why I follow Jesus Christ, and not Judaism or Mohammadenism

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why I follow Jesus Christ, and not Judaism or Mohammadenism:

It comes down to three ground rules that Jesus emphasized as personal imperatives, that aren’t shared by Judaic teachings or Muslim teachings:

Pacifism, especially opposition to all forms of armed organized violence

Forgiveness, and also recognition of the necessity of compensation for due damages

Universalism, unconditionally. Toward maybe even aliens, even. The goal of impartiality.

These might be said to be Ideals, which are then to be tested in the real world. Meantime realizing that the human condition’s short-term level of evaluation works against all of them, by insisting on the Justification of one’s own individual subjective perspective and private advantage. (“You’ll be as Gods, Knowing good and evil!” As if.) And sometimes the human condition of humans cornered by events (i.e., “history”) into fighting for survival- under th circumstances of modernity and an interconnected worl, all too often after multiple failures to take advantage of opportunities for preventing such a dire situation. War is more often than not the result of failures of statecraft, and a lack of imagination. Imbalances leading to an entropic result.

By “Pacifism” I don’t mean “passivity.” The Gospel accounts of Jesus [the loosely translated name I’ll use henceforth, out of convenience] include his most famous outburst of active defiance, confronting some of the Temple merchants and even overturning their tables. It’s interesting that the accounts don’t mention anything about Jesus being forcibly restrained. Maybe he was a big guy. Maybe he had some of what the Chinese call guanxi- multi-generation lineage connections, allowing him to benefit from an extra level of forbearance against being summarily pounded into the pavement. The Gospels state that after throwing out the vendors, he preached at the Temple for “days”, plural, before being confronted by the “chief priests and the elders.” In the aftermath of that confrontation, Jesus was allowed to depart the Temple with his group. There was a no-chase policy in regard to his heretical,confrontational actions, at least in the short term.

It’s important to note is that Jesus turned over those tables himself. He didn’t call on help. That isn’t really the action of a passive person cowed by fear. Another thing to note is that he could have used a weapon- a dagger, a sword, a club. But there’s no record of any violence other than Jesus on his feet and using his own two hands. He disdained the leverage of a weapon, because that was crucial to his code, and his teachings. He disdained the force multiplier of having a paramilitary band of “resistance” followers.

There’s an insight to be had from the implications of that event: the vast majority of self-identified “Christians” had lost that baseline teaching—the absolute necessity to forswear the politics of armed force- within three centuries of the incident at Calvary.

I’m inclined to think that Jesus doesn’t judge armed self-defense too strongly. Personal and family survival amounts to seriously extenuating circumstances; under conditions of peacetime, relatively few people and families find themselves in such a desperate situation. The crucial part of Jesus’ teaching there is that organized violence corrupts any goal that it touches. Including the use of organized armed violence to resist an Oppressor, or an Unjust Ruler. (Although Jesus knew about the deals cut between the Jewish religious establishment of the day and the Romans, too. Turning the Temple into a swindle.) And also opposing participating in organized armed violence in service to the idol of the nation-state. Which is quite a bit different than feeling an immediate requirement to defend one’s home territory and geography for the sake of survival, although the morality of any action is not to simply be settled by “noble intentions.” It’s all too easy for people to construct a paranoid plot line that wildly exaggerates the dire necessity for picking up the gun, for instance. (Especially for someone living in circumstances carrying little actual risk of immediate physical threat, and with ready access to firearms.)

More evidence that Jesus’ pacifism wasn’t a function of passivity or weakness can be found in the story of him stopping the lynching of the “adulteress” by a mob. He stepped in and shut it down.

The details of the Temple story and the intervention against the mob indicates that Jesus knew not to overdo it. He knew to make the point boldly, so it would not require re-stating. But without taking it personal, without maiming or killing, and and without inciting a riot. He put enough force into his actions so that everyone knew where he stood. And then the other side held the decision, on how to respond. Did Jesus know what awaited him? He seems to have considered the question quite thoroughly. And he wasn’t afraid of his fate. He had something that he had to see through. Yeah, prophetic tradition. By the Jews, of all people. (The idea that Jesus wasn’t Jewish is so far beyond absurd. It fits. All of it. The facility with parables, for example. The debates in the Gospels, he got his points in. Gadfly.)

I’ve known and interacted with Jews and Jewish behaviors and Jewish teachings for a long time, and at their best the Jews are peerless. But they’re also no less susceptible to corruption than anybody else. Jesus was there to get the society of his day to get back to knowing the difference between using language in service of the truth and using words to indulge in sophistry and manipulation. A tall order. In some ways it must have really been bad, in order for that to be necessary.

Forgiveness is another really important aspect. The thing about forgiveness is that our natural tendency is to view it as weakness, and yielding no material benefit- so why do it? Forgiveness seems insignificant- until you observe what happens whenever forgiveness is forgotten. Forgiveness is a crucial part of the difference between human consciousness and animal instinct. Animal instinct is always present in humans, but allowing it to run our every action is a grave error. Unforgiving accounts for every blood feud in history. Those feuds have been so common over the course of history that the people most closely involved very often take their existence for granted. They’ve forgotten forgiveness.

The endless acrimony and violence looks so mindless, from the outside.

Universalist perspective is the last feature that distinguishes Christianity from Judaism and Islam. Theoretically speaking, which I am. Historical reality of this one is just confounding. Consider that Jewish monotheism emerged and was adopted by one tribe, the Jews. (Gods in the early days were proprietary, isomorphic with culture. A lot has changed.) Yet tribal legacies notwithstanding, some of the greatest and most sincere expositors of universalist values have been Jews. Jews drawing on Jewish teaching, at that. But for many Jews, the core of Judaic religion remains the 613 Laws, or Commandments. Some of the 613 Commandments are as tribal and territorial as it gets. Some of them are notably absent of any hint of Forgiveness.

