Truth is Told in Stories

Truth is told in stories.  Stories are different from accounts.  Accounts purport to describe objective facts.  Stories are meant to convey meaning.

Accounts can be totally--or nearly totally--false, in that almost everything they contain might be in conflict with objective fact.  Stories, on the other hand, can be only as false as the conclusions people draw from them.

Jesus tells either stories, or else parables, which in effect are the same as stories, in that they make narratives out of idealized situations.  Neither purport to describe objective facts.

Stories and parables are meant to convey meaning.  Stories and parables operate, when handled properly, within the realization that truth is ultimately ungraspable.  That is why it is neither mysterious nor unjust that Jesus tells the masses parables, depriving them of more explicit explanations.  What I term "explicit explanations" are actually intentionally misnamed by me, because no explanation of any supernatural truth can ever be explicit.

What are held to be clear and definite supernatural truths (dogmas) are not merely untrue (such as might be said of untrue accounts), but are infinitely worse, in that the notion that such ostensible truths can be true (or even false) disregards their very nature as contentions about that which cannot be contended.

Accounts (and their naturally-accompanying dogmas) are things of this world, dispensed and monitored by the controllers of information (or what is purported to be information.)  Accounts can be very useful, in that--when true--they correspond to ascertainable and testable facts.  When false, they can be shown to be so--if the controllers of information will allow it.  In either event, accounts whether true or false are subordinated in practice to the existence of worldly authorities.

Dogmas (which purport of demonstrable derivation from ostensible accounts, and purport therefore to be necessary conclusions from agreed-upon facts) are the property of the authorities, no matter how explicit, formal, or ideologically-legitimate (or not) those authorities be.  A religious dogma can be enforced by a political state, or it can be imposed somewhat less formally by a political state that lends its sanction to supposedly uncoerced religion.

Accounts, therefore, are things of this world.  Accounts are things of the loci of authority in this world.  Accounts are, in Bible-type language, the province of the powers of the world.

In the gospel stories (differently-arranged, as stories typically are) Satan offers Jesus the powers of the world.  Jesus refuses.  The denominations, on the other hand, have taken up Satan's offer in promulgating what might as well be called "laws": the ostensibly unquestionable dogmas of faith.

The truth of the gospels resides in stories, of which the gospels are rich sources.  Some gospel stories have themes and bounds that are easy to find, and some gospel stories are far more elusive.  All Jesus promises us is the value of searching for them.

Staggered to Jerusalem

I titled the preceding post, "Endless Worrying of Theology," but I am struck now by how the experience of "endless worrying" describes well the narrative in the Gospel of Mark of Jesus' (and his followers') final trip to Jerusalem.  It would be fitting for us to wonder about the types of experiences undergone by the disciples, especially as the standard notions of the gospels are perfused with fancies about smoothly (if not sedately) developing knowledge-bases for the disciples.  Jesus is teaching, and presumably his followers are learning--yet the commentators are often enough, as each of the gospels draw to a close, astounded by how thick-headed the disciples can be.

How would each of us be, living in a world of harsh realities, yet instructed from the cradle in the notion that the miraculous might always be by one's elbow--and yet again warned interminably by the flesh-and-blood representatives of the prevailing faith that false signs and false prophets abound?  How would each of us be, cast--as were Jesus' disciples--into a state of quintessential otherness wending through an environment, not of indifferent secular culture or secular polity, but rather an environment where factions' established interplay of otherness was the feverish norm?

How would each of us be, in the milieu of the above paragraph, if the conditions of Mark's describing (considered here if for no other than the sake of argument) were to prevail upon us?  Confronted by miracles, empowered to do miracles, presented with theses from the messiah of a religion that had, for millennia, imagined that nothing more than evocative references to the messiah would be available before the great and awful final consummation?

These, I contend, are the questions that must surround us as we read of Jesus "teaching" (as though that word would really suit) on the way to Jerusalem.  I must agree that a curriculum of sorts was at hand, and I (as any commentator) have my own notions of its content.  What Jesus was teaching was a cycle (approximate and nearly-regular in its presentation) of lessons about realization, persistence, profession, passion, and renunciation.  I will rehearse these themes briefly through the course of the journey to Jerusalem, but I will contend that it is an open question, whether Jesus was teaching them the content of what he said and what they experienced, or whether Jesus was teaching them to embrace the experience-field that would be represented by the remnants of their existence cast ahead against their eternal fates.

