Jesus, Anthropology and World Religions:

Some Good News

by John K. Stoner

INTRODUCTION

    Following are some thoughts seeking  a genuine interreligious conversation around a question of human consequence posed by Jesus: “Is it lawful in your system to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?” (Mark 3)

    Many people have observed that religion plays a role in some of the most intractable conflicts and wars of our time.  As a consequence it is not a big jump to conclude that some of the work for peace, perhaps a very central part of it, is to seek peace between and among the religions of the world.

    Given this, it is certainly a good thing that people of faith are initiating conversations between religions.  Each faith tradition will certainly try to bring to that conversation the essence of its own  best insights.  In an effort  to contribute something toward that goal I present these thoughts, grounded in the life and teachings of Jesus, with a focus on what he said about human nature and humans living in community--elements of anthropology.  Here are some things to say about Jesus in an interreligous dialogue.  That there are other ways of talking about Jesus may simply indicate that there is more than one religion called Christianity. 

     The following themes are treated in the order shown.
    1.  To Do Good or To Do Harm
    2.  To Save Life or To Kill
    3.  The Primacy of Embrace
    4.  How to Deal With Enemies
    5.  The Tyranny of Exceptions
    6.  The Possibility of Change
    7.  The Persistence of Hope


1.  To Do Good or To Do Harm

    One can read the life of Jesus as a commentary on how to deal with enemies. 

    Did Jesus have enemies?  Yes, if “enemies” are what we call  “the other” in the most difficult cases, because of experienced hostility and perceived threat from the other.  Psychologists, counselors and pastors have written many books on relating to others in situations where the others present challenges and obstacles to an easy relationship.   However, there are not a lot of books on the really hard cases, where the challenges merge into serious threat, even endangering life itself.

    But surely it is in the hard cases that any principle of reconciliation and community is put to the test.  A textbook on human relations which treats everything except how to deal with enemies would not be a good buy. 

    On the other hand, a book which deals centrally with how to deal with enemies, in our day and age, would be a very good buy indeed.

    In a way the Bible is such a book.  But it is not automatically read as such, and indeed there are ways of reading it which teach more of the wrong thing than the right thing, because the Bible contains many voices, and the reader is forced to choose among them.

    It is here that we get help from a life rather than a book.  We get help from the life of Jesus, from how he lived his life and what he taught as he lived.   His life was lived, indeed, in the midst of a culture, religion and politics which kept much of its history and thought in a book, but Jesus added insight and energy which surpassed anything in the book.  His life and teachings thus became critical for understanding the book and choosing among its voices. 

    In the book, briefly summarized, the multiple voices present three major ways of dealing with enemies: annihilation, isolation, and reconciliation.  These three are not the same, and they cannot be made compatible with each other, as anyone imaging themselves on the receiving end of the three approaches will readily recognize.   There is neither practical nor moral parity among them.  Annihilation is not separation or reconciliation, isolation is not reconciliation, reconciliation is not annihilation, etc. 

    All three can be found in the older part of the book, with the heaviest weight (in more than one way) on the annihilation approach, secondly on the separation approach, and least, but impressively and increasingly, on the reconciliation approach.

    What we see in the life of Jesus is a resolute and uncompromising focus on the reconciliation approach.  He summarized his view of the matter with the words “love your enemies.”  It’s a way that is stark, it is difficult, but if we look at Jesus carefully and take him seriously, we find that it is possible.

    And that is good news for the human project, because what to do about enemies has become synonymous with the question of human survival.  If we get that right, we have a chance (shall we say a fighting chance?), and if we don’t we don’t.

    We do not have to just wonder or guess how Jesus dealt, in specifics, with his enemies.  The story is clear enough, and it confronts us with a choice.  It asks us what we think of how he did it, and would we choose to try it ourselves. 

    We can take one instance from the record to illustrate Jesus’ general approach.  By way of introduction we can observe that for Jesus the coinage of power was truth, and, to say the obvious, truth is communicated in speech.  So for Jesus in dealing with enemies, words were important.  Persuasion was the method.   

    But a further observation is important.  Jesus as a negotiator, or communicator, or persuader, did not necessarily count on changing the minds of his most determined opponents, or enemies, at least on the short term.  He was satisfied, it seems, to speak the truth into a situation, and let all who heard it make up their minds.  But that was, and is, no small thing.  In most critical situations there are far more undecided people than radically committed protagonists, and that majority which can be swayed will be more decisive in the long run than the minority of extremists.

    This brings us to an account from the gospels, found in Mark 3 (and Luke 6), in which the opponents (enemies) of Jesus are pressing him hard.  The Pharisees, seeking to discredit Jesus, watch him in the synagogue to see if he will break their interpretation of the sabbath law.   The conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees is intense, and in the course of this confrontation Jesus exposes the fact that they are prepared to kill him if they can.  So the starting point for grasping the significance of this story is to know that Jesus is here dealing with his enemies, and he knows he is.  How does he deal with them?

