Penal Substitutionary Atonement

Taking a break from the Bible, let’s have a chat with Jesus.
Intransitive Lie (IL): So thanks for sitting down with me.
Joshua ben Joseph (JC): Not a problem. I’m here for you.
IL: I’d like to pick your brain on the subject of penal substitutionary atonement.
JC: I can’t say that I dig it.
IL: So why did you die then?
JC: Because people are dicks.
IL: Interesting.
JC: Listen, I didn’t die for your sins. I died because of your sins, definitely, but not for your sins.
IL: So you weren’t the fulfillment of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac.
JC: When did God get the rep for being into human sacrifice? He said quite clearly after he tested Abe that he wasn’t into that. So why would he send me to be sacrificed.
IL: But then why did you die?
JC: Because people sin. Because the world sins. I died as a sacrifice, sure, but to sin, not to redeem sin. People back in the day weren’t ready for it.
IL: What?
JC: They weren’t ready to be free from sin, so they killed me. I hate to say it but if I came again they’d probably do the same thing. Forget the flaming swords and end times bullshit. I died because I love you so much, all of you sinful bastards, that I let you kill me because that’s how I roll. Love conquers hate. Love conquers death. But not because suddenly you no longer have original sin (which is a crock, by the way). I died because you met my love with hatred and death and you weren’t ready.
IL: So it was pointless then.
JC: Shit yeah it was pointless. I don’t mean my life or my teachings or my coming in the first place. That was point-full. But my death was horrible and painful and pointless, and through it all I still love you. God still loves you after you killed his only son (if you groove that way; me, I’m Jewish so I’m still waiting on the Messiah). That was my point. You can’t kill love, even if you try really, really hard, which you did, if you think about it. I was love, God is love, and you crucified me. Do you have any idea how horrible that is. You die hard when you get crucified, believe me.
IL: Oh I’ll take your word for it.
JC: But everyone dies hard. Nobody wants to die, unless they’re sick, in which case they need help, not death. I didn’t need to die. I could have happily kept preaching the good word and getting people to love one another.
IL: So all death is like yours?
JC: In a manner of speaking, although unless you’ve been crucified recently you can’t say it’s exactly like mine. But all death is the attempt to extinguish love. Life should be love. Death is just the last chapter there though; sin extinguishes love too. But by dying, I proved that love doesn’t. Sin and death can’t extinguish love. I loved you so much I forgave you even as I was dying really, really painfully (I can’t stress that enough).
IL: But what about folks who are ready for death or who look on it as a blessing?
JC: Some of them have figured it out. Death doesn’t win. Not if you love harder than you die. Some of them are just looking for an end, and like I said it would be awesome if they got an end to what is making them suffer rather than having to die, but God knows how it is and sometimes…
IL: So suicide isn’t a one-way ticket to Hell?
JC: What’s Hell?
IL: You know, Hell.
JC: Hell is existence without love. People who commit suicide frequently feel like they’re already in Hell, or they have so much suffering it’s hard to see the love. But I’m here to tell you that death doesn’t win, so if death doesn’t win, how can you wind up in Hell unless you put yourself there?
IL: So you didn’t go through Hell and redeem souls?
JC: I didn’t? I was all alone, dying harder than John McClane ever did, and it seemed like even God had forsaken me. My own father, if you think of it like that, since God is everyone’s father (I said it, I really did, no matter how hard people like to think otherwise). My family had deserted me. My brothers and sisters, my father, everyone. How is that not Hell? And yet love stayed with me, because that’s what redeems souls.
IL: What about the resurrection? Wasn’t that proof of God’s redeeming love?
JC: No, that was proof of your redeeming love. You couldn’t abandon me forever. My brothers couldn’t, my sisters couldn’t. And God never abandoned me in the first place. Did I rise from the dead or did your love triumph over your sin? Think about it.
IL: Anything else you’d like to say on the subject?
JC: People who want me to be a sacrifice are looking for an out. I called on all of you to be a sacrifice because only by self-sacrifice can you hope to win. It’s not about dying for the cause or for God. It’s about doing the hard thing. Love isn’t easy. Sin and death are easy, but love is hard, harder than dying the hardest you can die. If you can keep that love and live it, you don’t need me to be a lamb to the slaughter for you. I loved hard. Love as hard as I did and maybe you’ll die, sure, or maybe you’ll live hard. But love will win. That’s what I’m all about. Love wins.

