(March 31, 2019 at 6:36 pm)Yonadav Wrote: No, not oedipal. Islam is one of Judaism's 'children' as well. But there is no idolatry in Islam. No man-god. No human sacrifice. A Jew could almost convert to Islam if they continued to keep the 613 commandments. Jews and Muslims actually get along better than people realize. Take away the Israel/Palestine conflict, and we would basically have no trouble with each other at all. I have prayed at the same time and in the same room with Muslims. I have eaten Iftar meals with them. But I could never do that with the followers of Jesus.
My brother in law is a non practicing Catholic. He inherited a dreadful crucifix as a family heirloom. He mounted it on their dining room wall. It's this huge thing with some agonized bleeding man nailed to it. That is exactly what an idol is. If I were still an 'Observant' Jew, I would not even be able to enter my sister's dining room, because of that huge idol hanging on their wall. And even though I'm not so religious anymore, I still feel really creepy when I'm anywhere near that thing.
There is something very deep going on there which I don't understand.
All of those bleeding men, and paintings of saints holding their severed heads, etc..... There is something about the beloved of God sharing our human pain, but there is also some deep enjoyment of seeing that stuff. The mixture of the extreme beauty of the architecture and the extreme sadism of the depictions.
The "decadents" like Huysmans had a handle on this, to some extent. It's not a coincidence that the most over-the-top drug-taking aesthetes were also deeply linked with the idols of Catholicism.
There are layers that must be deeply unhealthy, but also deeply appealing.
