Not My Objective

When Jesus came to the Temple, He was one of the few there who actually reached out and touched the extended hand of God.
Look what it got Him. They said He was crazy, had demons, and was a terrorist. He was executed for insurrection against the established order.
When people ask certain kinds of questions, I am likely to tell them to save themselves some time and simply regard me as an alien, a creature from outer space. I’m not actually an alien, but alienated. I don’t consider the world crazy, just badly broken and I’m trying to show there might be another way of looking at things.
The problem is I wind up having these conversations with my fellow Christians, the ones who should understand the symbolism of saying “not of this world.” I don’t expect pagans, secularists and other “sinners” to understand, but often they do better than the people who claim to follow Jesus. These days I am more hesitant to open my mouth in church than among the general public. Yesterday’s worship service was one of the moments when I was totally out of place among the Jesus People because I’m totally convinced they don’t understand certain things about Him.
As I’ve noted relentlessly, that’s because I say Western Christians are too Western, and Christianity is an Eastern Religion. Yesterday was a painful reminder, when I endured a message by someone who clings to the West. Worse, I could deconstruct his sermon to show how he clings to this world. This man apparently does not understand the meaning of “take up your cross.” He was too busy talking about success in this world. What part of dying unjustly in such a grisly execution, for daring to suggest the system was wrong, is “successful”? Jesus didn’t come to change the world. He came to prepare folks for the painful transition to some other realm of existence.
Today, a whole range of other religions are now infected with Western thought. How often do you find references to the Tetragrammaton? It can be traced to the period in Hebrew tradition after Judaism embraced Hellenistic rational structures, dismissing their ancient Hebrew Mysticism. Most references to the Tetragrammaton objectify the power of the letters of God’s name. In the ancient Hebrew Mysticism of the Bible, that would be ludicrous. His Name has power only because it is His name. If He were to arbitrarily choose some other name, it would be just as powerful. There is no particular power in the letters or their arrangement. It is Western epistemology which objectifies things like that.
To suggest parts of the Bible are allegory is also silly. Allegory is the West’s poor excuse for not grasping symbolic logic. In allegory, the elements of a narrative exhibit a one-to-one equation with something else recognized in more common terms. In Hebrew parabolic language, the elements in the narrative are alive. They are not confined to reason and analysis, but take on a different cast of meaning with each new context. Allegories have to be rewritten when you change the context; parables stay the same. Once again, it is the Western mind which demands things be objectified. It puts them under human control.
In Hebrew thinking, Truth is simply a nickname for God. Ancient Hebrews would never regard Truth as an entity separate from God. Truth cannot be objectified. Truth cannot exist apart from the Person who gives it meaning. Again, objectification is a Western obsession. Even though we tend to speak of God’s Laws as somewhat objectified, that’s only because the promises of the Laws are objective themselves, applying only to this realm below. The Laws themselves point to a higher domain of truth, with a living Justice which cannot be objectified. Justice can only be exemplified in Laws; the Laws are a parable.
Why it is so very many churches embrace what amounts to a Christian flavored Pharisaism escapes me. When the Jewish scholars embraced Hellenism’s analytical frame of reference, it became an excuse to place their fallen human intellect on the throne, and fulfill the ancient temptation: “you shall be like gods, judging what is good and evil” — that Boastful Pride of Life. They no longer had to rely on a God who remained incomprehensible, whose truth remains ineffable. It put them on the divine throne, and they got to say what God was, and who He was allowed to be. It was why they rejected Jesus, the Son of God; they had already passed judgment on God Himself. They didn’t simply make the Law of Moses their god, but some Hellenized analysis of that Law, which we now call the Talmud. Jesus rejected the Talmud as mere human reasoning, hardly on a par with any Scripture. That was precisely opposite of the Jewish claim the Talmud took precedence over Moses. The way Christians cling to their Aristotelian Systematic Theology, it’s just another Talmud, just another pile of human intellectual analysis more sacred to them than the actual Bible.
Unlike Jesus, no part of my calling includes debating the church officials in public, or even in private. If they didn’t get it the first time around back 2000 years ago, there’s not much I can do to help them now. What I can, I do; I write. I keep trying to find fresh ways to say something they have so far refused to hear. I’m more like some of the Old Testament prophets. I’ve been watching the storm clouds of God’s wrath on the horizon for some time. They don’t see them. Maybe I’m just a nut, after all, seeing something not actually there. Maybe not.
The way I see it, whatever bad which happens to the rest of Western Civilization, it’s going to be much worse for those who should know better, those we collectively call the Church.