Holy Moly: My Brother’s Keeper

So Cain and Abel bring gifts to God and God plays favorites once again.  Poor Cain, bringing wheat to a fatted lamb fight.

“I am not my brother’s keeper,” is perhaps the most important part of this story. Remember those words, because Cain says them. Cain the fratricide, the primordial bad guy, the first murderer, says them. Not some good guy who is saying something pleasing to God.

So what can we take from this? A list of genealogy and a desire to sacrifice fat to God rather than the fruits of the soil (I’d like to believe Cain showed up with some turnips, personally)? Yes, that’s what folks for thousands of years have been getting out of Genesis 4.  And it certainly sets a precedent to hate the descendants of Cain (who are, I should point out, not vampires). We even get the terrific name Tubal-Cain to use as a Masonic symbol.

But that’s not the important thing.

“I am not my brother’s keeper,” is synonymous with, “I killed my brother.”  So if you say it, you’re identifying with murder.

Holy Moly: The Fall

Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.

Pretty strong meat from the Lord there. Let’s back up.

The serpent (not, I would like to point out, the Devil, who appears in Paradise Lost) talks Eve into eating from the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil. She, in turn, tells Adam to eat. Bam. The Fall.

I’m not here to justify this passage. Sure, it’s all allegory and myth. But seriously, fuck God. Ephraim, who has since been to some Lib meetings, is pretty ashamed of how the whole thing plays out. “Sure, we could have said that because Adam and Eve ate the fruit they were cursed, Eve to suffer the pain of birth, Adam to suffer the pain of working for his food. Sexist, but not that sexist. But no, we had to include this part:”

Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.

At its heart, the whole thing is about adulthood. Adam and Eve are children, eating for free, roaming around shamelessly naked, cared for by their awesome Father figure. Then they grow up, gain knowledge than cannot be ungained, and have to deal with the fact that it’s not all Eden in life. Why? Because this story. Just so.

But there are problems. The Fall is portrayed as being humanity’s fault, like perpetual childhood is something in which God would want humans to stay. Not much free will there, amiright? I guess God gave them free will to listen to the serpent.

From a mythical standpoint, it’s perfectly fine to have forbidden knowledge: Pandora (not the streaming music service) anyone? But usually either the knowledge is the curse or there’s some positive part of the knowledge or both. Pandora keeps hope in the box. What do Adam and Eve get?

See, legalism again: break God’s rules and get a good smiting. Never mind that knowing good and evil is a bit of a curse in and of itself; without knowledge of good and evil, everything is good.

And why couldn’t the serpent have tricked Eve into eating the fruit from the tree of life? God would be pissed but we’d all live forever.

This part doesn’t sit well with me. I want a rewrite, more progressive, and less with God cursing and more with God being disappointed that God can’t keep God’s children safe and children forever.

And that’s all you’re getting on the Fall.

Holy Moly: Two Beginnings?

Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done. Gen 2:1-3

This can only be explained as the writer being lazy and sticking a paragraph of the previous chapter at the beginning… wait, Ephraim is telling me that the original writers of the Torah didn’t come up with the chapter headings. So… someone in the middle ages fucked up royal, huh?

Why break the chapters like this? Could it be to make it so that it doesn’t seem quite as much like two different origin stories hastily cobbled together? To make Adam and Steve… sorry, Eve, seem like part of the previous story?

Adam and Eve

So here we are, where we all want to be, Genesis 2 (the not-scribal-error part). We don’t know what day it is because, well, it’s a different story. Don’t let anyone tell you differently. Adam and Eve are to “the six days of creation” what Khepri the creator is to Atum the creator: both of the latter are creation myths by the same culture that lasted thousands of years, and both can coexist happily, but neither have to be part of the other for it to work. So it is with Genesis 1 and 2.

Genesis 1 tells the story of creation, the genesis of the world if you will. Human beings are put on the world but other than “Get fuckin’!” they don’t get much air time. So now we’re going to trace the roots of the chosen people way, way back to the father of it all, Adam, whose name means “The Man,” by the by. He’s the primeval man. And his creation from dust is very, very similar to the creation myths of numerous other Middle Eastern cultures, except for some reason without the whole jacking off onto the dust to make mud aspect of things. Ephraim tells me they discussed that but wanted to avoid a hard R rating.

