Damozel: The Heretic's Handbook

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The Marginal Christian & Deuteronomy

Thu, 13 Jul 2006 14:40:58 GMT

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A Marginal Christian Looks at Corporal Punishment, Sexual Assault, Transvestitism, Divorce, and Crushed Testicles in the Old Testament

Someone pointed out to me that my discussion of the Bible isn't exactly authoritative. "You aren't a Biblical scholar," he pointed out. "You really aren't qualified to say what it means."

No, that's right. But I am engaging in a little exercise called "Imagine the world if we took the Bible literally just based on what it seems to be saying and didn't read selectively or with regard to its context" That's pretty much what certain right wing Christians do. I'm doing what they do: going through and cherry-picking the particular parts of interest to me.

I will always think it surprising that the Church Fathers saw fit to keep the parts of the Old Testament that didn't directly relate to Jesus. I know---or I think I know; let's say I've been told----that the early church split very early on between the Church led by Jesus's brother James and between the Church led by Paul (who never met Jesus, or at least not while Jesus was alive). The Church of James still followed the law of Moses; Paul decided because, according to him, he had the direct authority of Jesus to do so.

Jesus frequently cited the law of Moses in his disputes with the pharisees and scribes and such, but it's always seemed clear to me----I am telling you my perception, not what know or even "know"-----that in his disputes, he was constantly reinterpreting that law. Indeed, it seems obvious that he was; otherwise, why would they have been trying to nail him on charges of blasphemy. I don't think in sober truth that there is much of it left if you read his remarks closely; he quotes scripture constantly, but he is spinning it toward completely different conclusions, or so it seems. His statement that he came to fulfill the law I take as meaning something entirely different than the fundamentalists I know take it to mean. I understand it to mean---this is just me, unaided by Biblical scholarship----"Now that I am here, you don't need it anymore" or (possibly) "Now that I am here, I will tell you its purpose; if you achieve the purpose, you need not follow it to the letter."

I say all this because----again-----I am continually astonished at the ease with which certain Christians I know (including certain churches I shall not specifically name) jump back and forth between old and new testaments without really seeming ever to read them together.

At my church, there was always an Old Testament lesson and a New Testament lesson on Sunday. Sometimes, if the priest was good at his job, the sermon would discuss and attempt to reconcile them.

But I say you cannot reconcile them, not really. At a certain point----perhaps during the first century when James led the Jerusalem branch of Christianity----it might have been possible to hear a coherent explanation of how Christ's teachings fit in with the Old Testament. I understand why it was important to James to show that they did and to Paul, to show that they didn't (or not so much). I think it's pretty clear that Pauline Christianity won the day; and perhaps it's because I don't understand the other or have the knowledge to see the connection between what Christ was saying and what the Old Testament says that I just can't bring myself to believe that the Old Testament has much relevance to Christianity.

But let's assume that they do. A lot of fundamentalists Christians sincerely believe that they do. Which is why they and I don't get on (or rather, is one of the reasons).

More close reading of what's meant to be the best [Christian-based] reading currently available of the actual text. Again, I am using the New English Bible, which makes the whole verse/chapter thing difficult to discern. I am providing citations, but that's the best I can do. Remember: I am a marginal Christian.

Some people---people who have never read the Bible--- wonder where right wingers get their notions of family life, a woman's place, capital and corporal punishment, and the like.

I give you.....Deuteronomy! And I particularly give it to right-wing Christianists, some of whom might like for it, or parts of it, to apply now. But before starting my compilation of Old Testament quotes for modern Right-wing Christians, I want to say that in CONTEXT, considered in light of the practices that applied elsewhere at the time, the Old Testament laws are very reasonable, insistent on fairness and on giving due regard to the rights of one's neighbors.

For example---and there are lots more that relate to being just and kind to your neighbor---"When you see your fellow-countryman's ass or ox lying on the road, do not ignore it; you must help him to lift it to its feet again." Deuteronomy Ch. 22, New English Bible (1971 ed.) at 220. And this is sweet and also environmentally friendly:

When you come across a bird's nest by the road, in a tree or on the ground, with fledgling or eggs in it and the mother-bird on the next, do not take both mother and young. Let the mother-bird go free, and take only the young, and then you will prosper and live long.

Deuteronomy Ch. 22, New English Bible 1971 at 219.

In context, these laws were also protective, possibly extraordinarily protective, of women (in their way). But they also portray a way of life I for one would not wish to see restored. I imagine that most right wing Christian women would be with me on that score, though possibly Ann Coulter---author of Godless-- would only agree if an exception were made for her.

Here's an instruction to the menfolk on the treatment of captive women. To be fair, it is no doubt extraordinarily compassionate by the standards of those days that applied elsewhere.

Of course it does assume that women are property and that a man who gets hold of one in the course of warfare is entitled to 'have his will of her.' I can't see most of the Christian women I know feeling comfortable about it.

When you wage war against your enemy and the Lord your God delivers them into your hands and you take some of them captive, then if you see a comely woman and you take a liking to her, you may marry her. You shall bring her into your house, where she shall shave her head, pare her nails, and discard the clothes which she had when captured. Then she shall stay in your house and mourn for her father and mother for a full month. After that you may have intercourse with her; you shall be her husband and she your wife. But if you no longer find her pleasing, let her go free. You must not sell her, nor treat her harshly, since you have had your will of her.

Deuteronomy Ch. 21 (?), New English Bible (1971 ed.) at 219 [subsequently cited as New English Bible 1971].

Let's read on:

When a man has two wives, one loved and the other unloved, if they both bear him sons, and the son of the unloved wife is the elder, then, when the day comes for him to divide his property among his sons, he shall not treat the son of the loved wife as his first-born in contempt of his true first-born, the son of the unloved wife.

Deuteronomy Ch. 21 (?), NEB 1971 at 219.

Again, the above is eminently fair. I included it mainly to point up the context in which these laws applied, specifically a context in which a man takes (as we know from various Biblical stories) multiple wives, some loved and some unloved.

Now I don't think certain people on the right would entirely object to this next one; they probably are too soft and civilized to do it to their own offspring, but might be quite happy to see it applied to someone else's. At any rate, a soppy liberal like me can't help but be impressed by the ancients' idea of 'tough love.'

When a man has a son who is disobedient and out of control, and will not obey his father or his mother, or pay attention when they punish him, then his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of the town at the town gate. They shall say to the elders of the town, "This son of ours is disobedient and out of control; he will not obey us, he is a wastrel and a drunkard." Then all the men of the town shall stone him to death, and you will thereby rid yourselves of this wickedness.

Deuteronomy Ch. 21, NEB 1971 at 219-20.

That is some tough love right there.

Man, and to think I used to feel sorry for my dad. When he or his brothers got out of control, they were beaten with switches, hard enough to leave (shallow, or so I assume) cuts. My dad said that he had to go outside and cut them himself. And nowadays everyone moans about, I don't know, the odd occasional assault on a small child! And we think that BOOT CAMPS are tough.

This next one was still being brought up when I was a child and was frequently cited at the turn of the last century, when women had begun to wear 'bloomers' under their skirts.

No woman shall wear an article of man's clothing, nor shall a man put on woman's dress; for those who do these things are abominable in the sight of the Lord.

Deuteronomy Ch. 22, New English Bible 1971 at 220.

I quoted the above partly because of the intriguing picture it gives of ancient life before they got the Word. Nobody would have had to forbid transvestitism if there weren't a lot of it around. But it puts the kibosh on Dame Edna, Eddie Izzard, drag queens, and little old ladies in pantsuits.

Here are a couple of good ones. If we put the next back into effect, we wouldn't HAVE to teach girls about condoms.

When a man takes a wife and after having intercourse with her turns against her and brings trumped-up charges against her, giving her a bad name and saying, "I took this woman and slept with her and did not find proof of virginity [presumably an unbroken hymen] in her," then the girl's father and mother shall take the proof of her virginity [presumably bloodied sheets?] to the elders of the town, at the town gate. The girl's father shall say to the elders, "I gave my daughter in marriage to this man, and he has turned against her. He has trumped up a charge and said, 'I have not found proofs of virginity in your daughter.' Here are the proofs."

They shall then spread the garment before the elders of the town. The elders shall take the man and punish him: they shall fine him a undred pieces of silver because he has given a bad name to a virgin...., and hand them to the girl's father. She shall be his wife: he is not free to divorce her all his life long. If, on the other hand, the accusation is true and no proof of the girl's virginity is found, then they shall bring her out to the door of her father's house and the men of her town shall stone her to death. She has committed an outrage...by playing the prostitute in her father's house: you shall rid yourselves of this wickedness.

Deuteronomy Ch. 22, New English Bible 1971 at 220-21.

Here are some laws on rape, which---again in the context of the age---seem to make reasonable distinctions, though they may seem a bit hard on the girl who is attacked 'in the town' and gagged, or who is too injured or frightened to scream. Note that there is none of that liberal whinging about 'not blaming the victim.'

When a virgin is pledged in marriage to a man and another man comes upon her in the town and lies with her, you shall bring both of them out to the gate of that town and stone them to death; the girl because, although in the town, she did not cry out for help, and the man because he dishonoured another man's wife...

If the man comes upon such a girl in the country and rapes her, then the man alone shall die because he lay with her. You shall do nothing to the girl; she has done nothing worthy of death...for the man came upon her in the country and, though the girl cried for help, there was no one to rescue her.

Deuteronomy Ch. 22, New English Bible 1971 at 221.

At least if no one could hear you scream, they didn't stone you. And the stoning only applies to a girl who has been pledged to a man. If an un-pledged girl (and she's have to be awfully young, I believe) is raped, they don't get stoned; they get married "because he has dishonoured her."

When a man comes upon a virgin who is not pledged in marriage and forces her to lie with him, and they are discovered, then the man who lies with her shall gie the girl's father fifty pieces of silver, and she shall be his wife because he has dishonoured her. He is not free to divorce her all his life long.

Deuteronomy Ch. 22, New English Bible 1971 at 221.

On divorce:

When a man has married a wife, but she does not win his favour because he finds something shameful in her, and he writes her a note of divorce, gives it to her and sismisses her; and suppose after leaving his house she goes off to become the wife of another man, and this next husband turns against her and writes her a note of divorce which he gives her and dismisses her, or dies after making her his wife---then in that case her first husband is not free to take her back to be his wife again after she has become unclean. This is abominable to the Lord.

Deuteronomy Ch. 24, New English Bible 1971 at 222.

A law for widows:

When brothers live together and one of them dies without leaving a son, his widow shall not marry outside the family. Her husband's brother shall have intercourse with her; he shall take her in marriage and do his duty by her as her husband's brother. The first son she bears shall perpetuate the dead brother's name so that it may not be blotted out from Israel. But if the man is unwilling to take his brother's wife, she shall go to the elders at the town gate and say, "My husband's brother refuses to perpetuate his brother's name...He will not do his duty by me."

At this the elders of the town shall summon him and reason with him. If he still stands his ground and says, "I will not take her," his brother's widow shall go up to him in the presence of his elders; she shall pull his sandal off his foot and declare: "Thus we requite the man who will not build up his brother's family." His family shall be known...as the House of the Unsandalled Man.

Deuteronomy Ch. 25, New English Bible 1971 at 223-24.

I have to believe that the above is an exact transcription of an actual event which was subsequently written into law.

Here's one for the menfolk:

No man whose testicles are crushed or whose organ has been seered shall become a member of the assembly of the Lord.

Deuteronomy Ch. 23, New English Bible 1971 at 221.

Which no doubt explains this:

When two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes near to drag her husband clear of his opponent, if she puts out her hand and catches hold of the man's genitals, you shall cut off her hand and show her no mercy.

Deuteronomy Ch. 25, New English Bible 1971 at 219.

I have heard Right-wing Christians who say that the Old Testament---most particularly the declarations that homosexuality and transvestitism are abominations--- is fully binding because Jesus stated he came to fulfill the law of Moses.

So my question is this: what about all the rest of it?

RELATED POSTS:

Whited Sepulchres & the Odor of Sanctimony [progressive Christianity; Christianity v. “Christianism”]

The barbarians at our gates are us---The Duty of a Christian to Oppose the Death Penalty [progressive Christian; Christianity v. Christianism]

“Christianity” v. Christianity [Christianity v. Christianism]

Hijacking My Religion (Taking it Back from the Christian So-Called “Right”)

Hijacking My Religion Part 2 (Fighting Back Against the Christian Right): Why Secular Humanists Need Left-Leaning God-botherers like Me.

A Marginal Christian Looks at Corporal Punishment, Sexual Assault, Transvestitism, Divorce, and Crushed Testicles in the Old Testament.

Was Jesus Married to Mary Magdalene (Or Anyone)? Why this Heretic Thinks Not.

First Take that Plank Out of your Own Eye

Wed, 12 Jul 2006 14:17:48 GMT

Hi! I've moved to a new address. To jump to the updated version of this posting, please click here.

First take that plank out of your own eye.

A Marginal Christian looks at Leviticus on Sexual Sin Generally*; Matthew on adultery specifically; and what we can learn from Christ's encounters with two adulteresses.

* CAVEAT: I have only a rough idea of how the text is construed by modern-day Jews. This posting is an answer to Christians who use Leviticus as the ground for excluding homosexuals from the community or for denying them civil rights.

One of the most annoying aspects of "The Church of God Without Christ" is ignorance. Yes, ignorance. Most Christians---including or rather especially the leaders of the various sects----don't know and don't WANT to know the history of the church or really anything about its evolution.

Though they can quote scripture, and have a propensity to do so, they can only quote the bits that resonate for them (i.e., that confirm something they already want to believe). I've got family members who can bring the (apparently) apt quote, but if you start questioning them about the source, they have NO IDEA of the context or of how the quoted piece fits within the whole.

The chapters in the Bible that address the ancient laws provide a fascinating picture of life among the Israelites. You have to assume that if at least some of the people weren't engaged in the forbidden conduct, it wouldn't be necessary for God to forbid it.

Now there are Jews who keep to the ancient laws as well as they can; these people have the virtue of consistency and can be said to take the Old Testament literally.

But modern-day Protestant Christians like to go through and cherry-pick the ones that suit them and that they believe 'apply' to the current day. Then they will tell you that they take the Bible literally because it is the authentic word of God and that they take it literally. Oh really? Let's talk about what it would mean to apply Leviticus literally.

1. Sexual sin in Leviticus.

Time for some close reading. I'm going with the New English Bible because those who know better than me say it's more true to the original text. I'm going to take the word of the scholar who assured me that the New English Bible is more accurate, even though I recently saw a bumper stick that said---and this is so delightful---in golden letters upon a black background, "The King James Bible is the True Word of God." Heh.