    Here is the story::

    “Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there who had a withered hand.  They watched him to see whether he would cure him on the sabbath, so that they might accuse him.  And he said to the man who had the withered hand, “Come forward.”  Then he said to them, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?”  But they were silent.  He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart and said to the man, “stretch out your hand.”  He stretched it out, and his hand was restored.  The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him” (Mark 3). 

    The Pharisees were accredited representatives of an ancient and honored religious tradition--the tradition of the very people gathered in the synagogue that day.  As such they had a de facto claim on at least the deference, if not the subservience, of Jesus.  They held power which they were determined not to lose, and they saw Jesus as a threat because of his appeal to the people.  They were prepared to take any measures necessary to prevent Jesus from gaining more support.   But in the face of their threat, Jesus was fearless.  Luke adds an intriguing comment before Jesus’ command to the man to come forward.  He says, “even though he knew what they were thinking, he said to the man, “Come forward.”  He was not intimidated  by his enemies.

    Jesus could have responded differently.  We have no indication that he thought of dealing with them by annihilation.   But it is obvious that he could have separated himself from those threatening him by leaving the synagogue.  Without giving up his desire to heal the man, he could have decided to heal him at another time or another place, not in the holy time and space of the Pharisees.  In other words, he could have dealt with his enemies by separation.  He chose not to do that.  It is fair to wonder why.

    Instead, he escalated the tension by staging a confrontation of truth claims.  Recognizing his opponents’ claim to be authorities in the law he asked a question about the law.  “Is it lawful,” he asked, “to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?”

    But why, there in the holy space of the Pharisees on a holy day,  raise a question about killing?  Surely that was irrelevant at best, and wildly off the scale of what could be considered appropriate in the situation at worst.  But no, it wasn’t, because that question took the confrontation to the place of foundational commitments and ethics.  Jesus correctly perceived that his opponents were operating with a view of human nature and social order based on the power of homicidal sanctions.  He knew that the Pharisees in the room with him felt justified, in their official capacity as leaders, if not in their personal right as individuals, to kill an enemy of the people.  That, ultimately, was their way of maintaining law and order.

    The question which Jesus asked was, moreover, anthropological rather than theological.  In that holy space and time, Jesus did not ask the  Pharisees, or the assembled people, what they thought about God.  He asked them what that thought about their neighbor. 

    Jesus considered it important to challenge the Pharisees’ view of authority and notion of power.  He chose to make that which was hidden--a commitment to homicidal coercion--public and visible.  Hence his refusal to flee, and his escalation of the tension with a pointed question.

    The Pharisees were silent, and their silence moved Jesus to anger, and to compassion.  The two sides of his response are exemplary, and should not be missed by critics who think that Jesus was too soft on injustice,  or on the other hand, too hard on people.  

    But in that synagogue there was a place which was not silent at that moment, and that place was the heart and mind of every person in the room who heard the question which Jesus asked.  Without a doubt a response was formed in the heart of every listener, and a hundred voices spoke their own answer to themselves, if not to Jesus.  Again, an anthropological process. 

    How does human nature at its deepest level, in the best self as created by God, answer the question “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?”  The instinctive human answer is to say, “It is right to do good, and it is right to save life.”  Aware as they may be that their performance does not always measure up to this standard, people are as sure of the right answer to this question as they are that the sum of two plus two equals four.  Both answers come from the same place in the human being were truth is recognized--not invented or proven-- just recognized because it comports with the way we are made. 

    Jesus knew this about human nature, and so he was prepared to put his question, out of the blue, up against all the teaching and tradition of the Pharisees in a crowded room, confident that given a chance to see the choice, people will recognize the superiority of the good and the life-affirming over the harmful and the homicidal.  I said above that Jesus did not expect his enemies to change immediately, but that he was satisfied to help the masses of people, not radically committed to any viewpoint, to consider the facts by giving them the information.   Here he did just that.  In his strategy of dealing with the opposition and working for justice, appealing to the common people was vastly superior to the notion of power held by his enemies.  He  believed in the power of good to overcome evil.

    In conclusion, two observations about this event in the life of Jesus. First, was this a personal or a public confrontation with enemies?   Christian theologians and teacher, ever since the fourth century when the emperor Constantine made his politically and morally dubious claim to embrace Christianity, have worked hard to privatize the teaching of Jesus, saying that his teaching to love enemies has private meaning, but was not intended to speak to public or political practice.  But this won’t work.  The confrontation of Jesus with the Pharisees was  public and political in every conceivable way.  The Pharisees held power as public figures in their religious tradition of Judaism, and their religion was practiced under the permission and control of the Roman empire.  It is not possible to privatize them, nor is it possible to privatize the way Jesus understood the power confrontation.  At stake was the question of who had the right to lead the people--Jesus said once that the people were like sheep without a shepherd.  But the Pharisees saw themselves as the shepherds, and Jesus was making a frontal claim to displace them.  Jesus was dealing there with what today would be called political or public enemies, and the fate of the people was at stake.  In today’s language, the issue was national security.   

