Consider just two quotes from Walt Whitman’s writing:
“I believe a blade of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.”
“Every moment of light and dark is a miracle.”
I’m not aware of anything like this in the teachings attributed to Jesus. New Testament miracles are spectacular unnatural events intended to “wow” people who are accustomed to believing in spectacular unnatural events - like a woman turning into a pillar of salt, like two of every animal species climbing the gangplank onto a giant boat, like the oceans parting to allow God’s chosen people to escape their oppressors, like God carving his dictates on stone tablets. Comparing the Bible to Whitman’s ‘LEAVES OF GRASS’ is like comparing Disneyland to the Smithsonian.
The superiority of the Christian revelation? The superiority of Disneyland over the Smithsonian? The superiority of Fantasyland over NOVA?
In Whitman’s writing there is no moralizing and really hardly any form of judgement, just a pure and wise reporting of the nature of the world and of the human condition in the world. Other great writers like Shakespeare and even those well before the renaissance including some of the ancients who wrote well before christianity appeared are vastly superior to anything in the biblical scripture and that includes the New Testament.
If you read “Leaves of Grass” or any other of Whitman’s works, then you will understand what love is about . . . the journey-work of the stars . . . it’s love. Then you read the New Testament, or for pity’s sake the Old Testament, and there is no love in there at all. Just pompousness and preachyness - “for God so loved the world . . .” oh for pity’s sake what a load of crap!