According to the introduction to the New English Bible, the translation of the New Testament "was undertaken with the object of providing English readers...with a faithful rendering of the best available Greek text into the current speech of our own time, and a rendering which would harvest the recent gains of new scholarship." New English Bible (1971 ed.) Introduction to New Testament at v.

FYI, the New English Bible doesn't use the conventional verse numbers ("which in the New Testament date only from 1551 and have no basis in the manuscripts.") I've done the best I can to identify them correctly for those wedded to the KJB, but I can't warrant my citations.

Before I start, I am going to adopt the assumption of Christians everywhere that Christ's death was a sacrifice that somehow cancelled out the obligation of his followers to make ritual sacrifice as spelled out in Leviticus. I am going to focus on some of the other requirements of Leviticus.

Let's start with the much-touted and much-disputed passage from Leviticus banning homosexuality (between man and man) as an "abomination." Here is the translation set forth in the New English Bible. It is unequivocal. I cannot deny it. It comes from the chapter called 'the law of holiness' and it says:

You shall not lie with a man as with a woman; that is an abomination.

Leviticus, Chapter 18, New English Bible Leviticus (1971 ed.) at 130.

Furthermore, the punishment for this abomination is death.

If a man has intercourse with a man as with a woman, they both commit an abomination. They shall be put to death; their blood shall be upon their own heads.

Harsh, eh? But let's not focus too closely on this loophole-free injunction to the ancient Hebrews. There's lots more:

You shall revere, every man of you, his mother and his father. Leviticus, Chapter 19, NEB (1971 ed) at 130-31,

When any man reviles his father and his mother, he shall be put to death. He has reviled his fathyer and his mother; his blood shall be upon his own head.

Leviticus Chapter 20, NEB (1971 ed.) at 132.

I'm not sure, exactly, how 'reviling' differs from 'failing to revere.' Doubtless there is a distinction, but what? I remember as a child hearing one of the more conspicuous Christians of my acquaintance referring to her mom as "stupid," "useless," a "bitch," and "insane." Did I miss a chance for some serious smiting?

Anyway, let's move on. What other acts carried the same or worse penalties to homosexuality (specifically homosexual acts between guys; seems as if there is a little loophole there for lesbians)?

If a man commits adultery with his neighbour's wife, both adulterer and adulteress shall be put to death.

The man who has intercourse with his father's wife [presumably a step-mother] has brought shame on his father. They shall both be put to death; their blood shall be on their own heads.

If a man has intercourse with his daughter-in-law, they shall both be put to death. Their deed is a violation of nature; their blood shall be on their own heads.

If a man takes both a woman and her mother, that is lewdness. Both he and they shall be burnt; thus there shall be no lewdness in your midst.

A man who has sexual intercourse with any beast shall be put to death, and you shall kill the beast. If a woman approaches any animal to have sex with it, you shall kill both woman and beast. They shall be put to death; their blood shall be on their own heads.

Leviticus Chapter 20 (New English Bible 1971 ed.) at 132.

Note that all of the above are framed here as equal crimes. Adultery, certain forms of incest, bestiality, 'lewdness', homesexuality all carried the death penalty. Adulterers received the same treatment as homosexuals or those whose sexuality took a more bizarre turn. (Do I have to remind you of Jesus's gloss on the prohibition of adultery, by the way, or his broad definition of adultery and fornication?)

My point, of course, is that it doesn't make sense to treat homosexuality differently from other sex sins. Or does it? Let's read some more.

There is a set of sexual offenses that I initially thought didn't carry the death penalty; instead the offenders are proscribed (or at least that's what I assume the text means by the phrase 'cut off from their people').

If a man takes his sister, his father's daughter or his mother's daughter, and they see one another naked, it is a scandalous disgrace. They shall be cut off in the presence of their people. The man has had intercourse with his sister and he shall accept responsibility.

If a man lies with a woman during her monthly period and brings shame upon her, he has exposed her discharge, and she has uncovered the course of her discharge; they shall both be cut off from their people.

[But see Leviticus Chapter 15, which seems to contradict this. In discussing a woman with a 'discharge of blood,' it says, "If a man goes so far as to have intercourse with her and any of her discharge gets on to him, then he shall be unclean for seven days, and every bed on which he lies down shall be unclean.' At first I thought 'discharge of blood' must mean 'bleeding other than menstrual bleeding,' but the next set of verses deal with 'a prolonged discharge of blood not at the time of her menstruation, or whe her discharge continues beyond the period of menstruation', so I can't really work out what the rule is from this or the One True Text in the King James version. Leviticus Chapter 15, New English Bible (1971 ed. 1971) at 126-27.]

The reason I am confused about the intended penalty for the preceding offenses is that the subsequent text identifies a further death penalty text. My version states that if a man has sex with his uncle's wife, "they shall accept responsibility for their sin and shall be proscribed AND put to death."

Perhaps the uncle has special status that makes the level of sin different. The immediately preceding sentence says merely that if a man has sex with an aunt on either side, "they shall accept responsibility." I hate that phrase in any context because it is so ambiguous. It could mean 'apologize'---though that's not really what Leviticus is about---or it could mean 'be proscribed' or 'put to death,' or all of the above. It's ambiguous. I don't see why it's worse to sleep with your aunt-in-law than an aunt to whom you're related by blood, but maybe it made sense to the Hebrews.

The last item in the list is the prohibition against a man taking 'his brother's wife. [I]t is impurity. he has brought shame upon his brother; they shall be proscribed." Since it immediately follows the sentence stating that the death penalty applies to a man (and his uncle's wife) if they sleep together, I guess it didn't apply to any of these?

Anyway, here's my point: The text of Leviticus identifies a number of sexual sins, of which homosexuality is only one and definitely not the only one that carried the death penalty; the same applied to adultery.

I guess I am not sure why Christians of my acquaintance everywhere, many divorced and remarried, think that the text applies to gay men (note that there is an apparent loophole for lesbians) but not to them. The text of Leviticus seems to treat them as much of a muchness.

Jesus talked a great deal about divorce and unequivocally states that a divorced person who remarries commits fornication. Refer to Matthew.

The Pharisees came and tested him by asking, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife on any and every ground?"... [Jesus replies]: "What God has joined togther, man must not separate." "Why then," they objected, "did Moses lay it down that a man might divorce his wife by note of dismissal?" he answered, "It was because your minds were closed that Moses gave you permission to divorce your wives; but it was not like that when all began. I tell you, if a man divorces his wife for any cause other than unchastity, and marries another, he commits adultery.

The disciples said to him, "If that is the position with husband and wife, it is better not to marry." To this he replied, "That is something which not everyone can accept, but only those for whom God has appointed it. For while some are incapable of marriage because they were born so, or were made so by men, there aer others who have themselves renounced marriage for the sake of the kingdom of Heaven. Let those accept it who can."

Matthew, New English Bible (1971 ed.) at 27.

He has more to say on the subject in The Sermon on the Mount.

"You have learned that they [the Hebrews] were told, "Do not commit adultery." But I tell you this: If a man looks on a woman with a lustful eye, he has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

"If your right eye is your undoing, tear it out and fling it away; it is better for you to lose one part of your body than for the whole of it to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand is your undoing, cut it off and fling it away; it is better for you to lose one part of your body than for the whole of it to go to hell.

"They [the Hebrews] were told, "A man who divorces his wife must give her a note of dismissal." But what I tell you is this: If a man divorces his wife for any cause other than unchastity he inolves her in adultery; and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery."

Matthew, New English Bible (1971 ed.) at 8.

Pretty unequivocal, I'd say. Which takes us back to Leviticus.

Leviticus prescribed death for certain sins, including (BUT NOT LIMITED TO) adultery. We don't have any sayings of Jesus about other sins---presumably the issue just didn't come up----but we can see how he dealt with adulterers (i.e., the sinners, rather than the sin).

2. Jesus and the adulterous women.

Both scenes involve adulterous women. I'm very fond of both Biblical gals. The scenes give a picture of Jesus actually interacting with individuals other than the disciples. They provide some local color. They also show Jesus blithely violating some of the most closely held precepts of his community and freely associating with people he should not have been talking to.

In John is the charming scene where, while passing through Samaria, land of the despised Samaritans, he becomes 'tired after his journey' and sits down by a well to take a breather while the disciples go into the town of Sychar to buy food. The dialogue is from the text of the New English Bible. The interpolations are my own.

Along comes a Samaritan woman to draw water from the well. "Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink." Now--not knowing him from Adam (heh)--- I'd have said, "Magic word!?", but she said (according to my text) "What! You, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a Samaritan woman? Jews and Samaritans...do not use vessels in common (or 'are not on familiar terms with Samaritans)."

"Jesus answered her, "If only you knew what God gives, and who it is that is asking you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water."

"Sir," the woman said, "you have no bucket and this well is deep. How can you give me 'living water'? Are you a greater man than Jacob our ancestor, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, he and his sons, and his cattle too?""

I like to think that she said it flirtatiously, taking the whole thing as a first century attempt to chat her up. Come on, it totally works as a double entendre. No? If you know better, don't tell me; I enjoy my personal vision too much.

Jesus said, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water that I shall give him will never suffer thirst any more. The water that I shall give him will be an inner spring always welling up for eternal life."

"Sir," said the woman, "give me that water, and then I shall not be thirsty, nor come all this way to draw.""

Again, I like to think that she said it with wink and a coy smile. Because, as we see in the next line, she was that sort.

Anyway, Jesus is having none of it. He says, "Go home, call your husband and come back."

In my private imagining of this scene, she still doesn't get it. "I have no husband," she simpers.

I like to imagine that he said the next part with a slight smile and in a mild tone; we know he liked women and got on well with them. "You are right," he agrees, "in saying that you have no husband, for, although have had five husbands, the man with whom you are now living is not your husband; you told me the truth there." Note that he simply states the facts without sanctimonious moralizing.

Stunned, the woman says, "You are a prophet!" In my version of this conversation, she says the next thing because she's shaken and to divert the discussion to him. "Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you Jews say that the temple where God should be worshipped is in Jerusalem." I sometimes read it as a half-hearted, i.e., "Oh, what do you know about right and wrong; you think God should be worshipped in Jerusalem!" You know, to cover her own chagrin. I picture her turning away rather indignantly and picking up her jar to leave.

But then Jesus says something that surprises her even more---or so I imagine; Jews, as noted, seem to have thought the Samaritans no better than dogs---and she probably wasn't used to discussing theology with strange men, particularly Jewish ones.

Believe me, the time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship without knowing what you worship, while we worship what we know. It is from the Jews that salvation comes. but the time approaches, incdeed it is already here, when those who are real worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. Such are the worshippers whom the Father wants. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.

The woman answers---I think with a slight defensive edge?--- "I know that Messiah is coming. When he comes he will tell us everything." (Again, emphasis mine!)

And Jesus says, "I am he, who am speaking to you now."

At this juncture the disciples arrive, considerably astonished to find him talking with a woman, and a Samaritan woman at that. But they knew better than to object. The text says, "none of them said, 'What do you want?' or, 'Why are you talking with her?' [emphasis mine].

But they are not as astonished as this unnamed woman. The woman puts down her water-jar and goes straight back to the town where she tells everyone she has met the Messiah. The townspeople come out to greet Jesus and---the text tells us---because of the woman's testimony: 'He told me everything I ever did.'

And according to the text---because OF COURSE these men wouldn't have wanted to give ultimate credit for a revelation to a WOMAN-- many more became believers "because of what they heard from his own lips." They told the woman, "It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard him ourselves; and we know that this is in truth the savior of the World." He stayed two days---two days!---with them. [It may have become the basis for a later attack by the priests and scribes. Subsequently, his opponents challenge him by asking, "Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan....?" John Chapter 8, New English Bible (1971 ed.) at 123.]

But my favorite Jesus-meets-the-public story is the one about the woman caught in adultery. According to the New English Bible, this story actually appears in different places in various versions of this Gospel and not at all in others. Sigh. I choose to believe it happened because of the very specific details that John---of whom I am otherwise not overly fond, despite the Gnostic overtones, because of the pervasive anti-Semitism---is always so good about providing. The Gospel of John is full of strange details and local color. For example:

Here's the NEB version of the woman taken in adultery, based on the 'best Greek texts.'

Jesus shows up in the temple and sits down to teach a crowd of his followers. Some of the lawyers and pharisees bring a woman to him.

Making her stand out in the middle, they said to him, "Master, this woman was caught in the very act of adultery. In the Law Moses has laid down that such women are to be stoned. What do you say about it?"

They put the question as a test, hoping to frame a charge against her.

Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger in the ground (a wonderful detail). When they continued to press their question he sat up straight. "That one of you who is faultless shall throw the first stone."

[The subsequent text makes it clear that he then stoops down and starts scratching on the ground again---which is the part I like best.]

When they heard what he said, one by one they went away, the eldest first; and Jesus was left alone, with the woman standing there.

Jesus again sits up. He says to the woman, "Where are they? Has no one condemned you?"

She says, "No one, sir."

Jesus said, "Nor do I condemn you. You may go; do not sin again."

New English Bible at 143 (1971 ed.)

I love to imagine the lawyers and priests slowly laying down their self-righteousness and walking away.

One of my friends who reads Greek says that the original text actually ought to read, "That one among you who is without that sin [adultery] shall cast the first stone." Which would be even better.

Without looking at what it all meant, let's consider what he actually did. In the story of the Samaritan woman at the well, let the woman know that he knew the story, but other than his summary of the facts, the Gospel doesn't show him rebuking her personally, even though she's a MAJOR sexual sinner. Furthermore---knowing all that and knowing she's a Samaritan----he asks her to let him have a drink of water. (The gospel doesn't tell us whether he ever got that drink or whether this was just a conversational ice-breaker.) It does provide us with an example of how Jesus dealt with actual sexual sinners; and it shows that he considered such a person to be a worthy instrument for spreading the word to her people.

In the story of the woman taken in adultery, he doesn't rebuke anyone directly; the lawyers and priests take care of that for themselves. All he says to the woman is "Don't do it again." Note the absence of pontificating, bloviating, or humiliating.

3. Are adulterers less sinful than homosexuals?

Some of the most annoyingly sanctimonious Christianists of my acquaintance are divorced. We know Jesus's general position on the question of adultery and that he defined it broadly.

We know that after stating his position, he continued to be gentle in his handling of individual sinners (aside from the priests and lawyers, that is---to them he was almost unfailingly rude.)

Knowing what we know about his dealings with these adulterours women, what can we learn about those we believe----on the strength of ancient Jewish law we don't otherwise follow----to be sexual sinners?

To know what Jesus requires, surely you have to look at what he did. Those he attacked were PRECISEY those who set them up as the godly vessels of righteousness, who prayed loudly and publicly, and who presumed to judge and punish sin in the name of the Lord.

I CANNOT understand how there is even a SCRAP of an argument based on Christianity for excluding homosexuals, denying them civil rights, or otherwise treating them as sinners of a different class than ordinary sinners (including heart-lusters and adulterers).

