Messiahs false and true
Decades ago as a young person, I liked to visit the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., where one exhibit featured a nine-minute film that played continuously in a loop. I would stand there, in awe, watching it over and over again.
It was called “Powers of Ten: A Film Dealing with the Relative Size of Things in the Universe – and the Effect of Adding Another Zero.”
Narrated by MIT physics professor Philip Morrison, the short movie takes viewers on a virtual high-speed voyage into outer space, zooming away from earth another order of magnitude (10 times farther) every 10 seconds, thus traversing through our solar system and vastly beyond, eventually past the Milky Way galaxy unto the outer reaches of the known universe – ending up 100 million light years from home. Upon returning to earth, the cosmic roller-coaster pauses temporarily at its initial starting point at the planet’s surface, but now continues on “in the other direction” – that is, inward. Microscopically traveling by a new order of magnitude (10 times smaller) every 10 seconds, the same rate as the previous journey, this time the “fantastic voyage” ventures inside a man’s hand. We survey skin cells and other structures, then chromosomes and DNA, and, as the magnification increases exponentially, molecules and atoms, until finally we arrive at our destination: a single proton within the nucleus of a carbon atom.
Not only does “Powers of Ten” (as well as a later remake called “Cosmic Voyage” narrated by Morgan Freeman) provide a glimpse of the astonishing complexity and magnificence of creation and the relative size of all things known, it also, intriguingly, shows man to be more-or-less right smack in the middle of two universes, one infinitely larger than us and the other infinitesimally smaller.
Think of it: Zoom out to, say, one light-year of distance from earth (10-to-the-16th-power meters) and our sun is seen as a tiny speck in space. But zoom inward, toward the center of a carbon atom, and you’ve traveled the same number of orders of magnitude, sixteen (10-to-the-minus-16th-power meters, or 0.000001 angstroms), and the atomic nucleus is likewise seen as a tiny speck in space.
With this mind-blowing relativity in mind, man is obviously not “small,” as we’re often told, except when compared to the distances, speeds and heavenly bodies inhabiting outer space. But relative to the equally mind-bogglingly small universes of inner space – well, let’s just say, you and I are to the tiny particles in the nucleus of an atom as the Milky Way galaxy is to us.
Thus perched between these “parallel universes,” we human beings exist on this remarkably beautiful blue-green-and-brown spinning sphere called Earth. And as such, we are faced with a great enigma – a Creator who can conceive universes large and small, both equally incomprehensible in their largeness and smallness (not to mention their infinite complexity and wonder), and yet Who places, right in the middle of it all, human beings, full of all our vexing and even malignant flaws.
For what purpose?
That’s a mystery. It is THE mystery.
In our life on this Earth, our first and most tangible reality is the wondrous natural world surrounding us and providing all our material needs. We are likewise blessed with marvelous faculties – two little spherical cameras called eyes with which to see, ears to hear, plus all our other senses and abilities, all topped off with an astonishing super-computer – our brain. All this, that we may perceive, navigate and live our lives successfully within this natural world, like the rest of the animal kingdom.
Alas, we’re not just animals, ordained to live in an ecosystem, locate food, procreate and try to steer clear of predators. For co-existing with this natural world is a mysterious moral dimension in which we humans are also immersed. Animals don’t share this moral realm, nor do plants, rocks, mountains or oceans, nor for that matter do atoms, molecules, planets, stars or black holes, all of which “act” in accord with their given nature, all without honor or dishonor, reward or punishment. Kittens aren’t good, and man-eating sharks aren’t evil. Only man dwells in this peculiar moral realm wherein good and evil not only manifest, but seem to be focused directly on recruiting us! As such, we inevitably assume the role of conduits of good, or of evil – or more often, of both good and evil, since both realms relentlessly strive to claim our minds, hearts, loyalties, and ultimately our souls.
It is this moral dimension that is the matrix from which most of our problems emerge, overshadowing and often overwhelming everything else in our lives.
