The Family-Values Gospel
by Daniel Samek 7/25/99 wildseederus@yahoo.com
One hears so much about "family values" these days! The bulk of the racket is made by folk who assume that they have direct access, via the Holy Bible, to the will of God. The task of disentangling theology from mass psychosis must, for now, be left to minds far more agile than my own (Carl Jung tried). It might, however, prove enlightening (in the Buddhist vernacular) to investigate what Jesus actually taught regarding familial relationships. But the Messiah, perhaps nursing some inconvenient Socratic biases, favored spoken instruction over the written word. So, I could muster no more than a catalogue of what Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John claimed He taught--decades after His fleetingly incandescent tenure expired.
Luke launches one version of the Good News by conceding: "Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses. . . ." [Luke 1:1-2] He readily admits, then, that his account of Jesus' life--like the scads of other such tracts in circulation at the time--is largely hearsay: a brand of evidence which would be tossed out of any modern court of law. Emperor Constantine, further, had an inauspicious axe to grind when he and the Council of Nicaea peremptorily excluded all but four of the "many" gospels from the Roman canon: Namely, he realized that carefully crafted dogma was, in the long run, cheaper than maintaining an empire full of armed troops; with a little tinkering, a popular new creed centered upon liberation could ironically be fashioned into a suitable straitjacket--one woven entirely of fear and guilt. When Christ-espousing rabble managed to burn flat to the ground the irreplaceable library at Alexandria, the scale of the cover-up grew downright Nixonian.(1)
Harboring grave discursive qualms, I yet resolved to examine what the New Testament actually advocates in regard to the blessed ties that bind. Lo and behold, Scriptural "family values" stand in stark and telling contrast against those peddled across the insular reaches of the Bible Belt as God's own truth. I hope--and pray--that the fruits of this scrupulously documented research(2) will goad thoughtful readers into a riper consideration of this fundamental--truly fundamental--issue.
I. FILIAL DEVOTION
. . . [Jesus] saw two brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John. They were in a boat with their father Zebedee, preparing their nets. Jesus called them, and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him. [Matthew 4:21-22]
So much for filial devotion. Mark even adds insult to injury by insisting that ". . . they left their father Zebedee in the boat with hired men. . . . " [1:21]
Matthew [8:21-22] claims "Another disciple said to him, 'Lord, first let me go and bury my father.' But Jesus told him, 'Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.'" The bald insinuation here is that conventional piety in respect to a father's corpse is tantamount to spiritual death! Or am I missing something? Admittedly, if Bible-Belters expended upon the breathing a tenth of the concern that they lavish upon the compulsively flower-strewn graves of the "dearly departed", the-life-to-come would already be here! (Luke [17:37] recalls the Son of Man's being pestered by the Pharisees to give a specific location and arrival-time for the kingdom of God: "'Where there is a dead body, there the vultures will gather,'" He grouses in reply. But that assumes room between the lawyers and the morticians. . . .)
Jesus' cavalier dismissal of his disciples' fathers likely stems from His having Himself been engendered upon a Virgin by the Holy Spirit (in the flesh!). Equitably enough, garden-variety, down-and-dirty, childbearing women receive a parallel depreciation via the Church's insistence upon Mary's immaculateness--not only at the time of her unnatural insemination, but happily ever afterwards. Jesus' chronic lack of simple courtesy toward the purported Mother of God suggests that He and Roman Catholicism would have knocked heads on this point of dogma. (But I outrun myself: female complaints--or Jesus' response to them--will be tackled subsequently.)
The Lamb of God's scorn for mortal fathers extends right up to poor Joseph. At the age of 12, the budding Messiah reputedly opted to stay at the temple, chatting with the rabbis, rather than return to Nazareth with His unsuspecting kin. Finding Jesus missing, His parents trudged the miles back to Jerusalem in frantic search for Him. Spying Him, at last--
His mother said to him [sic], "Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you."
"Why were you searching for me?" he asked. "Didn't you know I had to be in my Father's house?" But they did not understand what he was saying to them. [Luke 2:48-50]
(I see a young--and instantaneously grounded--Michael J. Fox in the role; W. C. Fields as a pre-TV Joseph would have offered reproof more slapstick. . . .)
In contradiction to John's insistence that Jesus was an only-child (God's "one and only Son" [John 3:16]), Matthew's Jesus explicitly denies as much, informing His crowds of listeners: "'And do not call anyone on earth "father," for you have one Father, and he is in heaven.'" [Matthew 23:9] Proof of paternity has provided the Achilles' heel of patriarchal social-structuring from the beginning--the general public hardly ever being present at impregnation. Matthew [1:16] ends his "begats" at the thoroughly unsatisfying, if utterly unarguable, juncture: ". . . begat Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus. . . ." (So the Son of God's stepfather had the bluest of Hebrew blood: who cares?) At any rate, the Galilean carpenter's adoptee addressed the perennial patriarchal thorn as elegantly as anyone, prior to the advent of DNA-testing.
He also drilled a gaping loop-hole in the whole "honor thy father and thy mother" routine. But, there would have been no Christianity, as we know and love it, if the first Christians had not felt they had carte blanche to tell their Jewish parents what they could do with themselves, their "Tradition!", their rabbis' teeny-tiny surgical knives, and the soon-to-be-kosher livestock they rode in on. (I honor my earthly father and mother with the mostly thankless gift of straightforwardness.) Will Christendom ever grasp the implications of Jesus' argument here, one wonders, and begin to call the Earth our mother--perhaps even start to treat her thus? That the unchurched tribal primitives of this once-cherished land should have undissentingly done so all along presents a baffling conundrum!