So God makes Adam, and he’s obviously a chosen guy because God made him told him to give names to things; which, as we saw in Genesis 1, is a pretty big deal. I can’t help but wonder what would have happened had Adam decided to name everything “Burton Q. Lindquist Jr.” but that’s neither here nor there. God is on the hunt for a partner for Adam, so Adam gets to name everything.

Here’s where a culture which placed value in a particular animal might have changed this myth. Say the Israelites had placed particular value in goats, for instance. Then God would have gone looking for a partner for the primeval man and when God brought forth the goats to be named, that would have been the partnership. And maybe the whole thing with the Fall and ancient mysoginy would have wound up differently.

But the ancient authors of this myth wanted to make it pretty clear that only woman was fit to be a partner to man. Now, let’s acknowledge the elephant in the room: this is a Just-So story about how men and women came to get together, and it rather places women in the subservient role in the relationship. “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.” And that’s how the leopard got his spots. Woman is part of man, she is his helpmeet, etc.

But think about it for a minute based on what I just said: no other partner for man would do than woman. It’s an acknowledgment that human relationships are going to be paramount to this particular story, the story of the chosen people, not the story of the chosen people and also their goats. Livestock are important, but husband and wife are one fucking flesh, yo.

And nowhere does God say, “And by the way, only a man and a woman can do this; if you’ve got two dudes screwing, forget it, out of the pool, I’m tearing it down and starting over. Two chicks doing it is totally cool though, as long as they’re hot.” God just says, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” Man does pretty much all the talking, and it’s clear he’s straight, so when he says that’s how it is, take that as how he thinks it should be, not how God says. Adam’s doing all the naming in this chapter anyway, and God lets him, but God doesn’t say it’s all correct, just that if that’s the name Adam decides on, that’s the name he decides on.

In all seriousness, I don’t want this to all be about liberal theology. The men (pretty much all men) writing the Bible were living in a time when things were a certain way. Moving on.

Holy Moly: In the Beginning

I'm embarking on a little project inspired by some far better folks. I'll be reading through the Bible, bit by bit, tackling it as it comes, speaking with my various sources, and just generally cutting it to pieces. Because it's a book. I promise you'll find something in here by which to be scandalized. Get that out of the way. No, I'm not going after the Bible as a book of history and tearing it down. No, I don't believe it's the inerrant word of God, any more than my conversations with God are. God doesn't err, but humans do plenty of that to make up for it.

So, without further ado...

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In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. Gen 1:1-2 NIV

Let's get this out of the way: I don't read Hebrew. I'm not using the KJV here, although sometimes I might. I'm going for the NIV because it's a neutral territory.

This is one, count 'em, one of the two creation stories in the beginning of Genesis. Genesis means creation, so why isn't the whole thing taken up with what seems like a pretty darned important story: that first sentence there. We want God to go all Minecraft on shit. We want to hear the precise recipe used to create the heavens and the earth. And where was God before all this went down?

But Genesis is about how the chosen people (not Christians, for those keeping score at home) came to be the chosen people. And the writers of Genesis pretty much threw up their hands and said, "Fuck it, He's God, He did it, who are we to argue?"  I spoke with Ephraim, who sat on the committee, and he said to me, "Look, we weren't setting out to make a scientific account of things. That the universe was created was the important thing at the time. If we'd known you would all be taking our work as science, we probably would have said something about the Big Bang."

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day. Gen 1:3-5 NIV

I think you'll agree that light is a pretty important first step. We can't see without light, even if there isn't anything to see. I find it interesting that God created the heavens and the earth first, then created light. It shows that the writers were pretty sure that light couldn't exist without something to shine on. We now know this is bullshit.  But they did get the fact that darkness is merely an absence of light correct, so kudos to them.

The order of creation here is really more fascinating than my flip observation above. There was a period of time when the earth, without form though it was, existed without the traditional observations of time. No light means no cycle of day and night, which was only created after God brought it into existences later in the passage. So how long was it? It's traditional to lump all of the stuff prior to "the first day" into one day, but that's utter crap: evening and then morning constituted the first day, and all of that takes place after God creates the earth, light, and names day and night.

Also notice (I only did after thinking about it) that the day cycle is evening-morning, not the other way around. Which means that not until God turned out the lights for the first time did time start cycling. Also, how hopeful is the thought that the day may start out dying but it's reborn before the end. I like that thought. It's not about Jesus; these folks were writing way, way before that was a thought. But I like the idea that day follows night, not that night follows day.

