 02:40 AM']
Christianity has failed to…
I claim that the Christian religion has failed to teach empathy; one of the most important moral concepts we have.....[/quote] Coberst, if you mean that many Christians have failed to practice what they preach--the basic teaching of Jesus--I agree. Hypocrisy, your name is Nominal Member (of any of the world religions) and you love to organize and institutionalize things.


[/quote]
[/quote]


Does this mean that you disagree with my statement? Do you think that Christianity has taught us properly the nature and importance of empathy?

Coberst, IMO, there is no such thing as "Christiainty". There are "Christianities", and individual Christians. As an individual who happens to like Christianity, at its best, I agree with you.
Generalizing is a zero-sum game and divisive. I refuse to play it. OK?

If we do not generalize we do not learn. A stagnet mind is the devils workshop.

Perhaps we are not using the word 'generalize' in the same way. Sure there is a role for the process of generalizing, but it can lead to false logic.

For example: God is all good--that which includes all morals and ethics.; God is all light, all love and all spirit. Atheists say, there is no God; therefore, atheists are not good, do not have morals and ethics, prefer darkness, are unloving and devoid of spirit.

Much prejudice is the result of over generalizing. I presume you will agree that general ideas, statements, principles, or rules can be very dangerous unless they are based on well researched facts.

A still mind is often in communion with God. Whirling habitual or repetitive thoughts and spinning (making generalizations) in activity is also seen as being caught by the devil in certain schools of thought.
Man often tends to generalize without learning, accepting others assumptions and moving outward from generalized acceptance of hearsay than actual experience and practical evaluation of the difference even if they know the difference.


This is a relative value. Even atheists have values and ethics which dictate their beliefs and their arguments against their interpretations of another's description of God.

For example, if one was to make an example of God: being all good--that which includes all morals and ethics.; God is all light, all love and all spirit. In the comparisons of good versus evil, God would seem powerless against the prevailing struggles of a humanity that belongs to say a spiritually based fellowship that gathers together to stimulate greater forces than those they seek to dissolve or remove from creation.
Simply because evil has risen above and beyond any ideas or controls of defined morality.

Being that history has shown the diversity even corruptibility, of such spiritually based fellowships as being not without their evils or egos one would tend to find no comfort in a majority or group that might desire to impress upon the world a morality that is defined outside of ones own personal experience.
In other words Morality isn't something that can be defined but it can be lived if one finds the niche in which one serves themselves and humanity, even if it doesn't look pretty.

Take for example, tough love. Love and light being somewhat strained in some circles when it comes to discipline by some new age thinkers, some would rather allow a child to wander into their own experience than prepare certain guidelines based on wisdom learned from immersion in spirit.
Knowing about spirit through the teachings of those who are not themselves immersed in spirit is living from generalizations of community belief and determination.
Knowing of Spirit by having immersed themselves in spirit lends one to being outside of boundaries but capable of creating boundaries that are useful in guiding those to their own experience of spirit rather than ones projections of living by the rules and interpretations of spirit created by defining ego's.
Practical wisdom rather than education by policy.


Buddhists do not generally accept the idea of Monotheism but that is not to say they do not believe in God. One could make a generalization and say Buddhists are atheists but that would be incorrect by some others definition.
If one was to make a generalized statement and accept this (If we do not generalize we do not learn) as truth, carrying any belief without changing it, there is no real learning taking place. (unless you accept the idea of multiple incarnations where one weighs the experience of multiple examples of belief and experience over many lifetimes)

Generalization is a tool which is often used inefficiently like striking a nail with a pair of pliers or a screwdriver. One gets great use out of a tool when they become proficient with them, but some rarely use tools proficiently.

If the love and light of God is a tool which creates guidelines but does not restrict free will then any belief that comes of free will is sanctioned by a God that does not control, limit or define creation or the inhabitants of creation.
It would stand to reason that one mans love and light might be a generalization of a conditioned ideal rather than an experience of reality not defined by any outward appearances.
Man tends to define God as all that is and much more, but that description is often made from ones immersion into personal experience and the projections of personal experience as one looks upon the past and possible futures of belief, rather than the immersion in spirit and the undefinable absolute which underlies all surface appearances and generalizations made by the ego.