I have NEVER heard a credible argument produced in support of this position. I believe that it is grounded in misanthropy and a basic hatred of humanity and the impulses to which it is subject. It is clear that in the time of Leviticus there were men disposed to have sex with other men; otherwise, no law would have been needed. That law is unambiguously phrased, at least from the standpoint of any Christian prepared to rely on Leviticus.

But I will not accept Leviticus as a rational basis for the mistreatment of homosexuals (including the denial of their civil rights) by anyone who doesn't follow its OTHER many requirements, including those relating to nasty-looking skin lesions that may or may not be leprous or for cleaning up after a little horizontal jogging or for dealing with the byproducts of mentruation. E.g., the laws of purifications and atonement:

When a man has emitted semen, he shall bathe is whole body in water and be unclean till evening. Every piece of clothing or skin on which there is any semen shall be washed and remain unclean till evening. This applies also to the woman with whom a man has had intercourse; they shall both bathe themselves in water and remain unclean till evening.

When a woman has a discharge of blood, her impurity shall last for seven days; anyone who touches her shall be unclean till evening. Everything on which she sits or lies during her impurity shall be unclean. Anyone who touches her bed shall wash his clothes, bathe in water and remain unclean till evening. If he is on the bed or seat where she is sitting, by touching it he shall become unclean till evening. If a man goes so far as to have intercourse with her [note that this is subsequently forbidden, as noted above] and any of her discharge gets on to him, then he shall be unclean for seven days, and every bed on which he lies down shall be unclean.

When a woman has a prolonged discharge of blood not at the time of her menstruation, or when her discharge continues beyond the period of menstruation, her impurity shall last all the time of her discharge; she shall be unclean as during the period of her menstruation. Any bed on which she lies during the time of her discharge shall be like that which she used during menstruation, and everything on which she sits shall be uncloean as in her menstrual uncleanness. Every person who touches them shall be unclean; he shall wash his clothes, bathe in water and remain unclean till evening. If she is cleansed from her discharge she shall reckon seven days and after that she shall be ritually clean.

Leviticus, chapter 15, New English Bible (1971 ed.) at 126-27.

I won't listen to a word from anyone who does not follow THIS requirement as well:

You shall rise in the presence of grey hairs, give honour to the aged, and fear your God.

Leviticus, Chapter 19, NEB (1971 ed) at 132.

Or THIS one:

You shall revere, every man of you, his mother and his father. Leviticus, Chapter 19, NEB (1971 ed) at 130-31,

I'm not seeing a lot of rigorous adherence to the less sexy of the commandments or the law among conventional so-called Christians.

And until I do, I am not listening to or BELIEVING a WORD about the binding force of ancient Jewish law or Leviticus on contemporary Christians. Yes, I know he said that he didn't come to destroy the law but to fulfill it, but---judging by other things he said and did----he didn't mean by that what Christianists wish for him to mean either.

Also, yes: I know he said that the devil can quote scripture for his own purposes; but since the other side quote Scripture with far greater assurance, how do they know he wasn't speaking about them? They seem to think that affirming their belief is sufficient to ensure their righteousness, but as I recall he was VERY clear that those who say "I believe, I believe" aren't truly part of the posse unless they also understand what he meant and behave accordingly. It is quite, quite clear that the people he identified as most UNrighteous were those who were absolutely certain that they were the most righteous. They were, in fact, the wealthy and law-abiding people who assumed that as long as they were following all the rules, they were okay. But he clearly wanted no part of those who flaunted their orthodoxy, superior righteousness, and knowledge of the law.

"The letter kills; the spirit gives life. You will love the Lord with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind; and you will love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and all the Prophets."

Christians hellbent on judging and oppressing their neighbors would do well to consider Christ's broader message. It's not the business of a Christian to determine the worth/righteousness of another human being. If he wasn't clear about everything he said, he was absolutely clear about that.

I realize that many people who had adulterous fun, divorced, are happily remarried and have been faithful to their spouses ever sense believe that they are excused because Christ has redeemed and forgiven their sins, whereas practicing homosexuals can't be forgiven as long as they carry on being homosexuals. But should our formerly adulterous-not-continent fellow Christians feel quite so smugly superior? Are any of us really in a position to judge---or reform---the sins of our fellow Christians?

I think not.

Here endeth the Heretic's epistle.

RELATED POSTS:

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The Morning After Pill: Easier to Legislate than to Persuade

The barbarians at our gates are us---The Duty of a Christian to Oppose the Death Penalty [progressive Christian; Christianity v. Christianism]

“Christianity” v. Christianity [Christianity v. Christianism]

Hijacking My Religion (Taking it Back from the Christian So-Called “Right”)

Hijacking My Religion Part 2 (Fighting Back Against the Christian Right): Why Secular Humanists Need Left-Leaning God-botherers like Me.

A Marginal Christian Looks at Corporal Punishment, Sexual Assault, Transvestitism, Divorce, and Crushed Testicles in the Old Testament.

Crime and Punishment: Children’s Edition

Was Jesus Married to Mary Magdalene (Or Anyone)? Why this Heretic Thinks Not.

A Marginal Christian Looks at Corporal Punishment, Sexual Assault, Transvestitism, Divorce, and Crushed Testicles in the Old Testament.

The Marginal Christian's Reading List

Mon, 10 Jul 2006 15:52:39 GMT

Hi! I've changed addresses. To jump to the updated version of this posting, please click here.

The Marginal Christian's Reading List

The Jesus Papers, The Jesus Dynasty, The Gnostic Gospels, and what I learned from them.

I am not a stupid or a credulous person. I hold certain beliefs that those (like my husband and my friend Rumcove) who are invested in their own skepticism would reject as improbable on the ground that there is no evidence for them and that they contradict experience (meaning the experience of my husband and Rumcove).

1. Growing Up Christianish.

I studied physics in college as well as philosophy. I understand the history of science, which had its roots in alchemy and magic. Because I had good teachers, I know that sensory perception is an exceedingly poor test for its own reality. I have willfully made certain choices about what to believe about reality (meaning the real reality, that underlies what I perceive).

One way in which I have deparated from my Bible Belt upbringing is in rejecting received wisdom. When I was first told the Jesus story, I believed it. I also believed in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy. Later, when I had more information about the world, I let go of these beliefs one by one, based on my assessment of their probability (which was based on my observation of the world). Jesus was the last to go. In one sense, this was because I didn't feel quite so directly affected by Jesus. The gifts he would presumably provide weren't things I understood or particularly wished to procure.

Fortunately, I was brought up Episcopalian. In the early 1970's it was a relatively liberal church----relative to, say, Southern Baptists, Methodists, Roman Catholics, AME, the Church of God, and Presbyterians, which were the only churches I knew of as a child. We were taught about the Bible, but we weren't indoctrinated, and later on, we had a course in world religions. I remember a Sunday school teacher I still remember fondly saying to me, "God takes you where he finds you." In other words, if you're born in India, God----WE were taught that it was the same God----would be happy for you to be a Hindu. The priest who confirmed me seemed to agree with this proposition; or at least he never contradicted it.

In other words, I was brought up to look at Jesus differently. He wasn't the ONLY path to God (and I was very startled when I found out that most of the people I was in school with thought differently); he was A path; and it was the path most deeply embedded in my own culture. My priest said: "If you've never had doubts about your faith, then you haven't thought about it." I never forgot either of these lessons.

In the place where I lived, the various Protestant churches were tolerant (though sometimes grudgingly) of one another, though not of agnosticism. We had regular morning prayers in school, with a reading from the Bible. No one objected; I don't think it would have occurred to any of us to object. To me, it didn't matter what they said, since none of it had much to do with my personal beliefs about the church.

My Southern Baptist cousins worried that I was going to Hell (or perhaps they were gloating; it was usually pretty hard to tell the difference). Several of my classmates told me to my face: "You are going to Hell." When I refused to sit through an Easter assembly, the principal at first threatened to put me in detention, but I am pretty sure my father (something of a force in that little town) talked him out of it. The reason I refused to sit through Easter assembly was that the horrible evangelical type on the stage started mocking Catholics, which I believed to be unfair.

All along, I sang every week in the church choir. I particularly liked the musical component of the service; I loved all of the canticles; I loved plainsong and ancient songs such as "O Come O Come Emmanuel" and "Lo now he comes with clouds descending."

When Jesus Christ Superstar appeared on my personal horizon, I was wildly excited. That musical presented a view of Christ and the apostles that made sense to me.

2. The Superstar Epiphany.

I used to worry a lot about Judas. If he was so bad, how had Jesus chosen him to be one of his followers? If Jesus was God---if; I wasn't sure what I thought of that----how had he made such an egregious error? If it wasn't an error and he had chosen Judas intentionally because he was a bad man, how had the other apostles failed to notice it? In Superstar (and I'm no Lloyd Weber fan, but I still love JCS), Judas is frightened by the attention Jesus is receiving; the movements become too large and the Romans are bound to notice. In the meantime, Simon the Zealot is pushing Jesus to throw down the gauntlet and the Sanhedrin, like Judas, are worrying that the Romans will punish all of the Jews if they become aware of Christ's following.

I liked the story because it humanized these storybook characters whose actions otherwise made no sense to me. Though I had a not-too-bad church school education, I hadn't been taught much about the political and historic context in which Jesus operated. I had only the vaguest understanding that Judea was occupied territory, that Galilee was a hotbed of anti-Roman activisim, and that the Romans regularly arrested and crucified those who actively challenged Roman authority. In my mind, the Jesus story happened in a world apart from history. The sudden brutal intrusion of the Romans into the soft green hills of my imagined Judea had never made much sense to me; and I believed, because that's what John says, that 'the Jews' had suddenly-- for no apparent reason----turned on Jesus and persuaded the Romans to crucify him.

I'm pretty sure that many contemporary Christians haven't got much further than this in their imagination of the events of Christ's life. They can quote tags from the gospels and what their ministers have told them the tags mean. They can tell you the events from the New Testaments, but they garble them altogether. They don't notice or if they do they don't care that the details of the Christmas story are not the same (or are ignored altogether) and that the relationship of Christ with John the Baptist is completely different depending on which gospel you believe.

I loved Superstar because it purported to set Christ in a historical context and portrayed him as someone in the process of making some very hard choices. I also liked the portrayal of Judas as a frightened and angry man. A lot of the Christians I knew---most of them---proclaimed it blasphemous.

I no longer believe the JCS gospel, but it helped me to realize how absolutely fascinated I was at some level with the man Jesus. I maintained this interest through most of my life, even during the long period when I lost interest in Christianity.

Much later in life, I began to read everything I could find about the life of Jesus and the Crucifixion. I was fascinated even though I didn't believe anymore that he was God or that he rose from the dead on the third day. I read The Passover Plot, The Essene Odyssey, The Foreigner, Jesus the Man, Holy Blood Holy Grail, and some very thick volumes that bored me to tears but which I had the merit of qualifying as actual 'history.'

3. Questions, Questions, Questions.

I learned from my reading that history books concerning Jesus---by which I mean History, in the academic and scholarly sense----couldn't tell me what I wanted to know: What was he like? What was it like for him? What did the people really believe about him? Why did they turn against him after hailing him in his triumphal entry into the city on the back of a donkey? What suddenly changed? Why did Judas betray him?

Also: WHAT WAS HE DOING IN BETWEEN THE FEW INCIDENTS THAT THE GOSPELS COLLECTIVELY RECORD? What did he say to the Apostles the rest of the time? I never bought the whole 'divinely inspired by God' crap about the gospels, if 'divinely inspired' meant I had to believe every word, because (unlike a lot of my friends) I actually READ the Gospels and knew they were riddled with inconsistencies. I was also extremely confused by the Gospel of John, which seemed to be talking about principles and beliefs the other gospels barely touched upon.

Later when I found out the history of the Gospels and the Q manuscript, how and when the synoptics and John were selected for inclusion in the "New Testament," how many others were rejected at the time (and why), I finally understood why the story had never jelled for me. That's when I started looking for books by people who had the same questions and concerns I had. I wanted to see what other people thought might have happened.

Most of the books that have interested me aren't history. They are imaginative speculation, think pieces, arguments, educated guesses. Which is exactly why---like the 'story' in Jesus Christ Superstar, based on John's Gospel----they were useful to me. They offered various frameworks in which I could set the disconnected and inconsistent fragments I knew about the life of Jesus. Each book reframed him differently.

Was he a Nasorean, an Essene, a member of the Therapeutae, a Zealot, the inventor of a new brand of Judaism, a follower of the Baptist, or the founder of an entirely new school of religious thought? Had he grown up in the Jewish communities of Alexandria, as Professor Morton Smith and The Jesus Papers speculate? Did his brand of Jewishness incorporate elements of Egyptian mystery religions?

Was he the actual king of the Jews (the legitimate claimant to the throne) or simply one of many who claimed to have the requisite lineage to become the Messiah? Did he intend to be crucified in order to carry out the prophecy or was his arrest the product of a betrayal by his inner circle? When he rode into Jerusalem on the donkey---an in-your-face gesture from the Roman standpoint if ever there was one--what was he expecting?

Why was he so unkind to the scribes and pharisees? Why were the---and the high priest---so nasty to him?

Who were these people: Lazarus, Mary and Martha of Bethany, Mary Magdalene, Joseph of Arimathea, Simon the Cyrene, and the young man dressed in linen who was in the garden with him when he was arrested and who high-tailed it over the horizon?

Who were the people who were always following him around? Were they the same ones who demanded that Pilate crucified him or where there rival factions?

Why was he always hanging out at the house in Bethany? If he was so fond of the Bethany family, why didn't he rush back when his disciples told him Lazarus was dead? Didn't he care about Mary and Martha?

Why was he 'without honor in his own country,' Galilee? ("Um, isn't that the carpenter?") How did he escape from the synagogue after the people started to stone him?

If he wasn't married, why wasn't he? Where was Joseph at the time Jesus was crucified? Had he died? Was he perhaps divorced from Mary (this was an idea I came up with when I read Jesus's exhortation about divorce).

Was Jesus crucified on Calgary or somewhere more private? Who were the two 'lestai' crucified with him?

Why did he die (or pass out?) after they gave him the sponge? (I always thought that was a bit dodgy; it's my understanding that Crucifixion usually took at least a couple of days).

And ON and ON AND ON. Believe me, the miracles, including the Resurrection from the Dead, were the LEAST of my concerns.

I wanted more details. Why did people criticize him for being a wine-bibber and a glutton? Who was married at Cana (I don't necessarily buy the 'married-to-the-magdalene' story, but even if I did, the Cana wedding could have been a relative?