For despite all that is truly amazing about human beings – the civilizations we’ve built, literature and art we’ve created, diseases we’ve conquered, our dizzying scientific and technological achievements and, most important, our genuine capacity for nobility, generosity and self-sacrifice – we are seriously troubled, problem-ridden creatures. The human race is a giant mess, and from everything we know, always has been. Along with our conscience (a little speck of God’s mind that he graciously enfolds within each one of us) and the many virtues with which we are blessed, we’re also mightily beset by pride, doubt, anger, selfishness, greed, lust – in fact, by ignoble impulses and destructive proclivities of every imaginable sort, almost as though we had a genetic predisposition toward them. Some of us become full-fledged monsters.
As a result, our world includes entire nations that resemble insane asylums where the most deluded and dangerous people are those in positions of authority. Moreover, each culture, religion and political ideology has a set of core beliefs about which adherents are absolutely certain, yet which are utterly at odds with the core beliefs of all other cultures, religions and political systems. Even worse, in the case of major utopian systems like communism, Nazism and Islamism, millions are brainwashed into not only embracing impossibly irrational, degrading and destructive beliefs, but into believing they are required to force everyone else on Earth to adopt their beliefs – or else be subjugated or slaughtered.
False messiahs
Clearly there is something in our makeup, some mysterious inheritance from ancient times, that beckons us to so easily cross the line of conscience, morality and reason – to violate God’s laws, to become spiritual outlaws. In Christian shorthand, we’re all “born in sin.”
It’s one of the great mysteries of life that some people – usually after great suffering and soul-searching – eventually manage somehow to mature into responsible, conscientious, moral adults, while others unfortunately become ever more entangled in dark thoughts and feelings, leading to self-destructive or predatory behaviors.
But here’s the rub. Even in those who eventually leave behind their former sinful behavior, the nature that allowed it seems to linger somewhere deep within us like a latent virus. Moreover, even if we were somehow graced to become totally free of our sinful nature, we still cannot undo the sins we committed in the past. In a cosmic legal sense, we’re still guilty. We’re like offenders who have broken the law and hurt, violated and damaged other people, and though we may now sincerely regret what we did, we’re still guilty of having done it! How can our guilt then be taken away? Can the past be magically wiped out? This is where the idea of the Messiah as savior comes in.
Unfortunately, because repentance and facing our own dark, angry, sinful nature can be painful and requires humility, many people are more inclined to skip the introspection and just appoint an earthly savior to rescue them from their misery. The most notorious example of a false messiah in modern times was Adolf Hitler, although both Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong were responsible for far more deaths. All demanded obedience and worship in return for a glorious kingdom on Earth, but of course it didn’t work out. It never does – but we keep trying.
As former New Left leader David Horowitz explains, progressive true-believers “regard the past, which is real, with contempt, and are focused exclusively on a future which is imaginary.” He explains the strange thinking inherent in this political ideology:
Think of progressives as a species of religious fundamentalists planning a redemption. Like fundamentalists, they look at the world as fallen — a place corrupted by racism, sexism and class division. But the truly religious understand that we are the source of corruption and that redemption is only possible through the work of a Divinity. In contrast, progressives see themselves as the redeemers, which is why they are so dangerous, because they regard those who oppose them as the eternally damned. Progressives are on a mission to create the kingdom of heaven on earth by redistributing income and using the state to enforce politically correct attitudes and practices in everyone’s life.
Of course, the communist/socialist dream has never delivered on its utopian promises, with 100 to 200 million dead bodies resulting from it in the last century. How strange, then, that the stench emanating from those mountains of rotting corpses is somehow overcome by the sweet aroma of an impossible dream, the delusion that we can reform and redeem mankind through the “enlightened” coercion of an all-powerful government. Socialism, the strange religion of the Left, still energizes and excites true believers.
In America, the last time a political figure was worshipped as a messiah, someone in whom millions of people invested all their hopes and dreams for the future, was the elevation to the presidency of Barack Obama in 2008.
“We thought that he was going to be – I shouldn’t say this at Christmastime – but the next messiah,” veteran broadcast journalist Barbara Walters told Piers Morgan on CNN. Newsweek editor Evan Thomas told MSNBC, “I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God.” And upon Obama’s 2012 resurrection – I mean, reelection – Newsweek celebrated the occasion with the front-cover headline, “THE SECOND COMING.”
