I was listening to some Bob Marley the other day and was struck by a line in his song ‘Get Up Stand Up’: ‘Almighty God is a living man’. He was not of course referring to Jesus but to Haile Selassie, the Emperor of Ethiopia who was still alive when ‘Get Up Stand Up’ was recorded in 1973. Rastafarians like Marley believed the Emperor would redeem African-descended Jamaicans and restore them to Africa from where their ancestors had been taken.
Rastafarians saw and still see themselves as modern day Israelites, like those in the Bible stories of Egyptian slavery and Babylonian captivity. Their perspective is reflected in songs like ‘Exodus’, by Marley, ‘The Israelites’ (Desmond Dekker) and ‘Rivers Of Babylon’ (The Melodians). Selassie himself denied being divine (‘why do you call me good, when only God is good?’) but that didn’t stop those who believed in him from making a saviour god of him. When, inevitably, he died (in 1975), some Rastas left the movement while others reinterpreted his role:
Some Rastas believed that Selassie did not really die and that claims to the contrary were Western misinformation… Another perspective within Rastafari acknowledged that Haile Selassie’s body had perished, but claimed that his inner essence survived as a spiritual force. A third response within the Rastafari community was that Selassie’s death was inconsequential as he had only been a “personification” of Jah rather than Jah himself.
It all sounds rather familiar doesn’t it? The saviour didn’t really die/his inner essence survived/his death was inconsequential. Where have we heard all that before?
This put me in mind of a cult that for a long time rivalled that of Christianity. Indeed, in the early days of Jesus belief, it boasted more members, all of them men. Unlike Christianity and Rastafari, this cult believed in a saviour whom adherents knew had never existed as a human on Earth. Mithras was a celestial being whose salvific work, which involved the symbolic slaughter of a bull, was carried out in the heavenly realm:
Mithras is the guide of souls which he leads from the earthly life into which they had fallen back up to the light from which they issued… It was not only from the religions and the wisdom of Orientals and Egyptians, even less from Christianity, that the notion that life on earth was merely a transition to a higher life was derived by the Romans. Their own anguish and the awareness of senescence made it plain enough that earthly existence was all hardship and bitterness. Mithras-worship became one, and perhaps the most significant, of the religions of redemption in declining paganism. (Jacob Burckhkart)
Eventually, in the fourth century, Christians suppressed Mithraism to the extent that its adherents, along with its ritualistic texts, were wiped from history. Only its deserted, underground temples remained.
What both examples tell us – and their are hundreds more – is that people have always been willing and eager to make gods of revered figures, both real and imagined. They are ready to believe them capable of impossible feats and to trust in them for whatever form of redemption they feel in need of. There can be no doubt Jesus belief sprang from this same sort of wishful thinking; Jesus being cast as a divine figure with the power to lead believers into the light and/or the promised land of eternal life. It hardly matters whether he existed or not. Like Mithras, an imaginary/imagined figure could just as easily fulfil the role as a real person, like Selassie, who had others’ unrealistic expectations thrust upon him.
rejectingjesus, 
But the True Believers™ are simply unable to see the likeness. Hmmm. Wonder why that is???
LikeLiked by 1 person
.Neil: What both examples tell us…
They tell us that we are prone to make gods for ourselves and build cults around those gods, and that those gods in one way or another are alternatives to the one true living God. But they are broken cisterns that hold no water, that do not satisfy, that in the end crush us.
That is true whether those gods are supernatural deities or political ideologies or philosophies. In the end they are empty cisterns that offer no hope, only strife. God is different. he offers peace. And dear Lord, do we need peace!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Aah, of course – your God is the exception.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Any actual God would be the exception.
LikeLike
I expect you’ll tell us, Don: how do we tell any ‘actual’ god(s) from the thousands of others? They’re all the same.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Of the thousands of gods humanity has known, all are manmade. Except mine. Mine is the One True God™. I’m just that frackin’ special.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Glad to know that, Koseighty.
Bur kidding aside, you are special. We all are, for God has given us something no other earthly creature has, a spirit. That spirit gives us the capacity us to relate to God. Even the ability to conceive of God is something only we have. As we do on this blog. So, yes, you are special.
LikeLike
Don:
you are special.
Of course I am.
My hardware – my unique combination of DNA – has never happened before and will never happen again. My software – the lessons and experiences I’ve had during my life – is also unique to me and will never happen again.
The universe has spun me out as a completely unique entity, never occurring before, never to happen again.
God has given us something no other earthly creature has, a spirit.
There you go, claiming something you have no evidence for and no way of knowing.
That spirit gives us the capacity us to relate to God.
Assumes facts not in evidence. Assumes an entity for which there is no evidence.
Even the ability to conceive of God is something only we have.
We? Delusional internet apologists?
My cat, Ensign Tabby Redshirt II, knows very well there is a god. And she knows she’s it. She is eternal. The universe came into existence with her and will end when she ends. All things exist for her pleasure and comfort. (Tributes of tuna joyfully accepted.)
The difference between my cat and your god, Don, is that there is evidence for my cat.
LikeLike
There is even more evidence for God, if you care to look.
LikeLike
Don:
There is even more evidence for God, if you care to look.
You keep saying that.
LikeLiked by 1 person
And we’ve looked and looked … and still nothing!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Don:
There is even more evidence for God, if you care to look.
And, of course, before you can have even more evidence you need to have some evidence. Which you have yet to provide.
Claiming a soul exists is not evidence. You have to get to work and demonstrate that this soul exists. Which you haven’t done. No theist ever has. Just piles of words comprising an equal amount of bullshit.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Evidence for God. You could try to google the question. I tried it and there a lot of good answers. But if you’ll just think about it, you might be the best evidence.
Evidence is not proof. But the amount of evidence for God’s existence is adequate to come to the logical conclusion that God does exist.
LikeLike
You, Don, could try responding yourself instead of directing us to the internet which has been taken over by Christians promoting their God. An over-abundance of Bible references, testimonies and attacks on atheists is not evidence.
In any case, I don’t imagine any atheist is concerned with ‘proof’ of God. Nor is the onus on us to disprove his existence. Rather, it comes down to probability. How likely is it that YHWH exists? How likely is it that all that is claimed for him is true? The answer, it turns out, is not very likely; the probability the biblical God is real is infinitesimally small – https://rejectingjesus.com/2020/04/30/god-probably-not/
Ultimately, the only ‘evidence’ Christians have for their God is the warm fuzzy feelings they generate in their own heads; what William Lane Craig calls the witness of the Holy Spirit. Evidence it is not.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Don:
Evidence for God. … if you’ll just think about it, you might be the best evidence.
Another claim without evidence.
Of course, I exist. Just like that rock we didn’t bother proving exists the other day.
But you assume, and assert without evidence, that my existence somehow is evidence of your version of Jesus.
Do you ever get tired of constantly speaking while saying nothing?
LikeLike