Reza Aslan presented a talk at the Aspen Institute in July 2015 where he performed a deconstruction of Jesus. This was pitched to us as the Aspen Institute titled “The Jesus of history versus the Christ of faith”. The only problem with that title is that it suggests that we would explore the significance of the many roles Jesus has played throughout time and history. What we got was a neo-marxist deconstruction of Jesus through the intersection lense of TODAY’S sense of social justice. As you could probably guess, it was a rather less than charitable interpretation of Jesus.
Reza is theologically unqualified and intellectually dishonest at best but he’s a comrade who furthers the narratives of the culture war so why not put him on a stage to speak to a crowd. Clap, clap, clap. How woke. Have a watch and if you care to share, comment below.
Watch Reza Aslan in, “The Jesus of history versus the Christ of faith”:
If anyone thinks this was an honest discussion about Judeo-Christian faith can think again. This was nothing more than a marxist deconstruction and the only context from which Reza was speaking was through the ideologically possessed lense of post-modernism and intersectionality. held to a modern standard of what social justice means today, there’s a reason why even his question period had to consist of a gender parity. Not that there’s anything necessarily wrong with that, just funny how he had to virtue signal that to premise the Q&A.
The only goal here was to undermine Christianity by attempting to remove the righteous claim from Jesus and to paint him as just a flawed man, not someone who lived a life on the path to God. And to slander jews by questioning their motivations behind their religious institutions as a front for Muslim segregation and discrimination. Sure sounds pretty similar to the Jewish conspiracy to me. I personally consider his discussion around Jews to be anti-semitic.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is what sheer contempt hiding behind a smile looks like. There are far more interesting and intellectually honest theistic conversations going on through Jordan Peterson’s psychological biblical series and through the various youtube channels by churches and theologians like the Logos Christian Family Church channel or the Living Stones Christian Reformed channel. But let’s be real. You don’t see academic institutions entertaining theologians. We all know they aren’t intellectuals right? Because NO indoctrination ever occurs in academia. Ever.
What we saw here wasn’t a religious conversation about pluralism or even an honest critique about judeo-christian ethics, it wasn’t even really about jesus. It was a lecture about the religion of intersectionality (neo-marxism) and we see clearly here that deconstruction is solely designed to break down concepts to highlight their vulnerabilities and represent them as weaknesses, it is not a method which has ever been used to actually solve any problems.
And intersectionality truly is a religion in the various ways it’s cultists refuse any other version of reality to exist. And like Islam, those who do not adopt the teaching of Intersectionality are infidels and apostates are condemned and shunned. You are not sovereign in your individuality, you STAY IN YOUR LANE. And that lane is dictated to you by the authoritarians who claim to ascend the intersectional high ground. You are assigned to a group and that is where you will conform.
To the intersectionality crowd, this world is nothing more than oppressors and victims and there are no unique individuals, only groups based on identity and life itself is a zero sum game over power struggles. And in that game you have players like Reza who are desperately trying to climb up the hierarchy with his woke points. No different than scientology’s tiers to xenu.
The fact Reza seems almost giddy to answer questions like “could you talk about jesus family life, like his sketchy girlfriends” (36:10) I think really just highlights the real motivations behind the entire talk and just how misleading a title for this content is, “The Jesus of History versus the Christ of Faith” from the Aspen Institute. Clearly a more accurate title would’ve been, “a modern deconstruction of Jesus through history”. There’s a reason why they want to frame such a narrow minded view of Jesus as this sort of “Jesus for dummies” approach. because they’re expecting you to accept this opinion as fact. Reza Aslan who is theologically unqualified and intellectually dishonest at best. do yourself a favour, don’t drink the kool aid.
“The kids are starting to burn this place and to trash it. They’re dragging a grand piano down the stairs. It’s the destruction of high culture, about which they’re nothing but cynical, because they don’t believe that hard work and sacrifice can produce something of any value. They want to bring it down and destroy it. You can see it in the story of Cain and Abel. Abel is hard working and everyone likes him, and he makes the proper sacrifices, so his life goes really well. And that’s part of the reason that Cain hates him. He’s jealous and resentful, but worse than that – if you’re not doing very well and you’re around someone who is doing very well it’s painful, because the mere fact of their Being judges you. And so it’s very easy to want to destroy that ideal so that you don’t have to live with the terrible consequences of seeing it embodied in front of you. And so part of the reason that people want to tear things down is so that they don’t have anything to contrast themselves against and to feel bad. And that’s exactly what’s happening here. Kids are destroying all of this culture, because the fact that it exists judges them.”
Jordan Peterson – Maps of Meaning 4: Marionettes and Individuals (Part 3) [54:55-56:15]
Rule #8 