"Turn the other cheek," "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" and "As you have done to the least of my brethren, so have you done unto me" are hardly pro-torture slogans. But in the hearts and minds of movement conservatives, not even Churchill, Saint Ronnie or Jesus himself can compete with the comforting violence of Jack Bauer.
- Battochio
Essays like this would be much better if they could leave out the dishearteningly inevitable appeals to the authority of a certain ancient demagogue. Scrutamini scripturas!
From J.L. Mackie's The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and Against the Existence of God:
Richard Robinson has examined the synoptic gospels as the best evidence for Jesus's own teaching, and he finds in them five major precepts: "love God, believe in me, love man, be pure in heart, be humble." The reasons given for these precepts are "a plain matter of promises and threats": they are "that the kingdom of heaven is at hand," and that "those who obey these precepts will be rewarded in heaven, while those who disobey will have weeping and gnashing of teeth." Robinson notes that "Certain ideals that are prominent elsewhere are rather conspicuously absent from the synoptic gospels." These include beauty, truth, knowledge and reason:
As Jesus never recommends knowledge, so he never recommends the virtue that seeks and leads to knowledge, namely reason. On the contrary, he regards certain beliefs as in themselves sinful...whereas it is an essential part of the ideal of reason to hold that no belief can be morally wrong if reached in the attempt to believe truly. Jesus again and again demands faith; and by faith he means believing certain very improbable things without considering evidence or estimating probabilities, and that is contrary to reason.
Robinson adds:
Jesus says nothing on any social question except divorce, and all ascriptions of any political doctrine to him are false. He does not pronounce about war, capital punishment, gambling, justice, the administration of law, the distribution of goods, socialism, equality of income, equality of sex, equality of colour, equality of opportunity, tyranny, freedom, slavery, self-determination, or contraception. There is nothing Christian about being for any of these things, nor about being against them, if we mean by "Christian" what Jesus taught according to the synoptic gospels.
And let's not forget that his famous love of man seems to have only obtained if you define "man" as "fellow Jew", not Gentiles.
What about the historical Jesus? What do we know about him?It's popular to say he said the good stuff and not the less good stuff. I think it's the opposite.
He's typically seen as the great prophet of peace and love.
Yeah. But the fact is, the Sermon on the Mount, which is a beautiful thing, does not appear in Mark, which was the first written gospel. And these views are not attributed to Jesus in the letters of Paul, which are the earliest post-crucifixion documents we have. You see Paul develop a doctrine of universal love, but he's not, by and large, attributing this stuff to Jesus. So, too, with "love your enemies." Paul says something like love your enemies, but he doesn't say Jesus said it. It's only in later gospels that this stuff gets attributed to Jesus. This will seem dispiriting to some people to hear that Jesus wasn't the great guy we thought he was. But to me, it's actually more inspiring to think that the doctrines of transnational, transethnic love were products of a multinational, imperial platform. Throughout human history, as social organization grows beyond ethnic bounds, it comes to encompass diverse ethnicities and nations. And if it develops doctrines that bring us closer to moral truth, like universal love, that is encouraging. I think you see it in all three religions.
If Jesus was not the prophet of love and tolerance that he's commonly thought to be, what kind of person was he?
I think he was your typical Jewish apocalyptic preacher. I'm not the first to say that. Bart Ehrman makes these kinds of arguments, and it goes back to Albert Schweitzer. Jesus was preaching that the kingdom of God was about to come. He didn't mean in heaven. He meant God's going to come down and straighten things out on Earth. And he had the biases that you'd expect a Jewish apocalyptic preacher to have. He doesn't seem to have been all that enthusiastic about non-Jews. There's one episode where a woman who's not from Israel wants him to use his healing powers on her daughter. He's pretty mean and basically says, no, we don't serve dogs here. He compares her to a dog. In the later gospels, that conversation unfolds so you can interpret it as a lesson in the value of faith. But in the earliest treatment, in Mark, it's an ugly story. It's only because she accepts her inferior status that Jesus says, OK, I will heal your daughter.
But wasn't Jesus revolutionary because he made no distinctions between social classes? The poor were just as worthy as the rich.
It's certainly plausible that his following included poor people. But I don't think it extended beyond ethnic bounds. And I don't think it was that original. In the Hebrew Bible, you see a number of prophets who were crying out for justice on behalf of the poor. So it wasn't new that someone would have a constituency that includes the dispossessed. I'm sure in many ways Jesus was a laudable person. But I think more good things are attributed to him than really bear weight.