    Second, a comment regarding the phrase “on the sabbath” in the middle of Jesus’ challenging question.  Was Jesus really making a distinction between human obligation (that is the meaning of “lawful” here--what is morally obligatory?) on one holy day of the week and human obligation the other six days of the week?  That makes no sense.  “On the sabbath” had a much wider meaning.

    With that phrase Jesus gathered up the essence of the religious system of his opponents.  He was really asking, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm in your holy system, to save life or to kill?”

    And that is the question which rings down through the centuries.  Jesus is honored today because he had the wisdom, the courage, and the compassion to ask that question and that kind of question.  He left no religion or faith community out when he asked it.  And that is the question which those who start with the life and teachings of Jesus will ask in interfaith dialogue situations.

    Enemies too are people.  Do we set out to do good to them, or to do harm to them? 

    In your holy system, is it permitted to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?  An anthropological question for every interrelligious conversation.
   

2.  To Save Life or to Kill

    Of all the ten commandments, only one has been interpreted restrictively by the church and the Jewish community.  That is the sixth:  thou shalt not kill.  Why is this?

    The restrictive interpretation plays on the word murder in the English language, claiming that the commandment forbids only that homicide which is done between individuals, and not that which is done by the public, whether by execution or war.  Some such restricted meaning may have been intended in the original Hebrew texts.  We have noted above that the Old Testament texts speak with at least three conflicting voices on how to deal with enemies, advocating at one time annihilation, at another separation, and at another still reconciliation.  This makes it probable, if not obvious,  that there were different views on the matter of killing any human being, which is homicide.

    The question remains, if it could be shown decisively that the original meaning was usually or exclusively restrictive, would that dictate that three thousand years of human experience since then should achieve no expansion of the principle involved?  Certainly in the case of the other commandments, the effort of interpreters has been to expand the relevance and application of the original words and principles.  And so why has this one been interpreted restrictively?

    Could it be convenience which dictates this?  Could it be that people who do not know, or refuse to find, a better way of dealing with enemies than killing them have sought justification in holy texts for the behavior they want to follow anyway?

    Historically, a restrictive interpretation of “thou shalt not kill” has proven to be as disastrous as a restrictive interpretation of the prohibitions of lying and theft would certainly be.  When the church advocates shaving the edges of moral standards, society will not usually correct the loss.  And yet, remarkable as it seems, in some cases it has done just that--I would offer the cases of racial and sexual discrimination, where the leadership did not by any means all come from the church.  Perhaps society will yet lead the way in the matter of justified homicide. 

    In any case,it is clear enough that Jesus did not interpret this command restrictively.  When he said “love your enemies,”  he certainly did not mean, “but kill them if necessary.”  Moreover, he said it in the context of Israel’s existence as a vassal of Roman military occupation forces, i.e., enemies, and in a context of his own experience of political and ecclesiastical authorities targeting him as their enemy.  So he was not talking about loving merely personal enemies.  His practice as well as his speech showed that, as described in the previous chapter.

    So how many correct answers are there to Jesus’ question, Is it lawful to save life or to kill?   How many exceptions to the presumption against killing will be justified by those calling themselves his followers? 

    If I seem insistent in pressing the question “Is it lawful to save life or to kill?” it is because I understand Jesus to have been insistent with it.  Are we in a hurry to divert from this question, to talk about something else, to avoid a clear answer, to find exceptions to the obvious answer?

    Are the religions of the world prepared to make this the main question of their dialogue?  Are all versions of Christianity, all denominations and communions which call themselves Christian, ready to take a clear stand against all killing as Jesus did? 

    For Christians this must be a watershed question, because it is clearly not possible to love our enemies and kill them at the same time.   Not that it has never been claimed that this is truly possible.  Or as someone put it,  “Not to say that it was true, but only that some said so.”

     Jesus’ absolute prohibition of killing establishes the basis for serious conflict resolution, for the obvious reason that as long as the parties to the conflict claim the right, however carefully or judiciously, to kill their opponent, the discussion will be jaundiced by that reality.  No one makes really serious or lasting changes or commitments under duress.  And the threat of death, however covert, is duress. 

    Stated positively, when two parties enter a dispute resolution process with a prior commitment to respect the other’s right to be alive, the atmosphere is charged with possibilities which are no way present when threats of death surround the meeting space.  

    Uncompromising respect for the right of every “other” to life is the very foundation of any hopeful human struggle for unity.  Jesus made that clear, and this is the central reason he is called the way, the truth and the life.  He lived and died in uncompromising respect for this truth.  Principled refusal to take the life of another because of their inviolable right to life is the foundation of all sustainable human relationships, struggle for justice, and creation of community and peace. 

    If we do not take an unequivocal stand for every person’s right to be alive,  how can we expect people to believe our claim to care about other human rights?  If we equivocate on the ultimate human right, who will believe that we are serious about lesser human rights?

