Saturday 28 April 2012

A Need for Creed



The function of law is to regulate human conduct within any society in order to maintain a certain set of values and beliefs. Therefore, every legal system is based on a set of beliefs which it protects and derives its authority from. But if every law requires an inspiring belief system, would not every dogma entail a legal system to protect it? The logical answer is yes, but it was not apparently so for the founders of Christianity, who introduced a belief system that does not contain a self sustaining legal doctrine for some unknown reasons. 


The obituary of the Law of Moses, and therefore the New Testament’s relevance to public affairs, is majorly the work of Paul of Tarsus, the author of 13 books of the 27 books of the New Testament, and the apostle to whom half of the Book of Acts is dedicated. Paul’s de-activation of the comprehensive Halakhaic code took three insidious forms; the first is by nullifying the relationship between deeds and salvation, which lead to the duality of the metaphysical and physical realms, and denied the influential reciprocity between the body and the mind. The second was the obsoleteness of the autonomic political structure of the Jewish nation, which unified all forms of life in a fostering monotheistic set up. The third axis of the Paulian take over was the resilient superseding of revelation and the celebration of interpolation and sinister hermenutics. Paul said, "That which I speak, I speak it not after the Lord", and by that statement 20 centuries of Christology were tainted by vicious hierarchy and scriptural irrelevance.
 

Paul selectively focused on the deterministic aspect of Abrahamic theology excluding the indispensible personal role in salvation. In an example of how Paul contravened the teachings of Jesus, he says, “they are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus”, and “For we hold that a man is justified by faith apart from works of law.” Later on in the same chapter he philosophizes one of his novelties as he says, “Since, therefore, we are now justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.” On the couldn't be further other hand, Jesus focuses on the role of one’s own deeds in justification as mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew, “For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned” .Many Christians would be flabbergasted by the aforementioned quotes which corroborates the validity of the Jewish law regardless of demented hermeneutics and interpolations . However many would not be able to admit that the adventitious intervention by Saul, the former persecutor of Christians, narrowed down Christian morality to a mixture of ambivalent humanist ethics, political totalitarianism and ritual mysticism.


The detachment of deeds from salvation meant the irrelevance of non ritualistic actions to morality, and subsequently, facing the political false dilemma of choosing between brutal theocracy, and diabolic secularism. Not even a balanced dilemma as Paul has increased the bids on the second choice by preaching his followers to respect the political and economic systems under which they lived, and he also told them to pray for those who ruled over them in 1 Timothy 2:2. A theory that will lead to an inevitable secular Politiconomic alliance with the church.

Among myriads of his adverse messages to what Jesus had preached regarding the necessity of the law, Paul had brought the Jewish canon to an end by depicting the law as a curse, then transmitting this very curse to the slewed son of God in a clean disposal of the divine boo-boo. In Galatians 3:13, Paul fascinates his readers by the technical glitch resulting from God’s feeble mindedness which required a public sui/deicidal apology as he says, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us”. At this point the suspicious, lopsided, Paulian understanding culminates to make a room for all sorts of non monotheistic life shaping laws to refill the void, holy schema as it is announced In Rom.10, “For Christ is the end of the law, that everyone who has faith may be justified.". However, Jesus said verbatim, “Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them. He also says, “For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.”





Another theological perplexity of a seismic secular impact is the conflicting attitudes the Bible demonstrates towards the "Seclourum". Thanks to the infallible Paul, the freedom fighting followers of Jesus are told by Paul to love the world and nurture their political torpidity. Two passages of the gospel of John reveal this intrinsic contradiction. On the one hand,  John writes, “For God so loved the world [kosmon in Greek] that he gave his one and only Son”. But on the radical contrary, he quotes Jesus warning his followers saying, "Do not love the world [kosmon] or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in Him". But who cares, according to the founders of Christianity Jesus was so mystical and indecipherably ambiguous, unlike the plain language he preached in.
From a conspiratorial point of view, Robert Eisenman, the renowned Bible scholar, perceives Pauline Christianity as a method of containing a rebellious sect among radical Jews and making it appealing to Roman leadership. The American New Testament scholar, Bart D.Ehrman traces the political model of Rome upon which Pauline Christianity was based and made use of the administrative skills which Rome had possessed. The Roman organizational system of a single bishop for each town was, on this theory, the means by which it gained its hegemony.

The blustering resonance of secularism was firstly incepted in Christology as a rift between the political and liturgical realms, which later morphed into a complete schism between the social and religious spheres. The corrosive secularization of the message of Jesus is a loud reverberation of the intrinsic dissonance between faith and legal discipline in the New Testament. Paul of Tarsus is by and large the most important figure in Christianity before Jesus Christ himself, as his teachings managed to place those of Jesus in desuetude and gradual recession of relevance to life. A life that is riven by materialism and apostasy more than ever.