I don't know about you, but I love the magic of Genesis 1. God gives form to things by speaking them. To jump way ahead, in the beginning was the word. Words give humans power over things; we can name and therefore identify, count, segregate, and even specify the future of things because we name them. What else could writers of a sacred text do but believe that their words were small echoes of the primal creative force of the God who spoke things into being?

The idea is hardly unique to Judeo-Christian religious types either. The Egyptians believed that hieroglyphs (from the Greek for holy marks or letters) were magical writing, creative symbols which brought that which they represented to life.  In fact, anywhere there is writing, there is a creative impulse. Only by defacing or destroying the symbols can you destroy. That's pretty fucking neat, when you think about it.

And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. God called the vault “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day. Gen 1:6-8 NIV

Here we go a bit off the rails again, because we all know there's no great ocean above the sky, don't we? Unless you take it a bit more figuratively (that's a word I like to use a lot when talking about the Bible) in which case, hell yes, let's have some Steampunk up in this bitch and picture God creating some mighty sky-craft that ply the spaceways between worlds and hunt mighty Leviathan in the deep reaches of the cosmos.

Or we could just take Ephraim's word that it was just a metaphor, and how were ancient Jews supposed to know what space was like anyway? Look up. Doesn't that look like a giant vaulted ceiling to you? Me too. Fair enough. No illithids in the Pentateuch.  Not that it wouldn't have been better with them included.  Look for that in a few thousand years.

And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.

Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day. Gen 1:9-13 NIV

I don't get into the Bible as science; it's not. But notice how they don't get it too far from wrong sometimes.

Note also that when God says it, it happens just like God says. The authors are very, very interested in you knowing this. God's word is the way things happen. Remember that. Much more important than which day had which thing in it.

But notice also that God says it, it happens, and then God sees it. We'll come back to that.

And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day. Gen 1:14-19 NIV

We finally get around to a source for light. Whoa, messed up, right? Or could it be that obviously there's light which comes from the sun and moon and stars but also from firelight, from ambient light, from reflections, from the light inside all of us? Deep, man.

Also here we get some timekeeping proper.  Because what if you fell asleep and woke up and didn't know what day it was?  Light-dark-light-dark is a good way to tell whether it's day or not, but not what day.  And even back then, on day 4 (God can count them because God is God) God is thinking about sacred times. Judaism is big on sacred times. Could be that's why it's mentioned so prominently.

And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.” So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day. Gen 1:20-23 NIV

They get the seas right but the birds a bit off.  Can you really blame them? Seems like they're homing in on something.

God's big on being fruitful and multiplying. God wants the animals to be happy.  I like that.

And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so. God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. Gen 1:24-25 NIV

 Even at this early stage, the Linnaean impulse to taxonomy is strong. We've got swimming things, flying things, livestock, slithering things, and wild animals. Not awful, although is a lizard a wild animal, a slithering thing, or a swimming thing? "Not the fucking point," said Ephraim, and he's right.

You can see where folks who believe this stuff is science might get mighty screwed up and believe things like spontaneous generation.  If the land produces living creatures, where's the sex? I guess the swimming things and birds get to get their freak on at all times with divine sanction, but land-dwellers have to arise from dung heaps and rotten meat.  Yet another example of biblical prudishness, I guess.  Or I could be reading too much into this. Ephraim says I am.

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. Gen 1:26-27 NIV

 Holy shit, wait a minute. Male and female he created them? I thought it was Adam, and then Eve was his rib, and anyway there are no indications we're only getting two of the little bastards.

Wait for it.

The "rule over" part is worrisome except it isn't. This isn't the Bible according to slithering things. This is the Bible written by ancient mankind-be-ers (humans?) which means of course they get created last and they get to lord over the rest of creation.

Let's skip that part and look at the real emphasis here, repeated twice: you're created in God's image.

I could spend probably the rest of my life talking about that, but it only becomes really important later on.  Right now, it's just important that you know that you're special.

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so. Gen 1:28-30 NIV

Interesting observations: we're all supposed to be vegetarians, God speaks to us, and God wants us to
be happy and make with the fuckin'!

Let's tackle that middle point. God speaks to us. How amazing is that shit? But he spoke to the other creatures too. Food for thought there.

God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day. Gen 1:31 NIV

And on the seventh day he rested... wait, where's that part?

Wait for it.