    Jesus’ implication that it is lawful to save life, not to kill, is something we all understand.

    We may resist the practice of it, but few, I hope,  would step out to deny that they understand it.


3.  The Primacy of Embrace
   
    But it will be asked, Why should we love our enemies when justice seems to demand something else?  With this question we acknowledge the strongest reason which is given by those who justify homicide in some cases--specifically, who justify war.

     Having named the pursuit of justice as a strong reason (which will be dealt with in detail in this chapter) I will now name, in order to dispense with,  some of the hidden, subtle, covert and unspoken weak and perverse reasons why the church has gotten sucked into justifying war.  Let’s be clear that the devil as a liar uses these to great extent and advantage,  masquerading these phony motivations under a stolen banner of pursuing justice, and even peace.

    First, greed is a great covert justifier of war.  We want the oil that is under their soil; how did it get there?  How can they refuse it to us?  One people/nation wants to control the resources of another.  An empire like the USA wants to control the resources of the world.  It’s called our “national interest,” and our “way of life”  which are euphemisms for our national greed, and our claim to vastly more than our share of the world’s resources.

    Second, profit.  Closely related to greed, but focused in the greed of the  military industrial corporations, profit is what makes perpetual war attractive to the rich and power-hungry.  In the United States today it is impossible to overstate the corporate greed which drives war on and on.  As long as the taxpayers will pony up hundreds of billions of dollars, the corporations will gladly receive and spend it.  It is corporate welfare with a vengeance.

    Third, tribalism, nationalism, ideology, idolatry.  Here I’ve pulled together just four words describing one big package of public opinion which justifies and motivates war.  The slogans of this deceiving ideology include “united we stand,” “support the troops,” “these colors don’t run,” “9/11 Never Forget,” and similar mind-numbing utterances produced by and perpetuating group-think.  The main visible symbol of this ideology is the flag.  The public rituals of this false religion (idolatry of nation) include parades, pledging allegiance to the flag, military funerals, and school children collecting cookies and packages for people trained and commissioned to kill other people.  (A Greek philosopher once said, “The first rule of good government is to call everything by its right name.”)

    None of the above causes of war have anything to do with justice or peace, but they are routinely camouflaged in empty rhetoric of concern for justice.

    Now, to the question “Why should we love our enemies when justice seems to require something else?”

    Here I am will borrow heavily from a paper by Miroslav Volf, professor of theology at Yale Divinity School, which appears as a chapter titled “Forgiveness, Reconciliation, and Justice” in STRICKEN BY GOD? edited by Brad Jersak and Michael Hardin.  After noting that “not only have Christians committed atrocities and other lesser forms of violence but they have also drawn on religious beliefs to justify them,” Volf states his thesis thus:  “The cure against religiously  induced or legitimized violence is not less religion, but, in a carefully qualified sense, more religion.”   

    I will seek to integrate the somewhat theoretical discussion of forgiveness, reconciliation and justice which Volf gives with my perceptions of those behaviors and words of Jesus which seemed to make people with whom he interacted feel welcomed and embraced.  These same behaviors and words,remarkably enough, seem to cause people today who spend time reading and absorbing the life and teachings of Jesus also to feel welcomed and embraced, forgiven and reconciled. For some reason many people sense a moral resonance with Jesus.  I will note how the life and teaching of Jesus concerning how to deal with the other, and especially the radically other called enemy, impacts our own selves, our own sense of who we are and who we could become, in such a way that we tend to feel more loved and more whole, more internally integrated and embraced by life and others. 

    Volf begins: “I will first discard two wrongheaded ways to relate forgiveness, reconciliation and justice, and then argue for an alternative.” In a discussion first of what he calls cheap reconciliation, he notes that
“It is almost universally recognized by theologians and church leaders today that the prophetic denunciation of injustice has a prominent place in the Christian faith.”  He goes on, “but it is precisely here that watchfulness is needed.  For the imperative of justice severed from the overarching framework of grace within which it is  properly situated and from the obligation to non-violence, underlies much of the Christian faith’s misuse for religiously legitimizing violence.”

    In the story in Mark 3 of Jesus confronting the unjust use of power by the Pharisees, we briefly noted that Jesus’ emotional reaction to the Pharisees included both anger and compassion.  And what are we seeing in that compassion?  Surely an “overarching framework of grace!”  Jesus is feeling “the hardness of their hearts”--he is aware of something in his enemies which comes partly from their own choices and intention but also partly from beyond themselves--that is what is meant by “hardness of heart.”  The scriptural notion of this very human phenomenon is that it is caused by forces of evil which play upon the individual from beyond themselves, as well as from within themselves.  This is a recognition which each of us has  made within our own hearts.  To have Jesus recognize it is to feel understood by Jesus, and in some sense embraced by him.

    Volf goes on to say that because forgiveness “is conceptually tied to justice as desert, it always entails foregoing a rightful claim against someone who has in some way harmed or offended us.”  Since the forgoing of such a claim makes forgiveness apparently unjust, the question remains: What is the precise relation between justice on the one hand and forgiveness and reconciliation on the other?  Cheap reconciliation is not the answer.

