Right now in Panama we have a young, smart and promising politician called Juan Diego Vásquez. He is a lawyer and he's very clear about the political problems we have. That's a given.
In recent months, a lot of people have been pushing him to declare his intention to run for the presidency (let's ignore the fact that he doesn't have the required age or that the age requirement is stupid) even though he has been clear in his intentions to stay as a senator or maybe doing something in the Supreme Court.
Because of our lack of leadership, a lot of people have started to venerate him to the point it's unhealthy. Someone said that, while Juan Diego would be a better president than the one we have today, he needs a team of professionals who can help him (economists, doctors, other lawyers, etc.). This person was insulted and told that Juan Diego can do everything because he is good, honest and sincere.
Is this political messianism a thing in other countries too?
Nobody doubts he is sincere and honest, but politics (and real life) is not a fairytale.
His economic knowledge, for example, isn't good at all. He was one of the ones who wanted the Minister of Finance to invest in infrastructure to "move the economy" and keep the welfare benefits while being fiscally responsible 🙄. So he has good intentions, but definitely needs a team. He can't do it alone.
Hey everyone,
I'm trying to wrap my mind around Chabad messianism. I don't understand why it exists, and how it makes sense to any frum Jew. I also don't understand how frum Chabad Jews can believe that Rabbi Schneerson was/is Moshiach, but can also constantly yell "Moshiach now!"-- that alone seems to conflict, doesn't it?
Are the Chabad Jews the only ones that hold such a belief? Is it specific to them that they have a Messiah? I'm wondering what the difference is between that and the "Jews for Jesus", and the fact that its just so central in Judaism to accept that the Messiah hasn't come-- and when he comes, shit will change in the world, a lot. And obviously it hasn't.
How do people reconcile all this? Is it a topic that you can ask a Chabad Jew about, or are they tight-lipped when it comes to messianism?
Overarching question: but what (aside from the aggressive proselytizing) sets Chabad apart from other Chassidic Jews? They seem far more open and mellow, yet at the same times still hang on to some of these rather austere or confusing viewpoints. Trying to make sense of it all.
I don't know anything. I'm able to follow basic logic, but I'm stupid. I need to know what here is true and real. I feel so shaken in my foundations, but I know that's a good thing as it let's me rebuild correctly. But I want to make sure what I'm learning is right.
Obviously everybody has different perspectives on what that is specifically, but I'm looking for real broad strokes here. I want to know if I really shouldn't eat pork and if I shouldn't be spending money from Friday night to Saturday night. I want to be able to read through the new testament and understand why it doesn't go against the old testament. I want to be able to be fully equipped to defend the position. I want to know the extent of concern i should have for people who don't follow the torah (assuming messianism is real and we are supposed to). It's not for salvation, but you don't abstain from killing people for salvation either and yet if you kill a bunch of people it is questionable for me if that person really will be in heaven.
I know i should be able to do this all on my own, but maybe I'm incompetent or maybe i don't trust god enough or whatever. I just want help.
#An Introduction to Piracy
Most of us have torrented something at some point, whether it’s a game, movie, book, song or TV show, but just for those who haven’t, I’ll explain the basics.
When you go to a site like The Pirate Bay or Kick Ass Torrents, and click ‘Download Torrent’, all you’re really getting is a link. Programmes like Bittorrent or Vuze are able to open those links, and will let you download almost any file, legal or not. But you’re not downloading it from a server somewhere, a website, or a single person, you’re downloading it from dozens, sometimes thousands of people at the same time, all around the world. Those are known as ‘seeders’. And while you do that, other people are downloading the file from you. They’re ‘leechers’. The original distributor of the file created that torrent, and submitted it to torrenting websites so that other people could find it, but once they’ve shared the full file once, they can break off their connection to the torrent.
This is known as ‘Peer to Peer’ file sharing, and it’s the primary means of distributing media illegally, because it’s basically impossible to stop. If a website is hosting episodes of Game of Thrones, you can shut the website down. If a person is sending out files, you can sue them. But no company or corporation, however powerful, can stop a torrent (though many have tried).
Sharing a movie or a song is easy – you just distribute the file. It will work no matter who downloads it. But games are different. Since a game is made up of loads of files working in tandem and tangled up in a confusing spider-web of code, the developer is able to ‘booby trap’ the game so that it doesn’t work when it’s copied.