Come quick, Sweet Jesus!
II. A MOTHER'S LOVE
John claims that Jesus' first miracle was turning water into wine. A vacant-lot votary of Milwaukee's Best, I find the narrative preeminence of this event significant. At a wedding celebration in Cana, the wine had been drained far too soon--perhaps because Jesus and his gang were on board. (Have you ever been to a Jewish wedding celebration???) But Jesus was disinclined to display his (staggering?) abilities. When approached by a distraught (and thoroughly Jewish) mother, the King James Version of his (slurred?) retort is: "'Woman, what have I to do with you?'" [John 2:4]
I had to smile at the New International Version's version of this verse: "'Dear woman, why do you involve me?'" Was there legitimate textual basis for this grotesque insertion of hermeneutic(3) sentimentality, or did it but betoken the bloated morbidity of political correctitude at its most abhorrently misguided? Consulting The Living Bible (Paraphrased), published by Tyndale House, I faced the question-begging blandness of: "'I can't help you now.'" One must shudderingly surmise at this point that, if the Bible's author is indeed God, all Creation is in the hands of a pathetic--and probably dangerous--multiple-personality schizophrenic! At least the Tyndale crowd(4) had the decency to provide a footnote explaining that a literal translation would be just exactly what the King James Version said in the first place: "'Woman, what have I to do with you?'"
Throughout Scripture, Jesus' response to the Madonna is at best offhand:
While Jesus was still talking to the crowd, his mother and brothers stood outside, wanting to speak to him. Someone told him, "Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you." He replied to him, "Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?" Pointing to his disciples, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother." [Matthew 12:46-50; cf. Mark 3:32-35 & Luke 8:19-21]
Luke later presents yet another variation on this intriguing social theme, one wherein Jesus more accurately targets his barbs at the purely instinctive (i.e. unconscious) side of mothering--and one that eloquently debunks the popular (and officially exploited) view of the Virgin as a moral escape-hatch:
As Jesus was saying these things, a woman in the crowd called out, "Blessed is the mother who gave you birth and nursed you."
He replied, "Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it." [11:27-28]
The Chinese epigram is apt: "The sage is not a sentimentalist; but, neither is life."
Luke's Christ not only displays an unapologetic day-in/day-out contempt for maternal sentiment, but has no use for that sublimest of the wifely disciplines, housework:
As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he had said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, "Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself?"
"Martha, Martha," the Lord answered, "You are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her." [Luke 10:38-42]
It is widely conceded that the Mary Jesus here prefers is none other than the lurid Magdalene herself! In that event, Jesus spurns a decent, hardworking housewife for the attentions of a--dare I say it?--brazen hussy! Could Luke have woven this curious incident from whole cloth or failed to grasp its implications? (Consequently, Jesus is reported to have relished a leisurely rub-down at the solicitous and accomplished hand of "the other Mary"--one which was lubricated by an obscene extravagance of costly nard and is even whispered to have provoked Judas' betrayal. [Mat. 26:6-16 & John 12:1-7])
Apron strings are a two-edged sword in the gruesome story of Salome: It was at her mother's behest that the slip of a thing concluded her steamy fandango by exacting from Herod the head of John the Baptist on a platter! [Mat. 14:1-12 & Mark 6:21-28] How poignant is Mark's disclosure that Salome joined Mary Magdalene for the crucifixion of Jesus, and ". . . cared for his needs." [15:40-41] The tiny dancer had bravely rejected her mother's family values--pernicious greed and homicidal malice--to embrace selfless service beside an old whore. As the sky blackened, the earth trembled, and the temple veil was ripped most pregnantly open, myriads upon myriads of respectable, temple-going prigs did housework.
III. OUTCASTS & ARCHES
"'The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone. . . .'" [Matthew 21:42& Luke 20:17]. Capstone, cornerstone, keystone--the translations vary. But Jesus, evoking Psalm 118, makes clear enough his posture in regard to "squares". Our Lord & Savior Himself, upon occasion, even assumed full-tilt the Bohemian slouch:
To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else [not Jerry Falwell!], Jesus told this parable: "Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men--robbers, evildoers, adulterers--or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.' But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, 'God have mercy on me, a sinner.' I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted." [Luke 18:9-14]
Clinton and House Republicans alike gave stirring performances in the recent remake of this venerable evergreen; but the "honorable" Senator from Louisiana stole the show as House Speaker with his stunning enactment of the toppled smug. . . . (Jesus loves you, Larry Flint!)
Matthew glosses Jesus' relish for another drastic means of humbling/exalting oneself:
"I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery." The disciples said to him, "If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry." Jesus replied, "Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. For some are eunuchs because they were born that way; others were made that way by men; and others have renounced marriage [a note here says, "or 'have made themselves eunuchs'"--and that the original Greek had it thus is argued by the exigencies of structural parallelism] because of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it." [19:9-12]
Matthew evokes in this passage a Jesus who explicitly recommended emasculation over"marital bliss". (If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, right?) In point of fact, marriage was not performed within the sanctity of the church until the end of the Middle Ages: Nuptial vows were earlier exchanged no closer to the altar than the front porch. (English majors who have dabbled in Middle English know these things! Following here the example of Jesus post mortem, I invite doubting Thomases to perform their own investigations.)
