Forgiveness VII

A whole week I've been writing about forgiveness. Two more days in my novena. Seems longer. Both ways.

On the second day I started examining Jesus' life from the standpoint of betrayal. I didn't get very far, just up to Joseph's reaction to his fiancee's pregnancy. (It's a blog, not a journal.) Today I'll go further, taking the stories at face value for spiritual instruction, as I described on the second day.

Jesus grew up in the Jewish equivalent of a dusty West Texas town. ("Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" asked the Pharisees.) Maybe a degree or two above trailer trash, maybe not. Carpenters at least had a job, but they weren't on the high end of the social scale. The turtle doves his parents brought to the temple when he was circumcised indicated their poverty.

We don't know what he did until he was baptized by John. Probably he was just trying to be a good Jew and wondering why that was so hard. His baptism sparks something in him, though.

His mother always knew he was meant for great things. Didn't an angel tell her so? At a wedding, she points out meaningfully, "They've run out of wine." Maybe she did things like this all the time. "Your Auntie Elizabeth's arthritis is acting up. A good nephew might help her." "Only one fish for dinner. A good brother might not want to see the young ones go hungry." At Cana Jesus responds like a typical son, "Ah, Ma, I'm not ready yet!" (RC translation of John 2:4) She forces the issue by going to the steward, and Jesus supplies some really fine stuff, ensuring his welcome at any good party.

Jesus' relationship with his family appears strained. Besides the grudging miracle of Cana, several gospels recount how he refused to see his mothers and brothers when they came to see him. Scholars suggest that their motive was to lock him up before he did real damage to himself or somebody else. They didn't seem to support his work, and they may in turn have felt betrayed by him. The job of the eldest son is to support the family, and here he was wandering around the courtryside. If he wanted to be a rabbi, fine. Couldn't he be like that nice Rabbi Akiba?

Jesus tries to share his enlightenment with his home town. "Who does he think he is?" they said. (Matthew 15:55 and other gospels.) "We know his family." My experience with small towns suggests that they went on to recount various unsavory and/or imaginary stories about him and his relatives.

He travels, teaching, healing, feeding the folks that follow him. His success draws the attention of religious leaders. They call him a glutton, drunkard, blasphemer, law breaker, a bastard, and a traitor. And this without the benefit of Newt Gingrich's famous memo! Finally he stands in court, betrayed by a close friend, condemned by falsehoods, and denied by one who said he'd never leave.

So the Son of God was misunderstood and betrayed by family, friends, religion, and country. Just like the rest of us. Coming tomorrow: How he handled it.

7:11:20 PM    

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George Jean Nathan. "Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles." [Quotes of the Day]

6:17:30 PM    

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Wish I Was a Bird

I can't link to this, because it's for registered subscribers of Science News, but it's also in the Aug. 2 print version.

We've all heard how females of any species prefer males who win, supposedly because of the superior genes they'll pass along. This theory has also been applied to women who go after jerks with expensive cars and Rolexes. Maybe they should be saying, "You spent that much on a car?" and thinking that maybe the children will go hungry while Daddy buys toys, but, hey, nobody's asking me.

But now it appears that in a species of Asian quails, females prefer the losers in a fight. (Science News, Vol. 164 No. 5, p 78) Except for virgins: those girls chose the winners. And after being beaten up, dragged around, and had the guys try to mate with their heads (or should we just say forced fellatio?), they joined their wiser sisters in saying, "Look at that guy getting the shit beat out of him. He looks so...sensitive and caring. Wonder what he's doing when he gets out of the hospital?"

It's exciting that they learn so quickly. I wish we were closer to birds on the evolutionary tree.

4:31:27 PM    

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Security council split on Iraq

France says America must share authority in Iraq if it wants more nations to send troops to help restore order.

Why is this hard for our leaders to understand? They bypass the UN to rush into war, they won't attend the humanitarian agency planning meetings beforehand, and now they want other nations to come in and fix the mess they made solely on their own. While thumbing their nose to these other stupid cheese-eating nations.

Of course one looks with compassion on the Iraqis, who now have even less food, water, medical care, and safety than they did before. How do we help them without cooperating with this administration? I know why they have the idea that somebody else should pay for their pleasures and crimes, but how do we combat it without neglecting their victims?

3:40:01 PM    

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Small World After All

Six degrees of separation isn't an urban myth. Cornell scientists prove it with email. I knew email had to be good for something besides spam.

3:26:57 PM    

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