The Trouble With Economies Part Two

I think this second part can be addressed with relative "economy."  This has to do with the world's (that is to say, "worldly") economies.

A perfect example of the trouble with worldly economies is shown in a certain American Evangelical fascination with the Jamestown settlement: At first all was held in common, but that didn't work very well.  Captain John Smith instituted a system of private property (chiefly in the form of ostensibly arable land) whereby was to be actualized the New Testament admonition "if any would not work, neither should he eat" (2 Thessalonians 3:10, KJV).

It should be noted, of course, that the instituting of private property (and of private enterprise) does not follow directly from "if any would not work, neither should he eat"--it would merely be necessary for the authorities to withhold food from those persons who refused to exert themselves for the common good.  Of course, "merely" making such judgments would probably not be so easy.

And so we have the Evangelicals' beloved tale of colonists (exempting the gravely ill) being faced with work or starvation.  They were also faced, however, with two other things: the assumption that productivity equaled work (linked to the ultimately unproveable assumption that everyone's "lot" was equal), and the assumption that every application for consideration as infirm would be greeted with perfect justice.

And so we have the economy of The West, wedded awkwardly through the generations to the "Judeo-Christian" ethic.  "Free Enterprise" is, of course, a relatively efficient approximation of what would ideally be spontaneous and selfless collective endeavor, but one wonders if we have ever realized the full extent to which that "approximation" has degraded the teachings of Jesus.

As I wrote in the previous post, "The Jesus of the Salvation Economy may be praised to the highest heavens, but the very logic of an economy places Jesus at a bargaining-table, dealing out salvations and damnations for people as against some corners of existence which--most perversely--might be held to possess competing claims--as though such claimants could exist in a universe created through Jesus."

Similarly, "Free Enterprise" Christianity--from John Smith's day to our own--has given cruel fortune (or, in Job's theology, cruel Satan) a seat at the meeting-table of the community, arguing--even if silently--the crushing presumption that poverty is a just payment.

The Trouble With Economies Part One

These two posts are to address the notion of "economies," in religion and in the world; that is to say, these two posts are to address the notion of "economies" everywhere.  I will start with what is wrong with both types of economies--a fair premise, I believe, since the very "economy" connotation of "a house being in order" is heavy with undeserved praise.  An examination of "The Trouble With Economies" will shed light on the true implications of the term.

First, Christianity is shot through with ideas about the "salvation economy," by which it is held that Jesus' redeeming death has purchased salvation for those humans who are reckoned to obtain access to the bargain.  The problem with this view is not that it is entirely incorrect, but that it has been rendered--by the very emphasis placed on it--fundamentally inapplicable.  The Jesus whose death and resurrection saves the elect is the same Jesus through whom the world was created, and the same Jesus who experiences every suffering of Creation.  This is the same Jesus who dies every death in fallen Creation's unfeeling equation, and who experiences and performs every resurrection--a surprisingly commonplace occurrence, if the Gospels are to be trusted.

This Jesus of reality is a Jesus always living, always dying, and always resurrecting.  The Jesus of the "salvation economy" is a decidedly lower-order being, and this discounting of the true Jesus' nature is more than a simple blasphemy; it is a contravention of his true ministry.  No one is saved through a salvation economy; we must be saved through the operations of a salvific organism--an intrinsically Jesus-inhabited and Jesus-mediated kingdom.  If "inhabited" and "mediated" seem too humble terms for the Savior, it is only because Jesus in his nature and his utterances frames himself so--the Lord of All and the Servant of All.

Conversely, the King of the Salvation Economy is no king at all.  The Jesus of the Salvation Economy may be praised to the highest heavens, but the very logic of an economy places Jesus at a bargaining-table, dealing out salvations and damnations for people as against some corners of existence which--most perversely--might be held to possess competing claims--as though such claimants could exist in a universe created through Jesus.

This, then, is the contrast at hand: Jesus of The Salvation Economy, purchasing our salvation through the Resurrection, or Jesus of the Universal Organism, inhabiting a Kingdom that ministers continually to sentient Creation through justice and mercy.  In a  certain sense, the distinction between the two framings is not all that great--if one is willing to risk misjudging Jesus' relationship to Creation.

It would perhaps be worth wondering, though, if Jesus' ministry of salvation is not contravened by failure to understand its essential architecture.  Countless generations have been assured--with greater or lesser success--that A Salvation Economy has been instituted by Jesus' death on the Cross and subsequent triumphant Resurrection.  Countless generations have subsumed their understanding of that portrayal to Jesus' declaration in John 16:33: "I have overcome the world" (KJV).

Jesus, of course, said that before the Resurrection, not after.

The One and Only Human

No mere human can call the Son of God "The Son of God" by understanding what "God" means or what that sonship means.  We only know that we have always been unworthy to be called daughters or sons of God.  Yet such is what Eve and Adam were created to be.

We call Jesus the Son of God because he possesses life and identity as a child of God--as we were meant to do.  We, on the other hand, are dead--something that we are obligated to understand when first we are cognizant of our sin.

For these reasons it is important to remember that we flirt with blasphemy when we opine about Jesus becoming human "like us," because we cannot so much as claim that status.

No Happy Contentment

One of the most fascinating things about the Bible (and all the more so about just the Gospels) is the almost complete lack of references to concepts that can be rendered as "happiness" or "contentment."  To hear the denominations prate, however, one would think that a state of "happiness" and "contentment" (contrasted with the ostensible inner turmoil of nonbelievers) was the essence of The Christian Life.

The Gospels speak of "joy" (and, as I will hold to be joy's complement, "fear"), not of "happiness" or "contentment."  Jesus tells us to be always awake; that is not a posture of  happiness or contentment, but rather of fear, occasionally interspersed with rushes of joy, such as when a sentry glimpses the dawn.  More importantly, we cannot really plan on any occasion for joy, any more than we can plan on a life without fear.

