Occupy Jerusalem - 'Who Was Jesus' TV Special

There is a series on the Planet Green channel called Who Was Jesus? It's one of those pop-level looks at "the historical Jesus", which attempt to divine truths about Jesus as a person apart from religious doctrine and dogma. Given that the series appears on the Planet Green channel, I was fully prepared to be offended in some way, and while I only saw one episode of the series, two things were irksome about it. Well, more than two, but two that I felt like addressing in this post.

First was that the language used by the narrator to describe the economic and social conditions of the time were rooted in a particular disingenuous, modern, leftist rhetoric. Not that what they said was wrong per se, but the fact that they chose to say certain things repetitively -- while not saying many other things that could be said about first century Jewish and Roman culture -- revealed the presence of a particular ideology. Specifically, they referred to the "discrepancy of wealth" and "the suffering masses while a few prospered" over and over again. I will reiterate; it wasn't merely that they said these types of things, but that they made similar statements over and over again. The special could easily have been titled Occupy Jerusalem.

The second was some blatant racism by one historian. When talking about Mary when she goes with Jesus to Jerusalem, and Jesus goes to the temple, she says that "Just like a Jewish mother, Mary was worried to death when she couldn't find Jesus." I'm not hypersensitive when it comes to stereotypes, especially true ones, but this is one of those stereotypes that probably has little basis in reality. I'm aware of no evidence that suggests the average Jewish mother is appreciably more concerned about their children than non-Jewish mothers. The historian even reiterates the statement later, in addition to another trait of the Jewish mother that Mary displays after she finds Jesus, which the historian said was, I believe, relief. She was laughing as she relayed this observation of hers.

Again, I'm the last person to be overly politically correct and I certainly wasn't offended, but if they were exploring African history and she declared about some historical figure "he was, just like an African father, a deadbeat dad", I don't expect Planet Green would so readily include that programming on their channel. Even though, in this case, the attributes -- large amounts of worry and relief -- are either neutral or positive things, it's still quite surprising that they blithely include such dubious racial stereotypes.

The Myth of Progress

Abraham Lincoln once said "It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues." Some academics seem convinced of the fact that much of the history of man has been the process of taming our worst social vices: violence, genocide, slavery, racism, oppression, despotism etc. Not that we're free from these ills today, but that as history progresses we seem to continuously push them further back. For example, Steven Pinker points out that it seems as if violence has been decreasing, in the amount that occurs per capita, over the centuries. Of course there are setbacks along the way -- the 20th century's record of violence and genocide comes to mind -- but if we view history as a whole, concentrating on the elimination or reduction of these ills, human progress seems like an undeniable reality.

But by what means are we reducing these evils? Are we replacing them with goods, or simply neutral spaces which are more free from violence and coercion? Are there not other evils that arise in their place which we simply don't recognize as easily? Is the process that tames vices simultaneously taming our social virtues?

By taking our 'do no harm' ethos so far as to make it an ultimate end, it turns out that we must also 'do no good', at least at the social/collective/governmental level. Why? Because another thing that history has taught us is that men, or collections of men, with good and pure intentions are often among the most potent sources of tyranny and wickedness. As C.S. Lewis said: "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

Power itself is a corrosive, corrupting thing and so we can't discriminate too finely between those looking to do ill and those aiming to do good; they both need to be restrained by the same systems. Gandalf possessing the One Ring is, at best, only slightly preferable to Sauron possessing it. With this being the case, certain social virtues can't be allowed to flourish because there is the substantial risk that they will devolve into tyranny and oppression.

So what is the result? We are indeed succeeding at taming the worst manifestations of our worst vices, but at the price of taming our virtues. As Nietzsche saw, and feared, this process results in the mediocritization of men. Everyone is protected; everything (besides trampling on others) is accepted; nothing is greatly praised or honored above the virtue of not-trampling-upon-others; and the result is a rather dreary and drab collection of social virtues: tolerance, equality before the law, freedom.

Not that there's anything wrong with these things per se, but there's not a whole lot praiseworthy in them, either, except that they all denote the absence of something bad (rather than the presence of a good). Freedom is the absence of illegitimate coercion, but freedom means the freedom to be a dullard, parasite, or a miser just as much as it means the freedom to be a great teacher, artist, or philanthropist. And if freedom is elevated as the ultimate virtue by  the West -- as it is -- then neither outcome can be prized too highly above the other. We just have to be happy that at least people are free, even if they don't use that freedom to do anything worthwhile. Tolerance as a virtue means intolerance of those who are intolerant, and thus is a bit self-defeating, and more importantly requires making few-to-no judgments about what is virtuous and true, just as much as it means refraining from denouncing anything as wrong or wicked or undesirable (except trampling on the rights of someone, of course). Equality before the law -- and therefore the subsidence of racism and sexism -- is a good thing, but even this has a dark side. Namely, the subtle alchemy which transforms equality before the law (derived from the equality we have in the eyes of God) into the idea that we also have a right to equal results, which in turn creates a monstrous tyranny aimed at attempting to 'remedy' a veritable sea of existing 'inequities'.

