What Jesus Went About Refuting

Denominational Christianity has no use for Jesus.  Denominational Christianity relies on ideas, and Jesus went about refuting ideas.  In order to hide this fact, the denominations rely on saying that Jesus had merely "radical" ideas about things like the family.  Of course, the truly "radical" notion Jesus had about the family was the notion that the family is illegitimate.

Jesus knew that we are all family, and that the only truly "family" things that we do reflect the kinship of all humankind.  If all humankind are kin, then the concept of "the family" is meaningless.  The denominations cannot accept this, and rely instead on saying that Jesus had "radical" teachings about our duties to our fellow human beings.  No.  Jesus had radical teachings about human beings themselves.  Human beings are all kin, and all kin are essentially one.  Our fellow human beings are closer to us than family, the family being a concept of separation as well of inclusion.

Christianity will not accept this, though Christians will pay lip service to the kinship of humanity, or engage in gestures of support for persons as persons.  Always, though, such episodes are separated and pressed down by the impetus of religious organizations being borne along by attaching themselves to the worldly institution of the family.  "All men are brothers" will be the refrain, and then the moment or holiday or episode will pass, and the grinding, perpetuated pattern will reassert itself, as if to say:

"Well, that was fun.  Now let's get back to our real business: clamping down on immigration, illegal and otherwise, and lobbying for deportation of adults and children, even if this causes (or results in) their separation.  Only in this way (regrettable as it might seem) can we do our religious duty of the highest order: protecting Christian families in this Christian country."

The Very Conceit that We Are Alive

I'm afraid this blog is going to come down to the simple proposition that was always latent in its original premise.  If we are "roused, readied" and "reaped" to an awareness of God, then the awareness of God must destroy all other concepts.  The Edenic notion of "becoming like God"--when paired with the realization that we are not like God--means that we are neither human nor divine, and it would be ridiculous to imagine that our understanding of anything would be on a solid foundation.

A perfect example of this would be our understanding of "life."  Adam and Eve, as long as "death" did not exist, could not experience life as we do--their prospect of eternal life would not differ materially from a perfectly valid perception we might have of the "after" life.  Similarly, when Adam and Eve (and all of us) proceeded to live under the judgment of death described in the narrative, then we are all in a state of "after" death.

We spend our lives seeking to find meaning to life, and we are terrified at the prospect that life has no meaning.  Of course, we think we understand what life is--and what death is--and so (since we are mistaken about both life and death) we suffer from a surfeit of fancied meaning to life, not a lack of such meaning.  A necessary aspect of being "saved" in life is salvation from the very conceit that we are alive.

Something is Suspicious Here

The ridiculous quality of paragraphs--of completed, encapsulated assertions--is nowhere more evident than in precisely those gospel passages that are most significant.  A perfect example is the Good Thief (or whatever he is called)--Luke 23:39-43, KJV:

And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on him, saying, If thou be Christ, save thyself and us.  But the other answering rebuked him, saying, Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation?  And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss.  And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.  And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.

To present the verses as above, grouped and framed as a coherent whole, is to impose on those verses an apparent singleness of thrust that utterly misrepresents the dynamic of the narrative.  In John, the "two other with him" are mentioned as a dry fact; in Mark the "two thieves" are mentioned in order to contend a fulfillment of the prophecy "he was numbered with the transgressors."  Only Matthew--of the gospels other than Luke--describes any unsavory utterances of the other two crucified (27:38-44):

Then were there two thieves crucified with him, one on the right hand, and another on the left.  And they that passed by reviled him, wagging their heads, And saying, Thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest it in three days, save thyself.  If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross.  Likewise also the chief priests mocking him, with the scribes and elders, said; He saved others; himself he cannot save.  If he be the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him  He trusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him: for he said, I am the Son of God.  The thieves also, which were crucified with him, cast the same in his teeth.

To leave it at this point for now, I will simply say, "If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross" seems an utterly presumptuous and impious thing to say.  I will also say that the thrust of the "scripture-based" notions of people being "saved" or "converted" by the "evidence" of the Resurrection really amounts to the same thing: Jesus' testimony is validated by his power shown in overcoming death.

Suspicious Paragraphs

The most difficult part of writing this blog, for me, is getting rid of the idea of the completed paragraph.  Actually, it is the notion of anything "completed" that is the major problem.  I really have no business addressing concepts about religion in an ostensibly experiential way, and simultaneously attempting to have every communication I make about religion be complete and self-contained.

I just decided to pick on the concept of the paragraph because it is the smallest "completed" component of language that I think ought to be viewed with suspicion.  I cannot think that the sentence, as a language tool, can be discarded.

And so my writings, incomplete and disjointed as they are, will probably become even more incomplete and disjointed.  I only hope that my thoughts can follow suit.

The Gospel of the Messenger Part Two

The Book of Malachi, in addition to its references to the brothers Esau and Jacob, speaks at length of yet another ancestor, Jacob's third son Levi, the forbear of those who made Israel's offerings:

Behold, I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces, even the dung of your solemn feasts; and one shall take you away with it.  And ye shall know that I have sent this commandment unto you, that my covenant might be with Levi, saith the Lord of hosts.  My covenant was with him of life and peace; and I gave them to him for the fear wherewith he feared me, and was afraid before my name.  The law of truth was in his mouth, and iniquity was not found in his lips: he walked with me in peace and equity, and did turn many away from iniquity.  For the priest's lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth: for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts.  But ye are departed out of the way; ye have caused many to stumble at the law; ye have corrupted the covenant of Levi, saith the Lord of hosts (2:3-8, KJV).

