re: thoughts on my Jesus
Anything useful to say? Any substantive response? Any information, argument, or dispute as to facts or accuracy of quotation? Any weasel words, explanations of ambiguous actions, apologies (in the Greek sense). If you cannot bear to have the innermost thoughts and public behaviors of a person you claim as your saviour questioned, how much faith do you really have? Don't you believe in anything? Don't cower -- say what you believe. You may not know it, but I was not responding to will o' the wisps. Serious, well informed scholars and pundits (not me!)have accused Jesus of homosexuality, other sexual misbehavior, and even the normal male action of marriage with Mary Magdalene. These charges do not offend me in the slightest, for my Jesus was a man -- a pitifully sick man at the end -- but a man for all that who went bravely to his death for an idea he could no longer believe. I seek honestly to understand him, as I do any man or woman who has influenced me. I am not interested in obstructing justice or using clever legal tactics to prevent the truth from coming out. Do you think that I cannot face the truth that Martin L. King, Jr. the hero of my manhood was a plagiarist and an adulterer? What does that have to do with human equality and racial justice? Or that Gandiji, my childhood hero, liked to sleep with young girls to warm his old bones even though he early refused his marital duty to his wife. What did that have to do with working for peace and ending religious terrorism? Or that Jefferson, my political hero, seduced Sally Hemings and had children with her? What does that have to do with democracy or religious liberty or knowledge. Or that Maynard Keynes, my professional hero, was a flaming homosexual who perhaps seduced dozens of Cambridge boys -- even while he was tutoring them? What does that have to do with monetary policy and full employment?
Human, all of them. All too human!
Wake up, man! People are potentially hazardous! (as Judge Aldritch, my old law professor, used to say). They make mistakes. Some even say that they are uniformly and unredeemably sinful. But all of us, as I believe, can make up for any error. King and Gandhi died martyrs to peace -- and that wipes their slates clean. Keynes I honestly believe, made post-World War II peace a possibility, and died from overwork in the process, and besides, he gave up young boys, married a ballerina and subsidized the Cambridge Theatre where champagne was, by his specific command, sold at cost. That makes up for much.
Lighten up! If you believe, develop the courage to admit the worst truths that anyone can say about your hero and fight back for his ideas -- not his reputation. I would suggest, in all modesty, that you are wasting your time trying to embarrass me. Jesus, though long dead, still has real enemies, but none here.
Children, love one another, as the man said. |