For as long as developers have been doing this, savvy hackers and programmers have been working to undo it. When they do, the developers go back to the drawing board and come up with something smarter.
Cassettes were easily duplicated, so the industry invented consoles with more secure cartridges and built-in ROMs that could detect fakes. Pirates reverse-engineered the consoles to make their own duplicate consoles which could run both legitimate and fake copies. So the industry moved to CDs, because they had more storage space and could be fitted with new security features. Pirates cracked the CDs. Developers started requiring a game key, so pirates created key-genera
... keep reading on reddit ➡
For those who don’t know what a messiah is then pick up any religious text and you’ll see someone babbling about a “saviour”. A messiah is a figure (whether religious or cultists) that will come to save a group of people.
Now the only way is for the messiah to save you is if you worship and follow their rules and codes of conduct(or so I’ve been told). For example if you attend church and follow the bible then the messiah will save you from this world. Certain faiths will have different messiahs and things they will grant you when they come for you.
I find this in my opinion to be outrageous due to the nature of this and how people use this to further push their own agendas. For some odd reason and unsurprisingly people have used this to push “political agendas” or rather their own beliefs.
A personal example of this is my own father. He believes that Jesus will come back and free black people and rid the world of white people. My first thought was “I guess any other race other than these two races will be in limbo forever.....”. I found it quite odd that he would accept the messiah after this so-called “messiah” let black people suffer for years on end and suddenly decides to save them? Are these people gluts for punishment?
Another example is one my older sister brought up (I guess my sister inherited my dad’s questionable beliefs) is that the god “Lilith” if memory serves me correctly is Adam’s first wife or whatever, she was before Eve. She will come and liberate women from men just as long as women separate themselves from the evil that is men.
As soon as she said this I was thinking “I know my sister has some issues but I’ve never heard something so retarded in my life”. My sister is probably another glut for punishment as her “messiah” (honestly I hope she doesn’t actually believe this) has let her suffer and will only help if she follows blindly and follows codes of conduct.
My point of these examples is that messianism is a fantasy made by people who love punishment. These people are hoping that one day some deity will come and save them. You know why? Because they think that somehow under all this mess that is the human race that they have worth.
I mean worth as in importance or worth as in superiority because they were inferior but thanks to their “messiah” they will become superior. They have yet to realize that all humans are equally worthless and have no place in the world other than to des
... keep reading on reddit ➡I get that its some vague concept of hope for the future that intersects with or emanates the religious attitudes and highlights a certain approach to moving forward, but I don't really get what the point is or what it is trying to capture about human experience and understanding.
I got my degree in comparitive religion in college, and it was fascinating. I studied Judaism (second temple and rabbinic,) and Christian origins, alongside several other faiths.
One thing that opened my eyes to the BS of the whole religion thing was studying messianic phenomena in rabbinic Judaism.
For 2,000 years Jews and Christians have both been arguing over their respective interpretations of various texts, with Church led bloodshed filling much of that time.
How many of you were aware though that Judaism by itself has produced at least 3 other claimed would be "divine messiahs," after a pattern pretty similar to Jesus?
- Shabbatai Tzvi: a kabbalistic thinker who taught "redemption through sin."
He converted to Islam (after being threatened with death.)
His movement took his apostasy as a sign of the "true mission" of the messiah, instead of suffering like in the Christian version, his apostasy would heal the world and the effects of sin, because in Jewish belief, the messiah will come when everyone is either fully righteous, or when everyone is fully wicked. Tzvi was pushing for the latter. When did Moses come? When Israel was at a low point. The rabbis say
"If they are righteous, he comes with the. clouds of heaven, and if they (israel) are wicked, messiah comes lowly and riding on a donkey."
There is a messianic role in Judaism called "messiah son of Joseph." This messiah figure arrives when Israel is surrounded by its enemies, at a low point, and he 'fights the wars of god, both spiritual and physical.
Messiah son of Joseph ultimately fails in the fight, and dies in the war, and is resurrected later by the son of David, the second messiah. Sound roughly familiar?
When the warrior messiah son of Joseph dies, the people (motivated by his unjust and untimely death) repent, bringing the final redeemer.
After Shabbatai Tzvi died, he was deified by a small number of students who said he would return.