The elevation of marriage to a sacrament was roughly contemporary with the Church's promulgation of the scandalous dogma of "indulgences," whereby the rich conveniently bought their way into heaven. Both practices ran blatantly counter to Scripture. But the top guns had pretty much given up on Jesus' making so much as a cameo appearance either tomorrow or the day after. Meanwhile the Infidels were an expensive nuisance; and the Black Plague did wretched things to Europe's morale--not to mention its populace. So, the take from tithing took a tumble--and that's ten percent off the top! Christianity only began to glorify conjugal productivity, then, as a profoundly dubious tactical maneuver.
John the Baptist had called to repentance an earlier "generation of vipers," informing them that ". . . out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham" [Luke 3:8]. Lit thus, the joyful exhortation in Genesis to ". . .be fruitful and multiply. . ." is plainly just that--and not a scowling directive from On High. The Ten Commandments certainly entail no injunction against infertility. Nor is fecundity itself indicative of integrity. Abraham and Sarah were bricks long before the arrival of Isaac. And what example did Christ Himself set in regard to this (forgive me, Lord) issue? Luke's Jesus spotlights the purely instinctive and essentially amoral basis of child-rearing (c'mon--even animals do it!) in contrast to the fruits of the spirit: "'If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him.'" [11:13]
Jesus, on the pretext of "calling sinners to redemption", himself reputedly preferred the company of almost anybody to that of the Scribes and the Pharisees. And what were these petty potentates, after all, but your standard, run-of-the-mill, money-hungry, law-abiding, middle-class phonies with 2.5 brats to feed? Luke [8:1-3] tells how
. . . Jesus traveled about from one town and village to another, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. The Twelve were with him, and also some women who had been cured of evil spirits and diseases: Mary (called Magdalene) from whom seven demons had come out; Joanna, the wife of Cuza, the manager of Herod's household[???];Susanna; and many others. These women were helping to support them out of their own means.
Can't you just envision the "family-values" congregation warmly clasping this motley entourage of jobless transients and their camp-following sugar-mamas to its rigid, frigid, scrubbed, deodorized, and tastefully-clad bosom for a hearty covered-dish supper!
No less incredibly, The New International Version has taken upon itself the task of discrediting John's report of perhaps Jesus' finest one-liner: "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone against her . . . ." Having concluded, moreover, that a lowly footnote would prove entirely too scanty in so grave an instance of textual abuse, the editors inserted in brackets garishly preceding the narrative incident itself like a stop-sign: "The earliest and most reliable manuscripts and other ancient witnesses do not have John 7:53-8:11." Contemporary political exigencies suggest that some recently-unearthed and unavoidably compelling Everest of documentation had less to do with this butchery than the meddling hoof of the "intellectual" thugs on the Christian Right,--their venomous self-righteousness here assuming mountainous--and distressing--proportions.
Are today's Bible-readers to conclude that--at least for decent Christians--it's open season on "whoring bitches" and "screaming faggots", now? That a discordant tone has been set is clear, in light of the wholesale slaughter of prostitutes near Washington's Green River (the largest cluster of unsolved serial killings in U.S. history) and the recent outbreaks in Wyoming and Alabama (Peckerwood Creek, no less!) of unspeakably vicious attacks of "homophobia".(5) Perhaps the Inquisition never really ended, but rages on unabated, deep in the sour craws of its unwitting agents, the indoctrinated masses of "the faithful". When I contemplate the current middle-class urgency to exterminate whole segments of the lumpen brown-skinned who refuse to kow-tow quite low enough at the silent majority's altar of sham, I marvel that the bothersome "Judge not that ye be not judged. . ." and "Vengeance is mine. . ." bits (this go-round, at any rate) escaped the exegetic(6) axe! But, I digress.
Back at the ranch, Matthew's Jesus not only finds castration several ethical notches above matrimony, he flatly denies that "unholy deadlock" is an eternal union of souls:
"You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God. At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. But about the resurrection of the dead--have you not read what God said to you, 'I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.' He is not the God of the dead but of the living." [22:29-32]
Then, an overweening fascination with soulless corpses is not the only symptom of spiritual death. Preoccupation with a Doll's-House, Leave-It-to-Beaver, "marriage-for-all-eternity" existence is, likewise, a metaphysical blind alley. Still, romance sells; and for that reason alone, it functions as the motive engine of our de facto national credo: Consumerism. (Church-attendance in this country represents no more than a fatuous attempt to assuage the vestiges of an atavistic(7) guilt; shopping malls are the cathedrals of our garishly mercantile epoch.) Luke's Jesus [14:20] spins a yarn with a treacherously un-American moral, one about a great banquet from which a young fool excuses himself on the grounds that ". . .I just got married, so I can't come." In the flamboyant paraphraseology of Patrick Dennis' Auntie Mame, "Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death!" Amen.
IV. THE VOID
"The seed that fell among thorns stands for those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by life's worries, riches and pleasure, and they do not mature." [Luke 8:14]
Those aiming to raise a family and yet duck life's worries are indeed an heroic crew. Jesus' negative attitude toward marriage was indicative, not of Gingrichian meanness of spirit, but of a firm grasp on reality: Once a man's got a "passle o' yung'uns" to feed, the Roman Empire (a.k.a. Corporate State) has him--if I may wax poetic--by the family jewels; and that's a "luxury" revolutionaries, of the sort Jesus identified and trained, can ill afford. "Render unto Caesar. . .", far from a cop-out, was a slogan of ultimate contempt: Worthlessness is its own infinitely negligible reward. Luke's Jesus admonished:
"No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money."