This is why I read whatever books I can find on this non-historical, non-binding, purely speculative 'alternative Christianity'. I KNOW they are not the truth, but I also know that I am never in this lifetime going to know the truth (in the sense of "a true picture of Jesus's life.')

The storybook Jesus of my childhood, the Jesus who couldn't be questioned, the entranced and transported Jesus of da Vinci's last supper----that Jesus has never interested me. In my part of the world there is a dreadful/very beautiful (depending on your taste) old song called "And He Walks with Me and He Talks with Me." I was never in the least interested in walking with or talking with the Jesus introduced to me as a child. He was boring, cryptic, unfathomable, UNREAL.

But at some point (after 40) I became ever more fascinated with the elusive real Jesus who is always just disappearing round a corner at the moment I think I will finally catch a glimpse of the real authentic man. Is that wrong? I'll answer myself. No. It is not wrong.

4. Laura Miller's review at Salon.com.

Which as far as I'm concerned is exactly where Laura Miller's review of The Jesus Papers at Salon.com misses the point.

[quote from Miller's review, Jesus: The Cover Up, begins]

Nevertheless, the most intriguing discovery to be found in "The Jesus Papers" will probably only interest those of us who pursue the odd and somewhat pitiful hobby of crank-watching; it's finally clear from reading this book that it was Baigent -- rather than co-authors Leigh and Henry Lincoln -- who actually wrote "Holy Blood, Holy Grail." The voice, which grows more and more authoritative in tone as the foundations of its arguments dissolve into piffle, is unmistakable. Baigent's co-authors may have supplied the research and quite possibly the underlying structure of "Grail"; this book offers little fresh information and is badly muddled. But the style of "The Jesus Papers," a masterly counterpoint of bluster, false humility and self-righteousness, matches that of "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" like a fingerprint.

And what a style it is; Baigent helped make "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" one of the masterworks of paranoid pseudohistory, along with, say, "Chariots of the Gods." In ambition and organization, "The Jesus Papers" can't hold a candle to "Grail," but because it's a less seamlessly constructed edifice of bunkum, it gives you a clearer picture of how Baigent et al. managed to hoodwink millions of readers. Since writing "Grail," Baigent has borrowed a few crowd-pleasing, thriller-style tricks from Brown, but he's not as gifted a panderer, and he never seems as comfortable when he's trying to entertain you as when he's doing what he does best: pretending -- magnificently -- that he actually knows what he's talking about. ...

The New Testament gospels are based on oral traditions. Anyone who's ever played the child's game Telephone knows how easily words can be distorted as they're passed along from one person to another -- even when the people are all sitting in the same room on the same day, let alone when they're handed down over decades or more by individuals who are advocating religious agendas. Even in a thoroughly documented, highly literate era like our own, information gets distorted and distortions become conventional wisdom.

[quote from Miller review ends]

For what it's worth, the theory that Baigeant propounds in The Jesus Papers certainly evidences a few glaring flaws. There are many absurd logical jumps, fallacies, holes. As Miller notes, he says very little that is new. I agree that it would have been better if he had made the point, as he and his co-authors frequently do in Holy Blood Holy Grail, that his work is mainly speculative. His book is not history and his arguments often do seem to jump over big gaps. It's next door to fiction. I don't care.

I won't get into the question of whether books of this sort are detrimental to those too stupid or credulous to separate truth from speculation. Miller seems to assume that this category includes most people, including me.

The author Umberto Eco makes much more effective fun of books such as Holy Blood Holy Grail in the amazing and endlessly entertaining Foucault's Pendulum. Indeed, the entire story concerns the evolution of just such a constructed view of history and reality (and the seductive and dangerous power of such constructs.)

I found Baigent's book interesting and entertaining because it suggests that there might be other ways of looking at the life and mission of Jesus and the scriptures. Christian 0rthodoxy says that Christians are not permitted to look at either in other ways. The Jesus Papers, whatever its absurdities, is an alternative view. It can't answer my questions but it can broaden and enhance my view of the possibilities.

I found the review incredibly patronizing. Furthermore, it's dangerous work to call someone else illogical and inconsistent and to point out the gaps in their reasoning. Unless you're Thomas Aquinas (who, however, reasonable turned out to be wrong in many respects) your reasoning on matters of history and religion is likely to have gaps. Here's one in the article:

[quote from Miller's review, Jesus: The Cover Up, begins]

Likewise, Baigent finds the passage in Mark in which Joseph of Arimathea asks Pilate for Jesus' body to be very suggestive. In "the original Greek text," he reports, Joseph uses the term "soma" for the body, while Pilate refers to it as the "ptoma." Baigent claims that while "ptoma" always refers to a corpse, the word "soma" "denotes a living body," and thus, "Jesus' survival is revealed right there in the actual Gospel account." But this just isn't true. While "ptoma" does refer to a corpse, "soma," like the English word "body," can describe a person either living or dead. Why this difference is an issue is even more baffling, since according to passages elsewhere in his maddeningly inconsistent book, Baigent thinks that Pilate was in on the conspiracy to save Jesus!

[quote from Miller's review ends]

Actually, Baigent raises the question of whether Pilate might have been 'in on the conspiracy'. From what I've read of the Procurator of Judea, he was quite corrupt and might have been open to a bribe, and I think on the whole it was unlikely: scourging someone was no joke and might have been enough on its own to kill someone through blood poisoning, shock, etc.

But he definitely does state that 'soma' means 'denotes a living body'. The thing is, Miller's explanation simply raises further interesting questions. Why did the writer of the gospel have Joseph asking for 'the dead or living body' and Pilate replying "You can have his dead body"? I don't think the text proves anything one way or another but the discrepancy in the Greek is interesting. Somewhere along the way, someone chose to make a distinction, meaning that someone along the way thought that the distinction was significant in some way. In what way? We'll never know, because we will never know who wrote that particular text in that particular way and if we did, we couldn't ask. It raises some interesting questions and answers none of them.

But the discrepancy is interesting, just as the theory that Christ might have been brought up in Egypt is interesting. Did his teachings, and particularly the teachings reported in the rejected and disputed so-called "gnostic gospels", derive from Egyptian mystery religions? Baigent proves nothing, but his discussion of the Egyptians and the practice of 'incubation' might---just possibly---shed some light on the story of Lazarus (including Christ's blitheness when first informed of the young man's death).

As for the possibility that we may yet live to see the discovery of further evidence of Christ's life, is that really so far-fetched? Consider the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gnostic gospels. I don't buy into the notion of the Vatican as suppresser-of-inconvenient evidence at this point in history---it would be rude to too many of my Catholic friends----but certainly I believe that there have been times in the past (I won't say which times) when the Church would have been fully prepared to quash or destroy inconvenient evidence of this, that, and the other concerning Christ's life. I don't think you have to be a conspiracy theorist to concede this possibility so much as slightly versed in history.

5. The Church of Tabor vs. the Church of Baigent: Away with the heretic!

Miller's decrying of Baigent seems intended to support her subsequent elevation of James Tabor, author of The Jesus Dynasty: The Hidden History of Jesus, His Royal Family, and the Birth of Christianity. And I agree that it is well-argued and fascinating.

I was amused that Miller proceeded to argue the 'facts' about Jesus, after her diatribe against The Jesus Papers. Tabor may have argued more effectively, but surely his views are based mainly on the same sources? His view is less speculative, but doesn't rule out the notion that Jesus may have been married (why in the world is that so hard for people to believe) or that he might have been taken down from the cross before he had finished dying.

I agree, I fully agree, that Tabor makes a fairly plausible argument. Amusingly, Miller then launches into a rather dogmatic assertion of the facts according to The Gospel According to Tabor. I'm quoting a substantial portion because my objective is to illustrate how even discussion of books about Jesus take a sectarian tone. Furthermore, it shows how it's impossible to take a position without engaging in a fair amount of speculation.

[quote from Miller's review, Jesus: the Cover Up, begins]

Tabor is primarily interested in recovering the history of Jesus' immediate family -- his mother, four brothers and two sisters -- who, he maintains, played a far more important role in the young religious movement than is generally known. The exact configuration of Jesus' extended family is pretty hazy; Tabor suspects that an elderly Joseph married the teenage Mary when she was already pregnant by another man and then died a few years later, leaving Jesus at the head of a large family.

Jesus' brothers -- sons of Joseph or perhaps of Joseph's brother, who according to tradition was likely to have married Mary after Joseph's death -- took over the church in succession after Jesus' death. The eldest, James, stood for the continuation of the original identity of Jesus' movement. It was a profoundly Jewish, messianic sect that believed Jesus to be divinely inspired but not divine, that foresaw a coming "Kingdom of God" that was earthly rather than heavenly, that sought the restoration of Jewish self-rule in the form of a king descended from David, that did not view the celebration of the Eucharist as the symbolic consumption of Jesus' flesh and blood and that considered Jesus himself to be well and truly dead.

"There are two completely separate and distinct 'Christianities' embedded in the New Testament," Tabor writes. The version that triumphed -- Jesus as God in human form, born of the eternally virgin Mary, whose death mystically atoned for the sins of humankind, who rose from the dead and inaugurated a new covenant with God that superceded the necessity of following Jewish law -- is largely the creation of Paul. Tabor's mission with "The Jesus Dynasty" is to recover what he can of the vein of Christianity led by James, the one that "lost" and that eventually withered away.....

Eventually, Jesus and John became "full partners" in a movement that anticipated the overthrow of the corrupt civil and religious authorities in Israel and eventually the entire world. They heralded the establishment of a new age, in which the people would be ruled by two messiahs, a king descended from David (Jesus) and a high priest descended from Aaron (John), who would preside over the temple in Jerusalem. But John and Jesus didn't advocate armed revolution -- they believed, on the basis of their interpretation of passages in the Old Testament, that God would intervene and effect the change when the right moment arrived. Although Tabor describes their movement as "apocalyptic," he doesn't mean that they expected the end of the world, only its utter transformation.

Given this view, it's not surprising that Tabor considers John's execution by King Herod to be "the most disappointing and shocking event in Jesus' entire life." The loss seems to have inaugurated a new, darker vision of his own destiny in Jesus' mind. In the best section of "The Jesus Dynasty," Tabor imagines the last few days of Jesus' life. Although the story is familiar, as Tabor retells it, minus the supernatural elements and taking the very Jewish nature of Jesus himself into account, it becomes new and in its own way just as powerful.

Tabor's Jesus is a man who considers himself chosen by God and who reconciles himself to enduring terrible suffering before God's kingdom can be established. He deliberately provokes a Jewish religious establishment glutted on temple tributes, and the Roman authorities, known for their creatively sadistic execution methods. "He firmly believed that if he and his followers offered themselves up, placing their fate in God's hands," they could bring about the beginning of the new age, Tabor writes. Although, as Tabor admits, we can never know Jesus' inner thoughts, it's possible that even on the cross, "up until the last minutes, perhaps, Jesus believed that God would intervene and save his life, and openly manifest his Kingdom."

[quote from Miller's review ends (EMPHASIS ADDED)]

Note that she says, quite correctly, that Tabor's Jesus is Tabor's Jesus, just as Morton Smith's is Morton Smith's, Baigent's is Baigent's, Crossan's is Crossan's, Barbara Thiering's is Barbara Thiering's, Bultman's is Bultman's, and Pere Teilhard is Pere Teilhard's. The scholarship behind these versions varies substantially, but they are all working with the same scraps, rumors, allegations, hints, and references. Each portrait of Jesus varies according to which particular scraps the author found most persuasive, intriguing, affirming, curious.

Don't get me wrong; I like this book very much, but is Tabor really doing anything different from Baigent? Miller objects to the "Egyptian folderol," but is apparently prepared to buy into the Tabor version. Why? We know so little. And the 'history' we have is very unclear about the connection between Jesus and John and about the role of his family in his church. At any rate, the authors of Holy Blood Holy Grail (of which Miller is scathingly critical) certainly raised exactly these same points about Christ's mission and the divide between the Christianity of Paul and the Christianity of James.

Furthermore, I think there have been some very plausible arguments that Jesus's teachings represented a departure from contemporary Jewish orthodoxy. For further information, see the two volume treatise (four glorious inches of reading), A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus by John P. Meier. And by the way, if you want a detailed and scholarly discussion, this is the [2 volume] book you need.

My favorite book of this sort is Elaine Pagels' The Gnostic Gospels. The Jesus she presents there is the one I personally prefer to imagine. I've devoured her other books as well, but that is the one that I think delivers the biggest jolt. A lot of other works rely on it heavily.

What amuses me about this article is that Miller is basically setting up a couple of factions and then allying herself with the faction that fits in best with her own views. There is a sectarian tone to her advocacy of Tabor's view that just amuses the hell out of me.

What I want from those who have thought about such matters is more different colors of light, more speculation, more thought. I don't feel compelled to believe anyone's account, not excluding the unknown authors of the gospels. My goal is to come up with my own private version of Jesus and I will take all the input I can get.

LATER THE SAME DAY!

After reading this, Nick pulled out a tape he'd borrowed of The Unknown Jesus. The tape deals with recent archeaology, the New Jesus Seminar, and many (quote) "exciting new developments." Who opened the discussion? That's right, Michael Baigent. He said---if I understood him aright--- that the Jesus of faith/theology and the real Jesus were absolutely disconnected and that if you try to connect them, you get either bad faith or bad theology. Um....?

Anyway, it's a fascinating documentary; don't know how I missed it the first time around.

Was Jesus Married to Mary Magdalene (Or Anyone)? Why this Heretic Thinks Not.

Empathy as Charity

Mon, 19 Sep 2005 02:33:38 GMT

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There by the Grace of God Go Those Others [3]

Empathy--that pity that is akin to love.

If only it weren't so damn difficult.

Getting angry at the sight of another’s pain is the most natural response in the world. Why are we being forced to see it? What’s the good of our seeing it? What do they expect us to do about it? Isn't it obvious that there is nothing we can do about it?

Unabashed grief strikes us as embarrassing and unseemly---e.g., the widow or mother who abandons herself to emotion and howls with pain at the graveside. Our first response is to distance ourselves because what can you do or say or feel yourself in the face of it?

Even Christ got fed up and impatient being followed around by people who wanted him to fix their problems. If you can heal the sick, everyone is going to expect you to be at it all the hours there are and when are you going to have a minute to yourself, to think, to pray, to teach? Like the poor, the sick, maimed, and miserable are always with us.

I was so angry with my mother after my dad died. She just sat. I was there with her and she just sat in the chair staring ahead in the blank way people in pain do, as if they are looking at a wall a few inches away that is between you and them. I wanted to break through it, so I yelled at her. I wanted her to remember me and to care about me. I remember how listlessly she glanced up at me; it was with the expression of a mortally injured animal---uncomprehending grief, pain, and terror. Her misery was something she couldn’t articulate or share. I was sad, but she was shattered. Later, when my own husband died, and nobody wanted to hear or see too much of my pain, I remembered this and tried not to feel too abandoned or judgmental.