A messiah, at least in the Christian sense, is not only supposed to lead people out of bondage and oppression, but to take away their guilt and past sins. Obama was, in effect, anointed by the majority of American voters to absolve their guilt over our great national sin of slavery (and later, racial segregation). But instead of cleansing us of our national guilt, Obama and his administration, including his vice president, Joe Biden, and his attorney general, Eric Holder, cynically magnified and enlarged our guilt, using it as a weapon to confuse, confound and divide us, to neutralize patriots and critics, all for the unholy purpose of amassing ever more power.
Most Americans – some sooner, some later – ultimately realized that not only was Obama not a messiah, he was arguably the worst, most dishonest, incompetent, anti-American president in U.S. history. His radical-left administration caused tremendous harm not just to the nation’s constitutional system of government, its economy, security and culture – but to its national soul. That’s because, to “fundamentally transform” a uniquely great nation like America into just one more pathetic redistributionist welfare state presided over by an all-powerful nanny government, the American people must be seduced into becoming less independent and less moral than they once were, they mustn’t trust in God quite as much as they once did, they must become less rugged and resilient, less logical and competent, less principled and courageous than they once were.
This, alas, is the true legacy of the Obama presidency and later the Biden presidency – the degradation and demoralization of America.
The desire for a messiah – a God-anointed person who will lead us to lasting peace and happiness – is embedded deep in the human soul. The messiah is central not just to Christianity and to Judaism, but also to Islam, which has its own exotic version of a last-days deliverer.
In fact, polls reveal that a large percentage of Muslims currently living in the Middle East believe they will see, in their lifetime, the coming of their messiah – whom they call the Mahdi. But believe it or not, Islam anticipates that the Mahdi will return with a sidekick – Jesus, whom Muslims call “Isa.” The Muslim Jesus is expected to tell the entire world that he is not the son of God, was not crucified and was not resurrected from the dead. Rather, according to Muslim teachings, Jesus’ message upon his return will be that he does indeed exist, but that he is – surprise! – a Muslim, and that all the world must convert to Islam.
Since human beings, as is demonstrated again and again, are prone to disastrously appointing false “messiahs” to absolve their sins and lead them to peace and freedom, one question, which has endured for millennia, looms large: Is the messiah a political (group) savior, or a spiritual (individual) one?
Twenty centuries ago at the time Jesus walked the Earth, the Jewish people, citing the biblical prophets, were awaiting a great leader descended from King David who would rescue and lead them into a time of lasting peace on earth. However, Jesus, when urged to lead a rebellion against the Roman oppressors and occupiers, said he had come to lead a different sort of revolution – an inner one, within each person. Why?
True Messiah
If we’re completely honest, at some point during our lives we come to realize we are broken in such a deep way that we cannot fix ourselves. Our problem with sin, with deep roots going back to our childhood and beyond, seems to cling to us all of our lives.
Even in the best of us, the traumas of life have become so much a part of us, the perverse cravings of our hearts so strong, and the hold sin has on us so powerful, that even with our best efforts we remain a shadow of the person we’d like to be. We never seem to be totally healed – not through living a clean, law-abiding, moral life, not with the help of modern medicine and antidepressants, not with church attendance and sermons and hymns and good deeds, not even by diligently trying to obey all of God’s commandments.
We need something we cannot give ourselves.
We need true healing; we need forgiveness; we need a new identity; we need new life.
This mystery of otherworldly redemption is alluded to throughout the Old Testament, the prophet Isaiah writing: “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”
All of which brings us to the coming of the Messiah – the real one.
What more compassionate and needed gift could God possibly give His struggling, wayward children than a perfect, in-the-flesh example of how to live, a great lover of our souls who would suffer greatly for our redemption and dramatically demonstrate real love, and one who would actually do battle with the dark spiritual forces that oppress the human race?
Why, indeed, would a Creator so great as to imagine into existence such an astonishingly magnificent universe not provide for us the example, the teacher, and the savior we so desperately need?
The simplicity and sincerity of Christ’s essential message is conveyed by one of my very favorite scriptures, courtesy of John the apostle: “Here is the message we heard from him [Jesus] and pass on to you: that God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to be sharing in his life while we walk in the dark, our words and our lives are a lie; but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, then we share together a common life, and we are being cleansed from every sin by the blood of Jesus his Son” (1 John 1:5–7).
