The New Testament is a brutal destroyer of human illusions. If you follow Jesus and don't end up dead, it appears you have some explaining to do. The stark signifier of the human condition is one who spoke up for love and justice and was done to death for his pains. The traumatic truth of human history is a mutilated body.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the harsh realities and sacrifices associated with love and justice as portrayed in the New Testament.
Terry Eagleton emphasizes the brutal reality that those who stand up for love and justice often face severe consequences, as highlighted in the New Testament through the figure of Jesus. The quote suggests that the essence of human existence is intertwined with suffering and sacrifice, challenging the illusions people may hold about morality and faith.
In practice
During a sermon reflecting on the sacrifices of historical figures for justice.
Nations sometimes flourish by denying the crimes that brought them into being. Only when the original invasion, occupation, extermination or usurpation has been safely thrust into the political unconscious can sovereignty feel secure.
One side-effect of the so-called war on terror has been a crisis of liberalism. This is not only a question of alarmingly illiberal legislation, but a more general problem of how the liberal state deals with its anti-liberal enemies.
All communication involves faith; indeed, some linguisticians hold that the potential obstacles to acts of verbal understanding are so many and diverse that it is a minor miracle that they take place at all.
Capitalism will behave antisocially if it is profitable for it to do so, and that can now mean human devastation on an unimaginable scale. What used to be apocalyptic fantasy is today no more than sober realism.
Poetry is the most subtle of the literary arts, and students grow more ingenious by the year at avoiding it. If they can nip around Milton, duck under Blake and collapse gratefully into the arms of Jane Austen, a lot of them will.
Works of art cannot save us. They can simply render us more sensitive to what needs to be repaired.
If a woman possesses manly virtues one should run away from her; and if she does not possess them she runs away from herself.
The definition of morality: Morality is the idiosyncrasy of decadents having the hidden desire to revenge themselves upon life - and being successful.
A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law, or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.
Nada is found within. It is a music without strings which plays in the body. It penetrates the inner and outer and leads you away from illusion.
Cruelty hardens and degrades, kindness reforms and ennobles.
It is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it.
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