The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this and were sneering at Jesus. He said to them, "You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of men, but God knows your hearts. What is highly valued among men is detestable in God's sight." [16:35-39]
The uncomfortable truth is that raising children in a modern capitalist society requires a great deal of both worry and money. Matthew's [6:19-21] Jesus further holds that those who treasure any earthly thing whatsoever (wouldn't that include offspring?) have missed the Good Ship Lollipop:
"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
As unpalatable, if not downright inconceivable, as "dyed-in-the-wool" (thoroughly-brainwashed) Consumers find it--non-attachment is central to Christ's message:
Then Jesus said to his disciples: "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. Life is more than food, and the body is more than clothes. Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds! Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?
"Consider how the lilies grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today, and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith! And do not set your heart on what you will eat or drink; do not worry about it. For the pagan world runs after all such things, and your Father knows that you need them. But seek his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.
"Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. [Luke 12:22-34]
John Lennon, two millennia later, was still imploring, "Imagine no possessions (I wonder if you can); no need for greed or hunger--a brotherhood of man!" And, he was "neutralized" as expeditiously as his less-popular Galilean precursor. Oblivious to Jesus, the people who once covered this continent like buffalo nonetheless held private property in such contempt that the money-hungry, salvation-preaching Europeans found them a shocking--if manifestly expendable--embarrassment. One of the military commanders entrusted with driving tribes well west of offended "civilized" sensibilities ironically lamented, "I can abide these savages no longer; they will give no thought for the morrow!" (Cf. Jahoda's excellent Trail of Tears and Matthew 6:34.) Sometimes it seems as if the money-lenders Jesus ejected from the House of God--the uppity meddler having been dispatched forthwith--just donned His garments and went right back in. Wasn't it, after all, the discovery of gold in Dahlonega, Georgia--deep in territory that had long since been legally set aside for the manifestly industrious, if easygoing, Cherokees--that precipitated the eviction of "savages" from the Eastern states?
"'Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?'" asked a certain ruler. '''Why do you call me good?'" Jesus answered. "'No one is good--except God alone.'" (If Jesus is insisting on his unique Divinity here, he has a strange way of doing so.) He continues:
"You know the commandments: 'Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother."
"All these I have kept since I was a boy," he said.
When Jesus heard this, he said to him, " You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me." [Luke 18:18-22]
The televangelistic camels touting "family values" appear to have no immediate intention of squeezing their pampered corpulence through the well-known needle's eye. (Or was that "pig's eye"???) But, "'With God, all things are possible. . . .'" [Luke 18:23-27] He even let Tammy Faye keep her false eyelashes on during cancer surgery--talk about your "abomination upon the desolation"! [Mark 13:14]
". . . [A]ny of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple. Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; it is thrown out. He who has ears, let him hear." [Luke 14:33-35]
Modern Christians have no ears, chasing cheap thrills, comfort, and social security--not the discipline that reveals life's eternal aspect. In money they trust, and insurance. Presbyterians make a bundle on hospitals--which seems jarringly at odds with the words of Mark's Jesus:
"For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?" [8:35-36]
There goes the puritan work ethic right down the drain, along with the profit motive, the Joneses next door, and the whole blood-stained whorehouse that has too long packaged itself as the American Dream. Only a cretin could imagine that the God of this Jesus would be on that side for a New York minute.
It's easy enough to dismiss John Lennon's rhapsodies on the joys of no possessions. But Jesus was said to walk the walk: "'The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life--only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.'" [John 10:18] Like a Vietnamese monk all aflame on reincarnation, He knew, of course, that martyrdom is both the cheapest and most effective form of P.R.:
"I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life." [John 12:24-25]
A zeal to die for their beliefs was the early Christians' fortress against Rome's formidable war-machine; today that spirit enables Islamic suicide-bombers to short-circuit the "peace efforts" of the current belligerent dispensation of enfants terribles whose faith lies in bullet-proof Pope-mobiles.(8)
"Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid." [John 14:27]
V. CRACKED EGGS & OMELETS
Luke recalls still another potential revolutionary--oops!--disciple who said, "'I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say good-by to my family,' Jesus replied, 'No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.'" [9:61-62] The only "family values" that could conceivably be inferred from such a statement would involve an interpretation of the "kingdom of God" as a level of consciousness from which all humanity is perceived as one family. This notion is given utterance in Matthew's Sermon on the Mount, wherein Jesus preaches: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God"[5:9]. Matthew further claims that Jesus, when asked by the Pharisees to reveal the greatest commandment, replied:
"'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself." All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments." [Mat. 22:37-40]
"I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together," John Lennon rephrased it. What Jesus espoused, as nearly as I can see, was precisely a revolution in human awareness in regard to "family values". Otherwise, the last two passages are bizarrely incommensurable with what both Matthew and Luke further acknowledge Jesus to have said:
"Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn 'a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law--a man's enemies will be the members of his own household.' [quoting Micah 7:6] Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." [Matthew 10:35-39; cf. Luke 12:51-53]
Moreover,
"If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brother and sisters--yes, even his own life--he cannot be my disciple." [Luke 14:26]
This last passage is pretty much Our Lord and Savior's definitive policy-statement in regard to the nuclear family. Could Strunk & White have made it any clearer? It might as well be catalogued under "Family Values for the Brain-Dead." Matthew's perkier Jesus offers an "up" side--while he relegates "wives" to discomforting footnote-status:
"And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life." [Matthew 19:29]
Does this coffin need any more nails?