Islam offers a different promise to its followers—it claims to be a universalist faith shared equally by the devout, no matter their ancestry or heritage. But unlike the Jews, who as a rule decline to prosyletize and very often favor extending tolerance to practically every religious doctrine and faith—or absence of faith—Islamic regimes insist on the primacy of the Muslim religion in every polity that they govern. They extend some paternalistic hospitality toward other “peoples of the Book”- Christians and Jews—with a status known as dhimmitude, which allows them to worskip as they please in return for paying a small tax to the Islamic regime, along with functional disenfranchisement. Other named religions like Hinduism and Buddhism are basically considered unacceptable; where their presence is tolerated at all, it’s a very precarious condition. Atheism is also unacceptable- and widely held to be the actual condition of the societies of the modern developed West, an inevitable result of the decadent and degraded weakness of the Christian religion. Any resident of an Islamic regime who harbors skepticism about theism knows to keep the public expression of their thoughts in check. It’s asking for trouble. But there’s a religious offense that’s often held to be even worse and more deserving of apprehension and punishment in Islamic societies: Apostasy. Briefly stated, that means that once a person eccepts Islam into their life, they aren’t allowed to leave. No conversion is allowed- not even to another monotheistic religion. The death penalty has sometimes been applied for this offense. Apostasy is a capital crime.

That doesn’t sound anything like a universalist perspective, to me. I realize that some Christian sects and Jewish religious traditionalists- and perhaps other religions, too- actively disdain and shun anyone from within their communities who departs from the former religious affiliation. But it’s unthinkable for Christians and Jews to arrest the apostate and execute them, or apprehend and lynch them. Whereas it isn’t unthinkable for a Muslim to do that- or to support it, and defend it. That isn’t a truly universalist perspective.

Institutional Christianity has had its own history of that sort of intolerance, also. As with the dismissal of the pacifist imperative, the history shows that once Christians achieved institutional political power, Christianity began accuring its own horrific historic burden of intolerance and religious persecution. (And worse. Stories that we’ll set aside for now <cough>Borgia popes<cough>.)Without getting into the details: no wonder there was a secular Western Enlightenment. That’s what was required, as a corrective. Although considered as a “solution”, the Western Enlightenment has its own set of problems and conundrums. Par for the course, for humanity on this planet.

This history is why I feel so unconfortable referring to myself as a “Christian.” Christian history is weighed down with the load of every transgression it’s ever committed against the teachings of Jesus, the Christ. Christian community must have really been something, back in the days when the faith had to hide in the catacombs of Rome. Not long after that era, “Christianity” morphed into something unrecognizable.

I find it strange that I more people haven’t picked up on the implications of that history, even those who have studied enough of it to have some familiarity with the details. I find it strange that I didn’t pick up on it earlier. But I had little firsthand experience of actually reading the Gospels for myself prior to around 1998 or so. I did not grow up in a family of Bible readers. My family was nominally Christian, and my parents considered themselves Christian believers, were members of Christian church congregations, and often demonstrated virtues associated with Christian ideals- and they did that humbly and sincerely, not as a performance. But frankly, the acquaintance of my parents with biblical scripture was practically nonexistent.

(to be continued)

For all of that lack of formal acquaintance with Biblical details, my parents instilled me with a moral code that was inspired by Biblical morality- grounding in the conception of moral law as linked with a monothestic being, or state of being. The G~d of Moses, of the Hebrews. The same G~d that followers of Christ believe that Jesus was following in fulfilling his unique historic mission.

Monotheism— “The G~d of Israel is One.” What’s that all about? What makes the single god worshipped by devout Hebrews different from any of the deities of polytheistic religious belief? It isn’t about tribalism, at least not primarily; it might even be said that the tribal aspect is merely coincidental. Nor is it simply about preference for one deity expressed within the wider structure of a pantheon, the way that pantheist and polytheist narratives frame theistic concerns.

I think that the crucial difference comes down to Integrity. Moral law as single overarching concept. A type of monotheism that rules out compartmentalization. G~d is One, as One. Not some “sky god” in the clouds; that’s just cheap shorthand metaphor, and one that’s none too accurate. Instead, G~d is One. Incorporating principles of moral law and a mission of moral purpose, and the duty of human self-awareness to fulfill it, come what may on the material plane. An obscure, obscured, and sometimes even obscurantist concept, at least to the bandwidth of mortal human awareness. It entails a quest to learn better. It isn’t easy. Moral dilemmas are only easy for those who deny any validity to morality. Humans get things wrong a lot. But the difference between sincerely seeking the truth and faking it is the difference between 1 and 0.

When it comes to grappling with moral questions, it should be understood that there is no compartmentalization of experience. Humans are not naturally gifted with the consistency of memory and situational perspicacity to achieve the goal of Integrity in that regard. It’s hard work. And a task impossible to outsource or delegate. Denial, self-deception, self-serving judgements and justifications, hasty conclusions, ignorant assessments imbued with solipsistic hubris, unbalanced values- all of those errors and more are not merely occasional vulnerabilities to humans: they’re chronic pitfalls. Flaws that often present themselves as reflexively advantageous courses of action. Simple, easy, and convenient, but shoddy. Faulty heuristics. They impede the goal of seeking the clarity of Integrity.