Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Unreading the Gospels

If the ongoing Church sex scandals, the frequent endorsement of the wrong side of the culture wars, the smug self-righteousness and the unending flow of nonsense have you seriously questioning why you should continue to associate yourself with Christianity, you might want to peruse Adam Gopnik’s recent piece in The New Yorker, “What Did Jesus Do?” In the article, Gopnik, an author, staff writer for The New Yorker and secular Jew, ostensibly reviews a number of recent books about Jesus, but spins it into a meditation on the man himself. (Note to son Tom: one of the books mentioned in the article is Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years by Diarmaid MacCulloch.)

Mostly, for Gopnik, Jesus is a hard man to pin down. He’s a “fierce apocalyptic preacher,” but also a “wise philosophical teacher who professes love for his neighbor.” Gopnik describes Jesus as a Greek cynic with a contempt for material prosperity. But he is also a “wise rabbi.” He’s intelligent with “an ironic dueling wit.” He’s no Buddha, and has a short temper; he’s irritable and impatient, particularly with his own disciples (“Do you have eyes but fail to see?”). Jesus is “verbally spry and even a little shifty. He likes defiant, enigmatic paradoxes and pregnant parables that never quite close. …” Thus, for example, he avoids self-incrimination by suggesting that we render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s – a truism that says almost nothing but gets him out of a jam.

Gopnik suggests that, if you need a more contemporary example to get a sense of Jesus' approach to things -- with his unusual combination of harsh judgment and human compassion -- think Malcolm X. In fact, Gopnik calls Alex Haley Malcolm's St. Paul (long on doctrine and short on details) and Spike Lee his St. Mark (30 years later the human portrait and universalist message).

According to Gopnik, “Jesus’ morality has a brash, sideways indifference to conventional ideas of goodness” and has “a disdain for the props of piety.” For Jesus, the son who wastes his inheritance gets a feast; the woman taken in adultery is worthier than her onlookers, reflective Mary is better than the hardworking Martha. Prostitutes and tax collectors are entering the Kingdom of God before the chief priests and elders.

There is a richness here that familiarity tends to lose sight of. Was this what Gopnik is suggesting by his subtitle, "Reading and unreading the Gospels?" Perhaps here is the only real heresy – to reduce Jesus down to some simple formula which confirms your narrow view of things, to conventionalize an unconventional life. Jesus ends up being a culture warrior for the televangelists, a legalist for Catholics, and a moral example for humanists.

Gopnik sees that people like himself – outsiders – can make a unique contribution to this discussion: “With so many words over so long a time, perhaps passersby can still hear tones inaudible to the more passionate participants. Somebody seems to have hoped so, once.” Sometimes it takes a secular Jew to remind Christians why they bother to show up for church each Sunday.

10 comments:

James R said...

Not a bad article, although I couldn't follow parts of it. It does make you want to read some of the scholarly books mentioned.

He does mention one of my favorite ideas: Jesus was crucified for his table manners. Of all the contrary things he did, this was the most extreme and the most offensive.

Ted said...

Some thoughts on the article:
Crossan (mentioned in the article) is great if anyone is so inclined; I have read a couple of his books.

Myk says "Perhaps here is the only real heresy – to reduce Jesus down to some simple formula which confirms your narrow view of things, to conventionalize an unconventional life. Jesus ends up being a culture warrior for the televangelists, a legalist for Catholics, and a moral example for humanists."
I have two thoughts on this comment. First, I see the "reduction" of Jesus not as heresy but as the "genius" of Jesus as a religious figure. You have to figure in 2000 years people will be using Malcolm X or maybe Martin Luther King Jr to confirm their own narrow view of things. In politics, it's like using the Founding Fathers for whatever view you already have (they were religious, they were humanists who thought twice about religion etc.)
My second thought is, it is difficult to believe in the "historical Jesus" as anything but the historical Jesus(if one is skeptical about the issue), just as one would "believe" in the historical Malcolm X. Believing in the IDEA of Jesus is something else altogether and allows for all sorts of possibilities (much of which resorts to reducing Jesus to a simple formula for one's personal understanding)
* One more note: we always have to remember that, at the end of the day, no matter how much good "historical" info comes from the Gospels, they probably tell us more about the time period and communities they are written in rather than the historical Jesus or his time

James R said...

I'm not sure I understand your point, Ted, of "the 'genius' of Jesus as a religious figure" ... "to confirm their own narrow view of things." Surely, you think that understanding the strengths, weaknesses, contradictory and clear actions of a historical figure, such as Washington or Jesus, is better than taking a righteous simple formula and making a 'religion' out of it.

I really like the idea that we probably understand more about the time period and communities in which the Gospels were written.

Ted said...

