Debt

I just finished watching 'Maxed Out', which is a documentary on the debt situation in the American economy. I highly and urgently encourage anyone who has not seen this to watch it and take it seriously. I'll just say a few simple points here:

1. It is readily apparent to anyone who thinks about it that debt is thinly disguised slavery. To be in debt is to lack total freedom.

2. The Judeo-Christian religion began with a people escaping slavery and in the process of doing so finding awareness of God. To anyone who claims either religion, the situation of debt and financial repression that this documentary pointed out should stand as a fundamental abomination to God. Those who would put others in debt are in a literal sense Satanic, they are opposed to their intrinsic humanity of the individual. I have no trouble therefore labeling our current president, or any of the corporations which support him in allowing the growth of public debt, as anti-Christian on all levels.

3. The situation of debt in America is successfully serving to eliminate the middle class. As the rich get richer and the poor get poorer the polarizing effect does not have much tolerance for people in the middle. The middle class are presented with a dilema of contributing to the corporate oppression and enslavement of lower classes, or in the long run, joining the enslaved.

4. The structure of corporations is a hierarchy in which instructions flow downwards, and the people on the lower tiers have no ultimate say in decisions. Since they rely on this corporate structure for their well being they are basically in a situation of enslavement to the 'anonymous few' at the top. There is a word for this type of 'corporate structure': Fascism.

5. These are issues that are of utmost importance to Christian faith. The fact that churches are scarcely involved in the opposition of such social evils is blasphemy, and is evidence of why the Christian faith has ultimately been deemed irrelevant. More than seeking to keep its own members out of debt, churches should and must seek to oppose the corporate enslavement of greater society. We are a people who have been saved by faith, and liberation/freedom is inseperable from salvation. In so far as we tolerate people falling into slavery we have betrayed everything it means to be Christian. This includes changing the heart of the person to be freed of the life-style and choices that lead to slavery, but just as much, even more, to oppose the structures that would seek their enslavement.

6. This is one area where faith meets politics. To think we can keep politics out of church is delusional.

A Single Parable

Over the past 50 years in biblical criticism, a branch of thought know as rhetorical criticism has risen. The basic gist is that nothing in the Bible was ever intended to be written for the sake of reporting an event. In fact every verse of the Bible has an agenda, or more likely multiple agendas, behind it. The truth is that humans on the whole have a large aversion to passing on useless information. With most of our interaction, we expect there to be a point to everything. This is funny in light of the way so many critics treat faith documents. Often any form of religious conviction in scholarly circles is treated with disdain. Yet, this is the problem when dealing with a document like the Bible, there is nothing in it that is not directed at persueding the reader. This is what has given rise to rhetorical criticism, which downplays the 'factuality' of faith documents, and gives credit to them as they are. It respects the supposed subjectivity, since in the eyes of rhetorical critics, objective documents are essentially pointless.

In other words everything that has been written which is worth reading has a point it is trying to make. And insofar as we want to judge such a document we must do so in respect of its purpose.

One genre of teaching that is all too foreign to us is that of parables. Yet to the earliest Christian community, and to Jesus himself, parables appear to be a preferred method of teaching. Why? Parables are essentially rhetorical. There is no format for a parable. A parable cannot be stripped down to a simple, straight-forward critique and answer. Often preachers will read a parable and the follow it up with "here's the point . . ." This only betrays the reason for using parables in the first place. The potential of a parable is to NOT state things plainly. Parable are intended to be a form of imaginative theater. The speaker lays out a scenario in the mind of the listener, where the listener is then left at a crisis point of judgment. The power of a parable is that it brings people to a point of decision, but leave the situation open enough that the listener finds it difficult to back out. Parables are intended to leave listeners in a state of theatrical self-criticism, where they are forced to contrast their worldview with a worldview that stands opposed to their own.

When Jesus tells parables he is not simply trying to get down on the 'peoples level'. It is not that Jesus assumes that people are too dumb to understand. On the contrary, it seems that Jesus has little faith in the capacity of 'outside critique'. If Jesus were to criticize people openly, he sees that his message would never really effect them on a level which could lead to change. In speaking with parables, Jesus is attempting to do more that offer a dry criticism. He is using mental theater to open up a world of possibilities that things aren't always what they seem. In fact, Jesus is attempting to show a different worldview with a different set of values. He is trying to get the listener to contrast his current mind set, with the one that Jesus fully believes is possible and better.

In the Gospels, it is reported that when asked to explain a parable Jesus would generally just tell another. This displays quite well that Jesus was not trying to play judge over people decisions. Rather he wanted to bring them to the frustrating point where, if they had any level of personal integrity, they would stand in judgment of their own worldview, and possibly see the potential to change. The only explanation to a parable is another parable. Analogy begets analogy. To attempt to 'sum up' a parable is to undermine the whole point of telling one in the first place.