We now circle back around to God speaking, it happening, and God seeing it. What does that mean? I choose to believe that it means that while God can create, God makes it so that things don't just happen well. God is pleased with God's creation, but for more reasons than just pride of creation. Six days have gone by and things are going well. God named things and gave them instructions, but those things went off and did well by themselves, and God saw that it was very good. That's heartening. It's also terrifying. Free will is like that.

But more than that, God sees that creation is good. That's important. It didn't end, "And God saw that he'd royally fucked up with the platypus and also that the insects were fucking creepy, and he would have trashed the whole thing but he was tired and feeling like a good stiff drink, so he left it and went off somewhere else to get smashed."  God takes an active interest in creation, but God is pleased, and God is only pleased because creation turned out well, not because it turned out according to God's design. God is stepping back, taking a gander at the canvas, and saying, "Holy Moly, that worked out better than I thought it would."

Heartening thought, that.  Sometimes shit works out to be very good.

God is Love

“No one shows greater love than in laying down one’s life for one’s friends.”  John 15:13

You've probably heard that one.  “Greater love hath no man…”  It’s catchy, even if you take out King James and the sexism of the language and the poetry and reduce it to, as John says, “Self-sacrifice for your friends is the highest form of love.”

He’s wrong though.  Self-sacrifice for your friends does indeed show your great love for them, but try sacrificing yourself for your enemies.  Jesus was hardcore.  Dying for your friends is easy; what about doing something really hard like living through torture and pain for them.

“Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.”  It is right and fitting to die for one’s country.  Jesus didn’t say that, by the way, despite what some people might think.  Nor did he say, “You don’t win a war by dying for your country; you win by making the other poor bastard die for his.”  Neither did Patton, although it’s a good line.

Jesus said you have to turn the other cheek, love your enemies, and die for people who hate you.

Soldiers tend to take Horace and jam it together with John and apocryphal Patton and come up with, “The best thing you can do is to die while fighting for your country alongside your friends.”  Jesus wouldn’t touch that one with a ten-foot pole.

Remember the line that comes before that one in John 15. “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.”  Not, “Fight on!”  Not, “Defend each other with your lives!”  Just, “Love each other.”

I’m reminded of another great pair of theologians who, after considering the wealth of knowledge the world has created and the great thinkers of all time, were able to sum up the greatest commandments as follows: “Be excellent to each other and party on, dudes!”  I don’t want to put too fine a point on that, but looking at it, you’ll notice one thing: there’s no mention of dying.  In fact, you can’t continue being excellent to each other, to say nothing of partying, if you’re dead.

So is it the greatest love to die?  True, if given a choice between your own death and that of your friends, the loving thing to do is to choose to die yourself.  But is it the highest calling of love?

Love is patient, or so Paul told the Corinthians in one of my favorite parts of the Bible.  “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”  Surprisingly, Paul didn’t go on to say, ‘Oh, also, all of that is good, but dying is better.  Love dies for what it loves.”  No, Paul’s love is in for the long haul.  Always… always… always… always.  Not, “until it’s called upon to die for its friends at which point it can stop because that’s the big enchilada.”

A lot of Christians go in for plenary substitution, the idea that Jesus died to save us.  It’s us he’s talking to in John 15, they say.  We’re supposed to love each other because he died for us.  He died for our sins.  He was a sacrifice to an angry God… who so loved the world that he somehow caused himself to be born from a virgin and then suffer and die to placate his own wrath.  That’s love, right?  Maybe the Holy Ghost somehow makes it fit together better.  The Trinity is mysterious, right?

But they must be right, because that’s what’s in the Bible.  Jesus died for your sins.  It’s right there in black and white, right there in that passage surrounding John 3:16.  “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”  Right there… in between the words somehow.  "For God so loved the world that he gave his son so his son could die for you.”  Right?

No, that’s not what it says.  It says God loved the world so much that Jesus was sent to save the world.  Through him, it says, through belief in this savior, death will have no power.  Dying for love won’t mean anything because love doesn’t want death.  Love doesn’t die.  Love is eternal.  Believe in love and it won’t end like this.

Jesus died.  That’s a pretty inescapable spoiler in the New Testament.  But then he wasn’t dead; that’s a harder thing to grasp.  Except he told you exactly what that means.  “...that whoever believes in him shall not perish…”  Love doesn’t die.  That takes some belief; Jesus not dying takes a fair amount too.  But our own love never dies either, even as we do.  No one has come back and proved that; in fact, you can’t really prove, “never,” or, “always.”  But Jesus is asking for your belief in love’s eternal power.  Jesus is asking you to spend your entire life living on Good Friday but to believe that Easter Sunday always follows.

