Following Jesus, not Worshiping Jesus

Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ is wrong on so many levels. Here are one trivial and one not so trivial wrong.

First, even the Romans in 1st century Judea didn't speak Latin. (As Dan Quayle knows, the only place people speak Latin is in Latin America). They spoke Greek, the language equivalent to English today. It was the language of empire, of global business, and diplomacy. The so-called Romans serving in the military occupation in Jerusalem and the rest of Judea, Samaria and Gallilee most likely weren't from Rome or even Italy. They were from modern day Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, maybe even the Balkans. If they wanted to speak to one another or to the Judeans, they spoke Greek, not Latin.

Second, Gibson's sadistic portrayal of the death of Jesus is a reflection of centuries of Christian propaganda that transformed Jesus from a human being to a god and made his death a sacrifice for our redemption. However, Jesus was killed for how he lived. He was a political and theological threat to the Romans. Gibson, by concentrating on his suffering and death, tries to make that suffering and death the reason that those who believe are saved. Gibson's movie is the latest chapter in a two millenia long derailment of the message of Jesus of Nazareth. It is simply the latest, and most cinematic, method of worshipping Jesus without having to follow Jesus. The difference is attractive to the worshippers because to follow Jesus is to enter into an endeavor that will very likely end in ostracism and death at the hands of the good, religious people of your society.

Mark's gospel is about the "way" of Jesus. Mark wrote in Greek. The word for way is (to transliterate) hodos. It can also mean path, but Mark uses it mostly in a manner that for us English speakers is best translated as the way. Regardless, the point of a path or a way is that it must be followed or travelled upon.

The non-canonical book of Thomas and the canonical Mark are two of the earliest stories written about Jesus. Only some of Paul's letters were written earlier. Thomas dates from about 50 CE and Mark from about 70CE. This fact doesn't necessarily makes these versions true, but it does mean that they have less interpretation and "spin" attached to them. Mark's gospel is a story of how Jesus followed his path that led to the confrontation with the Roman empire and its local upper class Judean collaborators and how he was killed for following that path. It is also the story of how even his closest disciples couldn't, or wouldn't, follow that path. (The most notorious story of this is Peter's triple denial that he even knows Jesus on the day he was executed).

By the time the gospel of John was written, Jesus has become a god equivalent to the Father, present at the creation of the world, and is simply not recognizable as a human being, but is something more like one of the gods on Olympus. The way of Mark has become Jesus himself whom John called "the way, the truth and the light." He can no longer be followed, because He and we do not share a common humanity. He is more than human, he is perfect and therefore can't be followed, only worshipped. Christianity went wrong within the first few decades because it is easier to worship a god than follow a prophet.

I'll have more on this in later posts, and more on how current Chrisitanity in America functions as an equivalent to the Roman theology of Jesus's time rather than an expression of the teachings and actions of Jesus.

Tension of the In Between

The In Between is a notion (following Plato) created by the twentieth century mystic philosopher Eric Voegelin to describe where Being becomes luminous to itself. So what does that mean? It means, quite simply, that human beings exist in an "In Between," as Voegelin put it,

"if anything is constant in the history of mankind it is the language of tension between life and death, immortality and mortality, perfection and imperfection, time and timelessness, between order and disorder, truth and untruth, sense and senselessness of existence; between amor Dei and amor sui, l'ame ouverte and l'ame close; between the virtues of openness toward the ground of being such as faith, love and hope, and the vices of infolding closure such as hybris and revolt; between the moods of joy and despair; and alienation in its double meaning of alienation from the world and alienation from God"

The important doublet for this meditation is that of "between the virtues of openness toward the ground of being such as faith, love and hope, and the vices of infolding closure such as hybris and revolt." The attempts to alleviate the tension between these virtues and these vices is the cause of much of the human suffering on the planet. Faith, love and hope exist in a reality where nothing is absolutely certain. One does not have faith (anymore) in the notion that the world is round; it is simply accepted as a fact. When it was not possible to know whether the world was round or not, it was an act of faith to attempt to circumnavigate it. Hybris is displayed by those who reduce reality to their little island within it and claim that this is the whole and then seek to stuff the whole of reality through the lens of their little island. Since Easter is just over I wanted to talk about a passage from the gospel of Mark that illuminates the difference.

Mark's account of the last week of Jesus is precise and detailed when compared to the other gospels. (See Crossan and Borg's "Last Week"). On Tuesday of Holy Week (using our day names of course) Mark tells a story of how Jesus was quesitoned by a "scribe" who was not hostile to him as were the "high priests, elders and scribes" mentioned by Mark throughout this week's encounters. This scribe asks a straight forward question about what is the greatest commandment. Jesus answers by quoting Deuteronomy and Leviticus. Here's how Mark puts it.