The story of the good Samaritan sees our planet as God's children's community; humanity, their family. [Luke 10:25-37] This kingdom of God is not a political state but a truly conscious one, wherein even those "gawdawful" Samaritans are quite welcomed. A propos outcasts, Jesus alludes in the same chapter to Sodom. The context in which he does so indicates that its mythic import was initially notably at variance with the currently-stylish reduction of the legendary holocaust into uncontestable proof that God hates "queers":
"But when you enter a town and are not welcomed, go into the streets and say, 'Even the dust of our feet we wipe off against you. Yet be sure of this: The kingdom of God is near.' I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town." [Luke 10:10-12]
The sin Jesus clearly associated with those blasted cities of the plain--let's not forget the ever-lovely sister-city of Gomorrah!--was inhospitableness. Hospitality is a matter of life and death in the unforgiving deserts of the Middle East. According to this ancient morality play [Genesis 19], unkindness to strangers is not just mean, it is real dangerous business: They may, after all, turn out to be "angels unawares!" Now--didn't Matthew's Jesus insist that angels do not marry [22:30]? What conceivable purpose would genitalia serve on such beings? And what hidden agenda might prompt self-serving clerics to draw a moral about sexual preference from a narrative which has for its central object of desire an asexual being?
At any rate, attempted rape--angelic or otherwise--is hardly the ethical equivalent of two human beings' enjoying a mutual erotic encounter. The "fundamentalist" reading of this saga confronts absurdity outright when hospitable Lot offers the Sodomites--envisioned here as a sausage-starved clatch of effeminates limpwristedly pounding at his door--his youngest and virgin daughter in the place of his supernaturally endowed houseguest. At best, it affronts the mental competence of Abraham's beloved brother. The cherry on this surrealistic sundae is Lot's ensuing indulgence in the very same chapter of Genesis (one which bears reading) in drunken incest with both of his daughters. A God who would pointedly spare the life of such a creature must not, after all, be real picky when it comes to "lifestyle options". Moreover, if St. Paul's contention [1 Timothy 6:10, KJV] that "the love of money is the root of all evil" is correct, responsible non-commercial same-sex intimacy must be admitted to be "unseemly" [Romans 1:27, KJV] in much the sense that unmatched socks are.
Whether driven by sadistic impulses arising from the unnatural suppression of healthy libidinal expression or motivated by heartless greed (homosexuals produce no offspring, and the "tithe"--ten percent--of nothing is, after all, nothing)--only a clerical gestapo could have construed the tale of Sodom and Gomorrah into a Biblical justification for ecclesiastic fag-bashing. Similarly, once abortion became a practical alternative to a woman's bearing unwanted offspring, the Roman Catholic Church was driven by sheer venality to disavow its own original and time-hallowed dogma. Since the New Testament's Greek word pneuma--like its Latin counterpart "-spir-"--meant both "breath" ("respiration") and "spirit," ("inspiration") there had previously been no question regarding the instant at which the soul entered the body: It was with the first breath!
VI. JERUSALEM OR SALEM?
According to Luke, Jesus scarcely ever depended on the kindness of his immediate family, and warned his disciples, "You will be betrayed by parents, brothers, relatives. . . ." [21:16-17] Apparently, his distrust was well-founded. John explains that Jesus, at one point, was purposely avoiding Judea because he knew the Jews there were hoping to kill him. But,
Jesus' brothers said to him, "You ought to leave here and go to Judea, so that your disciples may see the miracles you do. No one who wants to become a public figure acts in secret. Since you are doing these things, show yourself to the world." For even his own brothers did not believe in him. [7:3-5]
Whether these brothers were budding Lenny Bruces or "accessories before the fact" is unclear.
Matthew [13:57], Mark [6:4], and Luke [4:23-30] all attribute to Jesus the observation that "'[o]nly in his hometown and in his own house is a prophet without honor.'" Mark extends the assertion to include "his relatives." Luke's narrative includes Jesus' making a trip to Nazareth for the sole purpose of taunting the "old neighborhood" with an extended scriptural justification for his refusal to perform any miracles there. In one fell swoop, Our Savior trashes "family values", "team spirit," and "God & Country," exposing them as cowardly retreats into the instinctive unconsciousness of the herd and the last refuge--to expand Emerson--of utter scoundrels.
Luke's Jesus [12:1] further alerts his disciples: "Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy." It strikes me that this ever-popular brand is yet wildly fashionable with the mindlessly church-going, smartly attired herds of "fundamentalists" who have accepted Jesus Christ as their Personal Savior from ever having to think another real thought again as long as they don't dare really live! Do you earnestly believe that Jesus' frequent use of metaphors involving sheep was intended as a compliment? (You must be like a child to enter the kingdom of God, of course; but being cognitively impaired was not, as I recall, a prerequisite. You must be a fool if you want to become wise, yes; but the point is not to remain amongst the addlepated for the bleak duration!)