John mentions here no complicated dogma, no required religious observances, rituals, pilgrimages, or special diet. Just a sincere appreciation of God’s forgiveness and this glistening instruction: If we “walk in the light, as he himself is in the light” – that is, if we calmly and humbly welcome God’s light of understanding to shine in our minds and souls, by which light we will observe our sinful nature – He will grace us with repentance. And “then,” assures John, “we share together a common life, and we are being cleansed from every sin by the blood of Jesus his Son.”
Again, living “in the light” – not losing ourselves in worry over the past, or anxiety and fear over the future, but staying faithful in the present moment, in the presence of God – involves facing our own vexing imperfections and faults, without condemning ourselves, or covering up the sin, or struggling with it to fix it, but just patiently waiting on God for help. When we do that, we are, in that very moment, being transformed, redeemed, graced to “share together a common life” with God.
These are, of course, simply my reflections on an enormously profound subject. But I believe such deep matters are meant to be pondered by each of us in our hearts, without worry, without pressure, without fear of hellfire hanging over us. If we don’t understand something, it’s okay. If we experience doubt or confusion, it’s okay – just honestly admit it. God sees all, and will help.
Our lives are an adventure playing out in two different worlds simultaneously: We’re meant not only to live our lives on this earth the best we can manage, but also to embrace an inner journey that is ultimately far more important. Sadly, some of us lead unexamined lives, but as Socrates said at his trial, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Still others simply don’t want to face reality no matter what, stubbornly preferring to inhabit their own alternate universe, their mad dreamworld, in which they inevitably hurt many people, and themselves.
That seems to be the great divide in humanity. It’s not a racial, ethnic, cultural, class, or generational one, nor is it even a philosophical, ideological, or religious divide per se. Rather, it is simply that there are people who are willing to honestly face their sinful nature no matter how uncomfortable or humbling, and to truly repent in the light of God and thereby find reconciliation with Him. And then there are people who are not. There are those who, even in the worst of circumstances, find this blessed place, and others who, though benefiting from the best of circumstances, reject it. Our deep-down love of truth – or lack of it – forms the invisible nucleus around which orbit all our beliefs and attitudes. What kind of person we become in this life emanates naturally from our willingness or unwillingness to face the sometimes painful mystery of ourselves with honesty and integrity.
Earlier we considered why God would position the human race betwixt alternate universes – magnificent cosmic clockwork large and small – and immerse us likewise in two opposing spiritual dimensions of good and evil, virtue and wickedness, sanity and madness.
Why are we here? What is God intent on creating in this special realm – the realm of man – that He couldn’t bring into being any other way, or anywhere else in the universe, even 100 million light-years out?
Love, sacrifice, courage, character – in a word, goodness. Manifesting real love and goodness in this world has more to do with patient suffering, endurance, forgiveness, and self-sacrifice than anything else, but how does God create that kind of person with purely natural processes? Can He create love the way He creates stars, with giant explosions of dense clouds of hydrogen gas? Or the way He causes an acorn to follow an invisible blueprint and grow into a towering oak?
God is seeking people who will truly love Him and love one another – and even, as Jesus taught and exemplified, love and pray for their enemies. That means He’s looking for something that simply cannot be brought into being any other way than as an end result of the troubled lives we lead in this difficult world and the hard-won lessons of humility and faith we ultimately embrace. And to help us, to guide us – indeed to make the impossible possible – He sends His Son, the true Messiah, our best friend, to lift the curse and destroy the virus through some wondrous magic from beyond the ends of the universe.
So, the solution to our mystery of why God put such imperfect beings in the midst of colliding galaxies and subatomic constellations may simply be that, in the Creator’s mind, all that dazzling stuff just serves as the ornate setting, and we – we’re the crown jewel of His creation. Not that we’re anything praiseworthy of ourselves, mind you. Not at all. It’s just that God wanted children – and all the stars, planets, oceans, rocks, trees, and birds just wouldn’t do.
God does not create loving and obedient children the same way He creates the rest of the universe. But in leaving a race of prodigal sons and daughters here, untethered in a moral wilderness with the freedom to follow their own folly for a season and thereby learn precious lessons, God knew many would eventually come to their senses and come back home to Him. May it be so with you.
The preceding is excerpted from the 2022 edition of David Kupelian’s “The Snapping of the American Mind: Healing a Nation Broken by a Lawless Government and Godless Culture.”
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