The great Christian celebration of Easter was last week. (As necessitated by the cycles of the moon; per medieval tradition, Easter is scheduled for the first weekend in Spring when there is a full moon. The moon symbolically reflects the light of the sun, just as Jesus “the son” reflects the greatness of God “the father”.) This got me to thinking again about “the man from Galilee”. Between 1997 and 2004 I put some time into studying the life and times of Jesus from a historical perspective. You can read the result of my intellectual journey here. In a nutshell, I was brought up in the Roman Catholic faith and I still have a lot of regard for it. However, my studies convinced me that Jesus was not “The Christ”, a God-man sent from above to save humankind from its sins. I could no longer participate in services at a Catholic church (or any other Christian church) offering supplications to Christ as Lord and Savior. Ritual and community are good and necessary things to me, but words and ideas also are important – actually, they are sacred, more sacred than ancient mythology.
However, as I have said before, I have not given up on the idea of God. And since Jesus, even as an historical figure, was very interested in God, I thus remain interested in Jesus. So I got out the New Testament again and took another look. Yes, I know that the fab four (Mark, Matthew, Luke and John) do not offer objective historical accounts of what Jesus said and did. I realize that these books were originally written with religious interests in mind, and were later modified by those with further religious interests (i.e., during the formative stages of the non-Jewish Christian Church). But I remain convinced that something of “the real Jesus” can be gleaned through a cautious reading of the Gospels. So over the past few days I’ve been skimming through Biblical chapter and verse (not very cautiously, admittedly), refreshing my memory and looking for new insights.
Well, I can’t say that I’ve had any stupendous new insights; no big light bulbs went on inside my head. But in trying to draw a unified mental picture of Jesus, it struck me just how difficult this really is (and not just because I’m picking from four different writings, five if you count the “Q source” within Matthew and Luke, each of which have multiple authors and redactors). Jesus sometimes sounds like a modern humanist, with his healings and his outreach to the downtrodden and powerless. Even though his methods (e.g., exorcising evil spirits) are based on ancient superstitions, his intentions certainly seemed good. And his overriding mission, i.e. to bring on the apocalyptic revolution, to trigger the coming of God’s kingdom to the dusty soils of Palestine, can be viewed in much the same light. Jesus most certainly was on a mission, a mission to bring forth a world of love and justice, a world where the suffering of the poor and the powerless would be ended.
But then again, there remains the judgmental side of Jesus. That’s the side that many modern people have a hard time with. Jesus clearly did believe that people were ultimately good or evil; a person could make it into the new paradise-like “Kingdom of God”, or be banished to punishment followed by oblivion. He did have some toleration for good people doing bad things, so long as they were willing to be “washed” of their sins in baptism. But his world view assumed that some folk were just plain beyond repair.
This is a question that remains unresolved today. Most of us know ourselves to be mixtures of good and bad, strongly influenced by conditions around us. But can we say that some humans are inherently evil, with no chance of redemption? Yes, history certainly does present many candidates. But the ‘inherently evil’ paradigm seems to deny that every human was created by God and remains God’s child. The old-tyme religion folk would say that God gives everyone free will, and if you use that free will to side with the Devil or the anti-Christ, then God no longer wants anything to do with you. (E.g., in more than one parable, Jesus talks about “not knowing” those who fail to do God’s will but then cry to God when a time of crisis comes). But then what happens to God’s infinite qualities? What happens to infinite love, wisdom and patience? Most human parents, by contrast, manage to hold out hope for a child who has gone far astray; even a homicidal sociopath sometimes has a mother who is still praying for his redemption ….
Here’s where I think that the Buddhists have the better paradigm (even though they ironically don’t have a God, or certainly not one in the Christian sense). In their inscrutable eastern wisdom, they seem to recognize that life is short, tough, and confusing. Not everyone has enough time to get in tune with the eternal truths. So they envision a metaphysics allowing souls to recycle through multiple earthly lives, until the great truths are finally assimilated. (Interestingly, however, this may be an historical Buddhist accretion; the Buddha himself did not emphasize the reincarnation of inner spirits). Only then can they reach the final state of unity with the celestial buddhas in Nirvana (again, this isn’t necessarily the Buddha’s teaching); or delay that final state so as to do some positive work advocating for those still locked in the cycles of earthly suffering (as “Bodhivistas”).
I myself am not a Buddhist; there are too many things about their system that I find unedifying (like the annihilation of self-awareness through awareness meditation). But if God really so loved the world, I think that He or She would be willing to consider some arrangements other than the heaven-or-hell paradigm of old fashioned Christianity (which really originated in Persian Zoroastrianism). I would think that God is big enough to use a good idea where ever it comes from, even if from a bunch of meditating, no-self atheists!
