Not once did anybody question me as I walked in and sat down. Not once was I asked if I were a Christian. Not once did anybody tell me to go because I was a woman... And, not once did anybody turn me away when I asked to be anointed at a meeting and received the Baptism of the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues. We met in a meeting room in a local motel. It was informal, people roamed around, or sat praying...
Then one night I saw a man come in and I knew who he was but did not know him personally. Suddenly I heard a word of knowledge for him. I waited, just to be sure. The man continued to stay, looking around. I was urged on. I spoke to the man: "You are worried that if you receive gifts of the spirit, that your congregation may not accept your change. I went on, your gifts are between you and God and you have no need to speak of them unless you find it appropriate... I think I shook hands with him and walked away from him. I have no idea what happened after we left. That really didn't matter. I had given God's message to him. That was to be my only role in his life...
I did invite two individuals from work with whom I'd been sharing a small fellowship during lunch. Both came, at different times. One spoke in tongues at his first meeting. Both of these individuals were involved in another God Incident, which I'll be writing about.
I remember that I was reading in bed, which is normal for me, of course. Suddenly, heat started coming into my body, it seemed to start in my head and slowly encompassed my entire body. I was totally submerged in His Love! God's Love! And tears of joy flowed, as I spoke words I did not know, some over and over. I remember, I wrote down "Ascil-li-up Tito" down in my Bible later, spelling out the words by sound. (Of course, I've searched to find those words. I did find Tito. I had thought that Tito might be Jesus in some language, but, finally, I decided it really didn't matter.)I have no idea how long I lay there with a body temperature well above normal but feeling so blessed. As I calmed, I began to pray for everybody that I knew...just saying their names, sending out God's love to them... Until I felt Him leave, the heat was gone... In a few minutes, of course, I went back to reading--wondering what would happen next...
Now, I am back at the beginning, it seems... I wasn't really away, but all of the above was not what I planned to write about today! So, it seems that, perhaps like I do for writers of non-fiction religious books, especially, I want to share their "credentials..." Could that really be the reason I felt a need to let you all know that I am truly a Child of God?! I don't know. You'll have to decide. But I do know something that I can now say, after reading Dusenbury's book, I Judge No One.
And yet, as Christ did before he had been blessed with His resurrection and became fully a part of the Holy Trinity--God, the Father, Christ, His Son, and The Holy Spirit who abides in us, if we allow...
I know that I am a human...and I do judge. I judge actions. Sometimes for personal reasons, but also as part of the political world in which we live.
You see, I know that God sees us as humans. Jesus had been human for a very short time, in order to fulfill His Mission given by His Father. When I say I do not judge, I speak of Christ's global love for all of mankind. If I believe that we are all made in God's image, then I believe that I am to extend love to all, no matter what religion. It is those times that I am most close to how I know that God wants us to be.
But, I am still human, and I falter, fall, and sometimes get confused. So, let's now look at Today's World of Religion...
Oops! This morning as I was waking, I began to think about all those books I have read in which somebody had shared their personal lives--and, in particular, their faith or religion. I knew one book in particular I wanted to mention, but, in the search it didn't come up, but another did... It was my 2014 interview with Lee Harmon, who wrote, among others, The River of Life as an agnostic christian... Even I was amazed at this second God Incident. Please, if you have the time, click over to first read that discussion with Lee. For one, it felt to me, that I was given the "affirmation" that many suggest should be received that God wants us to speak on a topic. And, second, it has so much more to say than I planned to include in today's article--yet very relevant and important!
I have now read and shared about two books by Dr. Michael Brown, Donald Trump Is Not My Savior and The Political Seduction of the Church. (You can search on Dr. Brown's name and bring up all of the blog posts that were done while I read these two books.) Although both of these books were informative for those who are interested, I did not feel that any of the questions about the role of The Evangelical Church's alignment with the Republican Party had been successfully addressed.
Somewhere along the line, I read that at least one writer felt that we of the Christian Faith were at least due some form of accountability. It is clear, to me, that most involved individuals do not feel they owe anybody anything. Indeed, in the last book, where Dr. Brown continues to repeat that Donald Trump is not his Savior, he never acknowledges that there was anything significant that he, himself, did not agree with. And there's the issue, isn't it?