Why, it's almost like all he cared about was the supposed imminent end of the world! A fanatically anti-intellectual cult leader who demands unquestioning loyalty, even at the cost of alienating friends and family, who exults in the thought that anyone who rouses his resentment will suffer greatly in the new world order...you know, I don't think it's the conservatives who don't understand how to interpret his message.
12 comments:
Posts like yours would be better if you read the posts you critique more carefully. Did you even read the whole thing, or just a paragraph? My post never stated that the Christian God did or did not exist. You might have also noted that it said "Jesus" but never "Jesus Christ," spoke of "religious beliefs" and used "according to Christian doctrine." You certainly missed that it never "appeal[ed] to the authority of a certain ancient demagogue." Instead, it discussed, among other things, how "Movement conservatives' public support for torture has contradicted even their own cherished mythology" and "The disconnect from professed Christians on the torture "debate" is particularly astounding." It's par for the course with the authoritarian set, but striking nonetheless.
I have no issue with the rest of your post, and found some of it interesting. You were mainly using my post as a launching point, and I'll assume your straw man was due to sloppiness or haste and wasn't intentional. However, please leave me out of your discussions if you're going to grossly mischaracterize what I've written, okay?
I did read the whole thing, and I didn't really have a problem with it, hence my focus on only one incidental paragraph. And you're right, I did use it as a launching point for criticizing a tendency that other people have displayed far more egregiously. Obviously your point about torture didn't entirely hinge on the intricacies of Christian doctrine; I just didn't think that needed stressing.
Still, the point stands -- too many people throw in these gestures towards scripture as if that's going to meaningfully reinforce their point or convince anyone that, "Yeah, you're right, I'm a Christian, so I shouldn't be in favor of things like torture and aggressive war!" I'm simply pointing out that maybe liberals ought to just leave any discussion of religion out of it, since Christians have been proving since Constantine that they have no problem picking and choosing which part of the message is important to them. The only reason to be astounded by the "disconnect" from Christians with regards to torture is if you take for granted that they think the most important issue in life on earth is to treat everyone with dignity and respect because it's the right thing to do. Maybe they're seeing that the most important issue is to do what a fearmongering authority figure tells you in order to be rewarded for it, which could help explain why so many of them are drawn to authoritarian politics.
Still, thanks for stopping by, even if only to take a swing at me.
If you by "the point" you mean your conclusion, based on the other materials, fine. However, my post does not support your "point," since you misrepresented my post. So does your post's "point" stand? Meanwhile, your mischaracterization of my post was the reason I commented here. The "point" of you doing so does not stand. It's bad form, all the more so since I've brought it to your attention.
My arguments about torture didn't hinge at all on the "intricacies of Christian doctrine" at all (although they're not "intricacies," they're glaringly central teachings) – it was a further example of hypocrisy, a lack of reflection, and authoritarianism. It was about torture proponents ignoring the obvious in yet another instance... which brings us to your post.
You criticized me for a view I do not hold and which I did not express. Apparently, you're standing by that, even after I've brought up the issue. That's not very encouraging. Since that particular post was linked elsewhere, I've read a number of other comments, somewhere over 50, and while other commentators have attacked religion or Christians (I'd say the main problem is more specifically religious authoritarians), I've yet to see anyone else misread or mischaracterize my post in the manner you have. Since I've written fairly extensively on torture, authoritarianism and against theocracy, you may understand I find you doing that a bit annoying. From what you've written in your comment here, I imagine we have pretty similar views.
You offered up a straw man. Please understand that's insulting, and more to the point, sloppy. You could own up to it, but you really haven't. That's disappointing, but maybe it will hit later, and if not, hey. The internet tubes are vast, and as I wrote before, feel free to write what you like, but if you can't characterize what I've written accurately, please leave me out of it, okay?
Are we somehow talking past each other? I never claimed to know what you think in general about religion, and I never said anything else about the rest of the post, so I'm not sure how I criticized you personally or misrepresented your post. I singled out one paragraph that seems to clearly suggest (yes? no?) that Christians are to a certain extent misinterpreting their own central teachings and used that as a starting point to discuss what I see as a widespread tendency for liberals in general to do that. At that point, I had nothing more to say about your post or to you personally. Sorry if that was unclear, but I thought my discussion was pretty clearly confined to the spirit of the excerpted paragraph.
