Scribbles

“Once every hundred years Jesus of Nazareth meets Jesus of the Christian in a garden among the hills of Lebanon, and they talk long. And each time Jesus of Nazareth goes away saying to Jesus of the Christian, ‘My friend, I fear we shall never, never agree.’” -Kahlil Gibran

Sometimes I think we might be better off without any atonement theory at all.

Some premises I think most mainstream Protestants would agree with: (1)Separation from God is the direct consequence not of God’s action but of (non-divine) human action; (2)reconciliation is ultimately initiated by God; (3) God’s love for humanity and his acts of reconciliation toward humanity are not motivated by human good deeds.

All this to say, it is we who create the need for reconciliation, and it is God who freely offers reconciliation. So if God is the kind of God who freely reconciles, how is he also the God who requires blood to atone for sin? Not so free after all. Sure, free for us, but somebody’s got to pay.

And if God is the kind of guy who would make the required payment for us to give us reconciliation, then why would he require payment at all in the first place?

As much as Protestants hate to admit it, the standard given in the gospels for entering the Kingdom is quite simple: merciful people in; unmerciful people out. If you are the kind of person who truly accepts God’s mercy (be it simply mercy or ‘mercy’ that someone paid for), then you must be the kind of person who not only receives it but also dispenses it. Check the red letters in your Bible, and see if I’m wrong. The contrapositive is also true: if you don’t dispense mercy, you have not accepted mercy. And if you will not receive mercy, it is your own standards that will judge you (Matt 7, Mark 4, & Luke 6).

The work of Christ in the passion and resurrection is, of course, central to Christianity. But if we read Paul as a follower of Jesus rather than his reinventor, those Pauline passages that are so often used in atonement theories take on a new shade of meaning. If we take Jesus’ words on the forgiveness seriously and give them primacy, mainstream atonement theories will be called into question.

Yoder talks about the apparent divide between the ethic of Jesus and the ethic of the New Testament letters. The mainstream church takes the instruction about subordination to authority and sees in it an implicit endorsement of a conservative, status quo supporting ethic. Yoder, however, sees in this call to subordination something Christlike. Instead of seeing Jesus, the prophetic revolutionary, versus the realistic need to come up with a sustainable way of life, we should realize that both Jesus and the ethic given in the epistles are calling for a revolution in the way that revolutions are understood.

Like any other revolutionary, Jesus calls out the supporters of the status quo for what they are: hypocrits. The way things are is bad. Rich oppressing poor. Man oppressing wife. Diginifed oppressing young. Owner oppressing slave. Roman (read: state) oppressing Jew (read: member of nonconformist religion or, simply, foreigner).

Because Jesus’ ethic is so radical, we assume that it must be in contradiction to the call to subordination found in the epistles. That we make such an illogical leap is a testament to the appallingly inadequate education to which most of us Westerners have been assigned.

The (early) Christian revolutionary message goes beyond the shallow revolutions to which we are accustomed. The revolution of Jesus is not simply, “Those in power are bad, so let’s rebel.” No! The revolution of Jesus calls for introspection. The revolution of Jesus calls not just for a change in the world structures but also for the revolutionary to look first at herself. First comes “Repent.” Then he says, “…for the kingdom is at hand.”

Too many conservatives stop at personally repentance.

Too many liberals skip ahead to the kingdom at hand.

To ignore either is to ignore Jesus.

The follower of Jesus walks as Jesus walked. Not only was Jesus’ condemnation of the world’s structures revolutionary. His response to these evil powers was a revolutionary way of being revolutionary. He submitted. He submitted to evil men… even to death.

“By this we know that we are in Him: the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked.”

Not only has this been on my mind lately, it’s a good place to start. Christian churches and denominations distinguish themselves in all sorts of ways. These distinctions are often trivial or superficial. Within the broad range of those religious organizations which call themselves ‘Christian,’ I choose to categorize most fundamentally by source of authority.

Taking any characteristic of a religious group into consideration and asking why such a characteristic exists, one will eventually come to some sort of root assumption or assumptions. In reality these root assumptions are not chosen because they make sense. They are only ever chosen because they bring the owner of the assumption some sort of satisfaction. The satisfaction may be with the assumption itself, but it is more likely that the assumption allows for physical comfort, peace of mind, or a sense of significance.

In my experience there are only four general kinds of root assumptions utilized by nominally Christian organizations and individuals. They are assumptions about where truth is to be found: either within the teaching of a holy group/tradition, a holy document, subjective experience, or a holy person. These foundational starting places of belief are sometimes explicitly announced but are sometimes unknown even to those who embrace them.

I was planning to rant on about the pros and cons of each, but that will have to be left alone for now. What strikes me at the moment is the similarity between the four possibilities. They are all examples of what Rene Girard calls mimesis. He claims that all people have their identities rooted in the imitation of someone or something or some group.

I believe that, too a large degree, we can choose whom or what we will imitate. I choose (undubitably hypocritically) to imitate a person. The ‘Christian’ who roots belief and finds ultimate authority elsewhere is keeping his hypocrisy very close to the surface.