Since Dr. Brown's book was published, we have gone through the January 6th Insurrection, the Supreme Court's overthrow of Roe-Wade and its concurrent and very real distress, anger, and disruption that has occurred in the lives of not only pregnant women, but in doctor's, nurses, clinic staff, et.al. Not only has elections been shrouded in misinformation and fear, but from, traditionally, red states, we are hearing of all that is happening at the local level that is clearly prejudicial between non-white citizens of America.
In I Judge No One, one of the parables shared by David Dusenbury, was one that I've often thought and wrote about... It is about the woman who was caught having sex...
Early in the morning Jesus came again to the Temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and began to teach them. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery. Making her stand before all of them, they said to him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They said this to tempt him (Greek peirazontes auton; Latin temptantes eum), so that they might have some legal charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to cast a stone at her.” And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground. When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, lord.” “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.” (John 8:2–11) The first thing to note is that this temptation is framed by Judaean law—not Roman law. The legal charge that Jesus is in peril of is a Judaean one—namely, that of subverting the divine law-code of “the truly sacred Moses,” as a second-century Egyptian Christian philosopher calls him.14 The question put to Jesus—Now what do you say?—is a lure for him to cancel a Mosaic statute. But there is also a temptation for Jesus to implicate himself in the machinery of Judaean law and politics. In effect, Jesus cannot release a woman caught in the act (in flagrante delicto) without committing blasphemy, and he cannot condemn her without becoming a punisher of the body—and a political Christ. Hostile observation of Jesus by the “the scribes and the Pharisees” is noted in much the same language in the synoptic gospels.15 In Mark, for instance, certain Pharisees ‘tempt’ Jesus by asking him: “Is it legal for a man to divorce his wife?” (Mark 10:2). There are numerous “legal episodes” of this sort in the gospels.16 And read with sufficient care, most of Jesus’ healing narratives have a legal aspect—they occur on the sabbath day, they render a person ceremonially pure, and so on.17 Nevertheless, the Incident of the Adulteress is one of only two scenes in the gospels in which Jesus is formally requested to render a judgement. The other is in Luke 12 (the topic of chapter 10). Yet the unique scene in John 8 should not be read in isolation. Wherever it may have originated, its original location in the gospel collection is in chapter 8 of John. And this means that Jesus’ non-judgement of a condemned woman can be read in light of a later scene of judgement in John’s gospel. Namely that in John 19, where the prefect of Judea takes a seat with ritual intent on his “judge’s chair”, and then sentences Jesus to be crucified (John 19:13, 16).18 The penultimate scene of Jesus’ natural life, in the fourth gospel, is a legal ordeal in which an innocent man is condemned to death by a guilty judge. In dramatic terms, John 8 is the inverse. Here, a guilty woman is not condemned by a uniquely innocent judge.19 There is no hint in the received text that the woman set before Jesus is falsely accused. The charge brought is that she has been trapped “in the very act” (John 8:4)—or, in one commentator’s gloss, in coitu.20 The text introduces this charge without comment (John 8:3). Further, there is no sign that Jesus doubts her guilt. On the contrary, he says to her, in parting: “Do not sin again” (John 8:11). This implies her guilt. It is striking, further, that there is no sign that Jesus doubts his right to judge. He is seated on a ‘judge’s chair’ when the pericope opens, and he seems to remain seated throughout the ordeal, even when he bends to write—more than once, and with his finger—in the dirt.21 “He Bent Down and Wrote” Before we ask what Jesus wrote in the dirt, we should pause to note a couple of curious parallels which are rarely noted.22 For the fact that Jesus writes is immensely suggestive. (i) Like Socrates, Jesus is not a writer. In both cases, however, there is one exception to the rule. Socrates traces geometric figures in the dirt, in Plato’s dialogue Meno, on behalf of a slave-boy who (per Socrates) has an immortal soul.23 And Jesus writes in the dust, in John, during the ordeal of a woman he refuses to condemn.24 (ii) Like Pilate, Jesus writes during a trial. The only place in the gospels where Jesus writes is in John 8, and the trial of Jesus in John 19 is the only place in the gospels where Pilate writes. “What I have written,” says the guilty judge, “I have written” (John 19:19–22). But what the innocent judge may have written, we are not told. We can nevertheless ask: What did Jesus write in the dirt during the adulteress’ ordeal? “Nothing certain can be stated,” according to Cornelius à Lapide’s baroque Great Commentary.25 This is true. Yet J. D. M. Derrett reminds us that “writing with the finger was symbolic of divine ‘legislation’” in Hebrew culture.26 Patristic commentators had already made this connection. And Derrett reconstructs the dramatic logic of Jesus’ leaning down to write, not once but twice, with his finger, in this way: The effect of his writing, and pausing after writing, was to produce from those in a position to watch him an insistence upon his giving his sentence … What he wrote was not unintelligible, but it did not satisfy them. This need not mean that it was irrelevant … It made them more anxious than ever to hear what he would say.27 “Has No One Condemned You?” And what did Jesus say? Of course, this is the question that marks the centre of the pericope. “The law Moses commanded us to stone such women,” say the hardliners. “Now what do you say?” (John 8:5). After he writes in the dirt—and before he resumes writing in the dirt—Jesus lifts his head to say to them: “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to cast a stone at her” (John 8:7). This is Jesus’ sentence—and it is, in George Steiner’s phrase, a “radiant challenge”.28 Is it a judicial sentence that Jesus utters? In a novel sense, yes. For the lawbreaker figures in Jesus’ sentence. Yet the sentence which he pronounces is only obliquely concerned with the one who is to be punished for her crime. The subject of Jesus’ sentence is not the lawbreaker, but rather her would-be punishers. Her executioners, says Jesus, must be wholly innocent before the punishment sanctioned by Moses can be meted out—beginning with the first, who ‘legitimates’ the cascading violence of a stoning. The pitiless enforcers of Mosaic law must be flawless observers of that law—and this, Jesus claims, no one is. (My italic emphasis.)
And here is the key I found in Dusenbury's book that was lacking in both of Dr. Martin's books, et.al. Let's consider the difference between the three books. Dr. Martin's is written as an Evangelical Christian, dealing with the presidency of Donald J. Trump. While Dusenbury's book is purely a scholarly analysis of the Life of Jesus, and, in particular, as He related to those with whom he lived and met during his life.
The authority of Jesus to judge came as His Role in The Holy Trinity. As such, he was concerned ONLY with the souls of those who God had created. That's all of us who were born in His image.
On the other hand, while Christ was living as a human and before He was Baptized, his judgments dealt with how our souls were being treated. To explain further, if I can, when Jesus became angry at those selling and buying within the front of the Temple where He taught, it was anger for their blasphemy. Jesus knew that the Temple was dedicated to God and should not be defiled.
Because of the role of the Evangelical Christians in their willingness to support Trump--if he did what they asked--I am using them as an example at this critical time in our lives. That is not to say, that there have not been others within religious facilities and/or as their members who have not also acted in ways not pleasing to God. Using the parable of the adulterous woman, Jesus did not take a role in open judgment of her... Let me repeat that. God knew the woman's heart and finally spoke to her as to how He wanted her to act in the future. In a way, even then, there was little emphasis on what she must do. Did He know, perhaps, that the woman had only turned to selling herself because she had no husband and had no way to eat, to live? Did He realize that, perhaps, it was the man with whom she was involved, that should have, at a minimum, also been there to be punished? We don't know... do we?
And that's the whole point. Insofar as possible, we, as Christians are asked to love--to give aid--to give food and shelter if needed. It was quite obvious to Jesus that there had been no love involved in what had been discovered. There was no search for the Truth of why she was involved in a forbidden action. There was nothing to be done by those who were willing to stone her, except to...stone her, or, in this story, use her to try to trick Jesus into becoming involved with Moses' Law...
