I PITY THOSE WHO KILLED THEIR SAVIOUR.

You will forgime me if I say that I have a bit of a problem with all that religious stuff considering the mess we are all in on this miserable globe.

Favourite verse (for rhyme and contrasts):

He came to save the lambs whose skin
was flayed by pains that were acute.
They saw He was so kind and soft;
they killed Him in a way too brute.

Very dear Robert,
I agree with you but only if the religion is calling for vengeance and killing against those who don't agree with its principles. Christ came to spread peace among all people and within our hearts. Thank you very much Robert. I would love to have you as a very dear friend to me.

Very dear Solomon,
Your words are as usual great encouragement to me. Thank you very much.

I think that here:

"The Shepherd could not stay afar
from His poor flock as it was weak",

that your use of "afar" (to maintain your meter?) instead of "far"  shows that you do not know what "afar" means and that you do not say what you presumably intended to say.

As WikiDif notes  
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"As adverbs the difference between afar and far is that afar is at, to, or from a great distance; far away while far is distant in space, time or degree."

You also don't take into account that Luke (from whom you derive Jesus' saying from the cross on forgiveness) depicts Jesus as leaning his flock to fend for itself and going away from it for as long as it took to find a lost sheep.

"Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?" (Lk 15:4)

And you neglect the fact (again, in order to maintain your meter ?0 when you note

"they killed Him in a way too brute." that "brute"  is not an adverb and that to use it  instead of "brutally" is to sacrifice good grammar (and making sense) for the sake of getting a rhyme.

And do you realize that in saying

"when it kills That Whose hands redeem."

you are claiming that Jesus is a thing, not a person?


BTW, no Gospel says that Jesus had a soul, let alone one that  was freed from his body when he died (that idea is crass paganism drawn from Plato's dictum  σῶμά σῆμα  -- the body is a tomb/prison --  Gorgias (492e-493a ) and you have misquoted Luke 23:34 in claiming that  Πάτερ, ἄφες αὐτοῖς, οὐ γὰρ οἴδασιν τί ποιοῦσιν. is to be rendered "Forgive them, Father, they don't know that their own Saviour they have killed."

You are reading into the story of the crucifixion a meaning you have derived from elsewhere  and this is going to make people who have done any solid research on what the Gospels say recognize that you don't know what you are talking about, that your theology is woefully ill informed, and that your writing on  Jesus as saviour (as imageless, all tell no show, and syrupy, wrong headedly  pious as it is) is not worth reading.

Are you saying when you note  

"The Shepherd could not stay afar [sic]
from His poor flock as it was weak,
but weakness at times causes harm
when it kills That [sic] Whose hands redeem.",

that it was Jesus' flock who were directly responsible for killing him?

Very dear Baldwin,
1-According to Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, you are confused between, AFAR: at a distance; far off, and FROM AFAR: from a great distance. Please, check well before you criticize.
2- Be careful about using the word WAY. They killed him in a brute way. In a brute way = brutally. Both are adverbs. They killed Him in a way too brute. IN A WAY TOO BRUTE= BRUTALLY. Don't sacrifice good grammar, Baldwin, and describe WAY with an adverb BRUTALLY.
3-" When it kills That Whose hands redeem..." IT refers to WEAKNESS, Baldwin.

And one more thing:   Why would someone being "kind and soft", which you say Jesus was,  bring down upon his head both the suspicion and charge of, and the exaction of the Roman penalty for,  being a seditionist and  a dangerous challenge to Roman rule in Judea?

1-"That it was Jesus' flock who were directly responsible for killing Him.
I can't imagine that you haven't understood that till now.
2-"That it was...............killing him." How can you start it with a capital letter and end it with a question mark? You must use a comma after the last quotation marks, and start THAT with a small letter to be able to use a question mark.

-"That it was Jesus' flock who were directly responsible for killing Him.
I can't imagine that you haven't understood that till now."

So it was the disciples of Jesus who nailed Jesus to the cross?  That's who, at least according to John and the author of Acts,  Jesus' flock was.

"2-"That it was...............killing him." How can you start it with a capital letter and end it with a question mark? You must use a comma after the last quotation marks, and start THAT with a small letter to be able to use a question mark."

Yes, I should not have used a capital T.

"1-According to Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, you are confused between, AFAR: at a distance; far off, and FROM AFAR: from a great distance. Please, check well before you criticize."  
 
Leaving aside the fact that I did check well before I made my remark and that the Longman entry does not say what you claim it does (see below)  are you saying when you wrote  
 
"The Shepherd could not stay afar from ..."  
 
that Jesus could not stay at a long  distance from his flock (which presumes that he had travelled from them) or could not go far away from his flock?  
 
