FAST FOOD AD 2026, Ninth Helping

                                                             

FAST FOOD AD 2026, Ninth Helping

 

In the fourth century some hierarchs and clerics began to rupture the three hundred year old staple and stable Sacred Tradition of the Church, regarding the absolute rejection of participation in violence and war as contrary to the Way of Jesus, by offering to their Christian people a way of justified violence and participation in war which they “authoritatively” said for the first time in Church history and with no evidence, was not incompatible with the Way of Jesus. As could be expected, once the Church manufactured out of thin air a few loopholes to avoid following Jesus’ teaching that absolutely rejected violence and enmity and participation in any activities or organizations that used these methods, the floodgates were opened wide to justifying and participating in activities and organizations, that for the prior three hundred years were morally odious and abhorrent.

 

For example, in 312 a Christian, by the norms of the Church and the laws of the state, could not be a member of the fighting Roman army. By 416 a person could not be a member of the fighting Roman army unless he was a Christian, backed up by the threat of excommunication if he refused to go into the Roman military. Today the small rupture, that was made in the three hundred years old fabric of the Sacred Tradition of the Church in the fourth century has deteriorated and degenerated into Christians as the single largest identifiable sociological group of people killing for the power elites who rule the United States with their 72 billion dollar annual war budget.

 

No wonder the mainline Churches do not properly and thoroughly teach their communicants about the Christians and the Churches complete rejection of violence and war of the first three centuries. What one doesn’t know or with which one is only barely familiar, cannot generate thoughts questioning whether one’s Church leaders and Church are telling him or her the truth about “how Jesus saves.” Yet every time a Christian chooses with his or her Church’s approval to go into homicide training in the military and/or takes off to bomb some city in Iran or Syria, they are explicitly and expressly proclaiming to all humanity and their fellow Christians that this is a way that Jesus saves. If for the Christian these choices are not a way that Jesus saves, then their military training or bombing escapades is choosing to intentionally engage in evil and public false witness, leading people and fellow Christians to believe that what is not how Jesus saves, is how Jesus saves.

 

So, Jesus saves! But again, “How does Jesus save?” By teaching His disciple to choose violence and war? Or, by teaching them to “love your enemies,” to “put up your swords” and to ” love one another as I have loved you?” Because of the incomprehensible enormity of what is at stake in answering truthfully the question, “How does Jesus save,” namely, your personal eternal salvation, the eternal salvation of others whom you will influence and of all human beings, one dare not lie to him or herself about what the truthful answer to this question is.

 

So, whose response was the correct response to the question, “How does Jesus save?” The Christians of the first three centuries or the Christians participating in unleashing fire from heaven on the enemy in Iran on behalf of the U.S. power elites?

 

A final caveat: The question, “How does Jesus save,” is not primarily a cognitive question to be resolved by debating it in Christian discussion groups or by the majority vote of theological scholars. It is the Christian iteration of a primal, universal, most grave human problem, namely, “Is there a way to be rather than not be after death, is there a way to existence rather than to become extinct after death—and to be, to exist, in peace?

 

In the New Testament the words “eternal life,” zōē aiōnios in Greek, appear 41 times but only once in the Old Testament in the Book of Daniel. In the Gospels Jesus uses eternal life and words comparable to eternal life, e.g., Heaven, His coming Kingdom, everlasting life, etc. in 192 verses. He knows the gravity and universality of the problem of known mortality and addresses it clearly, so clearly that His Apostles say to Him when other followers are leaving Him because of His teachings, “Where will we go? You have the words of eternal life.” And of course, Jesus’ ultimate and definitive communication that He is here to save Jews first, but also all people from evil and death and bring them into eternal life with Him, is His Resurrection.

 

Yes, “Jesus saves.” But, X and “not X” cannot both be answers to the question, “How does Jesus save.” The answer to the problem of how Jesus saves is not and cannot be in contradiction to the truth of the original oral Sacred Tradition accurately presented and preserved in matters of faith and morals in the written Gospels and universally lived as such for the three hundred years after His life, teaching, murder and resurrection. There are legions of answers out there to “How does Jesus save?” You can only live and die in one of them. In all truth, which should it be?

 

-Emmanuel Charles McCarthy

 

 

www.emmanuelcharlesmccarthy.org

https://www.youtube.com/@emmanuelcharlesmccarthy3292

 

“Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Love.

Heaven and earth are full of Your glory!