@dpmartin,
dpmartin wrote:Fido
"It is only because mankind is aware of it that there is a truth. People do not decide what reality is but the truth is a social concept. Remove the social and there is not concept. They decide what is true. They give truth meaning. What did Jesus say: Man was not made for the law, but the law was made for man. We are the only guys in town with a gun. As long as we can stay awake we are the law."
What is perceived as true by mankind is not necessarily the Truth.
Since your going to refer to Jesus;
Jesus also said: I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
He also said: Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.
What does the Truth have to do with the societal formation of law?
If I may remind you, Jesus is said to have said that man was not made for the law, but the law for man. He was continually pointing out how those in charge of the law did not follow it. He said do as they say, and, not as they do. But at the heart of the Jesus Myth is something far more beautiful and poignant. He was talking about a psychological relationship with God, and not a formal relationship of laws and sacrifice. He said justly that God knows what is in our hearts, that sin is in the mind, and not only in the act. What was he doing when called upon to judge the adulterous woman? He was not chiseling words in Granite, but writing in the dust. If people could have the sense of what Jesus was getting at, written on their hearts, there would be world peace, and there would be no churches, or armies or poverty. The Jews had, and have yet, a strict and strictly formal relationship with God. Jesus was asking for people to accept a personal relationship with God where each does God's will and accepts God judgement on earth. It is foolish for men to judge God. It is foolish for the rich man to judge God good, or for the poor to judge God harsh when each shares the same life and the same needs. No man is punished with poverty who recognizes his power to do good. No man is rewarded with wealth if with out the sense to see it all as illusion without God, and -without following the command to sell all, and follow him. I do not mix philosophy with religion. Nor do I think the Gospels are the word of God. I can catch their meaning, and I follow that meaning; but I do not hang on every word. There is too much history in them and not enough fact.
Of the nature of God we cannot know, and in spite of the contradictory evidence in the Bible, we know that people are at their best, good, and grateful to God for life, and mercy, and bounty. Even if humanity is within the hand of God, God will never be in our grasp. If we sense God spiritually it is individually. What then is the truth of God? If God is Good and we are of God, then Good will by his Grace come out of us. But how many deaths have come out of our conceptions of God? How much wealth has been piled away and how much misery justified in the name of God? What is real, and what is fact is like God, and something we can only approach and never have. Our sense of truth is something each can have personally, but is discovered socially. Even your truth, the truth of the Gospels was revealed to you by another. The truth is a form of relationship, but only if we agree.
Truth can also be a cause of death and war, but then death and war are the truth to anyone who would kill for it. If we say a form is a guide, or perhaps a template, then it is useless if it ever guides us out of our relationship, or makes our relationship meaningless. You think about what Jesus was talking about. Was it not always about how humans relate to humans? No man who abuses Lazerus can call on the mercy of God. If we know God in our minds, do we not prove our knowledge in our relationships? Look at the world of Jesus, -where one man would bring a lawsuit for anothers shirt, which one would have to pledge for breakfast for his children. Yet, when Rome took Jeruselem, it squeezed enough Gold out of the place to build the Colosseum, to say nothing of the human wealth in slaves. It is the same in our time, where the religion serves the piling up of wealth and supports its protection. It is no part of God.
