a very rough first draft

There is a lot of bullshit and many species of bullshit out there surrounding the life and teaching of Jesus–in fact a lot of the bullshit that goes by the name of Christianity has nothing to do with the life and teaching of Jesus.  It’s so bad, that many serious seekers dismiss Christianity out of hand–putting it in the same bucket as a fairy tale–despite those earnest souls who try to convince people that fairy tales are more real than day-to-day life.  But somewhere along the way I read somewhere that the Dalai Lama said–no more Christians becoming Buddhists!  Rather Christians should go deeper into their own tradition.  Well I’ve tried to do that and I’m passing along these distillations in hopes that they might save someone the trouble.  What follows is rambling, half coherent, and in need of editing.  Like some guy said, I apologize for the length of this letter.  I didn’t have time to write a shorter one.  

First, on the idea of why the hell is there so much shit and pain and evil in the world daily–this from Rowan Williams via James Macintyre: 

A FEW years ago, Rowan Williams, then Archbishop of Canterbury, was asked where God was on 11 September 2001. “Where he always is, always in the centre of things, always in the acts of love and generosity that people give to one another in times of crisis,” said Lord Williams, who had been in New York on the day of the terrorist attacks.

“People expect when they ask that question of where was God — they expect sometimes an answer in terms of a God who steps in and solves it all, stops it happening, or mops it up. But the way God works seems to be in the heart of it all, and through people.”

And I’m not a scholar with a list of footnotes–so let me just say that the following is plagiarized and mutated from many sources including Rowan Williams, Louis Evely, Thomas Hopko, Jacques Philippe, Howard Thurman, and probably lots of ancient Greeks that I’m not aware of.  Also the ethos of the holy fools and Eugene Vodolazkin’s Laurus and the existentialist philosophers.  

So anyway, one thing that occurred to me is this idea of God on a cross.  If I remember my philosophy prof from 25 or so years ago, that was a phrase from Nietzsche–God on a cross.  The God/man barbarically executed or lynched (cf James Cone).  Attention scholars and philosophers and theologians:  shut the f*&^ up and look at this outrageous scandalous barbaric execution of the God-man.  The cross is not a hallmark greeting card symbol–it is a lynching tree, an electric chair.  The excruciating embarrassing awkward shameful electrocution/lynching/crucifixion of Jesus.  Of Jesus!  The one man that lived a life of integrity and love to the fullest.  That event.  That event which culminated a life and a series of contingent events–that thing that happened in flesh-and-blood everyday history.  That is what reveals/exposes the human condition.  That is what reveals who God is.  (not a transcendent abstraction or even a scriptural analysis)  So you say that God is omnipotent?  We can speculate and project all day and all night about what God is.  But, according to our tradition anyway, where is the one place that we know that we see God?  Bueller? Bueller?  The one place that we know that we see God in on the cross.  So fast forward–my conclusion is that 1.  God is love.  (cf 1 John 4:8)  and 2.  God most fully revealed Himself on the electric-chair/lynching-tree/extremely-painful/embarrasing/[JESUS WAS CRUCIFIED NAKED]shameful-cross.  Would anyone disagree that Jesus’ crucifixion was a suffering?  And this suffering love–THIS is how God chose to save the world.  Not to check the box on some “theory of atonement,” but to absorb in His own flesh-and-blood all of the hell that could possibly be thrown at Him.  And we who would follow in His WAY continue to do the same. (cf Colossians 1:24)  Not in a codependent way, but from a place of (hard-won) self possession and interior freedom.  Well I’d like to think that God’s omnipotence should be manifested as a magic wand that fixed all the shit and stopped more shit from happening and I’d like to philosophize about all the implications and pretzel logic flowing from my magic wand demand.  But the root of the Christian tradition says that the cross is how God revealed Himself and that revelation (prior to any interpretation of it) is what saved the world.  God’s power is the power of suffering love.

And that brings me to another conundrum that I wrestled with for years–the relationship of Christ’s teaching and His crucifixion.  (And resurrection.)  (And His second coming.)  

Ok first–the supernatural, miracles, etc.  This is such a stumbling block for so many.  Contemporary seekers can’t wrap their head around supernatural aspects of faith.  Some Chrisitan apologists take issue with the terminology that would divide miracles, etc. from normal reality.  Others would demythologize Chrisitanity of all supernatural aspects.  Many Christians ignore all of this and focus on loving God and loving neighbor, and of course there are reactionaries. 