"And again, departing from the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, he came unto the sea of Galilee, through the midst of the coasts of Decapolis.  And they bring unto him one that was deaf, and had an impediment in his speech . . . " (Mark 7:31-32).  Of course, Jesus heals the man, and Jesus as usual orders the onlookers and the healed (to no avail) that they "should tell no man."  They seize upon their realization about Jesus: "He hath done all things well: he maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak."

Then we come to the second miracle of feeding many, and here the disciples' failure to realize the nature of their teacher is expounded several-fold: They do not believe that the multitude can be fed--even though they have seen Jesus do this before.  They do not realize that the sovereignty of Jesus is a function of his nature, and they seem inclined--as are the Pharisees who confront Jesus later at Dalmanutha--to require some sort of overt and startling sign to ratify Jesus' nature.  Leaving there, Jesus remonstrates with his disciples in a passage that must really be quoted:

". . . perceive ye not yet, neither understand? have ye your heart yet hardened?  Having eyes, see ye not? and having ears, hear ye not? and do ye not remember?  When I brake the five loaves among five thousand, how many baskets full of fragments took ye up?  They say unto him, Twelve.  And when the seven among four thousand, how many baskets full of fragments took ye up?  And they said, Seven.  And he said unto them, How is it that ye do not understand?" (Mark 8:17-21)

As far as the remaining themes of persistence, profession, passion, and renunciation--they follow in quick succession.  Jesus and the blind man persist through one of the most remarkable miracle-episodes of the Bible, wherein two ministrations are involved to effect the cure.  Peter then professes to Jesus, "Thou art the Christ."  Following this, Jesus speaks for the first time of his Passion, and then Jesus tells first Peter ("Get thee behind me, Satan") and then "the people unto him with his disciples" what they are going to have to renounce to follow Jesus.

Then the theme of realization comes again, with "there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power," followed by the Transfiguration--and its blinding focus on one essential point: "This is my beloved Son: hear him."  Immediately following is the episode of the demon-possessed, apparently epileptic youngster whose father persists in his pleas to Jesus, who cures the man's son and then cautions the disciples about how they must carry on in the face of such situations: "This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting."

Next comes Jesus' second description of his Passion, though the last part of the passage is of the most immediate concern to us: "But they understood not that saying, and were afraid to ask him."  A theme seems to be developing, and it certainly does not seem to be a theme of Jesus effectively "teaching" his disciples.

Then comes renunciation ("If any man desire to be first, the same shall be last of all"), followed by realization ("For whosoever shall give you a cup of water to drink in my name"), followed by persistence ("if thy hand offend thee, cut it off"), followed by profession ("Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God"), and the rewards of renunciation coming--out of order in my meager fancies--before the third prophecy of the Passion:

"And they were in the way going up to Jerusalem; and Jesus went before them: and they were amazed; and as they followed, they were afraid.  And he took again the twelve, and began to tell them what things should happen unto him, Saying, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man shall be delivered unto the chief priests . . ." 

Unsurprisingly, the topic of renunciation comes up soon again, as the sons of Zebedee are frustrated in their request to sit at the right and left of Jesus in glory--they seem to have gotten a taste of the idea of glory, coupled with the unfortunate fact that they have little idea what they are talking about.  And so again, the future apostles are told that "whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all."

There are as many commentaries, of course, as there are commentators, and there is nothing definitive about my description of the passages dealt with above as featuring realization, persistence, profession, passion, and renunciation--any number of other modes of analysis might be as salient.  What is as important as anything, here, is the intertwined theme I referred to before, and which might pass as the usual read-it-before blur of a familiar Bible passage.  To call particular attention to the scriptural introduction just above about the Passion:

". . . and they were amazed; and as they followed, they were afraid."

The snippet above is taken by some translators to say, "they were in a daze," or some such.  The disciples were not just tired, not just full of wonder, not just apprehensive--though all these things are true, they are usually things left by themselves in the many commentaries that wish to bemoan the dull and stubborn outlooks of the uncomprehending disciples.  This is insufficient--the disciples, to use the most apt phrase of our time, had had their minds blown.  And they were yet going to see their master curse a fig tree and scatter the human and animal contents of the temple.

As we will see in the next post, the question about the dullness of the disciples (and, inevitably, the question of how much Jesus requires any of us to learn) can only be understood when we understand as well what Jesus demanded his disciples learn, and how short a span was provided them to learn it.