When John's Jesus [2:13-16] found men selling livestock of various sorts in the temple courts, his response was vividly unReaganesque: "'Get out of here! How dare you turn my Father's house into a market.'" (Free or otherwise. . . .) Speaking of barnyard animals, it is curious that the advocates of "free-market trickle-down" and those who preach "family values" are one and the same species of political animal. (Guess which! Hint: they neither bray nor have trunks. . . .) "Lawn Order"--the pesticidal variety--is another common refrain among this tawdry bunch, who are apparently intent upon nothing less than flying in the face of each and every principle that Jesus was ever said to espouse:
"Beware of the teachers of the law. They like to walk around in flowing robes and love to be greeted in the marketplaces and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets. They devour widows' houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. Such men will be punished most severely." [Luke 20: 46-47]
Then a teacher of the law came to him and said, "Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go." Jesus replied, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head." [Matthew 8:19-20]
The self-satisfied grunts of this avaricious and intolerant brood,(9) who imagine themselves to have the sole legitimate interpretation of an indisputable word-for-word translation of texts written thousands of years ago, could scarcely be music to a Maker's ears: It was precisely this sort of arrogance that got Milton's Satan permanently 86ed out of the Paradise Lounge! Their seedy shenanigans have far too long been dignified under the heading of "Christian Fundamentalism." How damned fundamental is the notion that if nobody catches you smoking, drinking, dancing, or playing-around maybe you can get away with keeping the local government in your hip-pocket, while nobly teaching your darker-complected brothers and sisters (the white man's burden) to "know their place?" Was the Southern Baptist Church not founded at the onset of the Civil War to promulgate the doctrine that slavery was a gift of the Sweet Baby Jesus?
"White-Trash Pseudo-Christianity" strikes me as a far fitter epithet for the ghastly syndrome--and I grew up there. Such lost souls suffer from a profound and self-perpetuating mental illness--a social disease, if you will. Tricked out weekly in Sunday-go-to-meeting drag, they seem hellbent on making mock unmistakable of the commandments of the very One they imagine to be their salvation. Sadly, they labor within a delusional framework: "Blasphemy against the spirit" is, after all, the one sin Christ deemed absolutely "unforgivable." [Matthew 12:30-32]
More generally, modern Christianity is--let's face the music and dance--a paint-by-number mercantile burlesque of spirituality. Einstein suggested Buddhism as an alternative free of those dogmatic absurdities so disturbingly at variance with recent scientific discoveries regarding the nature of reality. Rather than issuing behavioral edicts, supervised by a fascist hierarchy in charge of eternal punishments and rewards, Buddhism offers individuals conceptual tools and psychological techniques for taking responsibility of their own lives. Buddha makes no claim to divine parentage, offers no pie-in-the-sky, isn't going to save you: In Buddhism, there is nothing to be saved from, anyway, since there was no Original Sin--there is only ignorance and the individual's struggle for enlightenment. "Those who knock" would assuredly have this door opened to them: that certain forms of Buddhism are about a zillion miles closer to the canonical teachings of Jesus than virtually all of what today mas-querades as Christianity. How could anything but unenlightened self-interest spawn a belief-system which essentially worships the family unit--in outright defiance of its namesake? How could the enlightened fail to have compassion for pathetic wretches who value their immortal souls so little as to accept that sort of herd-instinct claptrap for religious conviction and to accept as personal savior someone by whose every commandment they are utterly damned?
I am reminded of the observations of the French discourse-theorist Michel Foucault in regard to the nuclear family. Foucault was, like the Native Americans, a communist--but, so were the first Christians:
All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. [Acts 2:44-45. Where did you think Marx got the idea in the first place, anyway???]
Foucault was gay--but, the love of Jonathan for David was ". . . deeper [t]han the love of women!" [II Samuel 1:26 Tyndale House]; nor was John for naught the "beloved" disciple--the Greek term carries a deal of graphic anatomical baggage. Character assassination aside, the argument of this "pinko sissy" strikes me as dreadfully--terrifyingly--compelling.
Concerned with the relationship between knowledge and very worldly power, Foucault encouraged conscious analysis of each and every "discursive regime," always asking, "Whom does discourse serve?" (In a nutshell, he demonstrates how the dominant culture manipulates language to define reality in terms which maintain and expand its capacity for exploitation.) This encyclopedic French thinker was undoubtedly familiar with the Symposium, in which Plato draws a crucial connection between homophobia and authoritarianism, pointing out that childless couples have far too much free time and disposable income for the good of oppressive power-structures. Thus, Alan Watts saw the realization of the repressed homoerotic roots of militarism as the most significant meaning of "make love not war." It is for this very reason that "love" constitutes the ultimate thought-crime in the negative utopia of 1984.
And it was for this reason that AIDS was introduced just prior to Orwell's inauspicious year: The military-industrial complex's shadow-government targeted potential troublemakers on the heels of the embarrassment of Viet Nam, noting the obvious geographic correlation between hotbeds of anti-war sentiment and homosexual enclaves. Disguised as divine retribution, this hideous affliction was, in fact, a covert declaration of biological war against all those (whether advocates of free love or chemical stimulants) who presumed to use their bodies as they themselves chose.(10) An entire stratum of society has virtually been eliminated in the ensuing targeted holocaust--arguably the most truly creative and unarguably the most truly freedom-loving segment. Michel Foucault himself became a casualty: He had, after all, enunciated a forbidden insight. He had demonstrated that--as exemplified in the great Christian tradition of infant baptism--the importance of the nuclear family lies in its being the nexus of mind control.