    But neither, says Volf, is “first justice, then reconciliation.”  An insistence on this sequence is a common way to try to solve the problem.  On the surface that seems great, but in fact it doesn’t work, because it can’t work.  And the reason it can’t work is because the demands of justice are always greater than any  reconciliation which a postponed forgiveness can achieve.  In other words, the effort, or efforts, to meet the demands of justice will always delay forgiveness and reconciliation just a little longer, and that little longer will stretch out into forever unless something better than a sequence of justice first, then reconciliation, is found.  In Volf’s words, “No peace is possible within the overarching framework of strict justice for the simple reason that no strict justice is possible.”

    The better way which Volf finds, in Jesus, he calls “the primacy of embrace.”  What is this?  It is the welcoming of the other before the full demands of a justice legally conceived have been met.  And what we see in the gospel is that this is what Jesus, in his own life and teaching, actually did.  Jesus embraced people before he demanded their ethical reform or their moral perfection. Few things are more obvious from even a cursory reading of the gospels.   And we don’t know how good that feels, or how important that is, until we reflect honestly on our own case!  Reflection even briefly on our own case brings us up short and quick against the fact our own personal maturation or moral growth, to whatever small or great extent it has happened, has depended decisively on experiences of being embraced before we were reformed. 

    This begins for every one of us, except in the most tragic and unfortunate cases, in the experience of being embraced in spite of our imperfection by our loving parents.  The primacy of embrace goes by many other names in what parents practice, like giving a second (and twenty second) chance, loving the unlovable, holding on through thick and thin, never giving up, or tough love but it all comes down and adds up to what Volf, with charming felicity,  calls “the primacy of embrace.” 

    In his discussion of this, Volf adds a word, and phrases it “the primacy of the will to embrace.”  He asserts that the character of God is unconditional  and indiscriminate love, and that therefore “the will to embrace the other is the most fundamental obligation of Christians.”  He does not dwell on how the character of God translates into the obligation of Christians, so let us ask how that happens.  I see it happening in the life and teachings of Jesus, who, we say, reveals God in human flesh. 

    Throughout his life, Jesus showed unconditional and indiscriminate love to people.  It is this reality about Jesus which makes him a winsome figure still today:  People who spend time reading the record of Jesus life and relating to people who claim Jesus as their special ancestor and model, find themselves attracted to the way Jesus responded to people.  When Jesus stands with a man oppressed by misused scribal religious authority, a woman condemned by men for adultery, a child stricken by debilitating illness, a hungry crowd seeking food, or a wayward son returning home we somehow feel him standing with us.  None of these subjects of Jesus’ special attention are people of exceptional virtue as far as we can tell.  We know ourselves not to be persons of exceptional virtue.  But we are capable of responding to undeserved love and unconditional embrace.  And so we respond, to Jesus.  But so we are responding also to God, according to Jesus, who claimed to know something about God and to represent God faithfully.

    But the God step is a second step.  The Jesus step is first, and according to the best records we have, Jesus identified himself more consistently and insistently as the son of man than as the son of God.  In other words, he claimed to be showing us something about what is truly human as much as showing us something about God.  He actually ran the connections this way.   He said, as he sent out his disciples: “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me” (Mark 9).    You do the math.  You, me, God, all connected, all one.   Maybe this is the real trinity!  How does it feel to be part of it?

    The point is, a fulfilled human being, a human being ready to “be all you can be” is a human who gives primacy to the will to embrace.  Like a parent with a child, a mature human being relates to all people with a second chance, loving the unlovable, holding on through thick and thin, never giving up, and tough love mentality.  Maybe this is why Jesus, introducing new language for God, called God Abba--father.  God is the one who loves like a father loves--like parents love (the ancient problem of patriarchy forgiven for now).

    For humans it must be as it is for God, says Jesus in the words of his disciple Miroslav Volf: “the economy of underserved grace has primacy over the economy of just desert.”
   

4.  How to Deal with Enemies

    It becomes then, in the Christian view, a matter of observing how Jesus dealt with his enemies (by loving them), and making his way our way.  And all of this, not just as a pattern of interpersonal, or interindividual relationships, but as a way to run the world.  And that not just because it would be nice, or would do honor to Jesus or God, but also because it is the only way that will work.  Since this is the only workable way to run the world, it is right, helpful, and humanly indispensable to say that Jesus is the way and the only way. People who have found a way of human relationships that work, whatever their religion, will find that it is not materially different from what Jesus taught.

    At the same time we can, in this, invite everyone who wishes to take the scientist’s way out, to do so, and gladly welcome them to say with Albert Einstein, “I have not failed.  I’ve just found 10,000 ways that do not work.”    In my view there is no doubt, God has time for that.  It may well be asked whether humanity and it’s earth-bound project has time for it, and that would be the urgency of saying “yes” to the way of Jesus sooner rather than later.  But human freedom will have its say in this.

