re: Jesus is alive
It doesn't bother me that you (and many others) believe that Jesus is alive. I have only your naked word for it, and excuse me if I wait a while. I can't know if you are deluded in your beliefs and actually believe them or if you just feel more comfortable in believing it, as Muslims believe in Mahamet, Buddhists in whatever they believe it, and so forth. I think it is very unfortunate for the world that so many people not only believe in some god, but that they believe exclusively in that god. I can see that they would be deeply annoyed when one group of people (i.e. some Jews) believe that their god has been stolen from them and converted into a different god of another group of people (i.e. Christians). If Jesus was the Jewish Messiah, then it stands to reason that he would not have abandoned the Jews and set up his own ecclesia in competition with them (as many Christians believe). If some Christians believe that some Jews rejected (and killed) their own Messiah, and, in a sense abandoned him to gentiles then they would naturally have contempt for those Jews. And the same goes for Islam and Judaism (Abraham's expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael), Hindus and Islam (Islamic mosques built on the ruins of Hindu temples and so on, Buddhists and Islam (Mosques in Borobudur), Islam and Christians (Kossovo) et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
What infuriates me about these feuding religious people is that they so often deny the injunctions for peace and even tolerance from their founders, thereby denying their obedience. Surely if Jesus actually were God (in which case I would willingly capitalize the proper noun), someone would have obeyed his command for his disciples to love one another and for them to love their enemies. But I see that they do not and never have. In fact they make me feel like an enemy (although I profess than I am not), and I detect an extraordinary lack of love filtering in over the transome.
I see Jesus as a tragic man, blessed with enormous but wholly human powers, oppressed by a malignant politco-religious furore, torn between various sects of Jews, followed only by simple, hearty, uneducated working men and often once wicked women, and incapable even of keeping them from squabbling over power and position in the glory they expected to come, and who ultimately betraying, denied, or abandoned him at the last.
I don't criticize Peter and the others, but I would have hoped, had I been there at the last, that I would have died fighting for him in the garden, even though he bad me not. We would have made a merry fight (for Jesus had insisted that all his disciples buy swords.) Peter showed he was no coward in slicing Malchus's ear, and John and Andrew had the arms and lungs strengthened by an outdoor life of pulling on oars and nets. Jesus himself had probably not lost his carpenter's upper body strength.* If only Jesus had let us go on. A quick bloody fight, and escape to the desert, gathering a few horses and then a bedu life of raiding and stealing, or, if Jesus got his nerve back, a rebellion of all Jews against the oppressors. Maybe Jesus would have died anyway, sword in hand, fighting Romans. There would be a warrior messiah all Jews could have loved and followed (and at least 7/8's of one time-traveling gentile).
Or if I had refrained from combat (not at all in my nature) I hope and believe that I would have stuck by him through his trials (although I don't see how I could have borne to see him repeatedly struck and insulted without striking out and in turn being struck down by the guards). I would hope that I could have appeared as his attorney, and argued that he was mentally incompetent to stand trial and under both Jewish and Roman law could not be held to account for his conduct until he was healthy again. Civilized people, even then, did not execute madmen. Caiphas I doubt to have persuaded, because he was a sectarian fanatic and believed, no doubt, that Jesus was a blasphemer. Pilate, however, was a much more reasonable (and cynical) man**, and even washed his hands of the whole affair. It would have been simple to have him turn Jesus over to a house of healing (maybe the Essenes), and perhaps I could have arranged for drafts of fishes would have almost miraculously appeared at the Praetorium to feed him and his forty thieves. Before his arrest he expected death and prayed that it might pass away, but, like Socrates, he was unwilling to flee his fate. Perhaps if Peter had been more forceful, or more concerned for his health and safety, he could have got him out of town until the whole affair blew over and Jesus was able to get treatment.
Under any of these alternative courses of action which I believe could have occurred if only Peter has been a more forceful leader***, I believe we would have had a better world than the chaos we have inherited.
* I can eat without bread, and I can drink without beer, but I cannot write without footnotes. I hope it is never your fate to arm wrestle a working hard-wood flooring installer for your life. Jesus would have done well in the fight if he had felt better.
** Anyone who says to a prisoner "What is truth?" and will not stay for answer is a man with whom a deal can be struck.
*** Sometimes the military art depends on disobedience of orders, like Nelson at Cape St. Vincent and Copenhagen. "Any damned fool can obey orders" said Wellington. |