If it were possible to tame our egregious social vices while replacing the void left by them with the more robust virtues of courage, humility, charity, justice, kindness etc. then I suspect we would be much better off, and Progress would truly be a reality. But this is simply an unrealistic denial of human nature. Everything has a price, and subduing our worst vices has also subdued our virtues. Of course, there's nothing stopping individuals from being virtuous in their personal lives, but there's also nothing systematic that is greatly encouraging it. The main point is that the values society at large promotes are really what tend to shape our lives, attitudes, and decisions in subtle ways. Which is why I'm sure we all know tons of tolerant people who greatly cherish their personal freedom, and abhor the mistreatment of others, but who don't have a strong moral compass beyond that. Not because these values are universal to humanity throughout history, but because they are the values our society most highly prizes and most vigorously promotes.

So while it's possible to plot a fairly steady reduction of certain kinds of evil in the world throughout history, unless you can plot the state of our goodness alongside it -- to say nothing of newer, more subtle evils that we may not recognize or be able to chart -- you are left with an incomplete picture. The conceit of progress is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Clearly history has arrived at the present, and since we are here occupying the present, and we like to fancy ourselves good, or intelligent, or enlightened, then history must have been building up to us. But this amounts to a tautology: we are here today and we value what we value. Of course if we had other values, say those of a 12th century European monk, then the 21st century America might appear quite horrific in many respects, with the 12th century appearing to be much better. This is not to deny the fruits of history, such as they are, only to say that progress is often an illusion born of confirmation bias.

I'm not suggesting, by the way, that I greatly desire history to have brought us to some other destination, or that I think the West should have substantially different values than it does have. The logic behind tolerance, freedom, and equality being our anchoring social mores is completely sound. I only mean to point out that the gains have associated costs, and that we shouldn't be so eager to buy wholeheartedly into the myth of progress.

Questions, Allegory, History and Genesis

I just read a provocative blog by Ron Offringa about the types of questions we should and shouldn't be asking. I think he makes a good point about secondary questions about the Biblical text displacing the more important, primary concerns. We certainly expend too much energy doing this when the most important things about the text are plain enough to all, and what we should generally be focused on as far as the text's significance and applicability to how we should live and what we should believe.

However, in his response to questions about Genesis he has done the very thing he is cautioning against when he asserts, fairly dogmatically, the way in which the Genesis accounts must be read, or at least can't be read. Yes, the Genesis creation account can be read as allegorical, or at least not as containing literal history or scientific truths, as many of the early church fathers read them. And certainly the authors of Genesis and other ancient Scriptures weren't consciously transmitting modern-scientific truths in their writings. But that doesn't mean the text could not contain truths that would only make sense in the light of modern science (unbeknownst to the author), though of course that still isn't the primary intention of the text. Which, as it happens, is what I hold to be the case. That is; that the events can be read as literal history, though not necessarily as literal 24-hour days.

The creation accounts, almost inexplicably, make near perfect sense in the light of modern science once certain things are accounted for (Hebrew 'day' can mean 'era'/'age', the perspective shift in Gen 1:2, etc.). This doesn't displace an allegorical reading as illegitimate, or alter the main point of the story at all, only reveals the perfection, infallibility and dynamism of God's word.

When the authors of biblical texts were writing, they didn't know how their writings would fit within the Biblical canon. And yet the texts take on greater, richer meanings within the canon, despite the fact that the authors had no clue this would happen and it was not part of their intention when writing. The texts enliven each other, give context to one another, and tell a fully formed narrative in a way that each author working separately, in his individual historical context, and solely in the light of their own conscious intentions never could accomplish. Only the Holy Spirit working through them, and within history, could accomplish this, which is why limiting the truths the Bible is allowed to reveal to those truths that reside in the conscious intentions of the authors working in their specific historical context is too restricting of a hermeneutic. Similarly the text can contain other types of truths -- such as scientific ones -- that have nothing to do with the author's conscious thoughts, historical context or intentions.

Modern science determined -- contrary to most educated belief throughout history -- that the universe has a definite beginning at a finite time in the past. The Bible is the only Holy book to make this very claim in multiple places, and big-bang cosmology has confirmed this is true. This is just one example, but they are numerous.

It is certainly very important to understand context and the author's intention and cultural differences when reading the texts. It's also important to realize that it is not only through the author's conscious thoughts that the Holy Spirit speaks through the text.

In any case, just because I hold this view I don't think that other views are completely untenable. For example, someone may hold that the Genesis text is meant to be taken allegorically and can not be reconciled as literal history in any sense. This, as Ron rightly pointed out, is a disagreement, but not one that should be elevated to a level of greater importance than those truths which are beyond dispute: God created the universe and saw that it was good, God created the universe for the main purpose of being the domain of man and giving him the gift of existence as an act of infinite grace, God made man in His likeness, man is now fallen and sinful which separates us from God etc.

While we should avoid unnecessarily rigid dogma on matters of relatively small importance, we also need to be wary of slipping into counter-dogmas of our own on those very same secondary matters.