The current relevant spiritual struggle is not between those who "accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior" and those who don't. Armageddon is a psychic battlefield whereon those who love freedom confront the New World Order (the dollar bill's Novus Ordo Seclorum), an infernal cabal of the well-heeled, well-armed, and way-too-well-informed, which will not rest until (God forbid!) nothing breathes on this planet that is not under direct corporate surveillance. While private property constitutes its fangs and claws, corporate hierarchy is no less than the corpus, the very skeletal framework, of the Anti-Christ.. (Did you, maybe, think that the raptly gazing pyramid on the backside of that almighty buck you work for was a Medieval representation of the Sweet Baby Jesus?)
VII. BLESSING OR CURSE?
"The spirit gives life: the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life." [John 6:63]
+ + +
"If you love me, you will obey what I command. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another counselor to be with you forever--the spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him." [John 14:15-17]
+ + +
"Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father's desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. Yet because I tell you the truth, you do not believe me. . . . If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. . . ." [John 8:31-32, 43-45]
+ + +
"I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will [be empowered to perform the same miracles] I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father." [John 14:12]
+ + +
"But the one who hears my words and does not put them into practice is like a man who built a house on the ground without foundation. The moment the torrent struck that house, it collapsed and its destruction was complete." [Luke 6:49]
+ + +
"He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters. And so I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come." [Matthew 12:30-32]
+ + +
The next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. Then he said to the tree, "May no one ever eat fruit from you again." And his disciples heard him say it. . . . In the morning, as they went along, they saw the fig tree withered from the roots. [Mark 11: 12-14 & 20]
+ + +
"Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children. For the time will come when you will say,"Blessed are the barren women, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed." [Luke 23:28-29]
+ + +
After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven. He had great authority, and the earth was illuminated with his splendor. With a mighty voice he shouted:
"Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great! She has become a home for demons and a haunt for every evil spirit, a haunt for every unclean and detestable bird.
"For all the nations have drunk the maddening wine of her adulteries. The kings of the earth committed adultery with her, and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries."
Then I heard another voice from heaven say: "Come out of her, my people, so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues; for her sins are piled up to heaven, and God has remembered her crimes. . . ."
Then a mighty angel picked up a boulder the size of a large millstone and threw it into the sea, and said: "With such violence the great city of Babylon will be thrown down, never to be found again.
"The music of harpists and musicians, flute players and trumpeters, will never be heard in you again.
"No workman of any trade will ever be found in you again.
"The sound of a millstone will never be heard in you again.
"The light of a lamp will never shine in you again.
"The voice of bridegroom and bride will never be heard in you again.
"Your merchants were the world's great men.
"By your magic spell(11) all the nations were led astray.
"In her was found the blood of prophets and of saints, and of all who have been killed on the earth." [Revelation 18:1-3 & 21-24]
+ + +
"They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?' He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.' Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life." [Matthew 25:44-46]
VIII. CONCLUSION
Conversely, employing the loftier King James Version, "'Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.'" [Matthew 25:40] Surely, the "least of these my brethren" would include the whole repertory of social and sexual deviance. In this light, White-Trash Pseudo-Christianity is more than an oppressive theocratic lie--it is no less than a torture chamber for the very Body of Christ. While conveniently ignoring their "Personal Savior's" every commandment, they insist upon shoving their half-baked religious convictions down the throats of others. My sincere recommendation is that they try shoving their "Personal Savior" up their own stinking personal rear ends. It might prove therapeutic. Who knows? Maybe even fun! It would at least give real meaning to the term "Second Coming"--that millennially past-due bugaboo of the sadly-misguided-in-Christ, who refuse to either see or hear that
"The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is,' because the kingdom of God is within you." [Luke 17:20-21.]
The point is more emphatically drawn in the Gospel of St. Thomas, one of those gnostic texts happily recovered half a century ago with the unearthing of the Nag Hammadi chronicles--quid most emphatically videre licet--one of those gnostic texts so conveniently "lost" when the library at Alexandria was torched by a mob of Christian arsonists.(12) It is, of course, a point of view which renders priesthoods (those of the aridly scientistic persuasion along with their more obviously ecclesiastical brethren) blatantly--if unlucratively--irrelevant. But, isn't this, more or less, where we came in???]
Let us conclude, then, with the deathless words of the immensely erudite, if apocryphal, Sioux chief, who, upon being told by the missionary that Jesus Christ died for his sins, replied, "What gross presumption!" But, perhaps Popeye said it best: "I am what I am and that's all what I am!" At any rate, pigs is pigs; and their ears make lousy silk purses, I'm told. Should this literary effort encourage readers of sincere good will to unshackle themselves from exploitative mental-programming enough to help me laugh Latter-Day Phariseeism off the face of this agonized planet, I would be utterly delighted. The piteous pharisees themselves, nonetheless, should be regarded with infinite compassion. We should be as gentle as doves, but as cunning as serpents, to my way of thinking. Paul, quoting from Proverbs [25:21-22], here hit the proverbial nail on its proverbial head: "'If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.'" [Romans 12:20] So be it!