Sure, some people latched onto the Good Friday part and became convinced that that was what this Jesus guy was all about.  Good Friday, death, dying, sacrifice: that’s love to these people.  Jesus’ power was in dying, because that was how he showed his great love for us, his power.  God died.  Love died.  And it’s hard to fault them for thinking that, because we’re living on Good Friday.  And it corrupts their thinking until they believe that pain and suffering are a good thing, that that’s what God wants from them, that that’s the best way to love God.  “Offer it up,” they say as they earnestly believe that Jesus wants to take their lives.

But that’s not what he said.  He said, “Love one another as I have loved you.”  Not, “die for one another as I have died for you.”  Not, “die for me as I have died for you.”  Not, “suffer for me as I have suffered for you.”  He doesn’t ask us to do anything but love each other.  “Be excellent to each other,” he might have said had he shown up in San Dimas instead of Abraham Lincoln (that’s not a stretch, is it?).

Love doesn’t die.  Love is eternal.  Believe in that and you shall not pass away.  Believe in Easter Sunday.  Believe that love goes on, because that will save you.  That will make your love powerful.  That will bring you closer to God.

Balance

I never promised that I wouldn't talk about things which were a little off the beaten path, although in this case I promise that there is an applicable point to the discussion and not just esoterica about fictional things.

Let's talk about Star Wars. I'm not ashamed any more; Star Wars is a touchstone of culture, and even if you don't like it, you probably know it.  Geeks are out of the closet. N.B. Geeks, I'm going to talk about the prequels, but I'm not doing a movie review, I'm just using it to illustrate a point.

In case you don't know, or in case you weren't paying attention, or in case you need to know what I'm doing with it, the Jedi are basically a combination of kung fu and Zen monks with a bit of the X-Men thrown in there for good measure, because unfortunately, not everyone can become a Jedi.  The reasons why don't matter.  And because they've got the whole "Eastern mysticism" thing going on, they deal in emotions.  But because they're not Zen monks, they don't want you to give up all emotions.  Just "fear, anger, agression," and a bunch of other ones as circumstances permit.  Never mind that you can beat the ever-living fuck out of someone with a sword made of lasers; as long as you do it with sweetness and light in your heart, you're okay.

But if you stub your toe and make a table explode with your mind because you're sick and tired of your damn roommate moving his furniture into places it shouldn't belong and then you take all the splinters and drive them, one by one, into your roommate's face until he looks like a poster for Hellraiser... apparently that's not the good stuff.  The "Force" gives you phenominal cosmic power, but the second you start using it for evil, you're in the Dark Side of the Force, and you'll end up creating a machine which destroys your enemies and is powered by the sadness of kittens.

The real bitch of it is that if you see a mugger robbing an old lady and you think to yourself, "Mace H. Windu, I've had it with all this fucking crime.  You know what?  I'm going to blow that motherfucking mugger up!"  And you cackle with glee as you create an arcing blast of energy which causes the mugger to explode in a fine mist of blood and gristle, which you then cause to spell out your name on the pavement... turns out that, even though stopping an old lady from being mugged isn't evil, and you're still on the Dark Side because you were angry and aggressive.

Now I'll agree in the last example that the Jedi are probably right and making a mugger explode, no matter what the motivation, is probably not good.  But if you get just as angry, but you use the power of your mind to make the mugger give the purse back, then drop his pants and demand a spanking, while no one would think that that was unjust punishment (well, maybe the mugger) the Jedi would still mark you down for a black facemask and James Earl Jones voice because you were doing it with anger and aggression.

But I'm not really interested in arguing their relative morality in this case.  Fine, so they consider why you do something before judging it good or bad; I think that's perfectly valid.  That I don't agree with their judgments doesn't make their methods wrong.  No, what I want to discuss is the fact that, as a religion, the Jedi are seriously out of whack when it comes to this Dark/Light Side business, and I think it bleeds over into real life, as well as being a pretty good reasony why they failed as a religion/temple/organization/School For The Gifted.

Jedi are either Light Side or Dark Side.  And as Yoda says, "Once you start down the Dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny."  Which means that, as a young Jedi, you get mad at your roommate and, rather than making his head explode, you make him punch himself in the nuts repeatedly.  Oops, sorry, that's Dark Side nut-punching, and now you're screwed and should start picking out a nifty Darth name.