I didn’t know how to give her anything that would help. Getting in there with her was too painful for me. I wanted her to stop. I wanted her to be okay again. And this is the problem faced by people who are in pain---that not only can no one else help, they don’t really want to. They just want to make the pain stop.

Seeing someone give in to grief is devastating, terrifying, searing. None of us want to be reminded that things that are too bad to happen sometimes do, or that some types of loss are too painful to bear.

I’ve thought a lot lately about the notion of Christian love in the sense of ‘charity.’ And I’ve come to the conclusion that the most important component of that sort of love is empathy.

Empathy in some respects seems to be counterintuitive---when you see someone lying down in the ditch, the last thing you would think they need is for you to get down there in the ditch with them, because how is that helpful? I know based on empirical experience that it is not only helpful, but critical, but even now I don’t know why or exactly how it works. I had to be taught how to do it---it’s not like compassion or sympathy; it’s not something you can show, but something you have to be. You have to get down there with them. You have to be where they are and see the world in their way.

The best song I ever heard about empathy was by Everlast. It's on Whitey Ford Sings the Blues and is called “What It’s Like.” It’s a song about learning to experience empathy for the problems of the people in the poorest classes of life---beggars, desperate young pregnant girls, the wives and families of drug dealers and gangstas. And (in a very understated fashion) it makes the important, crucial point that empathy is the one emotion that is totally inconsistent with judgment.

You can judge someone and still feel sympathy; you can also have compassion for those you judge. But empathy precludes it. If you’re standing in the person’s shoes, so that you are experiencing what the world is like from their point of view, you lose that capacity. You’re right down there in the ditch with them. And you're there for one purpose and one purpose only: to get across the message You truly are not alone.

So I’ve come to the conclusion that the most important (and most often missing) component of true Christian charity is empathy. You don’t give money to the beggar because you feel sorry for him; you do it because you look into his shamed or angry face and see yourself; and because you see God. You do it for yourself because if you were abandoned by the community you would need money yourself; and so would God.

But it’s just so hard. It’s so hard to look into the eyes of people who have fallen through the net , people who are dying, or people who have lost. If they look angry, that’s easier, because you can get angry back, but if you see past through that to the grief, the loneliness, the suffering, and the bafflement…..who wants to participate in those feelings? Who wants to have to know what it's like till there is no other choice?

I have been trying to do empathy for years, but I’m not good at it. I fall back on the other, lesser things, such as pity, compassion, sympathy.

When I was training to be a volunteer, the technique they taught us was intended to convey to the person being counselled our empathy. Empathy, said the trainers, is what people in crisis need that you can give them. The last phrase is the key: Empathy is what people in crisis need that we can give them.

I can’t give the sobbing abandoned wife her husband back; I can’t give the man whose wife has Alzheimer’s his life or hers; I can’t take the traumatic memory away from the boy whose brother accidentally shot himself in front of him; I can’t give the woman dying of bone cancer her health; or take away the terrible fear of the man with Lou Gehrig’s muscle disease.

I can’t help any of them. Nor can I advise them---there’s no advice I am qualified to give that would serve. In the best cases, I can find resources for them in the community---support groups, therapists, and so forth. All I can do is be there.

In some respects, those cases are the easy ones. The pain of those people is pain that we can all understand. Most of the people don’t need much more than kindness and attention. They already know that their pain is something they have to undergo.

The harder ones are the people whose pain and sadness is chronic. Many of them are in dire straits, but in some cases, it just seems so clear to a third party that the pain is self-inflicted. Some of them abuse substances, some have mental or emotional illnesses that might be treatable if they could afford the treatment (or would take their medication), some are just angry, unhappy people with painful or abusive histories and a complete inability to trust others.

Those people want my advice. They may even think they want my judgment. They become angry when I continue to offer only empathy, acceptance, or understanding.

It’s very hard to keep from becoming angry. It’s hard to withhold judgment. I don’t think I’m very good at it, to be honest. The solutions are clear to me in many instances; sometimes I want to yell, “Just pull yourself together and start looking for a new place to live! Stop feeling sorry for yourself and realize that there are people around with much worse problems than your preoccupation with your neighbors’ opinions of you! Stop obsessing over the husband who left you 25 years ago and get a life now! Stop letting your husband make all the financial decisions---take some responsibility! Go to Al-Anon! AA!”

Most of the people I know who are in the helping professions end up---I’m sorry to say this, but it’s my opinion---losing whatever compassion or interest in other people initially drove them into the field. If you deal with people’s problems on a regular basis, you find out that they really are not that interesting. Furthermore, you learn two things: (1) That many people’s torments are of their own making; and (2) if they are not, there’s nothing much you can do to fix them anyway.

Empathy burns you right out. After awhile, it becomes something you do, not something you feel. It’s a technique, not a connection. And believe me, people at the receiving end of a technique know it. You can see the disappointment in their faces; you can hear it at the end of a phone line. You see the hopefulness---maybe someone will hear the story and take on some of the pain---die away.

The automatic and easy response is anger and irritation. What do these strangers expect from me? What do they think another person can do for them? Why do they expect anything at all?

It’s the last question that’s the saddest of all, when you think of it. Why do they expect anything? And it's because I think I know what the answer ought to be that I feel compelled to keep on trying.

“There by the Grace of God Goes Somebody Else”: Empathy---pity that is akin to love

Measure for Measure: How Much Charity Can I Afford?

“Infinite & Unforeseen.” The Cathars, the Quakers, T.S. Eliot, & Me

There by the Grace of God Go those Others3.

Sat, 17 Sep 2005 18:03:08 GMT

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There by the Grace of God Go Those Others

Part 2: The Hardest Part

of Christian Charity

What does a Christian owe to the poor? (No, the answer isn't "Nothing!" or even "Government-sponsored benefits!") Whatever help you can give, yes, but that ain't all. What's the hardest part of Christian charity? PICK ONE-- The greatest of these is (a) Voluntary Donations to your chosen recipient; (b) Involuntary donations through your increased tax bill; (c) Compassion; (d) Pity; (e) Empathy..... (HINT: It's the one that produces neither self-satisfaction nor self-pity, but grief and terror)

Part of the shock of New Orleans for those of us who consider ourselves middle class has been in being forced to confront some aspects of life that we may normally be able to keep at bay.

One of those aspects is the terrible loneliness of the individual who is severed from the community.

When you pass a homeless person in the street, do you ever really stop and ask yourself what the world is like to him or her? I don’t mean just the problem of being without money and not knowing how you are going to find shelter or where your next meal is coming from. I am talking about the almost unthinkable isolation of being in need and completely alone.

What is it like for the elderly lady who is hobbling along behind the grocery cart where she keeps all her worldly goods? What would it be like to be her? What would it like to be alone, homeless, and ill?

We are adept in our society at the ‘us/them’ mentality. We have inherited from our Puritan ancestors the belief that we make our own luck and that what a person gets pretty much tracks what they deserve to get. But is that really true? Do you think that Martha Stewart, say, is that much more deserving of her wealth and insulation from the fears that beset those of us who don’t know how we will manage after retirement or if something happens to prevent us from working?

My friends John and Lee do admirable work among the homeless. They drive out into woods with the homeless van and distribute food and clothing to people who are living in tents or little shelters they’ve constructed out of boxes. When a hurricane threatens, they help get them to shelter.

Some of the people look like ‘Them”---you know, those who are mad, mentally deficient, unable to work because of their criminal histories, too crippled to work really but not sufficiently disabled to get any benefits….those people, the ones who are not like lucky, lucky you or I. Some of them may deserve their fates (which to me still look worse than death).

They huddle in corners till they’re driven off, sleep in the streets, try to find resting places till their more fortunate fellow citizens drive them away….hope, I suppose, for some kindness that they rarely find, for the rare charitable impulse that any of us ever feel. They live outside the community. They’re treated as trash.

I saw a homeless man sitting in the library reading a paper the other day. One of the two friends who were there with me was indignant: he smelled bad, he was obviously there to get the benefit of free air conditioning and not because he really wanted to read, and he was making it so very unpleasant for all the good, kind, God-fearing library patrons who pay their taxes.

“Fuck you,” our other friend said to her. “Fuck you.” He hasn’t spoken to her since. He says he never will again.

I felt bad for her because she was so astonished. Did she not see the terrible despair and misery and hopelessness in this (fairly young) man’s bleary eyes. It was there all right. He knew he would be thrown out soon, he knew we didn’t want him there, and he knew he could only stay for a short time where there was shelter, cool air, and a place to sit down. He looked ill---he kept coughing behind his hand, trying not to be heard.

What would that be like? What would it be like to be ill and alone? What would it be like to have no place to go? People say they want their freedom, but does anyone want it at that price?

I have been doing counseling of a sort for years; I was trained to do it. The people I talk to aren’t always the poor; some of them are quite well off. But they are invariably alone, invariably terrified, invariably incapable of finding their footing in the world. Many of them are disabled and can’t leave their homes; and---contrary to what you probably believe---there really are not programs in place to ensure that those who can’t work are sheltered and fed. Only some of them receive help and those who do are terrified of losing it.

One disabled ex-Vietnam vet came to me in tears. He was going to lose his government sponsored housing and his main concern? His Siamese cat, the only thing he owns, the only love he has managed to retain, couldn't go with him because the only place he could afford didn't allow pets without a pet fee, and he didn't have the money. I cried too (though I didn’t let him see) because why should any human being be so thoroughly reduced that he has to choose between a roof over his head and his pet? (PS.--this is for my mom---he finally did find a place that would take the cat.)

I can’t forget the picture of the New Orleans man wading through chest-high filthy waters with gigantic white dog on his shoulders. The dog was still clean and still dry. God must love someone with that spirit of compassion and that capacity to love.

In a meeting I attended the other day, a woman stood up and said that she was ‘angry ’ with the people of New Orleans. She wants to tell them, “Don’t have children if you can’t support them! Don’t have animals you can’t evacuate or feed! Don’t live in places that are overcrowded and you can’t escape!”

In short, if you are poor, have nothing. Live alone, be lonely, and have no life. If you want things, get a job. If there are no jobs for you, you must not deserve anything. Deal with it. Don't go looking for hand-outs; take some individual responsibility for your loneliness and wretchedness. Did you think that individual responsibility included the responsibility of the individual to the community? Guess again.

Right: I was going to say something about Christianity and the duties it imposes. But do I really have to?

Oh, all right, then. Part of Christ’s mission seems to have been to make the more fortunate in the community aware of that their duty extends more broadly than humankind had previously dreamed or wished to believe. It’s not just that you ought to be charitable, it is that you have GOT to. It is the premier virtue, the one thing that is always acceptable to God, and always demanded of God.

Charity includes providing for those who have nothing out of the something that we have (however much or little). The story of the widow who put all she had into the treasury is instructive; Christ, who was looking on, remarked that that little meant more in God’s eyes than the much greater donations of the wealthy men who were giving only a tiny fraction of what they had.

But the greatest aspect of charity is much harder for me and everyone else than giving money into the treasury: love. Love in the form of empathy, compassion, acceptance, and above all, respect---respect for the part of God that is in all other human beings, even the more abject.

My friends John and Lee go into the woods and look the homeless people right in the eye. They talk to them; they ask to know their stories. They reach out with kindness and, above all, respect.

Christ required love in the form of charity. Charity doesn't just mean giving to others to relieve their suffering but the empathy and compassion that ought to prompt it and the respect (the respect of one human who could at any point lose everything for the endurance of another who already has) with which it ought to be done.

That’s so hard to do. It’s so contrary to the other, nonChristian teachings of our society. Our society teaches us that you can estimate the worth of a human being fairly accurately by assessing his or her education, social status, income, and net worth.

Christianity teaches us that it isn't our business to estimate the worth of another at all, but to honor in everyone---even the most abject, disgusting, terrifying leper---the part that belongs to God. There may have been times and places in human history where people tried to live by that creed (I like to believe it of the medieaval Cathars) but at any rate, it's fallen by the wayside in this time and place.

Nevertheless---and no matter how we rationalize our failures, indolence, and greed (or how I rationalize mine)---it is what is required of us. Should we be as comfortable as we are about failing at it?

“There by the Grace of God Goes Somebody Else”: Empathy---that pity that is akin to love

Measure for Measure: How Much Charity Can I Afford?

“Walk Me Out in the Morning Dew, My Honey.”

The Displaced Poor of New Orleans: It’s All Working Out so Well for Them!

Christianity, 'Christianity,' & Ann Coulter

Fri, 09 Sep 2005 09:19:25 GMT

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Christianity, 'Christianity,' and Ann Coulter

An Ann Coulter speech? Thanks but no thanks. A Christian college revokes its invitation. [Salon.com]

In addition to the Tim Grieve note, I recommend having a look at the article from Inside Higher Ed. Here's a quote which goes to the basis of this very conservative College's decision to retract an invitation to have her speak there:

Yet in the days after Harding’s announcement, a small group of Harding alumni began voicing their discontent on their blogs. Mike Cope, a minister at Highland Church of Christ in Abilene, Tex., complained that Coulter lives in a “black/white ‘I’m-right-and-you’re-an-idiot’ world. If you don’t agree with her then you’re a bleeding heart liberal who doesn’t deserve to live here.” The problem, he said, was not that Coulter is conservative, but that her views are un-Christian.

That view was echoed by Greg Kendall-Ball, a graduate divinity student at Abilene Christian University. He cited comments Coulter had made about countries that harbor terrorists — “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity” — and about campus radicals: “When contemplating college liberals, you really regret once again that John Walker is not getting the death penalty. We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors.”

In inviting Coulter to the campus, wrote Kendall-Ball, whose father and sisters are also Harding alums, the university had “failed to uphold the Christ-like spirit that Harding seeks to embody.” It troubled him, he said, that “someone advocating violence, forced conversions, physical intimidation and who has routinely expressed anti- or non-Christian views is welcomed and given one of the more prestigious speaking engagements on the school’s calendar.”

Amen, though they forgot to add that such views are also fundamentally un-American.

And, as usual, the conservatives whose views are challenged piss and moan and fling about accusations of cowardice, because anyone who doesn't espouse their views is a namby-pamby bleeding heart liberal (like that's an insult) with no balls. The 'Right' are rarely that and it's they who are the nation's brats (between braying out their pathetic, babyish threats of intimidation, as if the way to build consensus is to punish people into agreeing with them. Which is really what they'd like, because they certainly aren't capable or persuading by a resort to reason). Note the threats of retaliation against Harding, which is one of their own, for daring to challenge their agenda on a single point. How very Right of them.

And---because it can't be said too often--- how extremely un-American and anti-Christian. Well played, alumni of Harding!

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Susan Estrich on Ann Coulter: Sympathy for the Mean Girl.