Ok, let's get really serious about what happened during this decade. The conservative republicans either went to the Evangelical Christians, or vice-versa, and made a deal to work toward being able to ban abortion once again. And to rig the courts by placing conservatives totally thus attempting to ensure that conservative issues would be handled as they wished. It would have been the same process that occurred decades ago when the pro-choice; pro-life debate began (and even earlier than that). However, somehow the authority to abort was given... Could it be that this issue was only made into law because of those conservatives who wanted laws to follow which supported their own agendas?
Let's now look at what Jesus did with the woman caught having sex. His concern was mainly with those who judged the woman... And so it was that when the pharisees, even Judas, and others chose to attack Jesus, it was a judgment made for which Jesus felt they had no right to make, was it not? And yet they did because of the human laws that were being used to accuse Him.
I believe that the issue of abortion or any other part of the medical activities surrounding a pregnancy is part of the will that God has given to us. It is a choice that is made by the human whose soul belongs to God. And if that choice is wrong, then any judgment will be by God toward that individual. Bluntly, the federal government should never have been involved with this issue...
And we all know that those who are conservative "anything" want what they want, no matter what damage might evolve out of their own personal opinions and/or beliefs. I don't think I'm wrong. but I'm going to stop now. I feel anger, frustration, and, yes, judgment of the merged Evangelical Christians and the Republican Party...that now are daily causing unknown tragedies as well as beyond those which we do find out about...
So let's go back to Dusenbury's review of Jesus judgment versus the judgment of humans... For, indeed, it is quite clear since the merge of Evangelical Christians with The Republican Party, that certainly humans are doing the judging...NOT God!
Kant criticizes Reimarus’ theory of Jesus by distinguishing two ideas of the state. One he calls juridico-civil, the other ethico-civil. A juridico-civil state is one in which humans live together under a system of “juridical laws”, all of which are coercive. To belong to such a state is to belong to an ordered system of coercion. An ethico-civil state, however, is one in which humans are united by laws without being coerced, which is to say, “under laws of virtue alone.”29 In a less rebarbative (objective) terminology, Kant holds that a “political community” is by definition one that “compels its citizens” in a host of ways. An “ethical community”, however, is one that has “freedom from coercion in its very concept”. What Kant means is that what he calls “ethical ends” can only be chosen. Virtue originates in the heart, a place where—Kant stresses—“a human judge cannot penetrate”. Only a divine mind can be the judge of human hearts, because human judgments cannot reach “the depths of other beings”.30 (my emphasis) This is a Kantian idea which is deeply rooted in the gospels. For Kant, the Jesus of history hoped to inaugurate an ethical community, a new form of order in which, theoretically, all humans could be united by laws without coercion. Numerous caveats could be made here, but this new form of order is what Christians call the church, and what Kant calls the “invisible church” (giving the phrase an Enlightenment-style meaning).31 In Reimarus’ telling, the Jesus of history hoped to revolutionize the political community of first-century Judaea, by installing himself at the summit of an apocalyptic system of coercion. Reimarus’ Jesus failed because his political revolution was crushed, and his political faith was traduced by his cadre of disciples. The gospels, for Reimarus, are a testament to the disciples’ final betrayal of Jesus. It is in these writings that they systematically corrupt the memory of Jesus’ life and hope. Kant’s Jesus, no less than Reimarus’, is revolutionary. But his Jesus did not ultimately fail, because an “undeserved yet meritorious death” became the symbol of an ethical revolution,32 and because the ethical faith of Jesus is still with us. Kant writes that Jesus “brought about” through his life and death “an incalculably great moral good in the world, through a revolution in the human race”.33 At the heart of that revolution is the idea of what Kant calls “a kingdom of virtue”.34 And what is a kingdom of virtue? It is one which has “freedom from coercion in its very concept”.35 It is a ‘kingdom’ which must be freely chosen. Before Jesus, the idea of a kingdom of virtue—one which is still contentious—had never been articulated with the force and urgency that we hear in some of the sayings in the four unsigned texts which we call, in keeping with tradition, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. This book offers a political life of Jesus in the broad and variegated tradition of Spinoza, Kant and Nietzsche. With them, it resists the modern notion that Jesus’ life, sayings and death are in essence political. Against Reimarus’ idea of a political Christ—one which has been revived countless times in the last 250 years—I will try to show (i) that the modern theory of a political Christ is utterly incongruent with the dramatic structure of our earliest texts on the life of Jesus; and (ii) that something like Kant’s theory of an ethical Jesus, whatever its limitations, is far more philosophically interesting. For the divergent philosophical traditions which Nietzsche, Kant and Spinoza represent, the modern idea that Jesus is nothing but a failed, first-century rebel is doubly problematic. It blurs (or destroys) the structure and meaning of our earliest witnesses to the life of Jesus, and it is philosophically inert.36 I believe that if the figure of Jesus is to be thought-worthy in future, we must break with the modern tendency to reduce him to his milieus. In the city of his youth (Nazareth), in the tetrarchy to which he legally belonged (Galilee), in the Roman province he visited (Judaea) and in the holy city where he died (Jerusalem), Jesus remained—in Nietzsche’s words—a “strange figure” (fremde Gestalt).37 It is this strangeness that shaped his political life, and that led—I will argue—to his death as a political criminal. It is this strangeness, too, that makes Jesus’ life intriguing and his sayings still worthy of reflection.