Times change; and relevant belief systems respond to alterations in the nature of reality. Currently, humanity neither trudges the Sinai Desert in search of "promised" land, nor contends with the pandemic of the Black Plague. Rather, Earth has become an increasingly crowded and frustratingly cluttered domicile, whose self-appointed stewards blindly continue to breed like flies. Wouldn't it make more sense, at this point, to reward those who choose to remain childless rather than punishing them? (A sliding scale might be implemented for retirement benefits, doubling those of persons who refrained from procreation and insuring that unregenerate Roman Catholic and Mormon types who irresponsibly insist on more than two children would, as well, receive their just reward: prison.)(13)
Meanwhile, a tip o' the hat to the military-industrial viral miracle that has managed to make non-procreative love-making into attempted murder and the unhitched wanderer--who might otherwise endlessly evade surveillance by moving, as Jesus explicitly recommended, with nothing but the clothes on his back--into public enemy #1. Wasn't it Voltaire who clowned, " The Church not only teaches you that the wages of sin are death--they will even murder you. . . ."? Sing, then, the body (in general) electric--and the First Industrial-Strength Church thereof (the Church Way-Too-Militant--and proud "sponsor" of the next Winter Olympics) wherein martyrdom itself be mass-produced.
The foxes have holes. . . .
A rose is. . . (ever & anon)
Etc.
1. It is important to realize that the bleak obscurity of the Dark Ages occurred as a direct result of Europe's Christian hegemony, not--as the party-line history books of my Southern Gothic childhood cheerfully maintained--in spite of it. The Church's monopoly on literacy (blind loyalty to Church doctrine was the ticket price to gain access to the mental tools of reading and writing--or did your think "clergy" and "clerical" were cognates by accident?) methodically strangled out alternative points of view. Gore Vidal's Julian gives a lively portrayal of the interplay of intellect and politics during the sunset of the classical world.
2. The New International Version was used throughout, unless otherwise noted. KJV means King James Version. Underlining indicates my emphasis.
3. Pertaining to the science or art of interpretation, especially of the Scriptures.
4. A different "Legion" from the shabby renters of the Gadarene swine, I gather. [cf. Mark 5:1-20]
5. Rhetorical analysis of this lurid linguistic atrocity must be attempted only by those with cast-iron stomachs! After eons of enduring humiliation, remorseless violence, and a surfeit of more subtly crippling forms of oppression at the hands of the breeding majority, need homosexuals be told who should be "phobic" of whom? In my Alabama grammar school, homophobia had yet to be invented: they were called "bullies".
6. Exegetics is the purported science of Biblical interpretation.
7. Pertaining to a regressive or more primitive state.
8. Recently, NBC's Today show featured a Roman Catholic priest so appalled by the participation of the habitually cross-dressing Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence in San Francisco's Easter parade that, when it was suggested that perhaps it was time to "turn the other cheek", he screeched, "That's a fool's proposition!" Ironically enough, it also happens to be one of Jesus' commandments, ". . . that ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also." [Matthew 5:39, KJV] Has the Roman Catholic liturgy grown so pompously self-referential that "Our Lord and Savior" has been preempted by "Our Lord, the Fool"?
9. "Maybe, if we declare a 'Year of the Bible', nobody will notice. . . ."
10. I submit, as anecdotal evidence (the Evangelists had no more), what a friend in Albuquerque shared with me one inebriated night. Since he was retired from the Army, where he had worked in research-and-development for chemical and biological warfare, I suspect he knew whereof he spoke: "During the Ford administration, three thousand men in San Francisco were given HIV instead of the 'hepatitis A' vaccine." (Gee, I sure hope you aren't holding your breath for the C.I.A. to make a clean breast of the countless atrocities your tax dollars enabled it to perpetrate. . . . Cf. Oliver Stone's eye-opening JFK.)
11. Pharmakoi=drug pigs=C.I.A.
12. Joseph Campbell explores this crucial issue in "Indian Reflections in the Castle of the Grail," (The Celtic Consciousness, p. 9):
The mention, especially of apples [perpetually ripe in St. Brendan's Promised Land], suggests both the classical Hesperides, the Western Isles of the Golden Apples, beyond the earth-bounding Ocean, and the Celtic Avalon ["Apple Island"] of King Arthur's enduring repose. It is actually everywhere and nowhere: the Earthly Paradise: that place--or rather, condition of the experienced world--where the transcendent radiance of that which is beyond form is made visible through, and from within, all forms of things. This is not a revelation for which one has to wait to the end of time. . . . And this view. . . has now been strongly reinforced by the discovery in 1945--in a jar found buried in the Egyptian desert, near the village of Nag Hammadi, on the first sharp bend of the Nile (about 26 degrees 1 minute North, 32 degrees 2 minutes East)--of a Coptic translation from the Greek of the long lost Gospel According to Thomas. Here we read in the last saying (Saying 113) of Jesus, the following: "His disciples said to Him: 'When will the Kingdom come?' Jesus said: 'It will not come by expectation; they will not say: "See, here," or "See, there." But the Kingdom of the Father is spread upon the earth and men do not see it.'"
13. Freud and Jung agreed on very little in their later years. But they shared common ground on two notable philosophical conclusions: First, they were convinced of the essentially bisexual (or, more accurately, transgendered) nature of the human soul; second, they realized religious fundamentalism to be a dangerous--if all too prevalent--mental aberration. Cf. Jung's brilliant Answer to Job. Aldous Huxley, another of the germinal thinkers of our century, was firmly convinced--as am I--that overpopulation poses the most serious threat to human existence.