Antidote to Our Contemporary Pharisees
Gandhi's view of Christianity and its possibilities for good in the world was influenced almost entirely by Leo Tolstoy's "What I Believe" and "The Kingdom of God is Within You." These should be required reading for American Christians who have succumbed to the idolatry of Empire and the religio-fascist lies of the likes of Robertson, Dobson, Falwell, and their lackey George Bush. Right Wing Christianity, what others have humorously called The Rapture Right, is a perversion of the teachings of Jesus. In this perversion, however, American right wing religious radicals are not alone within Christianity. The entire Christian enterprise with its popes and bishops and political aspirations of worldly power is exactly what Jesus rejected when tempted by these things spewing from the mouth of Satan in their confrontation in the wilderness after Jesus was baptized by the Baptist. Rather than following Jesus, by taking up what Mark called The Way, Christians have followed the lunatic who wrote Revelation.
The first decade of the Common Era's 21st century is remarkably similar to the first decade of the 1st. The world is dominated politically by one empire and is in the throes of an economic globalization that strips people of local self-sufficiency through exporting jobs and raw materials to places of cheap or slave labor. Cultural and economic globalization has created a wasteland of meaning. Individuals have lost their centers of meaning as they become increasingly defined by their career, their function in the great economic machine that grinds out increasing wealth for a few and increasing alienation for the many. One response to that alienation, then and now, is a religious fundamentalism that seeks a definitive answer to this question. If the world God created is good, why is the world in which we live right now so evil?
This recognition that the world is filled with evil and injustice is the experiential core of fundamentalism. This experience is genuine, authentic and oh so human. The world really is filled with evil and injustice. However, the response of fundamentalism is inauthentic. Jesus contrasted his teaching with those of his current day fundamentalists. The experiential core of Jesus's teaching was the same experience of evil and injustice in the world. His response was more authentic and more honest than his contemporary end-timers and dominionists, because while the world is filled with evil and injustice, it's also filled with love and hope and faith.
On the one hand, the fundamentalist yearning for The End is the result of an all consuming alienation from God's Creation. The world is so evil that God should just squash it like a grape, except of course, not me. You see, I'm not evil just Others. On the other hand, a segment of American fundamentalism wants to bring about complete political domination for Jesus by infecting all asepcts of political and social life. From the outside they look like the Borg from Star Trek. From within they look like avenging angels.
The author of Matthew calls this fundamentalist yearning for political dominion Satanic. In the Temptation drama, Satan takes Jesus to the top of a mountain and show him the entire "ecumene," the entire known world. He says I will give you all this if you just fall down and worship me. What Christian dominionists seek was rejected out of hand by Jesus before he was the Christ. Matthew also has something to say to the End Timers of his day when he has Satan badger Jesus from the pinnacle of the Temple in Jerusalem to throw himself off and fly to his End because God will send angels to help and protect him. Jesus simply says that one shoulldn't tempt God. Jesus wasn't expecting any angelic help in his earthly sojourn against empire and globalization.
Any meaningful political and social program in the first decade of the 21st century must address the quesiton of evil and injustice in the world in its personal and systemic manifestations. But it must also be authentic. It must also remember that we are human beings, that we live in an in-between realm of imperfection tending toward perfection and that we can't jump outside of this central human condition. There is no End. The hope for God to just end it all for us is the chickenshit way out of evil and injustice. The authentic way is the way of Jesus, of love, hope and faith. It is the harder way because it demands that we become love, hope and faith rather than spectators waiting for the End. It's interesting to me that Gandhi, a little tiny Hindu understood the magnificent meaning of Jesus and yet embarked on his own version of The Way.
More on this meditation in future diaries.
The first decade of the Common Era's 21st century is remarkably similar to the first decade of the 1st. The world is dominated politically by one empire and is in the throes of an economic globalization that strips people of local self-sufficiency through exporting jobs and raw materials to places of cheap or slave labor. Cultural and economic globalization has created a wasteland of meaning. Individuals have lost their centers of meaning as they become increasingly defined by their career, their function in the great economic machine that grinds out increasing wealth for a few and increasing alienation for the many. One response to that alienation, then and now, is a religious fundamentalism that seeks a definitive answer to this question. If the world God created is good, why is the world in which we live right now so evil?
This recognition that the world is filled with evil and injustice is the experiential core of fundamentalism. This experience is genuine, authentic and oh so human. The world really is filled with evil and injustice. However, the response of fundamentalism is inauthentic. Jesus contrasted his teaching with those of his current day fundamentalists. The experiential core of Jesus's teaching was the same experience of evil and injustice in the world. His response was more authentic and more honest than his contemporary end-timers and dominionists, because while the world is filled with evil and injustice, it's also filled with love and hope and faith.
On the one hand, the fundamentalist yearning for The End is the result of an all consuming alienation from God's Creation. The world is so evil that God should just squash it like a grape, except of course, not me. You see, I'm not evil just Others. On the other hand, a segment of American fundamentalism wants to bring about complete political domination for Jesus by infecting all asepcts of political and social life. From the outside they look like the Borg from Star Trek. From within they look like avenging angels.
The author of Matthew calls this fundamentalist yearning for political dominion Satanic. In the Temptation drama, Satan takes Jesus to the top of a mountain and show him the entire "ecumene," the entire known world. He says I will give you all this if you just fall down and worship me. What Christian dominionists seek was rejected out of hand by Jesus before he was the Christ. Matthew also has something to say to the End Timers of his day when he has Satan badger Jesus from the pinnacle of the Temple in Jerusalem to throw himself off and fly to his End because God will send angels to help and protect him. Jesus simply says that one shoulldn't tempt God. Jesus wasn't expecting any angelic help in his earthly sojourn against empire and globalization.
Any meaningful political and social program in the first decade of the 21st century must address the quesiton of evil and injustice in the world in its personal and systemic manifestations. But it must also be authentic. It must also remember that we are human beings, that we live in an in-between realm of imperfection tending toward perfection and that we can't jump outside of this central human condition. There is no End. The hope for God to just end it all for us is the chickenshit way out of evil and injustice. The authentic way is the way of Jesus, of love, hope and faith. It is the harder way because it demands that we become love, hope and faith rather than spectators waiting for the End. It's interesting to me that Gandhi, a little tiny Hindu understood the magnificent meaning of Jesus and yet embarked on his own version of The Way.
More on this meditation in future diaries.
posted by Phronesis at 10:14 AM
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