AFTERWORD: When you talk about Jesus, you might as well talk about Elvis. Elvis Costello, that is. The other day I got to thinking about his tunes from the late 70s and early 80s, so I went on Amazon and bought five or six Costello MP3 files. (I’m not getting paid to shill for Amazon, but I think it’s great how they now sell plain old, no-hassle MP3 files, and not those stupid WMA’s that everyone else sells that are set to blow if you rename them or whatever). ‘Twas good to hear that old Elvis cynicism again. It still sounds fresh, thirty years later. Just about as good as any other music coming out these days.
Thirty years, that’s hard to believe. When I was a kid and I first started getting interested in radio and pop-rock music (on WABC-AM), if you wanted to listen to thirty year old music, that would put you in the Great Depression! The music would be totally different; big band, swing, jazz, Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, that kind of stuff.
Today, it seems as though thirty years old music isn’t necessarily antiquated; on the rock stations that I listen to (WDHA-FM, WXRK “K-Rock”, WAXQ “Q104”, and the new WRXP-FM), you still hear really old stuff from Led Zeppelin, Van Halen, the Stones, etc. mixed in with Linkin Park and the Foo Fighters and Saliva. You might even hear Elvis’s “Radio” every once in a blue moon. Too bad that they forgot about his other great stuff, like “The Angels Want To Wear My Red Shoes” or “What’s So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding”. I recommend the following YouTube clip of Costello performing “Waiting for the End of the World”. That clip is from 1978, thirty years ago. And think about it – the song title also applies in the other direction, to the early Christian Church two thousand years ago! And let’s not forget about “Miracle Man”. Damn that Elvis, he’s good!
Jim,
Well, once again, I find myself disagreeing with you. Let me explain.
You are making a fundamental mistake in how (it seems) you are perceiving (describing?) God. Namely, theologians will (Catholic, Protestant, Gnostic, etc.) tell you that God is a being who is beyond being. In fact, some scholars have even used the term, “nonexistent being,” as incompatible as the two words are to express the fact that God is beyond being.
However, the problem comes in “translation” of that concept. Elizabeth Johnson states that “no expression for God can be taken literally. None.” Because if one starts describing God in terms of human concepts, then inevitably one runs up against the problem that God has to be bigger and better than anything else we can conceive of–and we are back to what Eliz. Johnson calls “idolatry.” She points out that when we speak in terms of God that are human–only bigger, better, greater, etc., than human–“we literally do not understand what we are saying.” God is not the “chap” in the sky who is just bigger and better than us.
Thus your comment about “God’s INFINITE qualities” and “what happens to his INFINITE love, wisdom and patientce?”–again you are back (unwittingly) to an attempt at a HUMAN description of God.
I have a friend who used to say to me (thinking he was very clever) “if God is so powerful, how come he can’t make a stone he can’t lift?” Again, the fundamental problem: Describing God in any kind of human terms is inherently idolatrous. God is beyond being, simply not understandable by humans.
I know you know this, but I think you have slipped into the description inadvertently.
As to Jesus Christ: I’ve often wondered if he had a clue that he was God–or perhaps better expressed: Perhaps his being God was a acretion layered on later as the religion that was Christianity began to take on an institutional form. My thought is that he was an ordinary man who got caught up (deliberately or not) in political machinations of the time. I think he just became inconvenient for the political powers (both Roman and Jewish) to have around; so the solution was to get rid of him by making an example of him. That would stop of a lot of trouble among his followers–which indeed it did as they all scattered. If one studies Christianity in the second half of the first century, it’s a miracle that Christianity survived at all.
Another problem I have with your blog today is that it does seem to me that you seem to take Jesus to task for not having a modern, “enlightened” (not in the sense of the “enlightenment, but in the sense of, “Oh, I’m following the latest fashionable trends) approach to his world. I think Jesus was simply a man of his time (perhaps more educated than the ordinary first century person); but even the most educated of antiquity believed in many things we simply would not condone in our society and times.
And on another point: I have to say that I can understand the view that some people are simply “not good people.” I say it this way to avoid the word “evil.” But the fact of the matter (well as I see it anyway) is that no matter how one tries to put a spin on things–some people are just “not good people” and no amount of trying is going to make them good. This statement does not mean that MOST people are not capable of being good people; I’d say most people ARE good people. However, there are a few who just are “not good.” E.g., Hitler, John Wayne Gacy, Charles Manson, some others I could mention. No amount of loving them, trying to help them is going to change them (would have changed them). (And I just read a book “Have You Found Her” by Janice Erlbaum that had me coming to the conclusion that she describes a person who falls into that category: “Just not a good person.”)