Sunday 15 April 2012

Till Premarital Sex Do Us Apart


Like eating desserts before meals delays gastric emptying which causes the eater to feel fuller quicker, premarital sex can have the same subversive effect on relationship durability. The concurrence of staggering divorce rates and liberal attitudes towards prenuptial sex can attach it to endangering the soundness of consanguinity in society. Economical, technological, and cultural factors contributed to the rise of the phenomena, a rise that is more likely to increase both horizontally and vertically. With the support it receives from popular culture, premarital sex is gaining more popularity, and attempts of portraying it negatively are deemed obsolete and feebleminded by large sectors of modern societies.
From a natural take on the matter, all natural processes abide by an orderly fashion, where stages and phases of existence are sequenced harmoniously, fulfilling their purpose in a greater image. Stars, planets and all entities on Earth go through birth, a peak point of growth, and an eventual demise which connects with another new event relationally. Applying these rules of nature on the stages of coupling would give us a set of procedures that construct a contextual conception for sexual intercourse, such as the development of a mutual understanding of life and partnership which can provide a purpose for a long lasting union. Curtailing these steps and placing premature sex as a predecessor to them is invariably devastating as it widens the gap between the physical attachment and the spiritual compatibility. The absence of such a synchronousness of bodily and mental faculties can lead to the obliteration of a quintessential hallmark of the human identity. Such a demoted approach to sex challenges the longevity of relationships and threatens the coherence of society through the decimation of its primary unit, the family.
The advent of intelligent solutions to decrease the aftereffects of copulation, played a major role in bringing nonchalance to those who feared the premarital experience. The invention of the condom and other contraceptives has helped much in mitigating the undesired repercussions of intercourse. Pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases are not the only hazards of sex, as maintaining virginity till marriage is also an issue of  high significance in some cultures. Artificial hymen is a recent commercial product  available in Middle Eastern markets, substituting the several decades old surgeries which provide a temporary re-acquisition of virginity.
For many, premarital sex comes as a part of social deconstructionism culture which dictates the fragmentation of relationships in order to avoid full-scale failures, an apprehension which is fostered by previous disappointments. An example of these disappointments is taking part of a dysfunctional conjugal partnership either as a partner or a member of a dysfunctional family. Suffering from chronic social hardships resulting from prolonged, impaired relationship stigmatizes this kind of union in the minds of those witnessed constant domestic dispute and the negative repercussions which follow. The dismantlement of the components of human partnership provides a practical and successful solution of avoiding what is thought of as the arbitrary burden of serious commitment. This way, premarital sex becomes a way of stretching the margin of benefits of relationships while minimizing the level of risk to the lowest point possible in the eyes of many.
Since the downfall of the Bible as a manifesto of moral values in the West, and the subsequent unfinished age of European imperialism, modernization postulated European traditions at the expense of regional traditionalism. The Euro-American political dogmas have directly and indirectly endorsed the rights of individuals of leading free lives in order to serve free market trends. A liberated competitive sex world of supply and demand would be an incentive for individuals to condone the liberalization of economy. The financial capacity of individuals can no longer match a strict ethical code that can allow sex in the context of matrimony solely. The expenses of marriage can be possessed only by individuals of an age that postdates that of possessing sexual needs by at least 15 years, a time gap can only increase the figures of those interested in premarital sexual experiences.
Although the most conservative among cultures accommodate higher divorce rates than average, premarital sex is far from being in complementary distribution with divorce in more liberal places. In moderately conservative countries such as Azerbaijan, Mexico, and Magnolia, crude divorce rates are 0.83, 0.62, and 0.35 respectively. These rates are the lowest in comparison with more either liberal or conservative countries. In the U.S, Russia, and the European Union the rates are 3.4, 4.4, and 2.0 respectively, while in ultra conservative places like the Bible Belt, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, divorce rates are about 20% higher than those of less, but still conservative regions. One explanation of this unexpected representation of divorce is that in ultra conservative places, divorce is more common because marriage is more common. The conspicuous conclusion is that even if divorce rates are high in the most conservative environments, liberal societies still have double the crude rates with a smaller number of marriages. By taking into consideration the subjective and objective influence of divorce on generations to come, the rates can only lean towards accretion.
Entertainment media majorly target the age group of  13-27, which is flanked by puberty and considering marriage on both ends. Youngsters spending most of their leisure time in exposure to pop culture, find advocacy for premarital sex through the liberal attitudes of the protagonists of such acts. Contemporary arts of commercial appeal vastly downplay religion and celibacy within the direct and subliminal messages they convey to viewers. A globalized mainstream culture charged with individualism and celebration of selfdom, bolsters the preference of remaining unattached to any form of institutionalized association. The degeneracy of the quality of education broadens the influence of entertaining materials that accentuates hedonism, and debases the choice of chastity by conservative sectors of society.
Family, the cardinal structural unit of society faces serious impedance by the rampancy of premarital sex. Advancements in contraception technology cemented the tendencies towards sex out of wedlock. For many, premarital sex is a form of escapism from negative presentiments concerning marriage. Anachronism of sexual chronology in mainstream culture leads to indifferent attitudes towards sex among youngsters. Media plays a far-reaching role in setting premarital sex as a standardized behavioral norm. The rise of  prenuptial sex accompanies staggering rates of divorce, a phenomena that has irreversible impairing effects on society.