IS CHRISTIANITY WORTH TRYING TO SAVE ?
There. I said it. It has been a question on my mind for some time. I don't know why I was hesitant to articulate it. It must be obvious to anyone who knows me or has read my posts that I, as a nominal Christian, struggle with Christianity; in particular, its teachings about Jesus and its insistence on believing the unbelievable as necessary for salvation.
To be clear, I don't believe that Jesus is the only begotten son of God. I don't believe that he was brought into the world as result of a parthenogentic (virgin) birth or descended from heaven to earth nor more than you or I. I don't believe he is some form of demigod (true man and true god) as a result of divine-human spiritual tryst between God and a virgin named Mary. I don't believe that Jesus' crucifixion was a sacrifice required by God to pay the price sins of the world in perpetuity. I don't believe that Jesus was physically resurrected from the dead. In essence, I don't believe in what most Christian churches insist that one believes in order to be a Christian.
In addition, I don't believe that I'm the only nominal Christian sitting in the pew of a church who shares my list of disbeliefs. Whew! That's enough for now. You get the point.
If Christianity is worth saving, I believe Christianity need to be recalibrated to the facts regarding Jesus as best as we can determine them. Who is Jesus has been a question that has never been answered definitively nor factually. For the last one thousand years, orthodox/catholic understanding who Jesus is has reigned supreme without accepting Jesus as only being a Jewish man living Galilee in the first century C.E. We need to start with that basic fact and stick with it.
JESUS
NOTE: As my regular readers know, I see two types of teaching in the New Testament. The teachings of Jesus and the teachings about Jesus. I give more credibility to the teaching of Jesus which are rooted in the Torah and the Prophets of the Old Testament than I do to the teachings about Jesus which are rooted, for a lack of a better word, hearsay and theological speculation.
Here I must be clear about my use of the word "credibility." In my usage of the word, credibility is something that can be empirically proven as fact, replicated, verified historically by independent sources, and/or replicated scientifically. Given that definition, most of the teachings about Jesus are not credible.
This does not mean that the teachings about Jesus should be disregarded as having no value. I openly treat most of the teachings about Jesus metaphorically or as a myth which, ironically, may have been the original intent by those who wrote them down. I recognize that the term myth is controversial as implying something is a lie. So let me be clear as to why I like the term.
Myths are neither factual nor are they lies. A story about something that cannot be proven as a fact can give to meaning to our experiences, much as Greek or other myths do. The only way that a myth is a lie is by treating a myth as a fact. Both the Old and the New Testaments are replete with myths from which one can deduce applicable meanings.
The teachings about Jesus is another topic that will need recalibration in other posts. For now, the topic is Jesus, the man, the Jew, and his teachings.
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To be honest, we don't know much about the historical Jesus, apart from what we have in the Synoptic Gospels and the sparse remarks by ancient historians outside of the Christian community in the 1st century CE. In fact, we have very little information about the early formation of Christianity apart from the Book of Acts. With regard to factual information, we have, at best, second and third hand information.
To identify the historical Jesus is what can be factually determined about someone born in Galilee in the first century. Given what we know about the location, time frame, and what the Synoptic Gospels tell us, the safest thing to say about Jesus is that he was a Jew.
That may come across as something absurdly obvious. I would agree. Nevertheless, I feel it needs to be clearly stated because Jesus being a Jew is quickly lost in the New Testament. To the indoctrinated Christian mind, Jesus is perceived to be more than human and above and beyond being a devoted Jew. Therein lies the problem Christianity has with Jesus. Christians believe that Jesus turned Judaism upside down. I disagree with that assessment.
If one cannot understand Jesus as a devout and practicing Jew, one cannot understand Jesus at all. Most of the New Testament narratives about Jesus tend to side-step his being a practicing Jew, as if his being Jewish was somehow beneath him or didn't apply to him. A clear (non-editorialized) reading of the Synoptic Gospel depicts Jesus as deeply concerned about his Jewish religion and his fellow Jews.
Getting to know the historical Jesus requires stepping into the synoptic Gospels and being able to sift through its editorialized data and its mix of myth and fact to listen closely to what Jesus was saying in his "sermons," conversations, and his parabolic teachings.
