(December 8, 2023 at 1:52 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: Look at the metaphors they use: they are a herd of sheep to be led by the Shepherd. They are clay on the Potter's wheel. This rather speaks to their sense of being helpless nonagents, to be shaped by their lord. I bet they don't see God as authoritarian because they have voluntarily surrendered a good part of their agency.
That speaks to the pastoralist source, or, in the case of the nt, imitation of said source. Sounds weird today, but these weren't bad things back then. Sheep were wealth and warmth and food - they did not have the negative connotations we associate with them today. In it's time, that sort of stuff was life affirming. It comes out of the development of small hillholding families and communities. The Shepherd was very often the pater familias (or his responsible sons) and the good shepherd is, essentially, the picture of a good family man. Some of the best descriptions of the abrahamic god and gods relationship to man come out of these semantics. If it were written here and today, god would be the good company man. He'd be a union boss...or a randian hero.
Leads me into a comment on some other things in thread. The idea that the religious cannot think for themselves. It's not that. They can. Even in the hypothetical of a family religion or ancestor worship it may be that the people do the thing but they do it because they also agree with the thing. Ancestral gods that people no longer agree with or organize around have become imps and devils and demons in the new religions, when they're remembered at all. I have a private little giggle everytime that the faithful tell me their god is immortal and immutable. I know that's not true. In the wider view, it's usually not because a person believes in some private god that they act out in novel ways. It takes gods whole society to keep gods children in line..so much as they can, god himself is not up to the task - anymore than any of our own dead fathers were up to the task of controlling every aspect of their childrens lives and thoughts.
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