I agree. We must keep in mind that we learn more from error than from apathy.

Would it be wise to encourage error?
If not, how would you balance the acceptance of error in evolution and teaching, without prejudice and condemnation?

I think that it is wise to encourage learning, which is error prone. In our very dynamic world learning is the only means we have for survival of the species and the planet.

Learning is encouraged, yet somehow we've managed to graduate students who can't read.
Errors aren't encouraged in fact they are given negative recognition and association with error spreads a feeling of social dysfunction rather than human nature.

Ego has a habit of being short tempered and less than compassionate with error in the process of learning, especially if it has to to with productivity.
Schools grade you in the process of learning which begins the psychosis of self measure and comparison. Those who fail tests are not assured that they have made errors in light of their human nature, but that they have failed to live up to their potential. Parents have punished their children for failure or error and schools leave the error prone behind to give attention to those who make less errors, and encourage those who are not making errors to continue without giving thought to the error prone.
The separation of class emphasizes and encourages lack of compassion and by fear encourages the psyche to avoid error in light of being reduced in status, or class and even in character.

Everyone knows you can make mistakes, and most will say to err is human when it comes to forgiving ones self, but that is not what has been socially practiced in the system I was exposed to when being conditioned as a child in the schools that I was raised in.

Not having had children of my own I can only observe the kids nowadays wearing coke cans in their ears, chains in the noses and genitalia, piercing themselves with metal objects so when they drink fluids liquid passes through the holes in their lips and cheeks, that they still seek some kind of recognition for being unique or individual because they failed to be recognized for who they are by themselves or others as they were growing up.
I have a close relative who was a High School teacher and principal in a large U.S. City. The failure of parent involvement and the desperation for attention and recognition from peer groups was the most important factor in dealing with the kids at school. The teachers were lucky if they could teach anyone anything because learning wasn't as important as peer recognition to the students. And if they weren't clear enough to be present in the classroom without thinking about their reputations or too far removed from reality from the drugs they took the night before with their friends they had to face the pressure from the groups that felt threatened by the success of someone who actually applied themselves in school.

I'm not going to say this is the rule, obviously there are going to differences in social behavior and peer recognition, as well as parent involvement in the world. But what is recognizable is that people seek ground that is safe if they can afford to. They accept this reality and try to escape it by moving to better ground and leaving it behind. Until land becomes scarce and better ground become a premium for the wealthy and privileged what is going on in the inner cities eventually spreads into the better ground as the fences of special recognition are torn down to make room for social diseases that have been allowed to exist for the profit and gain of the few.

Humans know that ideals are often superficial but the addictions to superficial realities rarely motivate anyone to change anything until their ideals are threatened. Even then the roar is for instant gratification and quick fixes. The Govt. is all about quick responses and instant gratification so that elected officials can gain recognition for themselves while they are in office. It's not unlike the peer pressures they learned in school. The attention they get is supplemental, it feeds the need for the personal and the personal moment but not the longterm nor the benefit of all if it threatens the personal peer review machine.

Error and education are not exactly synonymous with change, one can see with the repetition that takes place in history that we are often like the person who sits in front of a television set with their finger on the remote thinking to ourselves,...All my relatives and their friends watched this channel and they're all dead after suffering the trials and tribulations of majority influence based on separation of class and personal interests..but I'm sure that even if my friends and I watch the same channel something will be different for us...

Joesus

Education in America is perhaps our greatest disgrace. I would like to focus blame on someone or some group but, alas, we are all to blame and we should all be ashamed of our self. But we are too unenlightened to realize it. It is the old boot strap problem. We are too ignorant to recognize our ignorance. Not only that but we are proud of it.

Perhaps the sacrificing of personal pride would turn the tide of ignorance...

I like that comment. I don't know who, but someone said something similar: The only people who make no mistakes are those who make nothing.

Without any apologies, Jean and I will be spending--between now and and March 20--the next three weeks in sunny and warm, we hope, Florida.

BTW, what do you do for vacation?

I envy your Florida trip. I love Florida in the winter and hate it during the summer.

I am in my middle seventies and have lost enthusiasm for long distance travel. I have never been wealthy enough to travel first-class, if I could I suspect I might still enjoy travel, but the hassel of second-class travel was a delight but is so no longer.