One-world government, Isaiah style.

Isaiah 9:1-7

For Isaiah, Christmas is all about one-world government:

“For a child has been born for us,
a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. His authority shall grow continually, and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom. He will establish and uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time onward and forevermore.”

How is this to happen? Not by conquest, but by making war irrelevant. War itself is overthrown. But how? Isaiah’s answer – people finally wake up and see the light:

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness–on them light has shined. You have multiplied the nation, you have increased its joy; they rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as people exult when dividing plunder. For the yoke of their burden, and the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian. For all the boots of the tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for the fire.”

Isaiah believed that the world could have a happy ending after all, simply as a result of everyone waking up and seeing the light. And I don’t believe that means everyone will convert to Christianity. It means everyone realizes that God already loves them; we don’t have a deity problem anymore. We never did. God is pro-Earth and all its inhabitants. Put it to rest. Forget about the verses that say people are God’s enemies. Re-interpret them. Look at them from a sociological perspective, or reject them outright but whatever you do, don’t believe them. Wake up and see the light, and let’s get governing.

Comfort, my planet II

If at any point in your life you’ve ever experienced unconditional love from anyone, you’re probably going to pull through this. Even if you have to endure some pretty brutal shit. I believe when someone loves you unconditionally they deposit within you an endless spring that continues to water you for the rest of your life even when you don’t realize it. Even if you didn’t realize you were being unconditionally loved when it happened.

I think this is the way the Hebrew prophet Isaiah felt about his deity: “For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.” (Isaiah 61.11)

For all their faults, deities seem to be ace at getting people to feel unconditionally loved.

I believe that’s because unconditional love is our way of unleashing divinity on each other.

See here for more about what Isaiah and some other ancient Jews thought about what happens to people who get loved unconditionally.

Comfort, my planet.

Isaiah 40:1-2

Comfort, O comfort my people,
says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord‘s hand double for all her sins.

Thank you Isaiah for these much needed words. Indeed we have paid out enough suffering to placate and satiate the whole damn pantheon. Obviously we have created enough to worry about down here without the threat of some angry deity coming down to make us pay more. After all, we’re like grass, not around very long, and we’ve got valleys that need filling, hills to climb and roads to fix.