Father, take this chalice away from me Father, take this chalice away from me
Of red wine of blood
How to drink this bitter drink
Sip the pain, swallow the endurance…(Song by Gilberto Gil and Chico Buarque)
For two millennia the exact meaning of Christ’s pleading to His father in Gethsemane has not been properly understood, as Christ would never have done this if the death on the cross were a necessary sacrifice. Well, as Abdruschin clarifies, Christ did not come to Earth to be sacrificed, but in fact, to bring to mankind the explanation of the Divine Will, which is basically only the understanding of the working of His Creation, in which humanity lives, as it belongs to man. And to know what Creation is, means everything! As, it is precisely this very ignorance about the automatic laws of Creation that has led man to build a world so tough and cruel, in which the desire to dominate and control has forged a construction on such a fragile and unstable foundation that it has already begun to show signs of fatigue, no longer being able to support the weight of so many failures.
Interpret it whichever way you may choose, the scholars have quickly ended up in coming to the same conclusion. For Zigmunt Bauman, honored professor of sociology at Leeds University, England, “superfluous humans had been placed in the empty regions of the planet, but today modernity became, as foreseen, a universal condition, or almost universal for humanity, and the production of human residue is practically generalized around the entire globe.” (Folha de São Paulo, Mais, n.o 614).
For the professor, it has become necessary to find global solutions for problems produced on a global basis.
Another researcher, Robert Kurz, the German sociologist examining the much praised outsourcing, concluded that what arose was “a subcontracting of poverty in mass in the urban agglomerations that swell monstrously.”…Of the old promises of a progressive outsourcing, under society’s heading of culture, of assistance and leisure, nothing remains. Tourism has also been caught up in the crisis. ”For him the social middle class has melted away.”
Yet another sociologist adds: “If humanity does not want to become extinct, it will have to overcome organic and mechanical reductionism and relate in a humane way with itself. Only then will it also be able to relate in a humane way with nature, both in biology and physics”. (FSP, Mais, n.o 613).
During the two millennia after Christ, we have had practically fifteen centuries of stagnation in which human communities have not reached the apogee of their development. From the 15th century on there was a rupture, and changes began to arise. Communities transformed into Nations and these into Sovereign States that proceeded to interfere profoundly in the activities regulating life. Three powers confronted each other, the religious, the bureaucratic state, and the economic one that, increasingly, enlarged its influence. Behind all this, there was always man himself who, instead of intensely seeking the recognition and performance of the laws of the Creation, was always disputing the control of riches, influence and power. Thus the misunderstandings remained and Christ's mission was not exactly recognized by humanity.
As the Message of the Grail clarifies, “Christ would not have pleaded in Gethsemane that the chalice of suffering be diverted from Him, if the death on the cross had been a necessary sacrifice. Never! Christ would not have done that. Nobody has even considered this for the last two millennia.”
Urban violence has spread throughout the large metropolises in a scary way, leaving the inhabitants disturbed. The constituted powers are facing insolvency and are powerless to liquidate the most essential debts. AIDS has resumed its advance, with more than five million new cases registered during 2003. Terrorism is now global creating a planetary climate of uncertainty and insecurity that is difficult to control. And the environment, the human habitat, is seriously damaged and overburdened with polluting agents.
The coming generations find themselves in a particularly hopeless situation. The employment possibilities concentrate mostly in areas of performance that employs great numbers of qualified people with low remuneration, with totalitarian and autocratic administration that is broadly based on the ideas of Skiner who did not give much appreciation to the “notion of a Humanity that acts on its own free will”. This way, “although it presents some advantages in the organizational environment and has seduced the totalitarian organizations, Skinnerian science points out to the creation of a society composed of zombies, conditioned, lifeless, superficially well-behaved and depressive beings.” (Functional dimensions, Sandra Regina da Rocha-Pinto Coordinating, Publisher. FGV).
Rage and frustration with the economy is widespread throughout the planet. This is a conclusion belonging to “Prophecies of a Rich Father”, (Publisher. Campus). According to the authors, Robert Kiyosaki & Sharon Lechter, "everything indicates that the great crash of the stock market looms on the horizon, but this is not the problem. All the financial markets go up and down. The economic cycles are part of life. To say that the stock market will fall is like foreseeing the arrival of winter. The question is what shall be the consequences of the next fall and the intensity of the crash… The bad news is that the next great stock market crash will reveal a poverty level in the United States that will shock the world.”
Then, as the sociologists have described it, the picture today is of true chaos. Failure is everywhere. “No matter where the eyes looks, there is a picture of the most desolate confusion and absolute poverty. Innumerous separations and ever increasing mutual hatred.”
How does one comprehend this situation?
“The cause lies neither with employer nor employee, neither with capital nor lack of it, nor is it due to the church or the state, or to the different nations, but it is only the wrong attitude of each individual which has brought about the present state of affairs.”
(In the Light of Truth, by Abdrushin, Vol. 2, lecture: Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!)
A new tuning has becomes indispensable, to dream of a better world constantly improving. Wishing to make the world a better place, with more happiness and beauty, appropriate for a decent human existence. When the human recognizes that he or she is a different species that besides the instinct and the intellect, he or she is also endowed with a soul and an intuition to act with nobility, placing the intellect at the service of more elevated objectives to build a truly human civilization, we shall have reached a more advanced level, of real evolution and nobility of life. Otherwise man will become more brutal in an irreversible way. Then we shall truly live in a self-destructive hell!
Benedicto Ismael Camargo Dutra