On the Prospects of Christianity: Bernard Shaw's Preface to Androcles and the Lion — John Shaqi
On the Prospects of Christianity: Bernard Shaw's Preface to Androcles and the LionShaw, Bernard
Religion
On the Prospects of Christianity: Bernard Shaw's Preface to Androcles and the Lion
Shaw, Bernard
Christianity; Essays; Prefaces
But mobs must be faced if civilization is to be saved. It did not need
the present war to show that neither the iconographic Christ nor the
Christ of St. Paul has succeeded in effecting the salvation of human
society. Whilst I write, the Turks are said to be massacring the
Armenian Christians on an unprecedented scale; but Europe is not in a
position to remonstrate; for her Christians are slaying one another by
every device which civilization has put within their reach as busily as
they are slaying the Turks. Barabbas is triumphant everywhere; and the
final use he makes of his triumph is to lead us all to suicide with
heroic gestures and resounding lies. Now those who, like myself, see the
Barabbasque social organization as a failure, and are convinced that the
Life Force (or whatever you choose to call it) cannot be finally beaten
by any failure, and will even supersede humanity by evolving a higher
species if we cannot master the problems raised by the multiplication
of our own numbers, have always known that Jesus had a real message,
and have felt the fascination of his character and doctrine. Not that
we should nowadays dream of claiming any supernatural authority for him,
much less the technical authority which attaches to an educated
modern philosopher and jurist. But when, having entirely got rid of
Salvationist Christianity, and even contracted a prejudice against
Jesus on the score of his involuntary connection with it, we engage on a
purely scientific study of economics, criminology, and biology, and
find that our practical conclusions are virtually those of Jesus, we
are distinctly pleased and encouraged to find that we were doing him an
injustice, and that the nimbus that surrounds his head in the pictures
may be interpreted some day as a light of science rather than a
declarations of sentiment or a label of idolatry.
The doctrines in which Jesus is thus confirmed are, roughly, the
following:
1. The kingdom of heaven is within you. You are the son of God; and God
is the son of man. God is a spirit, to be worshipped in spirit and in
truth, and not an elderly gentleman to be bribed and begged from. We are
members one of another; so that you cannot injure or help your neighbor
without injuring or helping yourself. God is your father: you are here
to do God's work; and you and your father are one.
2. Get rid of property by throwing it into the common stock. Dissociate
your work entirely from money payments. If you let a child starve you
are letting God starve. Get rid of all anxiety about tomorrow's dinner
and clothes, because you cannot serve two masters: God and Mammon.
S. Get rid of judges and punishment and revenge. Love your neighbor as
yourself, he being a part of yourself. And love your enemies: they are
your neighbors.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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