For instance, we know, according to the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus could read because he read the scriptures in the synagogue. That in the Synoptic Gospels he is called a rabbi by scribes and pharisees would indicate that he was recognized as a legitimate rabbi who would be able to read in a synagogue. Christians tend to minimize that probability by saying anyone who preached at the time was referred to as a rabbi or was mockingly being referred to as such. I don't think the scribes and the Pharisees would have referred to him as such if he were not recognized as a legitimate rabbi
With regard to being a practicing Jew, in the Gospel of Luke we have a story where Mary and Joseph presented him in the Temple according to Jewish practice at the age of twelve in order to prep him for his upcoming bar mitzvah when he turned thirteen from which we can deduce that he was brought up as a practicing Jew. We know he visited Jerusalem on at least one occasion, but I think it safe to say he was there on more than one occasion throughout his life to observe Jewish holy days in which he would have made the journey to the Templed as a practicing Jew.
As a practicing Jew who made trips to the Temple in Jerusalem, one can assume he, like his fellow Jews would have offered sacrifices at the Temple. Unfortunately, the New Testament is mute on the subject. I think most Christians believe Jesus didn't need to offer sacrifices because he was the sinless Son of God, which would have excused him from being a practicing Jew. His parents obviously didn't see him that way because they offered sacrifices on his behalf when he was young (See Luke 2:22-24).
It is likely that throughout his life Jesus would not have understood himself as being anything other than a human being who was a Jew. That Jesus was baptized by John could be factual, however, that God called him his beloved son does not have a factual reference that can be verified. The Synoptic Gospels describes such an event as personal experience, a vision, Jesus would have told his followers. One has to set aside, the Gospel of John's saying that John the Baptist saw the spirit of God descending on Jesus.
Jesus' conversations with the scribes and Pharisees reveal a person who reveled in discussions on the Torah and the prophets with them. Unfortunately, the New Testament tends to cast the scribes and pharisees as always trying to trick Jesus and maliciously denigrating what he was saying. I read those encounters differently. Jewish rabbis vigorously debated the scriptures in sometime challenging and personal ways. Like Jesus, they often resorted to parabolic stories to make their points. Jesus was a master of this form of discussion and debate.
If we are to take his encounters with the scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees as factual then Jesus was recognized by them as a practicing Jew. It is clear that Jesus' views on the law and prophets were intriguing and different. According to these Gospels, on more than one occasion Jesus was the guest of honor in a Pharisees' home. I don't see them trying to trick him or make him out to be an apostate Jew. If that were the case, I think Jesus would have been ignored by them, if not stoned long before he would have been crucified.
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A telling moment in the Gospel account is Jesus' reception at his hometown synagogue in Nazareth as recorded in the Gospels of Mark and Luke. These accounts offer some insight into how Jesus saw himself and his ministry. The Lucan Gospel gives us more detail and is worth taking a closer look.
And there was delivered unto (Jesus) the book of the prophet (Isaiah). And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the (good news) to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord." And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him. And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears. Luke 4:17-21
In both Luke's and Mark's account of this incident, Jesus' audience had a mixed reaction to what he said. They were both amazed and furious with what he said. In Mark, Jesus responds, "A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house." Mark 6:4
Jesus clearly was identifying with a prophetic role. As I have mentioned in other posts, the prophetic role is pointing out the ignored obvious or, in this case, the forgotten obvious. I believe Jesus saw his mission one of calling to mind who he and his fellow Jews were and whose they were. Jesus was not thinking outside the boundaries of his Jewish religion or the borders of Galilee and Judea. He wasn't thinking of gentiles when he was reading from Isaiah. He was thinking of the people seated in his hometown synagogue and in every synagogue throughout the known world at the time.
The selection that Jesus read from Isaiah 61 would have been recognizable to most of his audience in that synagogue. It's a passage that would have brought to mind a messianic figure, someone who might take on the Roman occupation of their land. It takes on a more militaristic tone as it says:
... and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn; To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified. ... And strangers shall stand and feed your flocks, and the sons of the alien shall be your plowmen and your vinedressers. But ye shall be named the Priests of the Lord: men shall call you the Ministers of our God: ye shall eat the riches of the Gentiles, and in their glory shall ye boast yourselves. Isaiah 61:2b-6
This is the backdrop message to what Jesus selected. If Luke's account is accurate with regard to what Jesus choose to read, Jesus was being very select in what he read. His audience would have been aware of what he left out. To stop after verse 2a of Isaiah and say, "This day the scripture has been fulfilled while you're sitting hear listening to me," had to leave his audience wondering what he was getting at.
What did Jesus mean by that? Was he claiming to be the messiah.
As Jonathan Sacks point out in his book, "A Letter in a Scroll," every person who proclaimed himself to be the messiah, during the era in which Jesus lived was executed, including Jesus. This is true and we need to stop there before going on to say, "Yes, but Jesus rose from the dead." Again, that is a teaching about Jesus that can neither be verified independently or replicated. This will be addressed in another post.