The first is "Hear O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength." The second is this, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." There is no other commandment greater than these."

The scribe says that this is so true. It's more important that all the burnt offerings and sacrifices made in the temple. Jesus then replies that this guy is close to the kingdom of God. Close but not in.

Questions about the greatest commandment were commonplace with Judaism. For a society that discovered the fact that God was a god of justice and righteousness and not a god of feritlity and reproduction, what other idea could be more important that the greatest of god's commandments? Jesus answers by quoting the passage in Deuteronomy that was so important to his religion that it was a prayer said twice daily by every devout Jew, and was even put in mezuzot andd tefillin. As Crossan and Borg point out, this phrase from Jesus has become so commonplace to Christians that it is a cliche muttered without understanding the historical context of it, and therefore not understanding the radical nature of the claim that god (YHWH) is God and that God is one. If god is God then all creation belongs to God. If god is God then God demands all of us, our heart, soul, mind and strength. God is contested by the gods of this earth, namely Caesar. If god is God, Caesar, (and no other lord of this world then and now) is not.

The second part of Jesus's answer, "to love your neighbor as yourself," is a corollary. If this is God's earth and not the earth of any succession of earthly lords, then it is a sacred duty to act against, and never accept, those divisions created by the "normalcy of civilization" (to use Crossan's and Borg's term), divisions between the haves and have nots, the respected and the unclean, sinners and self styled saints, between friends and enemies, between Us and Them. We are all Us to God. If one can't get with that program, one is not with, but against, God.

What does all this have to do with the In Between of our existence? Just this. What Eric Voegelin called the vices of infolding closure to reality is the creation of gods attempting to run this earth in opposition to the God of creation. Those who would create a false definition of god (or Jesus as god) in their own image and then worship that idol are exhibiting the closing off of Being through hubris. Christian Reconstructionsim in particular and the Christian Right in America in general are the most contemporary examples of this closure and revolt against YHWH.

There will be more.

Deconstructing Chrisitanity

In the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas, Jesus says that we will only find salvation when we succeed in bringing forth what is within us, namely that spark of divinity that makes human beings the image of God. He then teaches us what is involved in that bringing forth. By the time the Gospel of John was written, approximately 50 years later, this teaching of Jesus was reconstructed into the doctrine that only by believing that Jesus was the Son of God and that he died for our sins as a substitute for us and then rose again would we find salvation. That this Johannine doctine was specifically directed toward the Gospel of Thomas is evident in the story of Doubting Thomas, who said that until he sees and touches the scars of Jesus's torture and cruxifiction he will not believe that Jesus rose from the dead. Doubting Thomas only appears in John. Thomas is given doubt by John because Thomas's Jesus did not fit John's doctrine.
The Gospel of John is one of the early decision points where Chrisitianity became what it is today, namely an organized religion that made Jesus into a God by turning away from virtually everything that Jesus taught and acted upon. This derailment has created a religion whose adherents now support wars in the name of The Prince of Peace, who place worship ahead of doing justice, and who hate those different from themselves rather than following the commandment to love others as one loves oneself.
This blog is an attempt to deconstruct the edifice of Christianity from the point of view of holding Christians accountable for their words and deeds by comparing them to what their God instructed. Is this doing God's work? Don't know. How can I or anyone answer that unless we were to either be deluded or hubristic enough to claim to speak for God?
However, we all should know this. God is a god of justice and righteousness. When Yahweh revealed Itself to Moses it was as a god demanding that human beings create justice on God's earth. God showed that god is not simply a god of fertility, of reproduction (vegetable, animal or human), of making sure the rivers flood and bring forth mud, or of wanting to be worshipped and praised above all else. Why would God want the praise of that which It created out of wet dirt? God expected his creation to be good, as good as when it was first created, and that required that human beings bring forth justice and righteousness. Not just personal virtue, but public, social and common justice that comes from living well together in society. It is not sufficient to God for human beings to hide behind worship and to acquiesce in injustice in their society or their world. Specifically, news items reveal the thuggish quality of contemporary evangelical Christians who have picketed the homes of health care workers, who have assassinated doctors, and who have taken every opportunity to publically condemn and ridicule people different from them. But they go to church and sing "My God is an Awesome God," and think they are holy. Don't think so. Wouldn't want to be them when the time comes to be judged.
Like other people who seek God and who see Jesus as a path to God , I refuse to be called a Christian. The purpose of this blog is to to attempt to illuminate that path, and in so doing perhaps show why I refuse the name.