When reading a scholarly analysis, it is sometimes not easy to pull out the fragments which deserve more than a first-time read. Going back to the parable of the adulterous woman, we find a simple illustration that speaks to the point of Dusenbury's book. Jesus did not judge the adulterous woman. As mentioned earlier, we humans could never know what was behind the decision of the woman to commit adultery. Yet, there was a law that clearly defined that she was to be stoned. Jesus prevented the law to take place to stone the woman. Yet, after it was all over, Jesus then judged the woman as He saw her soul. Yes, she was guilty, but there was to be a difference from applying the law of stoning and what judgment Jesus ultimately gave. Bottom line, Jesus chose to not agree that the archaic law was a satisfactory judgment upon the woman... And then, bid her leave and consider other options, perhaps?
To me, this logical separation presents us with where Jesus wanted us to be. He had no desire to coerce us to follow Him. He had no desire to interfere in our God-given will to make our own decisions. Yet, he did realize that there would be those who chose to act in an evil manner and that political laws would be required to ensure that those who did harm to others could be identified and punished...
Therefore it seems to me that what has traditionally happened, going back to even the Crusades historically. Those leaders felt that all must follow Jesus and would force--coerce--their opinions of their christianity onto others. I recently read a book by an indigenous friend of mine where he spoke of how Christians began to force their religion upon those natives who very obviously had their own beliefs. Why? If we are to show God's love through our actions towards others, then by what political reason should we require others to forcibly act as conservative christians wish... And, as we have seen during the past six years, anybody who is different than white evangelical christians and/or a member of the republican party...must...be...controlled. Thus the republican party has turned into a purely judgmental group that does not act to love and be concerned about their neighbors, but, rather, to control, even through elections, so that, they are not even willing to recognize as our constitution clearly says... That we are all equal...
During the period between 2016 and today, I have been continuously urged to go about my Savior's bidding. It has caused friction within my own family, as I understand has happened with others. But, even then, you and others have a right to question what I've shared with you... I believe that once, a major portion of Christianity has acted to gain political power through the election of a United States president, that the nation is floundering in the attempt to have coercion controlling our lives beyond the need stated and made into laws of our country.
Indeed, there is every evidence that love for our neighbors is not even a consideration by this merged group. We have seen personal freedoms stripped from us. We have seen attempts to change American history to hide how the white conservatives actually have acted in the past and are still not acting to discriminate against anybody that is different from them. And, to be even more specific, we have seen those who committed an insurrection against the U.S. Capital and the constitution, continue to lie and claim that what happened is NOT what actually happened.
We are confronted with evil leaders who are telling us that they can use force against small children. We are confronted with children who are abused sexually through incest and/or other leaders, such as within the church. We are told that non-christians are to be banned, controlled and have a loss of their freedom of speech, religion, and more...
And we are once again told by an extensive study and research of the Bible that Jesus Does Not Judge... that God is Love... That we shall love one another as ourselves...
Surely you can see that the logic coming out of the merged group--Evangelical Christians and The Republican Party is totally opposite of what is taught by Christ?
No comments:
Post a Comment