I don't think we can blame all of the Christophobia on the Christians. There must be something more at work here. I would venture that this has more to do with theism vs. pantheism.

Elsewhere, I have, somewhat reluctantly, broached the possibility of an eschatological separation of humanity. The specifics of this scenario were left rather vague, but I recall proposing two alternative polarities for this separation. One was between sky and earth, and the other between high and low-tech. Here I am suggesting a third polarity between theism and pantheism, as the basis of a separation. How can we possibly reconcile these alternatives? They seem to be mutually orthogonal.

Here is about the best I can do off the top of my head. Consider the space-age as a metaphor. There was going to be a separation between the space explorer/pilgrims and all the rest of us who would be left behind. This would obviously be like the Sky and Earth polarity, and it would also differentiate between high and low-tech. In a postmodern context, high and low-tech could also be seen as the Sky and Earth forms of magic, respectively. Earth magic being some form of neo-pagan, deep ecology. This last description then gives over into pantheism and so we get back to the third polarity. And also we get back to a gender distinction, or at least a yin and yang distinction. This is confusing even me right now, but with a little perseverance it will all work out, I am sure.

The practical point is that we can have our eschatological cake and eat it too. We can have our universal salvation, and then each go our separate ways, thank you very much. This is certainly a bit of improvement upon the heaven and hell-fire polarity. But where does Jesus come in? He is at the cross-roads. He is the Axis Mundi who keeps the cosmic gears turning and meshing, I am claiming. He brings us together and then sets us on our merry ways again, with actually only a minimal amount of bloodshed. He is the master magician of human history.

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rev. 4/26/97