And so, in contrast to the "Esau" character in Malachi--the Esau unloved compared to Jacob--we have the progenitor of the temple class, Levi, heaped with praise: "My covenant was with him of life and peace; and I gave them to him for the fear wherewith he feared me, and was afraid before my name.  The law of truth was in his mouth, and iniquity was not found in his lips: he walked with me in peace and equity, and did turn many away from iniquity."  It seems to be the case, however, that there is little in the actual account of Levi that would merit such praise.

This is the Levi who, together with his full brother Simeon, avenged his sister Dinah's rape by conspiring to effect a false peace with the Hivite offender's people and "Dinah's brethren...took each man his sword, and came upon the city boldly, and slew all the males" (Genesis 34:25) and, in Old Testament fashion, robbed, enslaved (including, presumably, power-raping women and girls) and destroyed.

"And Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, You have troubled me to make me stink among the inhabitants of the land" (34:30), and that was not the last the two murderers heard of it.  When his time at last came, Jacob said, "Gather yourselves together, and hear, ye sons of Jacob; and hearken unto Israel your father....Simeon and Levi are brethren; instruments of cruelty are in their habitations....Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce; and their wrath, for it was cruel" (49:2-7).

Is this then the "Levi" of Malachi, of whom "saith the Lord of hosts": "My covenant was with him of life and peace....he walked with me in peace and equity...."?  The Book of Malachi, once again, is undercutting the specialness of Israel as inheritors even as the book is reinforcing the value and necessity of true Israelite worship.  Malachi is neither discrediting the observances in the temple nor disparaging the thrust of Jewish religion that led through the synagogues to Judaism's stature as one of the great world faiths.

What Malachi is in fact doing is asserting a view of God as an ever-present factor in the world's conscience and consciousness.  "The Lord will be magnified from the border of Israel" (1:5).  We will see more of this to come.

The Gospel of the Messenger Part One

As I wrote in the preceding post:

" ....the entire thrust of Jesus' ministry presumes that it is too late for humanity to be striving for life.  Jesus' ministry is about us preparing for death.

"We prepare for death by earnestly grasping the undeniable realities of our existence, understood chiefly in terms of our moral responsibilities.  We are supposed to do good, and to own up to our not doing good.  No religion and no ministry are necessary for us to realize such things."

The Gospel of Mark, the first--or at least the most elemental--of the gospels, introduces John the Baptist with the words of "the prophets": "Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee" (1:2, KJV).  This snippet is generally agreed to be from the Book of Malachi (3:1), though--like the quotation from Isaiah that follows--it is somewhat garbled.  Malachi 3:1 reads, "...he shall prepare the way before me...." not "before thee."  The difference doesn't seem to be a big one.

What I am not prepared to overlook, however, is the fact that Malachi in its entirety can be appended to the start of Mark's gospel (or any of the gospels) and serve as an appropriate condensation of the teachings of Jesus as I have described them above: "Jesus' ministry is about us preparing for death.  We prepare for death by earnestly grasping the undeniable realities of our existence, understood chiefly in terms of our moral responsibilities."  The Book of Malachi is, in effect, the first of the gospels.  It is appropriate, if perhaps happenstance, that the name (or pseudonym) Malachi means "my messenger".

Malachi begins, John-the-Baptist-like, with a thorough undercutting of the Jewish theologians' attachment to ancestry.  (This was, of course, the John who said, "God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham" (Matthew 3:9).)  Malachi relates:

"Was not Esau Jacob's brother? saith the Lord: yet I loved Jacob, And I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness.  Whereas Edom saith, We are impoverished, but we will return and build the desolate places; thus saith the Lord of hosts, They shall build, but I will throw down; and they shall call them, The border of wickedness, and, The people against whom the Lord hath indignation for ever" (1:2-4).

"They shall call them" is the notion of the characterization of Edom's fate as described above.  Edom has all the hallmarks of a cursed people, in distinction to blessed Israel ("Jacob").  What is not described above is Edom ("Esau") as a people cursed in totality and finality.  One might wonder why reputation, rather than fact, is used to describe the wretched descendants of Esau, until one remembers the "blessing" of Isaac for his elder son, tricked out of his expected true blessing by his younger brother Jacob:

"Behold, thy dwelling shall be [away from] the fatness of the earth, and of the dew of heaven from above; And by thy sword shalt thou live, and shalt serve thy brother; and it shall come to pass when thou shalt have dominion, that thou shalt break his yoke from off thy neck" (Genesis 27:39-40).

The picture of Edom, as related by the tale of their forebear Esau, is a picture of one who rises up; there is no available metaphor in Genesis of a finally defeated Esau.  This is the Esau who overcomes his hatred of his brother Jacob, who lives to have Jacob call him "my lord" (33:15), and who in the end experiences the crowning dignity of their troubled family: "And Isaac gave up the ghost, and died....and his sons Esau and Jacob buried him" (35:29).

When the Book of Malachi presents a picture of Edom (as "Esau") thus: "Whereas Edom saith, We are impoverished, but we will return and build the desolate places; thus saith the Lord of hosts, They shall build, but I will throw down...," Malachi is describing an indominable, if troubled, people.  It is left to the reader of Malachi's time, or Jesus' time, or our time, to decide if there is warrant to ever think of any people as being especially precious in God's sight.

This is brought home again later in Malachi, as the prophet depicts the Lord pointedly addressing "ye sons of Jacob": "Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine ordinances, and have not kept them" (3:6-7).  One can only be reminded of Esau's plaintive cry, "Is not he rightly named Jacob ['trickster']?" (Genesis 27:36).  Here again, Malachi presents the all-important (to some) fact of Israel's descent from the eponymous Jacob, and leaves hanging a choice of possible interpretations.

We will see that this is not the last such pregnant passage in Malachi.