We can try to grasp what Jesus means, and we can try to grasp what Jesus wants, but we rest happily contented in those endeavors at our soul's peril.

Because the Good is There

aaaejBecause the Good is There

The substance of any possible understanding of religion is within us as a birthright; that is the logical counterpart of our being born subject to the constraints of religion.  That is why the particulars, even the constituent themes, of religion are ancillary to religion's demand that we embrace the good and shun the evil.  Indeed, it is to be expected that earnest strivings for true religion will conclude that religion, as such, does not exist at all.

The above is simply the arc of the Gospel narrative.  Themes are repeated, or are spread over the gospels, but the emerging logic is simple.  John the Baptist tells us (in a quaint reshuffling of prophets' quotes) to prepare for the lord of all.  If an imposter presents himself as the lord, or as a representative of the lord, he will be betrayed by the fruit he produces.  What matters is that we prepare for the advent of the true righteous king.

The end, the exhaustion, the unfolding of our lives is the giving of ourselves as subject to the true righteous king.  Our ability or inability to identify any particular manifestation of the true God is as immaterial as is the question of whether our worship is "good enough."  A person who might identify the true God in a poached egg, and who determines that said poached egg is a manifestation of unlimited sovereignty and righteousness, is a truer (though wildly clumsy) worshipper of the true God than a person who exhausts himself or herself in pursuing the Lord Almighty of the Scriptures, and upon locating that God, endorses some supposedly salvific sacrament, theorem, or substitutionary sacrifice on the hideous basis that God "cannot" extend salvation except by such means.

Jesus said in the Garden, "Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me; nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt" (Mark 14:36, KJV).  The Good Thief of Luke ascribes to the innocent, suffering Jesus all possibility and all capacity for righteous judgment.  In substance, the thief's estimation of Jesus differs little from Jesus' description of his father.  Luke tells us that the thief reckoned on Jesus' innocence; we do not know, and Luke does not tell us, whether The Good Thief resembled more the sincerest of learned theologians, or our hypothetical egg-worshipper.  In the sight of the true God, presumably, the respective measures of theological acumen of the two human beings would be all but indistinguishable.

That, then, is the Gospel: the grasping for the Good--not because the Good is graspable, but because the Good is there.

The Illustrated Cavern Within Us

It is necessary to see the elements of the ancient world in their proper setting.  The timeless world of human experience is not an infinite universe, nor even a globe set in a neighborhood of stars.  Our world is better conceptualized as a cartouche-the simplest depiction of a bounded and interlocking system.  Our phantasmagoria of infinitudes allows us to spread our conceptualizations out as separate blotches on a canvas.

Nothing is separate, a fact that cannot be hidden from our unbridled senses--if we will unbridle them.  This is what Jesus meant when he said "if you have eyes to see or ears to hear" and the like.  Given the chance, we do not use our eyes to see, but rather to paint pictures of our preconceptions--no great difficulty, if we decide what to look at, and from which angle.

Indeed, there is not enough time in life to learn how to see nor how to properly believe--much less to divine the proper content of such beliefs.  No matter--what is necessary to believe is within us: our inheritance from Adam and Eve and the "apple."  We are one with the internalized cartouche of existence.  We are able, as Jesus charges us, to decide right from wrong--if only we will allow the unfiltered light of our senses to illuminate the profusely illustrated cavern within us.

In Regard to the Salt Business

In regard to the "salt" business, the Gospel of Mark has the enigmatic passage:

"For every one shall be salted with fire, and every sacrifice shall be salted with salt" (9:49, KJV).

That verse might seem to make little sense, until it is seen as a fulcrum between the two bracketing passages.  The preceding passage:

"And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched" (9:47-48).

That passage speaks of the suffering of those under the punishment of God.  And the passage subsequent to 49:

"Salt is good: but if the salt have lost his saltness, wherewith will ye season it?  Have salt in yourselves, and have peace one with another" (9:50).

That passage speaks of the possible beneficent power of the person.  The cumulative implication seems clear: the "salt" of the Gospels is the potency--the "fire"--of humanity, a potency that can be lost through dissipation.

Verse 49 says, "For every one shall be salted with fire, and every sacrifice shall be salted with salt"--but that power can be lost:

"Ye are the salt of the earth, but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men" (Matthew 5:13).

Not Really All That Special

aaaegNot Really All That Special

The ancient world had a simpler view of nature than we possess.  The "elements" of air, earth, water, and fire were taken to comprise the physical world, though of course fire--chiefly a manifestation of energy--has never seemed to be quite on a par with the other elements.  Additionally (and unsurprisingly) any physical substance of a spicy, acidic, or salty nature could be said to possess characteristics of "fire."

"For every one shall be salted with fire" (Mark 9:49, KJV).

There is no warrant, however, to assume that the ancients were unaware of the fact that "fire" does not exist of itself, and as such has a closer relationship to the physical elements than would at first seem to be the case.  Volcanism does not exist independently of the trillions of tons of less remarkable earth that press upon it; fire does not spring up on the surface of stony soil, but rather must wait for combustible vegetation to arise.

Similarly, the spiciness of some foods is drawn from processes of concentration, either in growth or through food preparation.  And most significantly, salt can be seen to arise from evaporation.  The "fire" of "salt" is not a merely a qualitative phenomenon--a property of salt itself--but is also a phenomenon of concentration--the gathering of substances uncommon in themselves, but plentiful in times and places when drawn from the wider world.

This is also the only defensible meaning of Jesus' statement, "Ye are the salt of the earth" (Matthew 5:13).  We are masses of elements drawn from the wider creation, to be responsible to our abilities, not to be celebrated for our specialness that is not really all that special.