Ah, okay. I think we are talking past each other. You wrote that I "appeal[ed] to the authority of a certain ancient demagogue." I thought it was clear I did not, so I found that characterization sloppy at best. Not the end of world, but it annoyed me enough I wrote in.
In your first comment here, it seemed you weren't willing to acknowledge that mischaracterization, or worse yet, didn't care that you done so. That was of greater concern to me. My preference is to acknowledge such things, move on, and maybe have a better discussion.
Based on your latest comment, I misread your attitude in your first comment, and apparently you weren't getting my objection in my first comment, so sorry. Honestly, I don't see how your characterization wasn't critical, and the same goes for "criticizing a tendency that other people have displayed far more egregiously." I do think your were unclear. I could have more clear myself that I'm not really surprised by what authoritarians (religious or otherwise) do, but I do still sometimes retain the capacity to be astounded by their cognitive dissonances. As I read it, one of your main points is that per Robinson, the Jesus of the synoptic gospels is not the Jesus of popular conception, and so citing the Jesus of popular conception is counterproductive or misleading. Yes? I think that's a fair point, up to a point. I don't think it affects what I was discussing much, though, since I was talking about contemporary conceptions and a particular set of professed believers. Another commenter mentioned I hadn't discussed earlier American torture programs – I have in earlier posts, but again, not a bad point.
There may be a few other sticking points. There's a big difference between criticizing someone's hypocrisy and endorsing their professed beliefs. There's also a key difference between saying "torture/war/murder is wrong because God/the Bible/ Quetzocoatl says so" and saying "torture/war/murder is wrong" and quoting a religious text in addition to other works to express that idea. The first is an appeal to authority (which I didn't do). The second is an appeal to a more general principle, which a particular religion might express. As it is, I wasn't really trying to do even that in that particular paragraph – but I don't have a problem with that second approach depending on how it's done. The "Golden Rule" is hardly uniquely Christian (and per Robinson, one might contest which accounts are really "Christian"). But it would be silly to pretend that the Golden Rule doesn't exist as a general teaching, or to pretend that when it comes to human rights abuses, the Golden Rule doesn't cohere with George Orwell, the history of torture, the Geneva Convention and other laws. Most torture apologists are mistaken or outright dishonest, plenty are self-righteous, and I'm fine with quoting their own supposed beliefs back at them, from how evil the Soviets were to the Gospels. That's mostly extra ammo added to a more core critique, though, and a theocratic pitch would be bad.
(Continuing in next comment, word count limit.)
(Cont.)
Personally, my opposition to torture is not rooted in Christianity and certainly not theocratic. I think Scott Horton makes a superb case against torture here to a Christian audience, and does so using their legacy, but to invoke more general principles. He knows his audience, but I think it's compelling to a wider crowd. I do view that as very different from trashing atheists and pandering to religious folk (here's an older post on that, and I notice I also bring up religious hypocrisy briefly). I think we agree on the theocracy thing, but may disagree on whether mentioning religion at all is helpful or harmful. I don't think it should be a linchpin, only an additional argument, and think it depends on how it's done. Anyway, sorry for my part in any misunderstanding.
Incidentally, there's a been a Blog Against Theocracy blogswarm every year on Easter weekend for a few years now. Atheists as well the faithful participate. Judging from this post and a few others of yours I've perused, you'd probably enjoy participating. Peace, and happy blogging.
Cool, I think we're on the same page. Thanks for taking the time to hash it out, too.
You're right, I could have been more clear in what precisely I was objecting to. Really, I could have just used that recent infamous poll about evangelical attitudes towards torture as my starting block; I just happened across your post while I was mulling over the passage from Mackie's book and the Wright interview, and here we are! (And again, I of course agree completely with everything you wrote about torture itself.)
I guess I'm just so used to seeing the same basic theme from years of reading political blogs that I've become very sensitive to anything that smacks of it: "What's up with these conservative Christians? Can't they see that Jesus was just so obviously a liberal hippie peacenik like us?"
I just think it's become a worn-out rhetorical crutch, and it helps facilitate liberals and conservatives talking past each other as well -- we emphasize the liberal-sounding platitudes, they emphasize the judgmental fanaticism, and I sit here and bang my head repeatedly on the keyboard over the folly of trying to ground arguments over 21st century politics in Bronze Age texts written from a cultural mindset that is not immediately apparent to a casual reader.