Secret Left-Wing Coulterphiles Alert: Coulter “Praises” Senator Lieberman

Christianity, “Christianity,” and Ann Coulter

Cry Havoc and Let Slip the Dogs of War!—The Sayings of Ann Coulter

“Christianity” v. Christianity [Christianity v. Christianism]

“There by the Grace of God Goes Somebody Else”: Empathy---that pity that is akin to love

Image drawn by Mr. Tenniel; painted by Damozel!

Affordable Charity.

Mon, 05 Sep 2005 18:48:05 GMT

To jump to the current version of this note, click this link (change of address...)!

Measure for Measure: How Much Charity Can I Afford?

When you're a bystander, far from affluent, and one of nature's misanthropes, how do you make yourself reach out? I'm having the same trouble as the rest of the people I know balancing grace against fiscal and psychic realities. Should I be trying to?

1. Christian stoicism in the face of the suffering of others.

I’m disturbed by the attempts I see from very good people who are sickened by the misery of New Orleans to limit and control their emotional responses. I'm even more disturbed by my attempts (and I realize that though sickened, I am not one of the very good people).

I realize that empathy is painful and inconvenient, but it is also the price you pay for an expanded consciousness---in a word, for God-consciousness. You can help the people of New Orleans by offering such help as you can offer, whether it’s much or little. You can only help yourself by fully realizing that there is nothing but an imaginary gap in time and space between their reality (including their suffering) and yours.

This is not the time for Christian stoicism. I had to stop for a few deep, healing breaths when I read the account of Laura Bush’s alleged Christian stoicism in the face of the suffering of others---and I am going to give her the benefit of the doubt on this one and assume that she said plenty of other things that were not quoted. I have to stop again, repeatedly, when other very good people in whose goodness I believe recite what I’ve recently seen mislabelled as ‘the comforting platitude’ that ‘the poor are always with you.’

Deep, healing breaths! Deep, healing breaths!

That statement is not a platitude and it was never meant to comfort anyone. It was uttered in a specific context. Judas---Christianity’s first misguided do-gooder---outraged by the wastefulness of the use of a very expensive balm made from oil of nard to anoint Christ objects that they could have sold the same for a large amount of money and fed the poor. Christ responds (more or less) that the expenditure for the balm, in light of his specific mission and the fact that it’s a one-time thing, is entirely appropriate. He notes that he isn’t going to be around that much longer, but that the poor will always be around and they will always need help, so Judas should chill. In other words, this was a special case, and yes, the poor do need food and money and yes, you need to carry on providing it for him.

If there was one thing Christ was clear about, it was the duty of the community to care for its own. “As you do to the poorest and most miserable of my brothers, you do to me.” “It’s easier to get a camel rope through the eye of a needle than to get a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.” “If you have two coats, and you see someone with none, give away one of your coats to the person with none.”

It’s not actually an injunction to impoverish yourself or to live in poverty. It’s an injunction to love your neighbor as you love yourself. I never thought about it until recently, but I think that the story of the rich man wasn’t intended to illustrate that the wealthy are barred from the “kingdom” but that if you invited them in, they [meaning 'we'] won’t want to enter. The admission price seems awfully damn high. What do other Christians (particularly the considerable number who are considerably more affluent than I) make, I wonder, of Christ’s rejoinder when asked ‘How do I sign up?’ ‘Sell everything you have and follow me.’

2. And I’m talking to myself.

Not that I am any better than other Americans who've always had all they needed (which for purposes of this note, is going to be my definition of 'rich.') I angered a lot of people at a meeting I attended the other day by saying that I now understand why it is so difficult for the rich to enter the kingdom of Heaven because when given the chance, they just won’t. I was actually including myself in the category of those who hold back; though I am not by any stretch even what you’d call ‘affluent,’ I have almost always had or been given what I need to get by. Some of those present at the meeting agreed with me, but others were most offended, so rebuttals ensued.

The rich, said one, at some length, are absolutely crucial in the effort to rescue the poor of New Orleans. This billionaire is giving $X! Shaq O’Neill is giving shoes! Be comforted! The speaker herself/himself has little to donate, so we should all be grateful that the ‘haves’ are giving of their abundance! Another rebuked me (not directly, but by implication) for ‘pointing fingers’ rather than focusing on ‘helping’ (which is pretty much the line the Bush Administration is taking, though this person isn’t one who would normally wish to be aligned with that school of thought).

Another has ‘closed the door’ emotionally on the suffering till he/she can work out how to allocate emotion when bombarded on all sides by the images of despair.

I got the clear feeling that they were responding to what they perceived---misperceived as this note will explain----to my sense of my superior sensitivity, charity, and commitment to helping the poor of New Orleans.

That is not it at all. It’s true I was angry, but it’s because I have a problem that is the opposite problem of the person who was working at a way of ‘closing the door.’ And I am not worried that others might not do enough but that I won’t. I am certainly worried about the fact that I never really gave much thought to doing anything about the miserable lives of the urban poor till now. I am one of the people this article was talking about.

3. The fair market value of a charitable act.

First, I am not ripping on the wealthy as a class. Most of the people I know (excluding myself) are relatively affluent. But I am greatly worried by the way in which Americans, presented with the opportunity for charity, always think first about their constitutional right to property and next about the potential inconvenience. ‘The Lord helps those who help themselves.’ ‘No good deed goes unpunished.’ Those platitudes, however comforting, carry anything but a Christian message.

And I am just as prone to these concerns as anyone else. It’s part of the reason why I am so angry: I am angry at myself and at the fact that my first response to another’s pain is to ask myself, ‘How much charity can I afford?’ The question isn’t unreasonable, but practical, and it’s one that we eventually all have to ask, but I am angry that it is my first response.

And the fact is that almost all of us end up doing less than we can afford. ‘The Lord helps those who help themselves.’ ‘No good deed goes unpunished.’

Does God (or whatever you choose to call the big It/Him/Her you secretly believe is somewhere looking on) know the fair market value of a charitable donation? I certainly believe that those who have been favored with great wealth will want to give as much of it as they can spare, which is exactly what I am doing and exactly what the person who rebuked me is doing. From a spiritual standpoint, that is. Christ remarked that the impoverished widow who contributed her two coins to the treasury from a spiritual standpoint made a much more significant donation than the wealthy men who gave far a smaller proportion of their much more significant wealth. We do what we can.

Should I be grateful to those who can do more? I am grateful, certainly, that there are people who have more that they can contribute. I honor them for seeing the need and for stepping forward to do what is needful. I also honor this woman for what she has done. But I am not grateful. I am not grateful because I sincerely believe that to do a charitable act is to feed one’s own soul and that these acts ultimately inure to the benefit of the one who gives rather than the one who receives.

(And no, the ‘benefit’ to which I am referring isn’t entry into some gateway to a happy Afterlife. I don’t have a theory about the afterlife. Christ said: The kingdom is here and now. I don’t really speculate much about what follows.)

The chance to do a charitable act is a sort of grace. The ability to do it is another. The wealthy who can donate shoes and money and food are the lucky ones.

4. The smell of the despair and other barriers.

Second, I am concerned at the way in which we (by which I most definitely mostly mean ‘I’) separate ourselves from participation in the communities to which we belong. I am particularly prone to this because by nature I am extremely introverted. Brushing up against other people, even very good other people like these makes me feel exposed and bruised. After prolonged bouts, all I want to do is crawl off into a corner and wipe away the lingering traces. I am that introverted.

The fact is, I don’t like other people en masse. I love a select few, quite like another few, can tolerate still others in small to medium doses, dislike on or two, and am mainly (though benignly) indifferent to the rest. I'm not friendly by nature and I've never had that much emotional energy. The best I will ever manage, I imagine, is to treat other people as I would wish to be treated by someone who is a proper Christian.

So I am definitely brought face to face with my own very serious limitations by an event like this one. I don’t want to have someone I don’t know living in my house. I don’t want to get up close and see the despair in their eyes.

But in the kingdom of the poor, we are all equally poor (and, if you believe the rest of the story, equally rich). There, there is no 'us' or 'them' and certainly no isolated 'I' who gets to pick and choose between the worthy' and the un-.

I tried saying it aloud to my husband, a much kinder person than I am. “I don’t want to give up any of my few [they really are very few] indulgences so other people can eat. I don’t want to give up going out to dinner so that animals can be rescued. I don’t want to give away clothes I still might want to wear some day so that other women can have clothes. I don’t want to give up my vacation plans so…..” My voice trailed away as he just looked at me steadily.

And that’s when I realized that the times have changed, though I fear only temporarily, my definition of 'a good life' and that in fact I totally do.

Measure for Measure: How Much Charity Can I Afford?

“Walk Me Out in the Morning Dew, My Honey.”

The Displaced Poor of New Orleans: It’s All Working Out so Well for Them!

Fighting Back Against the Church of Christ without Christ

Sat, 03 Sep 2005 00:10:49 GMT

To jump to the current version of this note (new address...), click on this link.

Fighting back against the church of Christ without Christ. Why secular humanists need left-leaning God-botherers like me.

I found the perfect name for the "Christianity" practiced by the 'religious' 'Right' from a book by Flannery O’Connor (who was talking about something else entirely. Though I like all her work, I am pretty sure that she and I wouldn’t see eye to eye.) But 'the Church of Christ without Christ" perfectly describes the religion that the Right touts as “Christianity”---a sort of nominal Christianity, a religion that mandates the worship of Christ while disregarding his actual teaching.

I received a comment on my last posting from Case Wagenvoord, who states:

Those on the right are Christanists who practice the doctrine of Christanism, a doctrine totally unrelated to the teachings of Christ. They should be forced to memorize Romans 8:38-39.

“Christianists.”---practitioners of the religion of Christ without Christ. You know, I don’t think he’d like them quite as much as they assume. He was constantly rebuking people for being hypocrites. And as he said to some of those tedious pharisees: “You are the sort who hold yourselves out to other people as righteous, but God knows what’s in your hearts, and the self-serving righteousness which people esteem, God despises.” (Luke 16: 15).

He also said, “Watch out for the scribes. They like to wear fine clothes, to be conspicuous when they mingle with the crowd, and receive deferential treatmentwhen at worship. In between bouts of prolonged praying, they'll go out and foreclose on a poor widow's house.….God will condemn them.”

He knew the fair market value of a good deed. When he saw the rich men donating large gifts to the treasury, and a poor widow giving her mite, he said, “These rich men have donated a small part of their wealth, but this poor widow has given all that she had. In God’s eyes, she has done more than all of them.”

I am mentioning this because I am so very worried these days about his reputation. I see how repelled non-Christians are by what they're hearing and seeing about "Christianity" as presented and practiced by the members of the Church of Christ without Christ. To secular humanists everywhere: Don’t listen to them! They are the contemporary equivalent of the sanctimonious self-satisfied pharisees and scribes he was constantly rebuking. Those people wanted him crucified then and they would want the same thing if he actually did reappear---because there is no way that the Jesus of the Gospels would be a Republican, drive an SUV, or be defending the gun laws.

The problem for the Left is that your basic unaffiliated non-Christian or mildly anti-Christian lefty can’t fight them on their own ground. For that you need me and others like me. I will carry the war straight into their own camp because I am disgusted and offended by the shame they bring on Christ’s name.

I’m not interested in pressing people who do not share my faith to adopt it. I don’t see how you can do that by persuasion and I know it can’t be done by force. But as I’ve said before, it’s so much easier to adopt the view that ‘redemption’ in the Christian sense says that if you believe, you are forgiven for everything, even if what you do and say directly contradicts the teachings of Christ, and that self-righteousness is the same as actual righteousness. It’s just easier to tell yourself that as long as you profess the right beliefs, your actions won’t count against you. I’m absolutely certain that’s not what he meant.

Even Christ didn’t shove his teachings down anyone’s throat. He talked to the people who wanted to hear them. “Let those who can hear me listen.” If he was challenged, he said what he thought, but he taught by example and persuasion; he didn’t try to make other people behave. And that is the Christian way to ‘witness’ for the Lord---not by yelling and waving your arms and speaking in gibberish nor yet by banding together in angry mobs organized for the purpose of passing laws designed to force other people to behave in a way that doesn't offend you.

Mocking the Right-eous for their religion isn’t going to help anything. Being mocked by nonbelievers is a Christian tradition, going straight back to the Crucifixion. Mocking them just makes them feel noble.

The only cure is to correct their message. It’s important to do that because if they occupy the field for too long, their version of Christianity will become the accepted version. Those of us who know better can't allow it. And we can't allow ourselves to be shamed into silence by fear of being associated with them by a superficially common faith. After all, we know what Christ would have had to say about that. "If you're ashamed of me, I'll be ashamed of you."

You need people who can attack them where they are vulnerable. If they quote scripture, we can quote scripture right back at them. If they give us St. Paul, we can counter with the teachings of Christ. If they cite Leviticus, we can counter with more of the teachings of Christ. If they give us Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Pat Robertson, the minister at their church, or George W. Bush, we give them Christ, the true Christ, again, some more.

And while I do not expect to persuade the founding members of the Church of Christ without Christ, some of the people who listen to them might actually begin to realize that the message they are hearing is not the message of the Gospels. I’m talking about those people who think that Christ said, “The Lord helps those who help themselves” (he didn’t). I'm talking about the ones who think that when he said “The poor you have with you always” he meant that since you can’t eradicate poverty, it was okay not to try to alleviate the sufferings of the poor (he didn’t); or who think that when he said “To those who have much, much shall be given; to those who have little, little shall be given”, he was prescribing tax breaks for the rich and the dismantling of social security (he wasn’t).

If persuaded to recognize the dissonance between their way of life and that recommended by Christ, a lot of people would doubtless prefer to continue practicing Christianism and to keep their SUV's, their tax shelters, and their handguns. But at least they'd have the moral high-ground cut right out from under their feet.

I realize that this whole discussion is in a way off topic, because just now the only real topic for any American is New Orleans. I can’t talk about New Orleans right now. But I am talking about some of the people who are talking about it, may of whom represent themselves as Christians.

And I see the disgust and contempt with which people I respect respond to the disgusting and contemptible views that are being expressed by some of them. I agree that disgust and contempt are entirely appropriate responses---to the people expressing them, and to the false Christianity or Christianism they profess, but not to Christianity itself modelled on the teachings of Christ.

RELATED POSTINGS

Whited Sepulchres & the Odor of Sanctimony [progressive Christianity; Christianity v. “Christianism”]

The barbarians at our gates are us---The Duty of a Christian to Oppose the Death Penalty [progressive Christian; Christianity v. Christianism]

“Christianity” v. Christianity [Christianity v. Christianism]

Hijacking My Religion (Taking it Back from the Christian So-Called “Right”)

Hijacking My Religion Part 2 (Fighting Back Against the Christian Right): Why Secular Humanists Need Left-Leaning God-botherers like Me.