    Christians do claim that Jesus helps people to understand God better, but they/we should be clear that first he helps people to understand themselves better. 

    It has been said that we are our own worst enemy.  We see at least some truth in that any time we observe that the better we understand ourselves, the better life goes for us.  That is, when we become less an enemy to ourselves, life goes better for us.

    The first, and in the end the most surprising thing that we learn from Jesus, is that we have the capacity to live out the primacy of the will to embrace, and that living this way is more true to our nature than anything else.  That is to say, we feel more fulfilled, whole, mature and happy when we recognize that the economy of undeserved grace has primacy over the economy of just desert.  This is, no doubt, different from most prevailing cultural ways of dealing with others, which tend to put the primacy of desert in first place.

    But how do people learn the primacy of embrace from Jesus?

    Let’s look at the Jesus story with that question in mind.  What we see, in one event after another, and one teaching after another, is Jesus practicing the primacy of embrace, and we see people responding to that.

    We admire Jesus in large part because we feel ourselves loved by him in spite of our failures.  There is nothing quite like feeling oneself accepted/embraced even though, and before, one has done something, or achieved a moral status, where one could think of oneself as worthy of acceptance.  We describe the extending of this embrace by a gracious person as forgiveness. 

    Forgiveness transcends both guilt and hostility.  What is the shape and form of our hostility?  Of our alienation from our enemy?  What is the shape of our hostility toward “God?” Perhaps our anger at being created unable to achieve the potential we feel, and feeling blamed for that inability!

    The emotional power of Christian conversion in diverse cultures is the very human experience of coming to see, to believe, that one is loved, forgiven, embraced as one is: imperfect, conflicted, hostile, whatever--at the center of the universe, the bottom of everything, we are loved as we are.  Every child likes that experience.  When adults rediscover it, it is a big discovery!  Put in terms of theology, if God thinks of us that way, we can think of ourselves that way!   And when we think of ourselves that way, something very big can change within us very suddenly, and it is indeed a “conversion.”  It is first a whole new way of seeing one’s self, and it becomes a whole new way of seeing others. 

    But let us put a qualification on the claim that this is a whole new way of seeing ourselves.  For some people it will not be so much a whole new way of seeing themselves.  Some people have little difficulty accepting and forgiving themselves.  So there will be exceptions.  But first, more about the usual. 

    People are nothing if not diverse, including diverse in their self-image and their perceptions and assumptions both about their own nature and the nature of others.  But generally, and here I generalize, people have conflicted feelings about themselves.  We do not feel all one way all day, nor all days.  Sometimes we feel good about ourselves, sometimes less good. My generalization includes the assertion that most people feel less good about themselves when they live with the primacy of just desert above the primacy of embrace--with concerns of justice above concerns of compassion.  And a further generalization, most people, largely because of cultural conditioning, never even think of putting the primacy of embrace first--especially in relation to themselves!  They live with an attitude of blame rather than an attitude of embrace toward themselves.   

    When someone calling himself “the human one,” Jesus, comes into that kind of life and that kind of self-image, saying, “You should be embracing yourself, because I embrace you, and God embraces you,”  it can certainly have the quality of welcome information, or good news, about it.

    Having said that, the diversity of human nature means that some other people, I believe a minority, and in any case basically determined by culture, some other people will not hear the primacy of embrace as a brand new idea nor a brand new way of thinking about themselves.  That’s great.  Let’s keep moving on to the people who have yet to discover this, giving them Jesus’ message of embrace, because this discovery for them is very important.

    In summary, a serious religion has got to take seriously the question of how to deal with enemies.  A plan for human relations which works only under good conditions and in easy cases is no plan at all.  That is why Jesus’ plan of loving your enemies, a plan dealing with the hard cases, is so essential and in the end so attractive.

5.  The Tyranny of Exceptions

    Christianity has been plagued by a morality of exceptions in the matter of how to deal with offenders, enemies, and especially war--producing  a theology of justified war when its true genius is a theology of war rendered obsolete.

    Theologians across the centuries, eager to give the appearance of honoring Jesus, start with lip service to peace as a goal and Jesus as their guide.  But before the ink has dried on those sentences they are busy developing exceptions to his teaching to love our enemies, and showing why doing good and saving life are usually, but not always, the lawful thing.  In their hands the “not always” grows and grows until the “usually” has shrunk to something between seldom and never.

    Jesus asks, “Is it lawful in your holy system to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?” and the church has answered, “Generally the former, but...we have these other thoughts too.”  Jesus has taught, “Love your enemies,” and the church has responded “Yes, but...what does love mean, and who is my enemy?”  Thus has developed over the centuries a veritable tyranny of exceptions to the most fundamental obligation which Jesus laid upon his followers.