-
Jacob Frank: Successor to Shabbatai tzvi became an apostate to Catholicism, and was likewise deified. His students claimed he would return.
-
In 1994 the Chabad Rebbe died. He was a good man, and his students loved him. A small number believed that he was a prophet/ righteous man, and when he suffered a stroke, his students turned to the suffering servant in Isaiah 53 (and the tradition of "messiah ben yosef") to say he was alive and would return.
It was so disheartening to realize that Christianity likely started just like th
... keep reading on reddit ➡I saw a person state that "Messianic Jews are just Christian Larpers" which peaked my interest.
An explication from a recent comment of mine, might be preaching to the choir here, but maybe its of use to someone:
>Addendum: why is heresy or pushing through the way to go?
One way to approach it would be to see it as a very emotionally charged thing, a point of recoil. True heresy is the point where one completely breaks of from conventional value systems, e.g. "declares oneself mad".
As said to me heresy/messianism are completely intertwined. Imagine this: Visualize walking around, meeting your friends and when they ask you what you are up to you tell them you are now part of this new philosophy movement that declares itself openly messianic and claims to have some potential, very technical, rational guides to ending human suffering, or rather at least might show us a way out of this deadlocked state. Everybody would be weirded out, a kind of tension would arise in the air. Now imagine not stopping there but talking on about the rationality of those systems, whatever they are. Okay it doesnt matter how far-out or rational they are. The point is that our culture has declared that a real salvational/messianic program is impossible and anybody who would believe in such things is "mad". Openly declaring oneself mad, and acting in e.g. the above manner is tied to very strong negative emotions. This is the point of heretic/messianic recoil.
A point here is that in a technical sense such programs exist, it doesnt matter if you directly believe in them but note that some of them are tied to very famous names such as Hegel or Nietzsche that everybody in contphil. is on about.
The critical-cynical culture critic is by above explication explicitly not heretic. That our culture is shitty and anti-humane is at this point not heretic, its mainstream. The true heretic point would be that there is or even only might be a solution, it is only that the standard political ideas that everybody so strongly identifies with are completely misguided, delusional.
Now, why "pushing through"? The point is that the point of heretic/messianic recoil is felt strongest when you are on your own. You feel like some stupid idiot, a typical crank. but as soon as there are maybe only a small critical mass of people sharing a belief that feeling of recoil lessens significantly. You give up on the validation of the herd, and thus the need to fit into their value systems, but there is already a, however small, replacement herd giving you an alternate source of validation
... keep reading on reddit ➡During the 19th and early 20th century Islam, particularly in the Indo-Iranian region of the world, experienced a period of "Mahdism" which gave rise to movements such as Babism, the Baha'i Faith, and Ahmadiyya Islam. Can we compare the rise of these movements to the wave of Messianism in Palestinian Judaism from the 1st century BCE to the 2nd century CE? Because ultimately this gave rise to the Baptists and early Christian movements and also influenced smaller apocalyptic Jewish groups like the Qumran community as well as Gnostics to an extent. Will studying these 19th century Islamic Mahdi movements give us insights into 1st century Jewish Messianic movements?
We always hear about some Chabadniks believing Schneerson was the messiah, but outside of Israel I've never met a Lubavitcher who actually espouses those beliefs. The closest I've gotten was one Canadian shaliach saying 'he wasn't sure' with a bit of a wink, hinting that he kind of did think he was.
How widespread is this belief within Chabad? What direction is it moving (ie is the idea gaining or losing support)? I've heard hypotheses that it's actually very wide spread but that shlichim don't like to talk about it because it will turn people away from Chabad.
Thoughts?
I have a thought experiment that I've been tossing around to people to further my own internal discussion about such an outcome.
What would be your response if in the near future an Israeli governing coalition took over united in a halakhist political platform (which favors the annexation of the West Bank, and the institution of a Sanhedrin, basing itself on orthodox halakha, as the arbiter of israel's law), which then goes foward and demolishes al-Aqsa, starts construction on a third temple, and declares that Palestinians who have citizenship would have it revoked unless they conform the stipulations of a ger toshav, but this status and full legal rights are guaranteed to anyone who lives as such. International reaction i assume would be expectedly horrified, but I sometimes play with if American + support staying due to the Christian community which might understandably rally in support of what would obviously be a messianic regime.
Would you fight for such a regime? Would you fight against it? (Insert third option)?
