For the benefit of those who don't know me I have this tendency when talking or debating topics to not come up with immediate responses or rebuttals. That stuff always comes later after careful thought and consideration. So I'll apologise to Ron (my other Dad) for the lame conversation we tried to have the other day at the Peace Rally we attended.
We found ourselves on the topic of Jesus/God and theology in a roundabout fashion. Which was great because I always enjoy discussing these things but I began to get the feeling Ron was getting a little frustrated. I am trying to recall his most potent questions to me on the day. They went something like this: How come you need to have belief in God? Why can't you reach your concept of right and wrong by yourself and through your own deliberation?
Great questions that I could probably answer sufficiently to my own satisfaction but, I suspect not to Ron's.
We explored ideas like: if you sat down a group of devout followers of the different main religions of the world and had them list their notions of right and wrong logic would dictate that they would look fairly similar and have a great deal of common ground. (we both agreed on that idea)
I did not conclude however that this meant that having a religion or a framing story has no value; which is where I think Ron was headed with that line of conversation.
We also explored an interesting slant on one of the stories of Jesus that I thought was funny and interesting. It's that one that many a socialist type use to paint Jesus the violent type: the whipping of the money changers in the temple. There is no denying that Jesus was very violent in this story. Looking squarely at the historical account of this event he was pretty fierce toward people he did call his own i.e, the religious Jews in the temple. I think he was pretty ticked off with those that were changing money there. It must have hit a real nerve and probably points to something quite deep and profound, going by the reaction. So when Ron went on to point out this event as an assault by Jesus on his fellow countrymen and beyond that as a treasonous act; I wasn't dismissive because it forced me to think harder about it. Ron put a good modern slant on this story by branding this type of act as terrorism. Taking his line of thought I can't completely discount how some people could come to this conclusion. Jesus the terrorist?! There must be something deeply disturbing about money changing in the temple (deeper than face value) that I haven't grasped yet if Jesus was willing to become a terrorist to overthrow it!
For those who don't know all Victoria Police members are now required to provide a list of known associates/friends that could be considered criminal or of ill repute.
Ron and I had a laugh when we considered I may have to put Jesus the terrorist at the top of the list!
We broached the topic of Jesus death at one point. Ron made it clear that he contests the idea of Christ's death. He argued that some historians have put forward that Jesus had a "whipping boy" that died in his place. He also pointed to other historical evidence of a man that was known as 'the fisherman' who joined the zealot offshoot of the Jews in Jesus' day the Escenes (I don't know if I spelt that right). Apparently this 'fisherman' lived to a ripe old age and is believed by some to be Jesus.
As you may suspect it took me a while to digest all this and I had no immediate answers for Ron at the time. Thinking on this over the past week or so though I started to get a picture of where these ideas of Ron's were headed. The main thing I gleaned was the contention between two framing stories. I could see that Ron had formed a framing story around this Escene movement. Some may know about these religious Jewish zealots. They were very hard core and virtually lived for the violent overthrow of the dominant Roman Empire. Their violent terrorist type activity against Rome saw them driven into the mountains where they lived like outcasts for many years before a big showdown with the Roman army. This last pitch battle where the Escenes knew they would be overthrown, led them to "take the victory from them (the Romans)" by taking their own lives. So in their rock fortress in the mountains every Escene man woman and child slit their own throats rather than face any type of rule under Roman Empire.
I think I've seen fruits of this type of framing story played out in more recent history in the form of Jonestown and David Koresh's commune (suicide) and even certain branches of the Mormon and Jehovas Witness movement's (isolation).
Jesus on the other hand provided a pretty potent and hopeful type of framing story of his own. A framing story that funnily enough also has elements of subversion of dominant Empire but which intends to fulfill that subversion through service, love, peace, longsuffering and sacrifice etc. Through ideas and actions that are diametrically opposed to violence and the hoarding of power over others. I had the feeling Ron was a little frustrated with these concepts as we explored them with a couple of scriptures like: if one asks for your shirt, give him your coat also and; if you are commanded to walk one mile, walk two. This kind of passive submission to Empire did not sit well with him and he concluded that these scriptures were the result of the rewriting of scripture by Emperical authorities 400 years after Christ i.e. Constantine.
On one hand I do believe that Constantine and the Roman Empire did put an Emperical stamp on Christianity and made it their own via a vision that Constantine had.
On the other hand however I am not convinced that the core concepts of the life of Jesus were altered in this 'stamping process.' In fact I think that these core concepts have been stamped and re stamped over and over by different theologies and denominations through history and even to this day. Still the base life of Jesus remains the same and his ideas of the Kingdom of God and 'The Way' are as dangerous, provoking,beautiful, terrifying, exasperating and ultimately fulfilling now as they were when he walked around telling us about it. Nothing I have yet found trumps it as a framing story. It's the framing story that Ghandi took ahold of and smashed the Commonwealth with and almost pulled off peace between Muslims and Hindus in India. It was the framing story Mother Theresa lived out in simplistically caring for so many of the lowest and downcast in such inspirational fashion in that same country. It was the subversive framing story that Martin Luther King Jr took along against the dogs, guns, batons and hoses of the biggest empire we know today. The inspirational stories of these people and their movements are still echoing today. All because of a simple framing story of one bloke.
So In response to Ron's idea about the Escene framing story I want to draw particular attention to the Outcomes of following these different framing stories. On the one hand we can follow a story that isolates us from our surrounding community and forms around a desire to overthrow the prevailing Empire by using the same violence that Empire lives by. On the other hand we can follow a story that has proven itself (when followed accurately and unstamped) to form the most potent and inspirational, positive life changing movements of our time. Potent and inspirational through its opposition to violence, its desire for justice and peace, its hope of another kingdom not of this world, but still meant for this world.
Many thanks to Ron for the deep and troubled thinking I went through over the past weeks. Its curious and ironic how the most challenging folks in our lives provoke the better and deeper thought.