I'm not a fan of the prequels, which is hardly a radical statement to make.  But I think the redeeming factor, the reason that the prequels can exist for me, is the prophecy of which Anakin is supposed to be the fulfillment.  I say that with a degree of self-deprecation because the prophecy is, under any scrutiny, simply something George Lucas threw in to justify anyone giving a good Goddamn about Anakin in the first place.  Sure, he's got lots of Force, but big deal.  But if he's going to be the prophecy messiah One, then there's some reason for him to be involved in big things.  It's crap.  So it's in spite of, rather than because of, George Lucas' reasons (I'd give him the benefit of the doubt, but why?) that I have this belief.

Most people probably either dismiss the "prophecy" as I did above (it's certainly not mentioned as much after the first one) or believe that the Jedi Council got it wrong and that Luke is Jesus instead (which is rather like the wise men screwing up and giving Joseph the frankincense).  There's a case to be made for that, I suppose, if one cares to make it.  If one regards the prequels as a bad dream and sticks to the legitimate movies, it's clearly Luke's story, and he clearly gets to be the Jesus figure.  The problem with this interpretation is that it ignores the prequels, which, bad as they are, do exist, and if you're going to deal with the prophecy you have to deal with the prequel from whence it cometh.  Also, if you look at Luke, he does sweet fuck all to be Jesus after the first movie.  Which is why people are so confused by Return of the Jedi (that and the Ewoks).  They want Luke to be the savior, but he gets his ass handed to him and has next to nothing to do with the Rebellion's victory in the battle with the second Death Star.  Sure, he's tangentially involved with the death of the Emperor, but the Empire was losing before the Emperor died.  He would have been blown to stellar dust along with everyone else had Luke not been there.  Yes, there is value in distraction, but Luke didn't go there be a diversion.  He went to try to convince Darth Vader to turn away from the Dark Side...

Hand on; we'll come back to that because it's important.

The other issue, aside from the fact that the prophecy thing is weak tea at best, is that "balance" is a pretty loaded term here.  If you've got a system of dichotomy, where good and evil, light and dark, or whatever opposites you use, are at the ends of the scale, fantasy epics seem enamored with the idea that there needs to be "balance," like good needs evil in order to exist.  I'm not sure why all fantasy religions are dualist almost to the point of Manichaeism in this way, but whatever the reason, it's usually an incredibly unsophisticated dualism.  I'm not going to debate moral dualism in religion, but if your religion requires Hitler in order to have Gandhi, there's something wonky.  So to think that "balance" between Light and Dark is a good thing smacks of the same thinking, one which would say that in order for the Jedi Light to shine, it needs to have Darkness in which to do so.  Which means that, deep down, the Jedi need Darths or they can't be good, and that by eliminating (or at least driving underground) the Sith, they have opened themselves up to the rot that destroys them.

Bullshit.

The rot that brings down the Jedi isn't corruption or a lack of evil for them to be good against.  It's not possible to be "too good."  If you're "too good" then what you're calling "good" isn't good.  Good is the thing of which you can never have enough. Note that I'm not talking about piety or lawfulness or any of that.  Hell, even things which would be hard to argue aren't good can be, if they result in bad things happening.  There's always room for more good; there's always a way you can take what you're doing and make it better.

No, the Jedi's problem of balance is that they won't let you be anything less than perfectly good.  A little introspection is a healthy thing, but to be a Jedi you either have to live in constant fear that everything you're doing is just one more link in some kind of Jacob-Marley-esque chain, if Jacob Marley had wound up as a Force ghost trying to keep Darth Scrooge from winding up in a black mask.  And even that doesn't work because in order for Marley-wan Jacobi to prevent Scrooge from turning to the Dark Side, he'd have to go back in time to a time before Marley was dead because by the time Marley was able to intercede, Scrooge would have been well and truly Darthed.  Not to mention that Darth Scrooge is not a name that any self-respecting Darth would take.  He'd probably be Darth Moneygrubber or something like that.

In short, to bring this discussion to a place where it's more than an esoteric discussion from the nerdery, the Jedi have a problem with redemption.  They're clearly not Calvinists because they don't believe in predestination ("Always in motion is the future.").  But they clearly haven't been thinking their own theology through, because if what they say is right, ain't a single Jedi getting into Jedi Heaven, or Nivana, or whatever.  If they were Buddhists, they would definitely be of the Theravadan pursuasion, hard-core, because not only are no non-Jedi getting into Jedi Paradise but most Jedi aren't either.