So my take is that, notwithstanding the first-century understanding of the physical world, etc., it’s pretty clear that it took even the apostles–those who were closest to Jesus–a long time to fully understand who He was and what He was about.  So why should we expect a contemporary seeker 2000 years later to accept at the outset something that even the apostles took a long time to grasp?  I think that a demythologized faith offers an existentialist framework for making sense of the human condition and an invitation to organizing one’s life inside the framework of Christ’s life.  And then leave the rest up to God.  Let God reveal whatever of the supernatural he wants to reveal when He wants to reveal it.  Let a spiritual director, clergy, and friends walk with the seeker on the long road of life.  All the arguing and debating is just hot air and a waste of time.

There are lots of ways to interpret the resurrection and what it was.  But at the end of the day, people were willing to be martyred rather than deny the resurrection of Christ.  

Some would say that the second coming was an unfulfilled promise.  Some go to great lengths to argue that the second coming will take place at some extremely distant point in the future.  But what about the thief-in-the-night verses?  There is an existentialist reading of the second coming that says that this moment…and this moment…and this moment…and this moment…is a second coming.  Lots could be said about this and argued about this, but the point is that there is a starting point here…an access point for the seeker or for the one who is rethinking his/her/their faith to understand this part of the tradition without a sacrifice of the intellect.  

Okay the next thing is the wedge or the perceived discontinuity between Christ the teacher and Christ crucified and resurrected and the subsequent atonement theories and mythologies and their associated formulas that are used to proselytize and to form children.  The arguments and the theories go round and round.  The crux of Christ’s teaching is the Beatitudes–which are not a Hallmark card, but rather a threatening teaching that would liberate the poor and oppressed–right now–starting with an internal liberation.  And the relationship of the crucifixion to those teachings was Christ walking the walk of the Beatitudes right into the teeth of the bargain between the state and the religious elite that wanted to snuff out His liberation that threatened their power.  

So there you go:

–how God works in the world  (oh the hubris) 

–how God saved (and continues to save) the world

–the horror of the crucifixion

–God’s power=the power of suffering love

–series of contingent events in human history is the key to understanding the totality of reality–not abstraction or speculation 

–Jesus the God/man taught the Way to live a life of freedom and liberation and walked the walk of His own teaching even though it meant the worst death imaginable 

–existentialist/demythologized understanding of the Gospel can be a gateway to the seeker to organize their life in the framework of Christ’s life–setting aside any supernatural aspects of faith for God to reveal if/when appropriate

–there is no discontinuity between the teaching of Christ and the death and resurrection of Christ that consumes the new testament.  

–and maybe some stuff I missed 

This is a very rough first draft.  A starting point for discussion. 

the threat of primitive Christianity

There is a reason why the Way (Christianity) was persecuted to the point of death–starting with Jesus–by the religious elite and by the government.  It was a threat–not by force–but by internal liberation from external threats–even threats of torture and death–or of divine punishment.  It was a Way that freed even peasants–no especially peasants–to face the emperor, to face the human projections of God, to face poverty, loss, fear and all manner of external circumstances or fear of potential circumstances–with peace, joy, and self possession.  No action of the emperor, no threat of religion, no material loss or physical suffering could touch the internal freedom, joy, and self possession of one who had put all his/her/their chips on Christ–whose life and death had exposed government, religion, physical pain, material want–or anything else–as empty and powerless.  The Way had defanged all of that power for those who put their chips on Jesus–who were all in.  That was and is a direct threat to those who have put all of their chips on riches and on power and control.  Can you imagine trying to threaten a true Christian saint with poverty or torture or hell?  He/she/they would probably thank you for it and pray for you and try to help you.  Look at the story of Saint Seraphim and the robbers.  Look at how Howard Thurman examined these themes in Jesus and the Disinherited.   

The Crucifixion as Existential Fish Hook

One of the oldest (and probably the oldest) ways to understand the significance of what Jesus did on the cross is the fish hook theory:  Adam and Eve and humanity were held prisoner in hell by Satan.  God agreed to give Jesus Christ to Satan in exchange for getting Adam and Eve, et al. out of Satan’s hell.  Satan took the bait, but he bit on the fish hook of Jesus’ divinity which was so bright and powerful that it exploded hell with its brightness.

When I experience hell in everyday life, it comes in the existential form of shame, intimidation, threats, traps, deceptions, fears, et al.  When I contemplate the torture of the cross that Jesus endured in order to demonstrate the depth of His love for me, I can allow **that Love, His Love** to explode that existential hell (fear, shame, threats, etc.)–rather than any futile attempt to do it myself.  Whatever the hell happens, whatever the hell they do to me–I have the divine love of Jesus Christ which will explode anything that this world throws against me, either in this life or the next–and knowing that can make this life a little more like heaven day by day as I try to stay close to Him.