Jesus was a social and theological revolutionary. The choirs of angels announcing his birth were at the same time announcing the death of the god of the Pharisees, and every other lesser god. The mission of Jesus was to exemplify and orient a faith to the god worthy of it. Essential to this is relinquishing our ties to the dying or dead god(s). Or, in other words, to finish off the dying gods.
This pattern of relinquishing ties to dying or dead gods has been the persistent narrative of all scripture. The dying or dead gods would include any god whose gospel promotes a lesser vision of human growth and development—as the god (or law) of the Old Testament died with the revelation of the god of the New Testament whose gospel promoted a fuller, loftier vision of human growth and potential.
For starters, the dead or dying god(s) would include the gods of religious and anti-religious dogma; the gods of idolatry; the gods of tautologies; the gods of rote recitations; the abstract as to be meaningless gods; the gods who are responsible for everything; the gods who seem to want that we frequently worship them in ways that avoid the call of the world to heal it; the gods who are at our beck and call to fix annoying, urgent, or life and death problems; or the deal-making gods who will fix problem x, provided we do action y; the gods fixed on indicators of participation in religious traditions; the gods that want us to see the world as unchangeably evil (until they sweep in on some future day); the gods that seem to desire worshippers more than peers; the gods that continually pit ‘us’ against ‘them’; the gods that seem more concerned that we acknowledge them in all things than that we acknowledge that we are more capable than we have acted, and can do more to build a worthy kingdom; and the gods who carry the ultimate burden of justification for the evil and death in the world.
And yet, as Lincoln Cannon has put it, “If we can raise our eyes from the altar of religious and anti-religious dogma, we’ll see that the hand raised to finish the dying God is the sign of the oath to the resurrecting God. … we’ll also see the hand is our own and it holds a blade that’s aged and stained. That’s when we have a choice, either to repeat the old sacrifices of our ancestors, or finally to make the new sacrifice that they always implied: we can put ourselves on the altar and learn to become Gods.” (1)
What would a worthy god do and bring about among humanity? Are there aspects in that that we could do, or with which we could help? That is the call of Christ. And in a broader sense, that is the call of life.
As we hearken to the gospel of Jesus Christ and follow his example, we accept the grace of this responsibility to take on the role and mantle of God to the degree we can. And with this revelation, we recognize and accept that we are, and always have been the ones who carry the true and full burden of justification for the evil and death in the world. So, with Christ, may we meet “the hopes and fears of all the years” (2) today.
-Ben Blair
1 - http://lincoln.metacannon.net/2013/04/purpose-of-mormon-transhumanist.html
2 - “O Little Town of Bethlehem”