Measure for Measure: How Much Charity Can I Afford?

Christianity, “Christianity,” and Ann Coulter

A Marginal Christian Looks at Corporal Punishment, Sexual Assault, Transvestitism, Divorce, and Crushed Testicles in the Old Testament.

To jump to the current version of this note (...new address!), click here.

Hijacking My Religion

Thu, 01 Sep 2005 20:34:41 GMT

So-called 'Christians.' They've hijacked my religion.

The response to Katrina is highlighting the absolute baseness and toxicity of the views of the so-called 'Right' (who are anything but that). Look here and here and here. At first I couldn't write at all about this disaster, because I couldn't find any words, but since reading some of these reports, I can't keep silent.

First off? There is really no such thing as a “right wing Christian.” It’s an oxymoron. It’s not possible. There are only right wing so-called "Christians." None of them are the least bit interested in what Christ said you are actually supposed to do yourself; they obsess instead about what other people are doing and how they can stop them from doing it. Except to the extent that they can use religion to control the private behavior of others, they are principally concerned with belief. They honestly believe---and I know what I am talking about because about half of them are my relatives---that as long as they believe that "Christ is my savior" and "witness" on his behalf, that they are personally exempt from any adverse judgment. They truly believe that all "Jesus" (they're all on very chummy terms with him) cares about is what's in their heads and in their "hearts" and not whether their "Christianity" leads to, you know, Christian action and Christian forbearance.

They're wrong. What was that he said? "By their fruits you will know them."

So the real problem is that they don't understand the religion that they are so anxious to shove down the throats of the rest of the world. As the man said, a diseased tree is going to yield diseased fruit 100% of the time.

I hate the way that they are hijacking my religion. I don't mind being considered a namby-pamby bleeding heart mawkish soft-shelled squeamish God-bothering liberal, because at least that's consistent with the principle of loving one's neighbor as oneself, which we are told is one of the two commandments "on which hang all the law and the prophets." I can live with being despised for being too tolerant, too ready to forgive, too ready to excuse. I am sure I'm wrong sometimes, but I'm comfortable with erring on the side of compassion.

But I cannot understand---or accept---how the religion of Christ has been taken over by people whose whole religion consists in judging and excluding those who don't believe the 'right' (in their minds) creeds.

To listen to the vile rhetoric spewing from the invariably-wrong ‘far right’ would turn Christ’s stomach. Seriously, some of the people who greet the disaster that has befallen us as a sign of the upcoming ‘Rapture’ and can’t wait to meet the man and shake him personally by the hand would be in for a rude awakening. That’s if they were right about that, and they aren’t, because they are always wrong. They are always, always wrong every time they mete out more sanctimony and more condemnation because they are not supposed to be doing that.

The Christian response in this sort of crisis is compassion, empathy, compassion, empathy, sympathy, and a deep longing to help. It’s saddening when people who are desperate behave basely instead of nobly, but they are desperate. They are wrong, but they are also us. You can't set up a false dichotomy of us/them, when you created and participated in the culture that created the poor underclass that couldn't escape the city and that also lets retail stores stock guns and ammo.

And you can’t sit on the sidelines and condemn others, especially the poor. It may be idealistic, it may be unrealistic, it may be nearly impossible, but if you're going to follow the teachings of Christ, forgiveness, understanding, and compassion trump the rule of law and expediency every single time.

For those of you who know this, and feel inclined to jeer, don’t think for a minute that what you’re hearing from these pious, canting, self-satisfied hypocrites---okay, this is me judging them and that's wrong too, but I am very upset, as the excess italics attest---- is in any way related to, or supported by, the Gospels. Don’t think for a minute that the same man who told the other convicted criminal hanging on that other cross that they would meet in Paradise would endorse shooting looters or treating more lightly the sufferings of the poor of New Orleans than the sufferings of people like themselves “because the poor didn’t have so much to lose.” (I actually heard a hoity toity Methodist say that.)

I'm not even going to utter the obvious and tragic truths that explain why it is that we are presently in a situation where our own National Military is apparently being instructed to "shoot to kill" and why teenaged boys armed with guns are roaming the streets of a ruined city threatening other pathetic terrified citizens. How did we come to this pass? That's what any liberal in the country would call a "no-brainer."

It’s easy for people sitting comfortably on the sidelines to sit in judgment calling for martial law. It’s just SO EASY. Which is exactly why a Christian---I mean a real one who respects the actual teachings of Christ--- would not do it. The expedient solution is never the right one, though it's generally the Right one. They are all about "wiping out" crime.

I shouldn’t judge the so-called Right so-called “Christians” either. I am trying to temper my anger and to be just in my speech. But this is my blog and this is my opinion and if I don’t utter it I am going to expire from holding it all inside. And then I won’t be able to do anything to help.

RELATED POSTINGS

Whited Sepulchres & the Odor of Sanctimony [progressive Christianity; Christianity v. “Christianism”]

The barbarians at our gates are us---The Duty of a Christian to Oppose the Death Penalty [progressive Christian; Christianity v. Christianism]

“Christianity” v. Christianity [Christianity v. Christianism]

Hijacking My Religion (Taking it Back from the Christian So-Called “Right”)

Hijacking My Religion Part 2 (Fighting Back Against the Christian Right): Why Secular Humanists Need Left-Leaning God-botherers like Me.

Measure for Measure: How Much Charity Can I Afford?

Christianity, “Christianity,” and Ann Coulter

A Marginal Christian Looks at Corporal Punishment, Sexual Assault, Transvestitism, Divorce, and Crushed Testicles in the Old Testament.

To jump to the current version of this note in my new blog, click this link!

My First Quaker Meeting Part 2

Sun, 21 Aug 2005 18:30:08 GMT

Quaker Meeting.

The experience was extremely satisfying, actually---I did not expect it. Usually churches make me feel uncomfortable and self-conscious---and conspicuously out of place.

After I worried that I might not be able to deal with keeping still for silent worship for an entire hour, I was rather startled at how quickly that hour passed. I was quite sorry when it ended.

I have had experience with silent meditation---I read The Secret of the Golden Flower when I was still in college and I certainly have tried from time to time to apply it---but I’ve never been good at it. My brain carries on chattering nonsensically in the background and if I just let it go on, I soon find my thoughts, such as they are, degenerating into what Kingsley Amis refers to in one of his novels as ‘thought substitutes.’ My theory is this: if you shut the left brain down---if you can get it to shut up at all without actually going to sleep or losing consciousness---the right brain then kicks in and starts pumping out the weird images that symbolize what you would be thinking if you were thinking at all. Anyway, that’s my theory and I’m sticking to it.

Thankfully, that didn’t happen in today’s meeting.

I was surprisingly unselfconscious for someone who is basically awkward and uncomfortable with strangers. It helped that the existing Quakers don’t make a fuss over newcomers or visitors. They just smiled and nodded and accepted our presence without the sort of kerfuffle that makes me feel all hemmed in by social obligations.

The local meeting is in the process of building a new Meetinghouse, and they have sold off their previous premises to pay for it, so right now they are meeting in the homes of various members or sometimes in a local synagogue. Today, we went to the home of one of the members. It was the sort of place that I find really appealing----an elegantly laid out but very simply furnished place with huge windows looking out onto the tops of the liveoak and palm trees that grew along a gorge or river bank running down to a creek. The living room and the slightly raised dining room that gave on to it seemed quite large enough to hold the 25-30 people who were present, but really I was barely aware of my surroundings other than that intense, deeply saturated green outside the windows. All of the palm leaves were shining in the sun. Much further down I could see the creek shining in the sun. The whole room was filled with that greenish light. It was the perfect place for my first experience of silent worship.

I was so tired from my most recent bout of insomnia that I just drifted in and sat down in the first available seat---which it turns out is exactly the procedure. People were already sitting there by the time I arrived. It was as silent as a room full of people could be. It was also quite warm. As I’d dressed in the Floridian’s usual expectation of shivering uncomfortably in the air conditioning after getting well and truly humidified, I was initially distracted by the discomfort; I even felt a little faint, what with the heat and the tiredness. But after a bit I forgot all about it.

What was it like? I don’t know how to describe it. The little handbook on silent worship says to try to focus on the inner light----that piece of each person that is supposed to be part of God----but not to worry if your mind wanders, you get distracted, have to move around, or don’t really get fully into it. At first, I was preoccupied with my physical discomfort.

After I settled down, I deliberately spent some time reflecting on the pain and panic that have so often plagued me since my late husband’s aneurysm, and certain circumstances surrounding his death; and with my constant anxiety about the future. I can’t say I arrived at any specific resolution, but after a bit, the panicky feeling subsided. I began to feel a little dazed. And after that, something happened. It was something very small----no blinding flashes of enlightenment or anything---but it was slightly frightening but also immensely reassuring. Something happened. I won’ t try to describe it because if I do, I will sound like a lunatic; as I said it was really small. I felt, not exactly confirmed, but encouraged in this particular path. After that, ‘silent worship’ seemed easy.

The silence was broken three times by people speaking out. A lovely young woman spoke out eloquently about her confusion over how to address a painful development in her life. Two men I couldn’t see from where I was sitting also spoke. One talked about Cindy Sheehan and her crucial role in ‘speaking truth to power,’ a phrase I’d heard but not really understood before he said that. Another talked about his concern for a friend. All of these interruptions were accepted in silence. People spoke when they were moved to speak and it was swallowed up in silence. I liked that very much.

In the end, there were introductions all round, ‘unspoken messages’---i.e., things people wanted to get off their chests but hadn’t felt prompted to say during the worship----and announcements concerning activities and so forth. For example: they are putting together some sort of communal tool-sharing plan. It sounds so mundane, but when I think about it, I can see how much money people could save if they need, say, a carpet-stretcher (“I’ll never use it again,” said the young man who was donating it) or some other expensive piece of equipment. It’s environmentally responsible as well as economically intelligent.

“Are they poor people?” asked my mother, ever vigilant on my behalf and clearly trying to conceal her concern that I am getting drawn into some sort of commune full of opportunistic types who will prey on me for my material goods (not that I have any to speak of; I don’t even have any tools to donate). No, not poor, but they do seem to follow the Gospel injunction to share what you have with others. One of their tenets is that you hold material things in trust and that you need to be able to let them go. Also, to quote the man specifically, if you have two coats and your neighbor has none, you give one of them to your neighbor.

I suppose this side of being Quaker might be much harder for me if I had ever accumulated a lot of possessions, but I haven’t. At one point in my life, circumstances were such that I lost nearly everything I owned----it tore at me a bit back then, but I managed not to let it upset me, and in the end it wasn’t as hard as I expected. I don’t need much---I’ve never wanted much more than to feel sure that I'll go on having a (rented) roof over my head and other necessities for carrying on as I am.

It's too soon to be sure---I'm as lazy as the next person---but I think this might work out for me.

UPDATE: 7-31-2006. Sadly, no. I parted on the best of terms with them---in fact with every intention of returning---but on reflection, I really didn't feel that I felt in. (For one thing, while I enjoy silent worship, I found other types of meetings rather tedious, with people waiting for the spirit to move them. For another...there were points on which---after a time---I didn't agree. But they were lovely people and I am glad to have had the experience.

RELATED POSTINGS.

“Infinite & Unforeseen.” The Cathars, the Quakers, T.S. Eliot, & Me

To jump to the current version of this note at my new address, click this link!

My first Quaker meeting Part 1

Sat, 20 Aug 2005 21:03:16 GMT

Anticipating My First Quaker Meeting: Speculation; Apprehensiveness

Some of the Quakers I’ve met insist on being referred to as ‘friends’---cf. The Friendly Persuasion---but I like the word Quaker and its attendant associations, and the websites I’ve looked at use the term, so: Quaker, Quaker, Quaker! I pray---silently, of course---that it will work out for me. I'm running out of options, frankly.

And I am desperate for a place to land. I feel that religion has been inflicted on me. I started out reading the Gnostic Gospels (initially via the scholar Elaine Pagels after a conversation with my friend and associate John) and somehow something sank in and took root---exactly like that parable he told; remember? To paraphrase one of the wild-eyed fanatics from one of Flannery O’Connor’s novels, it fell into rocky soil, “ but it fell in deep.” Or to quote that Bob Dylan song, also involving rocks, “I want to let go, but I can’t let go."

But I can’t go back to a conventional church. The last time, I looked round at all the people sitting there in rows (not so many of them either, though it’s a big church) standing, kneeling, singing, listening, and I just couldn’t see what any of it had to do with religion or with the Gospels. This is a religion about a man who wandered preaching from town to town in the hills of Galilee, then in the dust of Judea. Every word he said---and you have to do some reading on the history and the context to fully get this----subtly undermined the theocracy-loving established order and their laws and mores.

Every other word he spoke to the crowds decried hypocrisy and those whose religion consists in ‘correcting’ or ‘punishing’ the sins of others. You don’t get to do that, he said. God doesn’t want that. Look first to the mess inside yourself; sort that out, and then---when you are perfectly righteous, which you never will be---you might be in a position to judge. Love (and judge) others as you love (and judge yourself). Look at me; I say I’m the Son of Man, and yet I choose not to judge.

Another point that he made repeatedly, and particularly in the parable of the Good Samaritan: The good Samaritan did the right thing even though he was a despised Samaritan. The point of the story is that someone outside the faith who does not follow the prescribed practices is more greatly favored than the faithful follower of the letter of the law. Could this teaching have been more radical for that time and place?---that a Samaritan whose heart prompted him to behave with compassion might be a better man than a man who complied with the law, but who could pass by an injured man without stopping to assist him? Throughout the Gospels, Christ emphasizes the disjunct between compliance with the letter of the law and compliance with the spirit expressed in God's two essential commandments.

If it doesn’t sound so radical now; it’s almost all worn out from repetition, but these were new ideas for most of his hearers. And truly, they would seem to have been forgotten by most practitioners of conventional “Christianity” today.

A part of me doesn’t want the silence of a Quaker meeting. If the light indeed resides inside all of us, shouldn’t we follow the practices of the Pentecostals? Shouldn’t we be moved to shouting, speaking in tongues, yelling, “Hallelujah, Jesus is in my heart!” I had a friend at one point in my life, a recovered alcoholic, who had a strong Pentecostal bent. He went to church several times a week. “I have to get my fix of Jesus,” he told me. But I found the ‘Praise!”-ing and “Hallelujah!”-ing disruptive and embarrassing. In addition, I simply don't trust it.

If the Holy Spirit exists, shouldn’t it overhelm the person on whom it descends? Shouldn’t it chill you or burn you to the bone, render you quiet, render you speechless? Did the Apostles really babble like loonies, or does the story mean that they suddenly and miraculously had the gift to speak other tongues? I don’t really know or care, to tell you the truth. I don’t like any part of the Bible that doesn’t have the Christ in it, walking, talking, dying on the cross, or---as they said---coming back from the dead. I’m more interested in the parts before he died, to tell you the truth.

