In his sermon on the mount, Jesus of Nazareth
taught: “Love our enemies, do good to them that hate us, bless them
that curse us, and pray for them that despitefully use us, I say unto
you, that every one who is angry with his brother shall be in danger of
the judgement. Go be reconciled with thy brother.”  Jesus of Nazareth may have been the first human to embrace synergy.
His words seem to capture the very essence of synergic morality.
Synergic morality is more than not hurting other, it requires helping
other. Jesus was the first human to state the fundamental law of
synergic relationship. It is known as the Golden Rule:  “So in
everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this
sums up the Law.” What would you have others do to you? The best one
word answer I can find for this question is help. “Help others as you would have them help you.”
Whether you believe Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ fortold in the Old
Testament, or just a man, his words bring wisdom to all humanity. (12/25/06)
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Bill Moyers
writes: The Christian story begins simply: A child is given, a son. He
grows up to be a teacher, sage, healer and prophet. He gains a large
following. To many he is a divine savior; to the rich and powerful he
is an enemy. They put him to death in brutal fashion, befitting his
humble beginnings in peasant Galilee and his birth in a stall thick
with the raw odor of animals. Toward the end of his life, Jesus
preached in the Temple to large crowds, reaching the height of his
power. There he told the parable that likely sealed his fate. He said
there was a man who created a prosperous vineyard and then rented it to
some tenants while he went away on a journey. At harvest time, the
owner of vineyard sent a servant to collect a portion from the tenants,
but they beat the servant and sent him away empty-handed. Another
servant came, and they struck him on the head. Another they killed.
Finally, the owner sent his own son to collect the back payments. “They
will respect my son,” he thought. But when the tenants saw the son, and
knew him to be the heir, they saw their chance to take full possession
of the harvest. And so they killed the son, thinking now they would owe
nothing from the vineyard to anyone. The listeners understood the
symbolism: God, of course, is the owner of the vineyard, and the
vineyard is Israel or the covenant, or, more broadly, the whole
creation. It is all that God entrusts to the leaders of his people. And
what is in question is their stewardship of this bounty. … Political
dynasties fall from negligent stewardship. One thinks of the upward
redistribution called “tax relief”; of the Iraq invasion sold as
critical to the “War on Terror”; of rising poverty, inequality, crime,
debt, and foreclosure as America spews its bounty on war and a military
so muscle-bound it is like Gulliver. It would be hard to imagine a more
catastrophic failure of stewardship, certainly in the biblical sense of
helping the poor and allocating resources for the health of society.
Once upon a time these errant stewards boasted of restoring a culture
of integrity to politics. They became instead an axis of corruption,
joining corporate power to political ideology to religious
self-righteousness. (12/25/06)
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Pope Benedict XVI in
Christmas message said: “The child of Bethlehem directs our gaze toward
all children who suffer and are abused in the world, the born and the
unborn.” In celebrating Jesus’ birth, he said people should direct
their thoughts toward children forced to serve “as soldiers in a
violent world, toward children who have to beg, toward children who
suffer deprivation and hunger, toward children who are unloved. “Let us
pray this night that the brightness of God’s love may enfold all these
children,” the pontiff said. “Let us ask God to help us do our part so
that the dignity of children may be respected.” … The pope began the
Midnight Mass, broadcast to 44 nations, with a call for peace in Latin:
“Pax vobis” (”Peace be with you). The faithful responded: “Et cum
spiritu tuo.” (”And also with you.”) To symbolize the worldwide reach
of the Roman Catholic Church, children in native costumes from around
the world — including Korea, Poland and Burkina Faso — brought
flowers to a figure of the Baby Jesus near the altar. Benedict told
worshippers to “not forget the true gift: to give each others something
of ourselves, to give each other something of our time, to open our
time to God.” Christmas gift-giving also means giving to those who
cannot give anything back, he said. “This is what God has done,” the
pontiff said. (12/25/06)
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