Here's where this gets interesting: in the Gospels, as we've already seen, the writers are not simply trying to give an accurate report of Jesus and his preaching. Everything that the Gospel writers recorded has an agenda, and they are written in such a way as to persuede the reader to make a decision. There is an art in the Gospel narratives that is seeking to bring out a certain response from the reader/listener. The Gospels effectively blend the teachings of Jesus with accounts of his behavior and actions. Again even in recording what Jesus did in action, the Gospel writers are little concerned with the factual accuracy of their accounts. Their purpose is not to convey some dispassionate, objective, apologetic document. The Gospels are impassioned and most likely embellished accounts. They are intended not to convey facts, but to convey the fervor of the community that had already come to faith.

It is believed by most scholars that not all of the parables in the Gospels were originally spoken by Jesus. Rather, it is assured that Jesus often used parables effectively to bring others to a point of conflict between their worldview and the one that Jesus was so persueded of. In the Gospels we can see the early Christian community (before they were even called Christians) continuing on "as Jesus", and doing so in Jesus' name. When they record a parable which Jesus never historically said, they are nonetheless following the heart of Jesus in a new context.

In the Gospels, the parables of Jesus are intended to be contrasted with Jesus himself. This is the beauty of it. The ultimate parable is Jesus of Nazareth. He is the single parable the Gospels wish to record. All that is recorded as his teaching are merely lesser parables to explain him. This is the unique salvation that his original followers found in him. In his person, in his life and death, in his faith and the actions his faith resulted in, the early Christians were brought to a point of decision. They were led to a point where their worldview and values were contrasted with the worldview and values which Jesus lived out in complete integrity. What the Gospels truly convey is the effect which Jesus' life had on those who followed him. We can see the earliest Christians wrestling with this life-parable which Jesus became to them: one which provided no simple answers and left all judgments the the followers themselves. We can see that this parable has changed the world many times over.

And eventually, if taken with any seriousness, we have to allow ourselves to be brought to a similar point of crisis: do I see more of God in my own worldview, or that of Jesus? Is there a chance that the world as Jesus perceived it is more likely than the one I perceive? Is his life ultimately more true than my own?

In essence, it all returns to the question for each individual: . . . . and you, who do YOU say I am? It's a question that ultimately cannot be answered with words alone. It's a question that I'm still in the process of working out, with the utmost integrity . . . even if that gives the appearance of losing faith completely. Often we have to lose faith in order to find it . . . .

"What kind of MAN is this?" a legitimate question?

Recently I've been reading this graduate theology book by some European theologian whose name I can't pronounce. It's a good book. The title of the book is "JESUS: an experiment in Christology". The "JESUS" part of the title is written in massive yellow letters against a black background. It's conspicuous. I feel slightly strange carrying the thing around. When people ask me what I'm reading I feel the need to say it in the tone of a televangelist; facetiously.

I was reading this book at Starbucks the other evening (great corporate whore that I am), and an older gentleman in cowboy regalia sat down at the next table and asked me why I needed such a big book to understand the Bible. He seemed to think the Bible strait forward enough to make any book about it over 150 pages superfluous. I smiled and gave some answer about having a degree in theology and tried to move on. Honest, strait-foward answers are just too involved sometimes. I've been thinking this last week though about what such an answer would actually be, were I motivated enough to actually give one.

I think, at this particular time in my life, I would prepose that such books are important because fixing errors is always a laborious task. If you need clarification on what errors I am speaking of you can read any of my previous blogs and get a few of the many problems I have with faith, life, and everything in between. I could easily list other errors, but perhaps I'm just now realizing that the errors themselves are not what are important. There is an infinite stream of thought stemming from men much smarter than me pointing out problems. Anything I would add would most likely be excessive not to mention unoriginal if I assumed my task in life was simply to point out problems. Still I see that all too many of the errors that we all live in can be traced back to 'false beginnings'. It is easy to see the flaws of a situation and attempt to make superficial changes. These superficialities give a cosmetic sense of improvement, but in reality allow the deeper problems to go unchanged. In short, plastic surgery does not cure cancer. I see so much of our culture trying to smooth out wrinkles, rid themselves of cellulite, and fill out their bathing suits better, but underneath all of this facade of health they are deathly sick.

I feel that so much of what we call Christian or associate with it has been perverted and become cancerous: the way we read the Bible and treat it, the way we use faith as a means of coercion, on and on and on. With all these things I find that in finding such errors, we make cosmetic improvements, but nothing really changes. Faith becomes a veneer of life masking the death that consumes us underneath. The only answer, the only hope, I find is taking the long and arduous task of tracing our steps backwards to see where we went wrong, and in discerning these core failures, finding hope for the future.

This is why 700 page theology books matter. This is why I don't believe we can just read the Bible and arrive at some pristine and sublime faith. Whether one believe the Bible contains errors or not, it is assured that the reader does, and therefore there remains the threat that the faith inspired by the Bible is partially sick, even if this is well masked by a facade of health. When I read philosophy, or reports on social trends, I am continually struck by the massive, systemic evils in our world that Christian faith contributes to rather than opposes. I don't pretend to have answers to these evils, only an adamant demand that any faith worth adhering to be free of complicity to them.