And here's the Longman entry on Afar:  
a‧far /əˈfɑː $ əˈfɑːr/ adverb literary      
 
→ from afar  
Examples from the Corpus  
afar  
• But not today, I can see that from afar.  
• By Wednesday night, we could hear the sounds of cannons from afar.  
• This burning, lighting up the sky, would be seen from afar.  
• Yet the Master's mind reached out afar.  
• She'd distrusted him from afar, for some time, even before leaving London, before ever setting eyes on him.  
• From afar, he saw the Mount of the Beatitudes.  
• One of the advantages of the belt is that the animals are easily visible from afar in the gloom in rough country.  
• From afar, or even up close, the bridge is nothing more than a thin, unsteady shimmer of bamboo.  
 
I do not see it saying what you say it does.  
 
"2- Be careful about using the word WAY. They killed him in a brute way. In a brute way = brutally. Both are adverbs. They killed Him in a way too brute. IN A WAY TOO BRUTE= BRUTALLY. Don't sacrifice good grammar, Baldwin, and describe WAY with an adverb BRUTALLY."  
 
But I didn't use the word "way".  You did.  And you did not say "they killed Him in a brute way".  You said "they killed Him in a way [that was] too brute."  And since you use the word "too" -- indicating that you are speaking of "how" they killed him -- what follows "too" must be an adverb, not a noun or adjective.   Moreover. even if you had written "they killed Him in a brute way", you'd still be off grammatically.  You would have needed to have used "brutal" for your claim to be grammatically sound.  
 
"3-" When it kills That [sic] Whose hands redeem..." IT refers to WEAKNESS,"  
 
But you were referring to the weakness of  Jesus' flock.  So whether you know it or not, your syntax makes you say it was Jesus' flock who were responsible for nailing him to the cross.  Furthermore, the Roman soldiers who crucified Jesus were hardly weak.  They could not have killed him in a brutal way if that had been the case.

Very dear Baldwin,
I am really surprised, Baldwin. How can you write in such an irresponsible way?

Assuming I do write irresponsibly (a fact you've asserted without proof or any evidence), I can do so for the same reason you are unable to write in any way except poorly with you showing continual adherence to the ideas  that getting rhymes i(even if forced) is more important to you than making sense, that awkward and antiquated speech is somehow more poetically felicitous than what is quite rightly accepted by modern published poets and knowledgeable editors of acclaimed poetry journals  as the best use of the English language,  that  poetry does not have to be written at least as well as good prose,  that good poetry does not bring readers into an experience through the use of concrete sensual imagery,   that grammar mistakes and solecisms  are permissible as long as one's meter is kept regular, and that  not speaking directly to questions asked of you, and labeling them as not important in order to avoid showing that you can't answer them is a responsible thing to do.

Please put your money where your mouth is and **document** how I have written in any kind of (let alone "such an") irresponsible way.  

BTW,  you do know, I trust, that according to Christian proclamations articulated by Anselm and others on the doctrine of the Atonement, if Jesus had not been killed, salvation would not have been given to the world.  So those who crucified him do not need your pity.  They were God's instruments in the story of salvation.

I note with interest that J-Z has not done what I asked him to do when, in response to his claim that I wrote "irresponsibly",    I  wrote  "Please put your money where your mouth is and **document** how I have written in any kind of (let alone "such an") irresponsible way".  

And when I ask why he has not documented his claim,  I have to wonder if it his because he was talking through his hat when he made it  and is unable to produce any evidence that his claim is true.  

In any case, I also wonder why he seems to be sure, as his submission implies,  that had he been at Jesus' crucifixion, he would not have been a member of those who he says he pities.

O Joseph Z,
if you had been at Golgotha
that fateful darkened day,
would you have wept in sympathy
while standing there
close by the mocked one’s side
until the time that he cried out
forsakenly “My God!”  
and breathed his last?

Or would you then have been among
the ones  
who, roving past the bloodied hanging man
whose titulus declared him King,
reviled him when God refused his rescuing?

Your pietistic confidence
that you’d have taken up
with Mary and the other women
watching Jesus from afar
and pitied those who failed to see
what they had cruelly done
to God’s anointed one  
is arrogance and self aggrandized fantasy.

And is His resurrection fantasy or complete defeat to death and victory to Him and the people who believe in Him?

Here's another of your reading into my text things I was not talking about.  I did not anywhere within my text raise the issue of whether those who believed that Jesus was resurrected after he died by God were fantasizing, let alone that the resurrection did not happen.

