It's Not About Comfort

  This comes out of reading a bit of Matthew's gospel today.  I don't read the bible enough.  I used to read it every day as a kid and I spent endless hours memorizing it and having it beaten into me and lectured upon at church five times a week and so on.  There are shards of it lodged all through my body tissue.  So when I read it nowadays, it tends to bring a lot of baggage with it.  But I try to read it sometimes, and I try to hear it over the perpetual DVD commentary of my past teachers, chanting in sonorous voices what the different parts of the bible "actually mean", often in direct ignorance of what the different parts of the bible actually say.

  Anyway.  Some random thoughts upon reading what Jesus was saying in the middle of Matthew's gospel: There was a religious establishment in his day, and one already every bit as ancient, defined, stratified and broad as our Christendom is today.  We trace ours back to Peter and Paul in much the way they traced theirs back to Abraham and Moses. 

  Perhaps it would be a bit much to have expected them to accept that Jesus was in fact the prophetic Messiah figure spoken of in all of the holy writings they heard at synagogue, and that he was doing all of the things that figure was supposed to do, and was in fact the only one who was even able to do that stuff. Perhaps.  But even so:

  All questions of his claims and behaviour aside, any of his simply reading the scriptures and talking about them was in and of itself terribly unorthodox and upsetting to people. Just that.  Jews talking about the Jewish scriptures.  What he was seeing wasn't what they wanted him seeing.  (What he was doing was a bigger problem, for them, of course. He was upping the ante)  There were generations upon generations of rabbis who'd for many centuries written far more words on the subject of the Jewish scriptures than actually make up the scriptures themselves.  There was a cultural story of Jewish conquest and persecution every bit as vivid as today's one about 21st century conflicts over the Holy Land, and the trials of the Holocaust. Yet when Jesus read the bible to his fellow Jews and talked about it, it was like they'd never heard that stuff before.  His reading of it was not only completely different from any of the stuff the religious teachers of the time did with it, or the ones writing reams of analysis for centuries before, it had a different tone and focus.

  Jesus was talking about raising ones own personal standard of living up from the whole "So, I haven't, technically done anything wrong?" level to a "Have I done good and made a difference in the world?" level.  The religious teachers of the time occupied themselves with things such as judging if a man was guilty of murder, manslaughter or whatever, and questions relating to justifiable homicide or of self-defense laid out in their writings.  They occupied themselves with questions as to when it was okay to divorce ones wife, and with stuff about money and property rights.

  Jesus did not validate or build upon their work, but rather advised anyone listening to take it a step farther, with a different attitude, saying (all questions of justifiable homicide aside) not to call your brother a fool, and not to divorce your wife, just because it was legal for you to do so and you didn't like her much anymore. (remembering what kind of a position it put a woman in to have been divorced by her husband in an age and a culture untouched by feminism of any kind) but to continue to support her and honour her.

  Religious figures once tried to get Jesus to agree with them as to executing an adulteress.  That one was a clear cut case. He wouldn't go there.  They tried to get him to speak out for or against the occupying Roman armies.  He would have no part of that.  He was preaching about personally being and doing good (rather than merely avoiding breaking rules and giving the impression of religiousness) and forgiving other people (rather than judging them, simply because you hadn't sinned in quite the way they had, or you were reputed to be a holy person, which you felt gave you the right to judge people.)

  Not only did Jesus refuse to take sides on judging people (or political questions), he actually spoke out as to not doing something which we today are pretty used to doing: vicarious virtue.  "I may not have learned much science, but Stephen Hawking is an American, so he knows it for me." "I may not be very giving, but Mother Theresa was Catholic, and so she does it for me (and I send her money)." "I may not have read the whole bible, but my pastor did, and we pay his salary, and so he knows that stuff for us."  We do religion, knowledge and virtue by proxy.  Hiring it.  Delegating it.  Chairing it.  Making it something we are a financial investor in.  Making it something we talk about other people doing.