    The sad history of the church’s involvement in wars is so familiar and well-documented that it is unnecessary to repeat it here at length, but at the same time essential to address its unavoidable implications.  Seed has been sown to the wind, and we shall continue to reap the whirlwind if we do not, with relentless clarity and unmitigated vigor,  revise the strategy of our sowing.  Toward that revision, some proposals. 

      First, when any social  group has engaged to this extent in human depredation, nothing less than an attitude of perpetual contrition can begin to redress the wrong.  And to this contrition must be attached a fixed determination to change.  That is, a will to repent-- for the root meaning of “repent’ is to change one’s mind--and just as surely to change one’s behavior.  Moreover, here let us urge without fear of contradiction, let white males lead.  That is to say, let those who led in wars and crusades now lead in contrition and repentance.
   
    Secondly, we are bound to say the obvious: that the time which the church’s  theologians, preachers and teachers spend justifying war cannot be spent exploring and creating the ways of peace.  The misdirection of energy and potential which has been and continues to be devoted to exceptions to Jesus’ plain teaching is a cancer in the soul of the church.  Brilliant as they are, the church’s ethicists, theologians and Bible scholars cannot know and develop  the things that make for peace while they are justifying the things that make for war.  And if I as an insider do not name and lament this, the worldly critics and detractors of the church will do it for us, and that with a vengeance that will dwarf the whimper of complaint which I raise here and elsewhere.

    Which names a third impact of the church’s sad involvement in exceptions to Jesus’ clear teaching--this tyranny of exceptions has discredited the church in the eyes of millions of people who could have been the church’s best friends.  We cannot with impunity ignore and discredit the plain teaching of the one we claim to follow.  A major consequence of failing to do good and save life has been the alienation of people of goodwill and responsive conscience.  If we are not following our leader, we are not going to persuade other to do it. Have you noticed that with the exception of liberal Christians virtually every  spiritual person and religious adherent in the world is eager to promote the writings and teachings of their own spiritual leader.  Why is that? 
 
    To conclude this brief discussion of the tyranny of exceptions I’ll end where I might have started, by asking where the impact of this tyranny can still be found in our midst.  Is this problem real or imagined?  So now, let the reader ask in his or her own mind, How do I answer Jesus’ question, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?”  Is my answer to this simple and straightforward, clear and unequivocal?  Or is it complex and subtle, even devious and evasive? 

    And having quite plainly asked themselves Jesus’ question, let the reader then take it just as clearly and unavoidably to religious leaders, starting with those identified as Christians, and observe carefully whether they begin to discover exception.  If they do, let the reader decide for herself whether the tyranny of exceptions is still a problem.


6.  The Possibility of Change

    Is it possible for humans to turn from habits of harm toward habits of healing, and from habits of killing to habits of saving life?  Can we, in other words, actually replace a culture of violence with a culture of peace?

    The short answer is simple, and I’ll give it first.  Whatever is possible for one individual now is possible for a whole society in time.

    But of course, saying it’s true doesn’t prove its true.  So, let’s poke around this  a little.  

    We could start with this obvious but rare bit of honesty: it sounds better to say “I cannot change” than to say “I will not change.”  You’ll find a hundred people ready to say “I cannot change this behavior” for every one who will say “I will not change this behavior.”  Having stripped the cover from that ubiquitous little piece of self deception, it’s not hard to imagine that a good bit of energy, not to mention creativity, will be put into making things sound better.  It is likely, for example, that theological arguments for the total depravity of human nature will be used to undergird the presumption  that “I cannot change.”  In a similar fashion, elaborate arguments to demonstrate that society is inherently and irretrievably immoral will be used to imply that individuals too cannot change. 

    What gives the lie to every argument that people cannot change their behavior is the observation that people do change their behavior.  My, how we treasure the stories of people who have changed in dramatic ways!  By treasuring these stories we show that we admire change, such as change from habits of harm to habits of healing.  But do we also show that we expect such change to be rare, and even imply that it is usually not possible?  

    Change, as we’ve said, is another word for repentance.  It means to begin seeing things in a different way, and doing things in a different way.  The possibility of both seeing and doing differently is there because we’ve seen it happen.  But why would anyone want to see or do differently?  Stripped of the claim that “I cannot change,” how will a person be moved to say “I will change?”

    We begin to see that the question of change moves less on the plane of possibility than on the plane of incentive.  The bottom line is not whether it is possible, but why it would be chosen.

    We choose things either because we think they will be good for us, or good for others.  Now, we might add a third motive, or incentive:  we choose things because they will be good for God.  This is the “to glorify God and enjoy him [sic] forever” argument.  And that’s OK, it has its place,  but I think we have reason to be careful here, on no less authority than Jesus himself, who cautioned us mightily against thinking we can do things for God which we’re either unwilling or think ourselves unable to do for others.  He linked the love of God and the love of neighbor, and any effort to de-link those, for even the highest of motives, is doomed to reap nothing but the basest of results.   

    I think Jesus saw us incapable of doing things purely “for God,” and that not simply because we’re sinners, but because we’re humans.  That is, we’re what God made us, and that is, living in the flesh, capable of loving ourselves and loving others, our neighbor as ourselves, at the same time as we love God.

