Cruisin' for a Bruisin', or Heresy On Parade

Well, I knew this was  going to happen, sooner or later.  Of course, later would have been better.  Say, in about a hundred years or so.  But then...

While scrolling through the AOL news, I saw a teaser headline:  "Did Jesus Really Exist?"  Oh, crap.  How can I pass this one up?  I couldn't.

The author's first bit of business was to dispense with any claims to respectable intellectual rigor, on the part of those who question the physical existence of the man we Christians call Jesus.  He did this by pointing out that none of these doubting Thomases was employed in a religious university or seminary.  Which seemed odd to me, as it seems obvious that such institutions wouldn't hire heretics in the first place.

Then, he said there was no reason to doubt the existence of Jesus, just because there's no mention of such a person in the contemporary Roman histories.  There followed a list of conversations that may or may not have taken place between people who may or may not have actually known the historic human being.  It sounded a bit thin.

And then, I realized that none of this 'did he, didn't he' was as interesting as the rest of the story -- the walking on water, raising the dead, resurrection and ascension, etc.  Which the author seemed to imply had to be accepted as fact, if one accepts, as he seemed to feel was self-evident, that there was an historic Jesus.  There's a lot of ipso in that facto, in my opinion.

All of this set me off, as one who knows me might imagine.  I have so wanted, all my life, to be a good Christian, and to believe all the things that I was supposed to believe.  Mostly because I crave value, and rescue.  But, as I get older, rather than my faith solidifying, I discover that I'm actually quite angry and puzzled -- not, it must be said, about Whoever that Historic Figure may or may not have been, but about all the dogmatic accretions that have been selectively applied, as conditions of faith.  Maybe it's my Death Flu acting up again (I couldn't just have a headache, and throw up all the time?  Oh, no), and giving me a kind of religious logorrhea.  So...

Let me plunge right in, then.  (The sizzling you hear, is the lightning bolt crackling through my roof.  The smell is supposed to be something like that of roast pork.  The cats, left unfed, will nibble my fingertips and earlobes first)  It started with the nature program about squid.

Fabulous underwater photography captured the mating dance of male and female Humboldt squid.  They swim into a vortex, simultaneously release eggs and sperm, and the centrifugal force of the column of life-infested water insures a maximum likelihood of fertilization.  Millions of eggs.  Millions and millions of sperm.  A dizzying plethora of baby squid.  (Never mind that most of them won't live more than a few months.  Everyone's got to eat something)

And for some reason, while watching this reckless abundance of fertility, which happens every single year, I found myself thinking... just the One Son?  (Thunder in the background...)

The Hubble telescope shows us heart-breaking, awe-inspiring images of towering columns of stellar gases, spewing stars like the squid spreading their life essence.  The maple tree beside my driveway tosses countless elegant, winged chartreuse seeds everywhere, every year.  And we all know that there are just way too many feral cats in Philadelphia.  But... just the One Son?

I'm so sorry, but this bit of doctrine, in my opinion, makes God look kind of stinting.  If -- going out on the proverbial limb here -- there is deistic caring involved (which those whirling star nurseries call into question -- Who could possibly find little us?), I would think we might at least expect a kind of Refresher Course every once in a while.  (Sorry, but saints just don't count)  Maybe one Embodiment of the Divine every century?  One a generation would be even better.  We humans certainly need some shepherding on a more regular basis than once every... two thousand years and counting?  We're like the proverbial teenage girl, waiting for that boy to call, like he said he would.  For tens of centuries.

And another thing (since the lightning seems to be holding off, for the time being), while I have always found a deep sense of gratitude in the idea that God would choose to undergo a human existence, now that I'm all of 65, I have these terrible thoughts of which to unburden myself:

33?  Unmarried, and dead at 33?  No, no, no.  Here's the human experience.  You get married.  You work really hard.  Your kids are a disappointment -- one runs away with a clown from the Syrian circus, one takes to drink, and your own only son turns out to be gay.  Your wisdom teeth are impacted.  You get arthritis.  You get more arthritis.  Your business goes bust because your best friend has been robbing you blind, and then your wife runs off with him.  Your pension turns out to be bogus.  Your home is repossessed.  You have to go live in a homeless shelter.  And then, because someone mistakes you for someone else, you're arrested, publicly humiliated and crucified.  THAT's a human life.  33 is getting off easy.

(Still no lightning.  Maybe when I go outside to look at the fog rolling in...)

And finally, there's the one observation that has a certain poignancy, at least for me.  Don't misunderstand me -- this isn't delusion of grandeur talking -- but, wouldn't you like to be the Son or Daughter of God?  Wouldn't you like to think that God so loved you that He chose you to be His Favorite on Earth?  One day not long ago, it just struck me, with a stab of disappointment -- wouldn't I like to have been good enough, to be Chosen?  Not that I'm salivating for betrayal and pain (though those seem to crop up anyway, don't they?), but what would it be like, to have that inner knowing, that you were the One?  Or, thinking back to my complaint about God's alleged spiritual economics, One of the Many?  Who asks to be imperfect?  Who asks for whatever it is that makes up original sin?

Understand, again -- it's the dogma with which I struggle.  Divinity is so far beyond me as to be irrelevant. 

The one precious nugget in the Gospels, for me, is the Pentecostal transfer of responsibility, from a Sacred One Who is about to depart (for thousands and thousands of years), to the fallible human followers left behind.  This, to me, is grown-up religion.  Rather than turning to Someone Who will make it all better, we are left to solve, individually and communally, the misfortunes we inevitably encounter.  This is bracing.  This is dour.  This feels adult.  Taking what I can, of the teachings I've been given (and remember, the Bible was put together by committee, and we know two things about these operations: history is written by the winners, and the truth will out), I can try my best to embody, as the Communion prayer says, Christ in the world today.  Thank Heaven for that temper tantrum in the temple, or I'd be in big trouble.

Well, I was going to say something pert about wasting perfectly good miraculous energy to show up on a piece of toast, when the real miracle would be paying everyone's mortgage, but I think I'll let this stand as is. 

By the way, if you see me in church, you may want to sit a bit further away.  The lightning thing, don't you know.  It's only a matter of time...

©   2012          Walter Zimmerman