  Needless to say, this hands-off approach makes it of little personal, life-changing benefit.  If one followed the spirit and attitude of what Jesus described as good living, people would only be able to suspect that you were someone who prayed, read the bible, gave money to charity, didn't mistreat your brother and family and all the rest.  A big part of it was that you'd do it and then not tell people and "raise awareness" of it.  You'd do it, rather than advocate for the doing of it.  You'd be modest in the sense of a swimsuit model wearing a top when going out to buy groceries.  You'd cover it up.  Not out of shame.  Because it isn't good to be getting recognition for good stuff all the time.  It wouldn't be the text of a sermon you'd give.  You wouldn't have a website presenting yourself as an expert, with a PayPal donations button, and DVDs for sale, and lecture appearances arranged on there.  You would live rather than just sell yourself or the virtue you felt most important.  You would blog and Tweet and Facebook status update fairly infrequently, and only to do something specific which you thought was good, and not because you were hired to do it, or to raise sales, or to try to swing votes or any of the rest of it.  Certainly not to share how awesome it feels to do it, as you do it and want people to know about that.  You would put stuff out there and leave it up to people to do with it as they willed.  You would live it rather than do it as a job, for other people.  You would reject being given a special title, too.

  I think the next part, though maybe upsetting to some, shouldn't really surprise anyone: we have a religious establishment nowadays.  We have a system of churches, with authority structures and financial infrastructure and all of that, just like the Jews had in Jesus' day.  We have days when businesses are to be closed to recognize "our" holy days/holidays.  That's how established institutionalized Christianity is.  And just like in Jesus' day, reading the scriptures and talking about them in any genuine way often puts one at odds with all of that structure.  If you are a youth pastor, are you allowed to speak your mind against anything much?  Are you allowed to decide that next week, instead of getting pizza and watching a new release movie (perhaps "scrubbed" for content), you are going to go talk to smelly homeless people or give needles to junkies or bibles to hookers or something?  Are you allowed to say "If the attendance drops off, and these kids are going elsewhere for their partying, as we are doing good, we are willing to simply live with that and will do nothing to try to 'fix it'?"  Or are you going to be held responsible to be popular?  Is approval-gaining and bums-on-seats going to be Job One?
  I'm sure people could point out that they know one group that is sometimes doing this sort of good stuff, right now.  I think that's the exception, though.  Mostly it's about being a group and feeling good about that.

  Because it's an establishment.  It's about politics, outward appearances, arguing whether to let gay people hold positions of power, stuff about slogans, mission statements, money, public perception and what is going to be seen as wrong and judged as such.  And there is a general mealy-mouthed lack of clout, reality, and workability to most of it.  A lot of trying to market themselves, be like a corporation, soothe, unify and comfort.
  And the thing is: people are not staying away from churches in droves because the snake oil isn't slick enough.  They are staying away because it is empty, plastic and pointless.  It is masturbatory.  To flip that metaphor around a bit, for many, church represents having taken the overzealous, excessive joy of life and neutering that.  There is a strong scent of "I used to be someone, and now I'm not being that someone." Like AA for sinners. Getting high off not getting high anymore and talking about it instead.  Using Jesus for comfort and euphoria.  Thing is, he was here in person, and nobody much was getting high off or comforted by him when he was in the flesh (so to speak), walking around, smelling of sweat and needing his feet washed.  He was actually pretty ranty and blunt, according to Matthew, anyway, and Matthew was there.
  When Jesus spoke, as a young man with older guys right there to hear what he was saying, people were completely amazed at what it was like to hear someone speak about the scriptures and have it mean something, have it sound real and workable, upsetting, mind-changing and challenging (not "comforting").  They said he spoke with authority, not like the scribes (the professional religious, church teachers and scholars).

