From Today's Journal Entries
December 25, 2023, Afternoon
The Christian myth is the
whole arc of the Jesus story. It helps to see it as a whole rather than get
fixated on one or another of its parts. It begins with a virtuous but otherwise
quite ordinary, young, Jewish woman giving birth to a child with a relationship
to God more intimate than that of any other human. The myth says she was a
virgin, the point apparently being to emphasize how unique her son was. At
around the age of thirty he emerges as the leader of a popular movement for the
renewal of his Jewish faith. He teaches a vision of God and God’s ways that,
though it clearly has roots in the Hebrew tradition, is new for his time—and for
ours. His teaching is both anti-imperial and anti- religious power structure.
He teaches what the Catholic tradition has come to call God’s “preferential
option for the poor.” His critique of both the secular and the religious authorities
of his time provoked violent opposition to him and his teaching from both such
authorities. Almost certainly with collaboration from the Jewish power
structure at the temple but not from the Jewish people as a whole, the secular
authorities, i.e., the Roman Empire, arrested him and crucified him. He died a
horrifically painful death, something that was the whole point of crucifixion.
The Christian myth says he was buried in a borrowed cave. It also says that on
the third day after his crucifixion, that is, on the Sunday after a Friday, some
women from among his followers found his tomb empty. In the myth he appears to
different people at different times and in different ways after his execution,
when he was supposed to be dead and gone. They myth says that those appearances
continued for a while, then stopped, according to the myth when he ascended
into heaven. There are differences in the different biblical accounts of parts
of this story, but this, I think, is an honest overview of the Christian myth.
What does this myth mean? It means first of all that the
Christian faith is centered on one particular figure, the man we call first of
all Jesus of Nazareth and later on Jesus the Christ or Jesus the Messiah, the
two words meaning the same thing. The Christian faith confesses him to be the
one God anointed (that’s what both Christ and Messiah mean) to bring a new, more
complete revelation of God’s nature and will to people on earth. Because of the
myth’s element of his most intimate relationship with God, the Christian myth
means that it is in him that we see not just human truth but divine truth. The
Christian myth tells us many things about God, or rather, it points us toward
many truths about God. It points us toward the truth that God is radically
nonviolent and calls us to be radically nonviolent. It points us toward the
truth that when God comes to God’s people it’s not to the rich or the powerful
but to the poor, the marginalized, the powerless. It points toward the fairly
obvious truth that God’s will and ways of nonviolence, justice, and preference
for the poor provoke the violent opposition of both secular and religious
authorities. It tells us that if you truly, fully, preach and live the gospel
of peace through nonviolent justice you will almost certainly suffer at the
hands of those authorities. Doing so may even cost you your life just as it
cost Jesus his life. It is extremely important that it points us toward the
truth that with God human death is not the end. God is with us beyond death.
Even more importantly, the Christian myth points us toward the truth that God
is present in solidarity with us in everything that happens to us in life no
matter how miserable, no matter how unjust.
We must remember that it doesn’t matter at all whether any
of this is historical fact. What matters is that it is incredibly powerful
myth. It points us toward universal truths. Toward truths that have always been
true, not truths that happened once and changed anything beginning at that
time. It is vitally important to understand that Jesus didn’t bring a salvation
that didn’t exist before. Rather, the Christian myth points to the truth that
God has always saved humans, all humans. Always. It’s not that
none of these truths was available to humanity before Jesus. When we see it as
myth, we see that the Christian story isn’t about before and after. The concepts
before and after don’t apply. The divine truths to which the Christian myth
points us are beyond time.
The Christian story is set in a particular place and a
particular time. It is about that place and that time, but only superficially.
It is set in a particular place and time because stories told by and to humans
must aways be set in a particular place and time. We live in places, and we
live in times; but God doesn’t. God transcends place and time absolutely. God’s
truth transcends place and time absolutely. The Christian myth isn’t about God being
revealed as it about expressing the truth that God has always been the way God
is in the Christian myth. Paul says as much in Romans 1. That Paul says it isn’t necessary to
the myth, and his saying it doesn’t, in itself, make it true. Yet Paul saying
as much helps make this truth one to which the Christian myth truly points.
So, Sorenson, if you know these things to be true, set your
historical training aside. The Christian myth isn’t about history. It is about
divine truth. It can’t contain that truth; it can only point to it. But it
points to it in ways at least as powerful as any other faith story does. It is
not everyone’s myth, but it is our myth. Our call is not to impose it on
anyone. It is to live into it. It is to work to make the universal truths of
peace, nonviolence, and justice more real in God’s world. It is to put our
faith into action, not to convert anyone but to serve the people God serves,
the people God prefers, the people in need not those with immense privilege and
prosperity.
The Christian myth has a lot to say to those people of privilege,
wealth, and power. It says to them less give up your privilege, wealth, and
power than it says use them to make God’s priorities of distributive justice,
peace, and nonviolence more real in the world that has given you so much. After
all, your wealth, power, and privilege certainly come to you at someone else’s
expense. It’s not money that is the root of all evil. It is the love of money
that is. So, if you have money, don’t love it. Send it out into the world to do
good for God’s people. If you don’t have money, don’t crave having more of it
than you need for the basics of life. Rather, know that God
wants you to have what you need for a decent life but does not want you to profit
at the expense of others.
So, Sorenson, move yourself beyond the intellectual-spiritual
stage of critical thought. Yes, critical thought has its importance in the
world. There is far too little of it afoot. But psychospiritual growth involves
moving beyond it. Moving to what Borg called postcritical naivete. Sorenson,
you’re lousy at postcritical naivete. Maybe you’re overeducated. Maybe your
professional training in critical thinking as an historian and a lawyer, and
maybe even as a pastor, has made it harder than it is for most people to move
beyond critical thinking and entering a story as a story, a myth as a myth. If
so, you really need to get over it.
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