    The possibility of change lies in the possibility of learning that the best way to truly love ourselves is to truly love our neighbor (who includes always our enemy as well).  What the individual discovers is that the ultimate fulfillment of self-interest comes through the total abandonment of self for others.  “Whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake and the good news will save it.”  “Whoever would come after me, must  take up his cross and follow me.”  The promise of Jesus is that people will learn to say as he said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing,” and as Stephen said, “Lord, do not lay this sin to their charge.”  The individual can learn to overcome evil with good, and there is no greater self-interest or world-saving incentive than that. 

    Those who embrace the possibility of change expect more of others, but first they expect more of themselves.  It is an expectation which carries the reward of the experience of more--more of all that satisfies and matters, within and beyond which God is found.  Also called life, and eternal life.

7.  The Persistence of Hope

    Hope is persistent because Jesus is insistent.

    Not in some irritating or demanding way, but in an invitational way which has resonated in the souls of people from every imaginable land and culture and religion.

    One of the reasons that Jesus is good news is that his life  and teachings come to us not as something alien and accusing, but as something familiar and affirming.  If this sounds flip or corny, so be it.  Just check it out before you throw it out.

    Check first whether your reluctance to cut Jesus some slack, ie a fair shake in the contest of world religions and religious leaders, might be growing out of either a seriously flawed understanding of how Jesus truly lived and taught or a mistaken identification of Jesus with people who since his time have claimed to speak for him.  If you have ditched Jesus for either of these bad reasons you’ve shot yourself in the foot--or maybe the head.

    Jesus comes to us with strong words--strong words of affirmation.  Calling himself  “the human one,”  or “the son of man,” he claimed far more to be truly human than to be truly God.  Now, there, I’ve offended some of the orthodox, but so be it.  Jesus also offended the orthodox.  Life is more than orthodoxy.  Straight thinking is something, but it’s not everything, I say in resonance with Jesus himself. 

    The affirming word which Jesus speaks to us is something like “peace to this house” (Luke 10).   The shalom, wholeness, be-all-you-can-be words which he spoke were rooted in a history which was so rife with failure that the “worst” of us can see ourselves in it, and so brimming with grace that the “best” of us are surpassed by its characters.  Jesus, in other words, was connected with, and connects us with, human history as it is, its warts and its wisdom in full measure.

    As a guide in our search for ourselves and for God, Jesus helps us to sort through the profoundly checkered history of his tribe (and in that, all of our tribes), keeping some and throwing out a lot more.  If we can’t admire him for anything else, we can respect his angry and compassionate assessment of his own religious tradition.  What will you give anyway for a leader who is incapable of self-criticism, or a religion which lacks honesty about its own failures?

    When Jesus welcomed people who were social outcasts, encouraged people who were down on themselves, and forgave people who were condemned by society and themselves, he spoke to possibilities which those people sensed in some deep part of themselves, but had lost or forgotten in the crush of life.  Maybe somebody else could have done that for them just as well, but the point is that he did it, and they recognized it.  He gave them hope. 

    Moreover, what he did for people he taught and insisted that they could do for one another.  And this, not in some small or token way, but at the very deepest and most profound levels of life and death.  Maybe that’s why he talked about life and death, and asked questions like “Is it lawful to do good or go do harm, to save life or to kill?”  In your religious system, on your sabbath, how do you answer those basic questions?    He was constantly drawing people into solidarity with himself.  He did that by assuring people that he was like them, a human one.  He was sharing life and death with them.  

    And when he did the other thing, claiming some unique identification with God, his posture of solidarity with every man, woman and child around him meant that he was claiming the same thing for them, i.e., some unique identification with God.  His words were, “whoever welcomes you, welcomes me.  And whoever welcomes me, welcomes him that sent me.”  You do the math.  When you identify “You” with “me” and “me” with “God,” you have identified “you” with “___.”

    At the heart of the way Jesus lived was compassion and forgiveness.  He forgave sins, he forgave people.  He assured them of his welcome and acceptance, and asserted that this represented God’s welcome and forgiveness.  Then he went on to say that this way of compassion and forgiveness was to be the way of his followers.  They would create and maintain (their) human community  with a process of welcome and forgiveness (Matthew 18)   He lived and taught this as a clear and deliberate alternative to the world’s (the Roman empire’s, at the time) effort to create and maintain human community on the basis of coercion and violence.  That this was a conscious and intentional alternative to the prevailing mode of social organization is clear by the term he used to describe his message and mission, the kingship or reign of God.  Kingship was the name of the world’s way of social organization.  He claimed that God did it a different way, with the power of love operating through power and forgiveness.  This, he said, is the way, the truth, and the life.   

    It has made sense to a lot of people who have tried it.  They’ve said, "I think we can do this."  It gives them hope.

February 2008   jstoner@ptd.net
online at www.ecapc.org/jesusandworldreligions.asp