Argh. Forgot to mention:
You wrote that I "appeal[ed] to the authority of a certain ancient demagogue." I thought it was clear I did not, so I found that characterization sloppy at best.
Yes, guilty. I was already moving on to my generalizing and should have been more clear about that.
Well, on my side, this has been a reminder to me not to comment on posts late at night when my brain is more tired than I realize. Haha. Peace.
Interesting post. I didn't think that there was much indication that Jesus' "love of man" was to fellow Jews alone. Do you think that a contextual reading of the Gospels would be appropriate?
Mackie. Doesn't seem like he's read the texts he's referring to with any hope of understanding what Jesus might have meant in the time Jesus lived to the people he lived with. Jesus' faith does not exclude "considering evidence". The people he spoke to had the Torah and Prophets to check against, they had their own reasoning, they had their own cultural situation, they had apparently witnessed many miracles and were no stranger to Jesus' style of teaching. I'm not making a case for Christianity here, but the points brought up by Mackie almost seem thoughtless.
The point about Paul not attributing his ideas to Jesus is incorrect I believe. Paul claimed to have met the resurrected Jesus, he considered himself an apostle, and called his message the "gospel of Christ". It's a clever idea to think that Paul and later Christians might have changed the message of Christ to meet bigger needs, to reach more people. But it's unfounded.
Consider Paul, previously Saul the most fiercely loyal Jew you could find, a Pharisee beyond his years, an ethnic pure-bread, a political zealot, the equivalent of today's religious extremists. He was on his was to Damascus to persecute the Christians when he apparently met Christ. After that, look at his transformation. He became a servant of all men, he preached to Jew and Gentile, he was stoned, shipwrecked, whipped and imprisoned... he became nothing, he who was once such a proud man. The idea that this man, who was once so proudly Jewish, decided one day to live, breath and eat amongst the "heathens", to grant them the salvation he previously considered his, something he felt he 'owned'; it's absurd. The only thing that could move a man like that is evidence, a real encounter with something tangible. You needn't believe in Paul, or in Jesus, or in the message of the Bible, or in the nobility of any of it... but some of the conclusions that have been made just simply are contrary to the evidence.
The point about Paul not attributing his ideas to Jesus is incorrect I believe. Paul claimed to have met the resurrected Jesus, he considered himself an apostle, and called his message the "gospel of Christ". It's a clever idea to think that Paul and later Christians might have changed the message of Christ to meet bigger needs, to reach more people. But it's unfounded.
First of all, what message? Given how many gospels there were and how widely varied their details and themes were, why would you assume that what finally came down to us in the form of the 27 books of the New Testament is the pure and accurate message of Christ? The "message" was an improvisation, a work in progress from the very beginning, and historical accuracy for the sake of an audience two thousand years away was hardly a pressing concern.
And as scholars from the aforementioned Bart Ehrman to Earl Doherty have pointed out, Paul seems to have a very unhistorical Christ in mind, and is either ignorant of or uninterested in the details of the actual life of Jesus (assuming he even existed; Ehrman thinks so, Doherty and a few others don't).
And there's nothing outside the mainstream of historical criticism in saying that Jesus was just another Jewish apocalyptic preacher whose message could be summed up as:
1. The end of the world is coming very soon!
2. Here's what you need to do to be on the winning team.
3. Because I said so, that's why.
I don't see how you can conclude that the message wasn't altered over time to fit the fact that the world didn't end and Jesus didn't return.
I didn't suggest that Paul did not improvise, that the early Christians did not have to make decisions on which material represented their Christianity best. I am suggesting that I find the evidence to show the apostles and their testimony to be honest; not necessarily infallible but honest. There is not evidence of them purposefully changing the inappropriate parts of Christ's message to meet a wider audience - if they did I'd like to see it.
Yep, Jesus was an apocalyptic teacher. What's been changed? I can not see where such an idea might have been erased from scripture. It's there. Sure, interpretations of those passages have varied, but the early Christians did not try to suppress such ideas. A reading of Thessalonians 1 and 2 shows how Paul went from expecting the return of Christ to be coming soon to then concluding it to be something in the future.
Paul had to apply what he and the other believers felt were "Christian" principles to situations which Christ was silent on. In this way the message was new and open to change. Again though, there is no evidence to suggest in this attempt to meet the needs of the masses that Paul or anyone else "changed" the message of Jesus. The Jesus Seminar might disagree though.
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