The New Critical Thinking

Given, perhaps, the dance community is in habit of exercising the body to a fault, neglecting the activities of the noggin. And yet, my intuition points that underdevelopment to another source. Taking the following situation:

Two highschool age dancers in discussion about beards and the boy says, “Have you ever seen Jesus’ face?”

Perhaps he meant images of Jesus, no harm there.

Another girl butts into the conversation, very matter-of-factly. “But Jesus doesn’t have a face!”

After pausing she goes on. “He doesn’t have a face. He’s not a person. He’s a… a… spiritual being.”

The boys responds. “Well, he used to.”

Rebuttal. “But not anymore!”

Oh my. Apparently there is no distinguishment made in Christian worship between Jesus of Nazereth, a man who lived and taught in Jerusalem, and God, the omnipotent and all-encompassing entity who is considered to exist outside of time and to be perfect.

Christians do believe Jesus of Nazereth was also the son the God or God in human form. But to enmesh their identities so much that they are interchangeable seems to have provided for a gross misunderstanding by this young person, who probably thought she was being wildly cutting edge to believe God/Jesus does not take a bodily form (though this nebulous entity still has a gender, interestingly).

This is exactly the kind of intellectual laziness that organized religion is apt to promote. And this makes it very dangerous, as the girl was completely confident with interuppting into a conversation that was not even her own in order to spew out this misinformation. With Christianity specifically, believing itself the only sovereigned religion, individuals will be prone to self-righteousness and inflexibility. There is a great potential for serious reperucussions when the most basic facts are poorly understood by its practitioners.

Later, there was a debate as to whether Jesus was Jewish.