So what’s going to happen during the meeting? I don’t like any practice I’ve so far experienced; how will I manage among people who just sit there? Will I feel anything? The few religious experiences I had (and though I can't explain them in a way that makes sense to anyone else they struck me at the time as authentic, which is why I’m here now) terrified me---I definitely ‘quaked’; I was afraid even to move or turn my head for fear of seeing something that would take away my choice to believe or not. (PS. I didn’t turn my head but I lost some of my choices). It was shocking, terrifying; I am sure it could not happen to me while sitting in a circle with peaceful people whose whole philosophy is all centered on the light. I don't want it to happen.

But will I be bored or become distracted if I sit in silence for too long? Will I become impatient? I once attended a religious meeting with some friends who practiced an alternative Indian religion. Their religious service consisted of silent meditation. Perhaps it was because my heart wasn’t in it, but I can remember literally itching with impatience for it to be over. I found it embarrassing and awkward. Will this happen again?

I don’t even know what I am looking for from a religious service. Something that gets at the core of my desire for some sort of safe connection with the thing that so terrified me during a certain period of my life? I don’t know. I was honest about this with the very nice man from the Quaker meeting who kindly explained to me the basic elements. The truth is that I don’t know what I want.

“This place is terrifying, for it is the house of the Lord.” I am not sure where you find Bethel in the time of the internet or if I could endure it if I found it. I don’t want to find it. But can I accept anything less?

RELATED POSTINGS

“Infinite & Unforeseen.” The Cathars, the Quakers, T.S. Eliot, & Me

“Infinite & Unforeseen.” The Cathars, the Quakers, T.S. Eliot, & Me

Chaotic Simplicity

Wed, 17 Aug 2005 23:04:35 GMT

To jump to the current version of this note, click on this link.

Chaotic Simplicity

Today I met with one of the acting clerks for the local Quaker meeting. It’s only a small meeting at present though they are hoping to increase their membership. They’re building a new meetinghouse and in the interim, are using another church’s premises as a meeting place.

I didn’t hear anything to put me off it. Politically liberal, check; no fixed dogma, check; social and environmentalism, check; accepting of the gay community, check. These are Liberal Quakers, so-called to distinguish them from a more conservative and evangelical branch.

The person who met with me has a living room that is stark in its simplicity---all beige and wood, very minimalist, very Japanese, very beautiful. “Very Quakerly,” he said. But though the house was lovely, extremely so, traditional Quaker color schemes wouldn’t do for me, whether I become a Quaker or not. I live the simplest possible life----I don’t even own a house and don’t expect to---but I like richness and complexity in color schemes.

My favorite painter is Matisse and I try to emulate his canvases in putting together my main color schemes. One wall of my small living room is painted the richest possible yellow, verging toward but never quite reaching orange. I made a set of shelves like the ones I had in college, melamine boards separated by what the local stonemason calls ‘decorative blocks’---but I painted the blocks in layers of paint with intricate designs ‘carved’ into the forward faces. Those shelves are covered mostly with glass in various intense colors, though there are a couple of large tropical birds carved out of wood my mom got me from an antique stores, plus two large jars of giant marbles in various combinations of colors. My furniture is white and my room is small with very little in it but the effect is opulent. When I am depressed, just staring at the way all that glass looks with the light coming through it can cheer me up. I want to be surrounded by pure vibrant colors with no grey, brown, or black mingled in.

I also couldn't do without the additional chaos produced by many pets. I have three cats and a hamster. The hamster has his own room (he more or less has to); the cats occupy all the rest of the house. They matter more to me than anything I actually own. My cats have turned the carpet on the stairs into a scratching pad and they have been scratching it when my back is turned for three straight years. But the cats are cats and are individually irreplaceable; the carpet is just a carpet. They are also ruining a rug that I liked a lot but....ditto.

Simplicity comes in various forms. My life is simple. I own and consume relatively little for an American. I do not spend much money on clothes and am indifferent to fashion. In fact, most of my family regard my indifference to accumulating property as downright irresponsible. In my own community, people are baffled that I don’t want to buy a home but am content so far (and at my age) to live in apartments.

But a person has only so much energy or time. The time that people devote to maintaining a house and yard is energy and time I’d rather expend on something else. I hate doing maintenance, though one pretty much as to, and one of my goals for myself is to minimize the number of drains on my available energy. To me, the appeal of ‘simplicity’ is that it leaves you free from tedious (and stressful) details required for managing. If you have a lot of anything, you expend a certain portion of your life maintaining it, stewarding it, fostering it. It’s fine for people who like that sort of thing, but it doesn’t do for the minority who think ‘freedom’ means something more than freedom to collect consumer goods.

Which brings me back round to the Quakers and their appeal for me. Life has always gone too fast for me. I feel exactly like the Red Queen in Through the Looking Glass: all roads round here may belong to me, but the ground moves so quickly that you have to run twice as fast as it does to stay in the same place. I need a slow sort of country where people aren’t so walled off from one another. I need a place where people aren’t surprised to see a woman walking.

I’m hoping to find a community of people who at least feel that something matters besides acquiring more and more stuff or getting further and further up some imaginary ladder of personal significance. "I'm not getting anywhere," I said once to my friend Frances. "That's because there's nowhere to get to," she replied. I didn't think it was true then, but I do now.

“Don’t you think most people today have an over-inflated sense of self?” asked a very intelligent, very thoughtful student under my jurisdiction.

I think most people might. Perhaps at one point in my life I too had the feeling that I was some sort of ‘fixed point in the turning world’; I know my parents told me often enough that the universe doesn’t revolve around me. If I felt that way before, many successive losses taught me differently. It was feeling so completely insignificant that perhaps helped drive me toward religion-----if you don’t feel that you matter at all, it can be hard to find a reason for pushing through the usual obstacles of daily life. After my late husband’s death in particular I used to wake up in the night full of the terror of being completely on my own. That feeling in turn drove me to think about the experience of those who are more alienated and more neglected than I felt: the homeless, the very poor, the dying, and the neglected elderly. It took that to make me see.

And it took seeing to turn my thoughts in direction of God and the need for some sense of connection that wouldn’t fail me when everything else did. And it took losing most of the little I had to make me see how little I really need. As Lao Tzu said---this is of course a paraphrase---sometimes you can make great gains by losing.

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Matisse and My Mom

Infinite and Unforeseen

Tue, 16 Aug 2005 17:02:28 GMT

‘Infinite and Unforeseen.’ Quakers, Cathars, T.S. Eliot, and me.

A friend of mine who read a couple of my blog entries was complaining about what she called the “Christian overtones.”

“When did this happen to you?” she asked. “And also, why? You didn’t used to be this way. I don’t like it.”

It’s true; I wasn’t. In college, influenced by my reading of Sartre, I was an existentialist. I believed in existential nausea, freedom, and some sort of ethical duty (I forget the source since there was no God) to live an ‘authentic’ existence in the circumstances presented to me. Later, when I began to read Chinese philosophy, I became interested in Taoism. Buddhism interested me as well, but I liked the simplicity of Taoism. Don’t go against the flow. Accept change; learn to flow with it. When the professor asked me on an examination to describe the central tenets of Taoism, I wrote, “This:” and left the rest of the paper blank. To the disgust of the other students, I received an ‘A.’

I have always been attracted to cosmology. While studying Taoism, I began reading the works of the great, the very great, English philosopher and mathematician, “Alfred North Whitehead.” I wanted to write a paper on his work, but of course the true meaning of Whitehead was really very far beyond me when I was in my late teens. I’m working on it now though. I find it profound and beautiful.

But Christianity…..no. No, I wanted no part of it. I grew up in the Bible Belt. I didn’t like the religion practiced by a large part of my family (thankfully, not my parents or my mother’s family); I didn’t like the hypocrisy---many so-called ‘Christians’ I saw were and doubtless still are unapologetic racists, just for example---and I didn’t like the fervor or the anger. I didn’t like the suspicious and---I can’t call it hatred; it was more like dread---of the religious practices of other denominations (let alone other religions). Catholics were strange and exotic in my town; I remember my 11 year old cousin telling me in shock and horror that the Catholics worship the Pope and Mary. And the whole family were despondent over the fact that my family attended the Episcopal Church and were therefore ‘Whiskeypalians.’

But I did grow up in a family where religion was constantly discussed (not at my parents’ table, but by my paternal grandparents, my many aunts and uncles, and cousins by the dozens). I therefore never had any aversion to discussing it myself, even though my mother largely banned such discussion at our house.

In college, my areas were philosophy and religion as noted. I wasn’t very good at either, really. I wrote papers on which I received good grades and answered complicated exam questions, but I wasn’t that interested in understanding schools of thought or the history of thought; I was looking for answers. I don’t think I realized it, and I was greatly offended when a professor said to me, “Look, it’s not about finding something to believe in. You don’t have to believe any of it.” I was offended by the implication that that’s what I was after. Looking back, I see that it totally was.

I didn’t give much attention to religion until I was older, though I gave it a certain amount of thought. I read books and poetry that talked about it (Eliot, for example). I was in my late thirties and I’d fallen in love. My situation and his were such that we seldom met---because he lived in another country and we seldom met.

It was the deepest, most fulfilling love of my life because----I suppose for different reasons we both were lonely---it was such a complete meeting of the minds. We couldn’t meet in any other way. I suppose if we had, the other aspect would never have developed. But it met some need in my nature for a feeling of connection. Because our communication was limited to electrical impulses over the wires, I developed a sense of his presence even though he never was there. I thought of him all the time and I knew he was thinking of me. There was a real feeling on both sides---I know this because I have the letters to prove it----of communion. It wasn’t a sexual thing at all. It was a foretaste, or a precursor, of genuine religious feeling. The word ‘soulmate’ gets flung around a lot, but that’s what it was.

There’s a long by Jeff Buckley that gets played way too much on TV when someone wants a ‘religious’ theme. I have a notion that Leonard Cohen may have written the original version, but if he did, Buckley changed the words. Anyway---I know it’s a bit lame to quote song lyrics, but here it comes----a couple of lines from that song express how I feel when I remember my friend and how it felt to love him: “But remember when I moved in you and the holy dove was moving too, and every breath we drew was “Hallelujah.” The song is talking about something else, but the something else is exactly the same.

I’m glad I had the experience because it’s not one that many people today get to have. Sex happens right away nowadays and----nobody likes me to say this but it’s true----sex absolutely ends any possibility that the sort of connection I am speaking of can ever happen. That connection was different. It was an expansion of consciousness. It didn’t last because it couldn’t, but it made me understand something most people never actually do understand: what I wanted from life. I wanted a lasting sense of expanded consciousness. In that state, you’re never lonely, never without solace, never without the feeling that you’re loved and cared for. I think it was then that I started to understand the notion (not the thing itself, but the idea) of feeling that sort of connection all the time without having to worry about losing it). You reach out, and it’s there.

It was a dilemma for a nonbeliever. It was not resolved for years afterward. That particular relationship, being a relationship between human beings, changed over time. Through the various incidents and accidents of life, we stopped being in love and became ordinary friends. As to finding a subsequent version of the same thing, that was never going to happen. I was sad afterward because afterward I was just me again. I’ve had other loves since, but never again that feeling of merging my own being with someone else’s.

I read something somewhere about the essential futility about seeking fulfillment from relationships because of the certainty that human relationships will change. One writer said that falling in love is simply a bad substitute for finding connection with the something greater constituting the divine presence.

And that may be so. I didn’t exactly intend to try. I don’t even know how I went within the space of a few months from secular humanist to devoutly religious. I couldn’t tell you the path, though studying the gnostic gospels and the medieaval heresy of Catharism certainly played some part it in.

Nor can I explain how I fixed on Christ as the object----possibly simply because he was the most familiar object of devotion to a westerner. Taoism wasn’t enough (though it definitely helped) because it is so impersonal. I didn’t want to be one part of the whole on the theory that it’s the whole that mattered; I wanted to feel---whether rightly or wrongly---that I mattered too.

I was heartened by reading some of Eliot’s poetry. I knew from my past studies that religion can be something you simply decide to do. His poetry is full of images that are helpful to someone who comes to Christianity by the alternate route and independently of anyone else’s urging. “In the juvescence of the year came Christ the tiger.”

The actual change felt and still feels a bit like that----it’s annihilating. Moreover, the connection isn’t reliable; there are times when I don’t feel it at all; when I feel completely alone and fully as unimportant as I doubtless am to most of my fellow human beings.

But I do get moments when I feel tuned in to some presence that seems to be there---now I’m going to quote George Harrison at his most annoying---‘within you and without you.’

The weirdest thing to me still is feeling that it really IS there. When I first started to have these moments, I was actually terrified by it. Was I going insane? Dying? Having a seizure? Because if you look, you won’t see anything at all. My friend’s voice over the wire produced electrical impulses that created sound waves from the phone receiver that transmitted signals to my brain. That was actually quite a tenuous---an ethereal---connection, if you think about it. But this isn’t even that. No sound waves. If there is a stimulus, it is originating in my own brain. Is it something I am just doing to myself, as my friend suggested?

And does it matter if it is?

Regardless: I’m getting to a place now where I feel intimations not of mortality but of some actual presence that responds when I ask. You reach out and there is something there. But---and here’s the thing I didn’t get about prayer going up----you have to ask. It’s not imposed on you. And if you’re not paying close attention, you won’t recognize it. When I realized this, it was the first time I understood the real significance of Christ saying ‘Seek and ye shall find.”

The Quakers speak of an inner light that’s in everyone (a notion derived from the Gospel of John). The Cathars seem to have believed in something roughly similar. If you’re caught up in the things that relate to the mortal part of you, you won’t know it’s there, because if you’re caught up in those things, you’re really caught up. You have to ask, then you have to be quiet. If you’re quiet, you get---quoting Salinger now---‘not an answer, but a response.” You get a sense there's something more. You feel enhanced.

And, for anyone wondering what gets into all these religious nut cases, that’s what gets into them. It’s something sufficiently terrifying and awesome and life-altering that you naturally feel that other people ought to know about it. The difference between them and me is that they believe they’ve got to make you believe in it. My version of Christ, which includes him as he appeared in the Gnostic gospels knew that not everyone wants or needs that sense of connection to God. He was the Christ who told parables to the crowd to give them guidance on how to live, but whose ‘secret teachings’ were reserved for the inner circle of those who chose to follow him. “Let those with ears to hear, hear me now.’ That part isn’t something you can impose on anyone. It happens only if they ask for it because they actually want it.

The title comes from a K.D. Laing song. She was writing about romantic love: "It takes you by surprise." So does this sort.

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“Infinite & Unforeseen.” The Cathars, the Quakers, T.S. Eliot, & Me