The issue I raised -- and which you ignored and certainly did nor speak to -- was **which group**

(a) those who  wept for Jesus as he was being executed and **perhaps** pitied those who engaged in and supported his crucifixion [BTW, there's no scriptural warrant for saying that anyone besides the Lukan Jesus did so) or

(b) those who mocked him and thought his crucifixion was well deserved --

**you** would have belonged to had you been at Golgotha on Good Friday  and not after Easter Sunday.

Your implicit claim in your poorly written piece that you would have been among the former group is self aggrandizing ("oh look how  pious I am") hindsight grounded fantasy.

You know very well to which group l belong. I am a believer in Jesus Christ. What matters to me is the final stage, THE RESURRECTION OR THE DEFEAT OF DEATH.

The issue is not what you are **now**, but which group you would have belonged to **then**, before the resurrection. And if you say you would have belonged to the first group, you are lying.   The Gospels note that   except for a few women,  all of his followers abandoned Jesus.  And the Gospels certainly do not say that any of them pitied those who executed Jesus.

Very dear Baldwin,  
Jesus Christ was courageous enough to suffer and die for me, l should deal with Him likewise. However, l hope to be courageous enough, like Joseph of Arimathea, who asked for His body from Pilates. If l could have been as courageous as he was, l would have stood with His mother,Mary, and John and talked with Him. After resurrection, and now, l am sure that l will not leave Him whatever the result may be.

Who is PilateS?      
    
And where in the Gospels can I find a statement that Joseph of Arimathea was among the witnesses to Jesus' crucifixion, let alone that he pitied those who encouraged and engaged in executing Jesus?  Indeed,  according to the Gospel of John,  it was only **after he heard of Jesus' death** that he asked for permission to "take away" Jesus body from Golgotha where (according to Roman practice) it would have otherwise remained until his corpse rotted.    
  
BTW,  it is only in the Gospel of John that Mary (and her sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene)  are said to have been at the foot of the cross.   The beloved disciple (who is not named) is said to have been standing "nearby".  The other Gospels say that Jesus had no supporters there and that the women who were witnesses to Jesus' crucifixion stood a ways off from the cross.  Were they lying?  And the Johannine Jesus does **not** ask his God to forgive anyone.  

This is how magnanimous Jesus is. A wise man who understands the incentives of the weak of spirit.
The sole act of his incarnation here is an act of mercy, in the sense that he did come here exactly out of concern for their fate, evolution, the results of their actions.
We all know that there is a consequence of our bad choices, sooner or later it escalates in a way that will show us a lesson. The later we wake up, the worse example. And not because it is punishment. Suffering is just a way to purify successfully, to stimulate the healing process - ironically, what seemingly appears as destruction of our life is actually a  catalyst of our life force.
However, why shouldn't we avoid the worst case scenario? Wouldn't it be better to grow in harmony?
He came here to activate the Earth grid, to pour his Christ energy to the realm, change its matrix with the divine processes that are too complex for us to comprehend.
After he departed, he finalised the restoration of the Godly flow, the exchange, the "Elevator" between the worlds became possible again. It is not just showing the Earthly example, it is mostly energy work, as most changes happen in the invisible plane of existance.
He voluntarily chose the difficult path. When people chose to mutilate him, he did have a choice to soften the pain or even escape. But he wanted to be equal in pain to us. Therefore, he never prayed for himself. He prayed for us, as he knew that our bad choice would lead to our future suffering.
"God, Let this Cup pass me" Is it how it is translated in English? He did not fear brutality, his heart was soaking in mercy, for he always thinks about our wellbeing in the first place, as a priority. And how wouldn't he? As a GUARDIAN of the Universe, it is already a natural process for him not to judge. We always discuss it because it is normal for us to fear acts of mercy and doubt them. I mean, what is the centre of our discussion is just the students book for him.
He is actually centred on  carrying out salvation, guaranteeing eternal life, until the Last Soul is safe.
How hard is it to get that?
This is why indeed instead of hatred it is better to show pity. Why? Otherwise you dig in the bad and send the same energy pattern to the person. If you focus on their good traits or at least keep a neutral position, it would automatically shift energies in a more positive way.
This is what Jesus meant by turning the cheek.
It is not about lack of personality or useless naivity.
It is about mature silence in the face of the illiterate ones. Just keeping silence when arguments are unnecessary and keeping the job for the sake of our Eternal Father, the Sabaoth.

:)

Very dear Boyana,
Your knowledge and analysis of Christianity are very deep. I need to think more about them. Your Christian education is excellent. What is your specialization at the university?

I have a bachelor's degree in lingustics with English, Spanish and marketing. I Studied Italian and Russian in high school. My Christian education is self-acquired. I Studied it on my Own and I never partook in a group or a religious school. I was baptised as a baby in the offiical Orthodox church of Bulgaria.

You speak four essential languages, Boyana, and studied marketing. That's great. I have a B.A. in English literature from Damascus university.