-As groups of people are subjected to the cruelties of aggressive and violent force acting on a false belief of divinely sanctioned moral superiority, the victims of these forces become familiar with the brutish tactics of a powerful ‘godlike’ authority, and later use those tactics to assume hierarchical control and gain physical property where they feel a greater degree of protection from such organized cruelties through assuming the opposite social role- the role of the controller of these cruelties, the role of the aggressors. The individual members of groups which are oppressed under the rule of God either consciously or subconsciously seek to reverse their social roles and become those who oppress with assumed spiritual impunity via divine sanction. Romans often crucified Christians and other enemies of their empire to humiliate them with a long, painful, public death to act as a deterrent to would-be dissenter witnesses- but using the image of execution by crucifixion to instill fear is a tactic that Christians would later adopt for themselves, but this fear is now increased through the additional conceptual weight of an unattainable and counter-intuitive ideal- that of humanity reaching divine “perfection” though submission, suffering and death. An image of a crucified human now serves evangelical Christians far better than it ever did Roman imperialists, in that it helps the Christians create feelings of guilt and inferiority (in addition to the awe and fear utilized by Pagan Rome).
Posted on: Thu, 05 Sep 2013 00:03:23 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015