Perhaps the reason these people are “not good” may be a neuron or two in the brain that did not develop right; but the fact of the matter is that THAT person is just not going to become good. This is a conclusion that when I was younger I never thought I’d have arrived at; but life has taught me differently.
So, maybe Jesus was not too far off in his “world view” that “some folk were just plain beyond repair.” Again, I say not a LOT of people like that around, but they are around.
I also wonder: If as some people believe there is no consciousness beyond what we have in this life, then how posit reincarnation?
But I do say that I have to AGREE with you on the point you make that it was the “annihilation of self-awareness through awareness meditation” that turned you off Buddhism–so it did me.
And lastly: Once again, I think I see the baby boomer generation thinking they “invented” being fifty (and some of the older ones are now working on thinking they they have “invented” being sixty). Let me put this another way: Your comment about when you were a kid and looking back on 30 years put you back in the depression era music generation. I find myself saying, ah, but that IS MY generation. The baby boomers did not “invent” looking back 30 years and seeing only the 1970s; some of us can look back 40 and even 50 years. (I have to stick up for us “old” people.) And as a comment that is only tangentially related: I cannot pass up next Tuesday’s TV program on “How to live to be 150 years old”!!! Wouldn’t you know it: The baby boomers seeing the fact approaching that they are not going to live forever are busily in the process of hoping, denying the fact of their mortality, and trying to fool themselves that if they do not live forever, then possibly they may live 3 times as long as they have so far. (I can’t help myself on commenting on this point.)
MCS
Comment by MCS — March 30, 2008 @ 6:36 pm
Jim,
Well, once again, I find myself disagreeing with you. Let me explain.
You are making a fundamental mistake in how (it seems) you are perceiving (describing?) God. Namely, theologians will (Catholic, Protestant, Gnostic, etc.) tell you that God is a being who is beyond being. In fact, some scholars have even used the term, “nonexistent being,” as incompatible as the two words are to express the fact that God is beyond being.
However, the problem comes in “translation” of that concept. Elizabeth Johnson states that “no expression for God can be taken literally. None.” Because if one starts describing God in terms of human concepts, then inevitably one runs up against the problem that God has to be bigger and better than anything else we can conceive of–and we are back to what Eliz. Johnson calls “idolatry.” She points out that when we speak in terms of God that are human–only bigger, better, greater, etc., than human–“we literally do not understand what we are saying.” God is not the “chap” in the sky who is just bigger and better than us.
Thus your comment about “God’s INFINITE qualities” and “what happens to his INFINITE love, wisdom and patientce?”–again you are back (unwittingly) to an attempt at a HUMAN description of God.
I have a friend who used to say to me (thinking he was very clever) “if God is so powerful, how come he can’t make a stone he can’t lift?” Again, the fundamental problem: Describing God in any kind of human terms is inherently idolatrous. God is beyond being, simply not understandable by humans.
I know you know this, but I think you have slipped into the description inadvertently.
As to Jesus Christ: I’ve often wondered if he had a clue that he was God–or perhaps better expressed: Perhaps his being God was a acretion layered on later as the religion that was Christianity began to take on an institutional form. My thought is that he was an ordinary man who got caught up (deliberately or not) in political machinations of the time. I think he just became inconvenient for the political powers (both Roman and Jewish) to have around; so the solution was to get rid of him by making an example of him. That would stop of a lot of trouble among his followers–which indeed it did as they all scattered. If one studies Christianity in the second half of the first century, it’s a miracle that Christianity survived at all.
Another problem I have with your blog today is that it does seem to me that you seem to take Jesus to task for not having a modern, “enlightened” (not in the sense of the “enlightenment, but in the sense of, “Oh, I’m following the latest fashionable trends) approach to his world. I think Jesus was simply a man of his time (perhaps more educated than the ordinary first century person); but even the most educated of antiquity believed in many things we simply would not condone in our society and times.
And on another point: I have to say that I can understand the view that some people are simply “not good people.” I say it this way to avoid the word “evil.” But the fact of the matter (well as I see it anyway) is that no matter how one tries to put a spin on things–some people are just “not good people” and no amount of trying is going to make them good. This statement does not mean that MOST people are not capable of being good people; I’d say most people ARE good people. However, there are a few who just are “not good.” E.g., Hitler, John Wayne Gacy, Charles Manson, some others I could mention. No amount of loving them, trying to help them is going to change them (would have changed them). (And I just read a book “Have You Found Her” by Janice Erlbaum that had me coming to the conclusion that she describes a person who falls into that category: “Just not a good person.”)
Perhaps the reason these people are “not good” may be a neuron or two in the brain that did not develop right; but the fact of the matter is that THAT person is just not going to become good. Th
Comment by MCS — March 30, 2008 @ 6:36 pm