Question:

Are we saying that Jesus enjoys supremacy over the other gods?

This is not a question that can be answered either "yes" or "no", because the assumptions embedded in it are false ones. It would be accurate to say that we feel that it is Jesus' calling to rein in the others when they go wrong. But it is equally true that it is part of the rightful order of things, that they should resist the reining in. One of life's little paradoxes is that we should occasionally do that which we know we ought not to do.

A notion that comes down to us as a distortion of one offered to us by Kant in the Critique of Practical Reason, is that we ought to do that which we would wish to see made universal practice. A better principle, perhaps, is that we ought to promote and live by that attitude which, in our own setting, we would wish to see made universal. For example, while it is true that we would not care for a regular diet of cruel comments, it is equally true that almost all humor has a faint trace of cruelty in it, and a little taste of pain in the pleasure. Yet life quickly grows dull without it. Thus, to seek to abolish all minor cruelty, would be to commit a grossly sadistic act.

Yes, we need to offer kindness to others, and receive it in return, but we also need to breath free, and the extent to which these goods conflict, sets an inescapable limit on how perfect life can be, and those living it should try to be. It is not a question, then, of abolishing all rebellion, or all rules, but of haggling out a balance between order and chaos, discipline and relaxation.

The fallacy in the question is the unstated assumption that for restraint to be real, it must be absolute and inescapable. No, it is sufficient that it affect the likelihood of the nobler outcome being seen, to a substantial enough degree. A priest does not reign over his parishioners like a king, in this world, or rather he should not. His is merely a respected voice that is heard, and listened to with respect. It is a matter of influence, not control.

Question :

"But hasn't always been said, that we should obey God's will?"

Indeed so. But what is that will? To repeat a quote from the Koran which we are especially fond of, "Do not worry about small sins. Do you think that your creator did not know you, when He made you?" The acceptance of our imperfection is His choice, and His will. Consider how much of both the Bible and Koran are spent speaking of His forgivness - obviously not a choice a deity hell-bent on forging a perfect species would make so easily, as He does in these books.

To make ourselves miserable trying to be that which we are not is only superficial obedience, for to engage in it is to defy the will of God, as to our very nature. We are imperfect. We will fail. Accept it. Sometimes, the burden of doing what intellectually we know we should is too heavy for us to carry, at least for the moment, and God patiently understands.

As with men, so with their older sisters and brothers, the gods.
Let's return to the previous article.