Much of the teaching and culture that has emerged in recent Christianity has much more to do with Greek philosophy and Roman mythologies than the Gospel. This is not all bad, but we must acknowledge these influences. The ego is naturally attracted to heroic language, and so we focused on the heroic instead of transformation: Zeus instead of Trinity, Prometheus and Ulysses instead of the Suffering Servant foretold by Isaiah.
.. The scandalous thing about Jesus is how free he is. He is not a ritualist, legalist, or into any form of priestcraft. The things we usually associate with religion are not what Jesus emphasizes—at all.
“Star Wars” Is Really About Feminism. And Jefferson. And Jesus.
Christianity
Anakin Skywalker is the product of a virgini birth. He has no human father. He turns out to be a Christ-like figure, dying for humanity’s sins, which he incarnates and symbolizes. Star Wars is an imaginative reconstruction of Jesus’s life, in which the Jesus figure is the sinner — unable to resist Satan until the very end, when he sacrifices everything for his child, and symbolically for all children.
5 Political Myths Trump Is Exploding
Donald Trump has provided high-profile, living disproof of some of the most familiar myths of American politics.
.. Obama’s success has shown that race doesn’t matter
.. While that is not entirely wrong, it is also the case that our beliefs about which issues “go together” are shaped by political elites’ efforts to establish winning electoral coalitions.
.. Romney’s “47%” comment and Obama’s “You didn’t build that” misstep produced no real movement in the polls, despite the attention they received in the media.
.. Because many people aren’t paying close attention to politics, the volume of coverage that a candidate receives may shape their attitudes just as much as the content of this coverage.
Donald Trump, Trickster God
The more adamantly people deny the influence of unseen forces—that is to say, unconscious impulses—over their own behavior, the more power those forces exhibit.
.. By now you might have guessed where I’m going with this. And you might be thinking that it’s unfair to attribute disagreeable voter behavior to mass psychosis. To which I say, keep watching the news. Is it really so far-fetched to suggest that America has literally gone mad?
.. The cynical construction of political persona and “narratives” that exploit unconscious anxieties may entail a great deal of obnoxious mumbo-jumbo, but that’s no proof it doesn’t work, never mind what statisticians like Nate Silver say.
.. Trump may be racist and fascist but that doesn’t make him Hitler. Fascism was and is a veritable rainbow coalition of hatred. Some favor jackboots, others loafers.
.. Hitler’s paramilitary brownshirts were far better organized than the goons who stalk Trump rallies looking for protesters and dark-skinned people to beat up. For his part, Trump has done Hitler one better by promising terrifying purges and concentration camps from the very get-go, rather than waiting until after his election to reveal the full scope of his vicious designs.
.. Just as Hitler was not known to crack wise from the podium, Trump’s stump speeches do not call to mind “storm and frenzy.” Trump is no Wotan, no berserker—he is a wisecracker, adept in the cool medium of television.
.. The trickster god has visited this young nation before, in the person of P.T. Barnum and in the character of Tom Sawyer.