Actually no, I don't think that "understanding the strengths, weaknesses, etc." is "better" than making a simple formula. If we could actually do what you are suggesting, than yes, maybe it would be better (but even then, I don't know), but I think assuming that we can understand the strengths, weaknesses etc. of a single person who lived 200 or 2000 years ago (particularly one from whom our "understanding" is based on a chosen few gospels and general tradition that has profoundly changed over the course of time) is little different in the long run than making our own, so-called narrow view, of who Jesus was. If my knowledge of who Jesus was is based on the Gospels (and we assume for argument's sake they are written and conceived of by men or women who are not divine), than I am never going to be satisfied that I know or understand who or what the so-called historical Jesus was, thought, did etc. Now, if we are talking about the idea of Jesus, than the accuracy of his historical tendencies, mannerisms etc. hardly matter. What matters is what I've been told, what I believe, what I understand, and ultimately my narrow view (as worldly and profound as I think it is) on Jesus.

James R said...

OK, I think I see your point, but I have to vehemently disagree. You are right to question "if we could actually do what you are suggesting," because, in practice, we can't. HOWEVER, that is what 'religion' (or philosophy) is: the endless quest for meaning.

We have to use any knowledge we can in that quest. We can't limit ourselves to even our own narrow, if well intentioned ideas, we have to keep rolling the stone up the hill as Sisyphus did, even if there is no chance to understand it all. It is an "endless quest after all.

This is where Harris and Hitchens, as well as many religious leaders err. Hitchens would call my thinking "watered down religion," while, in fact, it is the opposite. He and others are right in exposing the silly, narrow, and even evil tenets of popular institutionalized religion. I cheer them on. But they are attacking a 'religion' of people no longer seeking meaning, but having already found it in a small enough package that they can grasp it in their own hands and choke it to death.

I agree it is hard to tread on non solid ground and be able to make solid decisions based on what you have learned thus far on the "endless quest", but, and here is where I differ from most thinking, I think that most people do this!

In my life I have found that most people I have gotten to know, i.e. most friends, despite whether or not they argue for a narrow set of beliefs, when difficult decisions arise, they act from the total breadth of what they have learned rather than a small subset of rules.

So, despite the news accounts of horrible acts in the name of religion (which we should continually fight against), I think most people actually embrace the idea of religion as "the endless quest for meaning." And, in that sense, I say, let's continue to analyze the "strengths, weaknesses, etc."

Big Myk said...

There's probably a lot that can be said here. Hopefully, I won't end up saying it all. First, I agree that using the Gospels to discover a human being -- his personal stregnths and weaknesses -- is probably a losing proposition. We are at best only going to get glimpses at the historical Jesus. After all, the Gospels were written in Greek, a language that neither Jesus nor any of his followers knew how to speak or write.

But to go from there to saying that Jesus is just this blank slate that everyone can write their own prejudices on doesn't do justice to Jesus or the early community of followers.

We've been left this deposit of scripture. Whether it reflects the man himself or his early followers is of little concern to me. What matters is the value of the deposit itself.

If you say that the deposit means nothing, then it doesn't matter what you do in the name of Jesus. At one time Crusaders slaughtered every Jewish and Muslim man woman and child in Jerusalem; they boasted of wading knee-deep in human blood. I think that it's fair reading of the Gospels to conclude that that's not exactly what the writers had in mind. Woody Allen's line "If Jesus Christ came back today and saw what was being done in his name, he'd never stop throwing up" is funny because we suspect that it's true.

Every age will interpret Jesus its own way, as we have seen. But, I don't think that it is a violation of human reason to say that some interpretations are closer to the mark than others.

One of brother Bob's many cryptic remarks -- it was made in a kindly mockery of the "Keep Christ in Christmas" slogan -- was that, more importantly, we should keep the crisis in Christ. As in so many things, who knew what Bob actually meant by that. But, for me, you are getting closer to the Biblical message when Jesus shows up challenging your narrow view and making you at least a bit uncomfortable. If Jesus does not provoke some kind of crisis in the way you look at things and ultimately live your life, perhaps he's a decent enough fellow, but he's not really offering any kind of redemption.

James R said...

By the way, Crossan does sound interesting. Which book should I start with...The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (1991)?

Ted said...

That is a classic. I also like "Excavating Jesus" but that might just be my archaeological tendencies. "In Search of Paul" is a good sequel.

James R said...

I keep rereading Ted's posts to enhance my understanding. I can see that if the 'idea of Jesus' is, as Myk suggests, someone who is continually upsetting and making you feel uncomfortable, then, yes, that very well could be more important than the historical Jesus.

Big Myk said...

Not to be difficult here, but some time ago I read Crossan's Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography and, while I don't really remember it, I recall being generally disappointed. Mostly, I think my complaint was that it was a rather simple-minded attempt, by being very selective in his sources, to make Jesus out to be someone who we would easily recognize today as a left-wing activist, ie, a totally PC Jesus.