I'm convinced that all ideologies and faith systems rely on mythology to justify themselves. "Being American" is rooted in mythology. We hold up inaccurate caricatures of our founding fathers, and idealized notions of their beliefs and our connection to these same beliefs. We pose that we are in line with their desires. We hold up the documents of American faith, the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, assuming that we are directly in line of the intentions of these documents. Yet, historically if we examine the ideas of the founding fathers and the way such ideas were the context for our 'sacred paper', we find that we are currently quite far from anything these historical figures intended. To see this though, requires one to involve oneself in the laborious study of the past, and the difficulty to seeing past the myths to actual reality. Christianity isn't really any different.

On the one hand, I don't truly believe there is any true faith that is free of mythology. Mythology in a sense is the deepest well of meaning for human life. To deny it any place in our lives is to lose part of what it is to be human. The problem is that meaning as such becomes one of the greatest tools for manipulating human behavior. On the one hand there is the misguided belief that it is possible to live free of mythology, as was thought in most modern systems. Ideologies abounded with the idea that it was possible to live "above mere myths", only to find that ideology became mythic. Marx critiqued religion, and his adherents gave in to the same religious fervor they criticized. They also surrounded Marx himself and his sacred papers with the same mythologic flavor they were supposedly freeing themselves from. So we find mythology to be necessary, but all too easily abused.

One of the biggest problems I see with Christian faith is the way we present it in the West. Western Christian culture presents the mythic view of Jesus as the only viable route to meeting him. He becomes quite divorced from the historical context he emerged from, that is unless a particular preacher find such context convenient to that week's sermon. What we are told in the West about Jesus, the Son of God, dying as an atoning sacrifice for our sins, is pure mythology. It is filled with meaning, as well as immense potential for completely missing the intentions of the historical person it centers on (or the original followers). I don't think the myths themselves are erroneous, only that errors have centered themselve in such myths.

Myths, which again, are inseperable to human experience, are always rooted in some historical experience. Typically they are a means of adding potential meaning to memory. Myths are a collective bank of meaning for a community or society. Still they are rooted in historical experience. And though it is ultimately impossible to retrieve the past, it is still possible to come close. The study of history, especially with Christian faith, allows us to come dramatically close to 'what actually happened'. And in doing so we also get the opportunity to contrast the myth and the facts (which are certainly more vague than is often supposed). So, what am I getting at?

Western Christianity, with its staggering number of problems, strongly favors the mythic Jesus to the historical one. The problem, which the bredth of liberal scholars for the past few centuries have been pointing out, is that the Jesus of history appears to be drastically different that the one of Christian myth. In fact, the factual Jesus seems partially opposed to many of the ideas which the movement he spawned came to uphold. "Actual Jesus" had much different concerns than "Interpreted Jesus". Now all the myths that came to surround Jesus I feel quite confident were rooted in the actual person and that person's actual concerns, but in far too many places theses myths were twisted to oppose the actual intent of Jesus of Nazareth. Perhaps, Jesus, the risen Christ, is in many ways calling his followers to doubt the myths for the sake of discerning the meanings the myths originally formed to capture.

The immediate followers of Jesus did not first encounter the glorified Son of God, nor did the follow Jesus in hopes of finding redemption for their guilty consciences. They first encountered a man, a friend, a rabbi, and a prophet. The myths that arrose from this are of infinite importance, but they are a poor place to begin. Churches in the West frequently encourage converts to proclaim Jesus as the Son of God and the Savior from sins, before people can even experience him as a good person or a man of wisdom. And while mythology is how we discern 'what it all means', it is a horrible way to get to know someone. I firmly believe Jesus would have perferred we know him first. Rather, I think the first error of our myth-loving culture has been telling people that saying "Lord, Lord" is enough. We have long been a society that proclaims him fully God and fully man, while in essence proclaiming him as fully God and on a rare occasion partially man. In doing so I believe we have prepetuated a mythology that mostly ends up serving the very systemic evils which the man Jesus set out to oppose.

And I say all of this not to contribute further to the despair I see surrounding us on all sides, but to display clearly the only place where I still find hope. Somewhere between historical facts and mythic interpretations there resides a person whom millions have understood as our only hope. This hope is not rooted in any cosmic mythology, but rather in the character of this man Jesus, and the character he inspired and inspires in those who decide to follow him practically. (Practical = practice = action-based) I find this to essentially be the only place we can begin. To begin elsewhere, to begin with a mythic interpretation, is to simply default to a meaning which others have given us. Rather, it seems to me, the best, perhaps the only good place to start is with a historical person, always partially in the shadow of what others think of him, but still always potentially ready to change the world and everything we've ever thought the world to be . . . . . .