  I've seen YouTube video of preachers shouting and flailing their arms around, trying to get some kind of clout into what they were saying, but really, besides being loud they were mainly just being judgmental and abrasive.  Jesus didn't rail against adulterers and gay people and people who cheated on their taxes, or the government the way modern preachers who want to seem edgy do.  He railed (resorting to name-calling) against the religious establishment and how the venerated religious folk of the day lived.  He didn't merely name names and point a finger at the key problematic religious people.  He did worse than that, according to modern sensibilities: he generalized.  He tarred the entire group of pious folk with one giant brush and said a single thing about them all.  He refused to judge anything or anyone other than that.  He made that one exception in his lifelong habit of carefully not judging people and things.  (Giving it to someone straight isn't the same as what I mean by judging someone or a group to be guilty so as to dispose of them publicly).  He unleashed on the religious figures and establishment of his time.  Dismissed them as a whole.  And that establishment sounds remarkably, disconcertingly unchanged down through the ages until we have what we are steeped in today.  And his judgement was really simple:

  Not good enough.  Don't do like them.

  Predictably, when he lived his life, the religious establishment wanted to discredit and kill him.  The better he did, the more they hated him.  The better person he was, the worse they acted.  That hasn't changed.  Getting hired by other men to speak to everyone about the bible nowadays requires a complete lack of the kind of opinionated abrasiveness by which Jesus was characterized.  Any professional religious scholar or speaker I've ever heard of is allowed to display those traits only if they are aiming at targets safely outside of the flock.  A "judging gun" to aim at others.  "Speak unto us smooth things" is how the bible describes this.  Say stuff we like.  Say the stuff we hear toward the end of this month every year.  Describe this stuff so that kids will like it, and old ladies as well.  Give us that "It's Christmas, Charlie Brown" Linus speech feeling.  Make people buy our religious product, and not the ones others are selling.  Emphasize the superiority of our product.  Don't worry that making it a product in the first place may have done something weird to it. Like what happens when you sell love.

  This blog is written in a fairly dry, blank tone.  This is not high-handed, profane, purple rhetoric.  Even this level of position-taking upsets people, though.  They say they "wonder which side [I'm] on sometimes."  They say it's "a burr under the saddle of the Church." They demand to know what makes me think I can just say this kind of thing.  They claim it's an attack on those whom God loves.  It's "negative," after all. And I'm not doing much of anything.  Certainly nothing new or unusual.  I am meek and well-behaved, by the standards of anyone not conditioned to demand party-line-toeing and diplomatic, Ecclesiastically Correct language  on a Church Christian level. I was told today that Jesus, and the fruits of the spirit themselves, could be summed up in one word: nice.
  Bullshit.

 Western Christianity, when it's not safely hating distant targets, is cushy and warm, in a bright plastic package with zippy slogans.  It validates us, and tells us to never change.  It tells us to keep doing what we're already doing and to feel good about that.  And, unsurprisingly, many folks find that this warm, cuddly happyfest simply does nothing for them.  They don't feel it.  It's like a Leafs fan at a Star Trek convention, or a hobby quilter at SexiCoN 2012.  So they say "Well, I guess it's alright if That Kind of Thing works for you.  If you get some comfort from it, I guess it's okay in its place."

  Jesus didn't come to give comfort. He didn't come to bring peace.  He didn't come to help families get along.  He didn't come to help young men find a nice, religious wife.  He didn't come to encourage wives to produce an innovative array of exciting but healthful meals for their families.  He didn't come to help people succeed at work by having a positive attitude and knowing how to be team players.  He didn't come to help people reaffirm their dying faith in a labyrinth of tradition.  He didn't even come to tell the rich people he was eating with that, really, they should give more money to the poor.  And he said he hadn't come to do those things.  Repeatedly.  He announced that he had come to bring a sword rather than peace, that he had come to make wives fight with their mothers-in-law, that he had come to turn children against their parents.  And when people "got" what he was doing and saying, the religious establishment discredited, disowned and killed them too.  His message was simple, and it's still here to think about, in terms of how he wants us to think and feel about the religious establishment that Western Pre-Packaged Christianity is today:

  Not good enough.  Don't do like them.

  Because it's not about comfort.  It's not about happy feelings.  It's not about peace.  And professional clergy and accredited bible scholars can't do it for you.  You're it.  So go do it.  Do it yourself or not at all. And then shut up about it.