Jesus' synagogue audience, would have agreed with Rabbi Sacks. Galilee was a known hot spot for zealot activity. The people of Galilee witnessed first hand what the Romans did to self-proclaimed messiahs. The roads were lined with his crucified followers and a small village, like Nazareth would be at risk if the Romans thought they were colluding with a rebellion.
But was Jesus identifying himself with being the Messiah? If so, why did he, according to Luke, stop at Isaiah 61: 2a? In what way was Jesus proclaiming the time in which he lived, a time in which all of Judea was occupied by a gentile empire and polarized by religious contention, as the acceptable year of the Lord?
I don't believe that Jesus was trying to proclaim himself to be the Messiah. Jesus ending with Isaiah 61:2a was doing something more radical and, in some sense, more difficult than trying to take on Rome. He was trying to awaken his audience to what Isaiah had prophesied about, to preaching good news to the poor, healing the brokenhearted, proclaiming deliverance to the captives, restoring sight to the blind, and freeing the afflicted in spite Rome's oppression and the religious contention of the times.
The Gospels show Jesus treating the Roman presence with ambivalence. A famous example of this is when asked if it was lawful to pay taxes to Rome, Jesus asks to see the coin his interlocutors paid taxes with. Seeing the likeness of Caesar on the coin, he famously responded, "Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's." Jesus' focus was clearly on the present and on the cultural and religious disorder that afflicted his fellow Jews.
Jesus appears to have modeled himself as the Son of Man, God's to identify the prophet Ezekiel. Like Ezekiel, Jesus acted out his message. But instead of acting out in bizarre, cryptic ways as Ezekiel did, Jesus acted in provocative ways to get to his target audience, the ultra-religious, by associating with those considered lost causes; the hated tax collectors, the unclean prostitutes, the lame, the blind, the leper, and the occasional gentile. He not only talked to them, he touched them, and he ate and drank with them. In short he celebrated life with them.
Jesus appears to have been both generous with what he had and generous in receiving what was offered. When others were trying to tighten their religious belts against corrupting influences, Jesus was redefining the law by getting at the heart of what the law was saying to him and exposing the hypocrisy of those demonstrating personal piety while ignoring the plight of their fellow Jews who were living on the fringe of their society and were disenfranchised by the often wealthy ultra-religious (see the story of the rich man or the rich young man Matthew 19 and Mark 10).
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One has to consider why Jesus was an itinerant rabbi as opposed to one assigned to local synagogue; such as, Nazareth or Capernaum, his chosen hometown. He obviously preached in their synagogues. What one hears in his teachings, give us a clue to why Jesus treated the streets and the hillsides as an open synagogue. Jesus was critical of the religious leaders of his day who practiced personal piety rather than humility and concern for the marginalized. Jesus, on more than one occasion, stated that his mission was specifically to save the lost of Israel. His method of doing so was far ahead of his time and was confusing to those who emphasized personal piety by keeping strict adherence to the law.
Jesus' approach was first to accept the person as a child of God, like himself. Forgiveness, not condemnation, of one's faults was not only his mode of teaching, but also his mode of healing. It is interesting to note that in stories where Jesus healed someone, he often began by saying a person's sins were forgiven. There is a psychological element to his doing so. Often physical illness can be the result of severe depression and unresolved guilt or shame. Jesus' initial act of forgiveness had to be a tremendous relief to many who sought Jesus for healing who saw their sins as a punishment sent from God.
This was something that the scribes and Pharisees apparently had difficulty in grasping, according to the Gospels. Jesus put forgiveness as his primary religious obligation toward his fellow Jews. We also hear in these Gospels that Jesus couldn't heal those who couldn't forgive themselves or accept being forgiven. This was often put in terms of whether one believed Jesus could heal; such as, the father who brought his seemingly possessed son. In Mark 9, Jesus' question of whether the father believed or had faith that Jesus could heal goes straight to the heart of the matter. Did the father believe he was worthy enough to have a son who was not afflicted by something that the father or a member of the family had done? Such illnesses were thought to be the result of someone committing a sin that God was punishing them for.
It is clear Jesus did not believe God punished sinners, but more that sinners punished themselves because they were led to believe that all illnesses were the result of sin, which was reinforced by others who avoided them because of their perceived uncleanliness. Jesus' ministry was shaped by the love of his religion, his God who he claimed not only as his father but the father of all humans. His teachings reflect that understanding as does his activities among those who followed and sought him out.
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Next time, the post on recalibrating Christianity will address, Jesus as Christ.
Norm
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