Which rather goes contrary to the whole philosophy of the Force being everything.  Sure, the Jedi are good at making the Force do things for them, but that shouldn't make them any more or less "Force-beings" than anyone else.  And there's no Karmic wheel of rebirth to speak of, so it's not like they're going through lives to perfect themselves.  Yoda doesn't say anything like, "Luke, dying am I; back to the Force Wheel am I going where hopefully in my next life, less Dark Side will I be.  If lucky you are, born as less of a dumbass will you be the next time reborn are you."  Plus, rather gives the edge to Jedi who happen to come from races that don't live 900 years.

So the Jedi are getting it wrong, and not because they need more evil, but because they don't want you to ever fuck up.  Get pissed off at your roommate and restrain yourself to making him give himself only one sharp punch to the sack?  Too bad; we're not Catholics up in here.  Confession is something you shouldn't do because then we'll probably throw you out and/or do unpleasant things to ensure that when you inevitably become Darth Nadbreaker, you'll have a hard time doing anything bad from inside a black hole (that, at any rate, is how I'd solve the problem).

It's fascinating that Evil usually has a much better performance policy.  If you're good and you lose it and punch a few nuts, you get to spend a lot of time thinking about how sorry you are for what you've done, in the best case.  If you're evil and one day you feel like letting a cute bunny live, your supervisor rarely writes you up and makes you say 10 Kill Marys* and 20 Our Dark Lords.  Evil usually wants you to be Evil when they want you to be Evil, but in your spare time, you can do whatever, as long as you're not actively hurting Evil.  Good generally doesn't want you to do anything not Good, even when no one's watching and you haven't had sex in decades.  Not a good recruiting strategy: "Be a Jedi! Come be trained to have all kinds of cool powers except the really cool ones, then never use any of your powers or think naughty thoughts."  Versus the Sith: "Join the Sith! Whatever the fuck you want! Yeah, we're allowed to swear, use force lightning, and have sexual encounters the likes of which you wouldn't believe even if you'd seen them, but you'll have them if you just get on board with the whole 'anger' thing."

Plus, there's no retention policy: "Be a Jedi! Unless you screw up at all, in which case your two options are death or Darth, though we recommend death." "Sith! Where all Jedi eventually wind up unless they live a lie, and who really wants to do that?"

Anyway, back to the point of discussion.  The Force doesn't need balance.  The Jedi need redemption, and not that the organization needs to be redeemed, but that they need to have a concept of forgiveness, atonement, redemption, what have you.  And I would argue that, if you watch the movies the way Lucas wants you to watch them, the inescapable fact is that Anakin Skywalker is the fulfillment of that prophecy, even if it's a bit late for most of the Jedi.  Because who else brings balance to the Force?

It's not Yoda.  Yoda goes down believing the same crap he always did.  It's just possible that maybe he should have gone into the Cave of Unpleasant Personal Knowledge himself, because I imagine it would have shown him rejecting Jedi after Jedi, all of whom turned to the Dark Side.  And the sad thing is, he'd probably see that and think, "Gee, why is it showing me this?  They turned, I rejected them, they went full-on Sith.  QED." (Yoda talks normally in his own head).  But maybe the cave would have made him see that the Jedi he was rejecting was himself, over and over, for things he'd actually done.  Maybe he would have seen that taking responsibility is important, and that maybe, hiding in a swamp waiting for Jesus to show up isn't what makes you John the Motherfucking Baptist (a 1976 Blacksploitation film starring Rosie Greer as Salome and Cleavon Little as JTMF Baptist).

Nor is it Obi Wan, who may be a Force ghose but should probably be accompanied by several lawyers indicating that the statements of Mr. Kenobi do not reflect his opinion or that of anyone else.  He spends the entire first movie being the worst teacher ever (one wonders how Vader got to be any good at all, but let's be generous and assume that Kenobi's just a little Rusti-Wan) and lying to Luke about almost everything.  Sure, Luke is a snotty little shit and he's acting like every single spoiled kid ever who winds up in a karate class where the teacher actually cares about more than just kicking through boards, but if you're training David, when it turns out that you're going to hit the Goliath stage of things a little ahead of schedule and that Goliath is actually a giant ball of death, maybe now is not that time to continue with your "Philosophy of Slingshots 101" course.

Be that as it may, Obi Wan has a chance to realize his mistake.  He betrayed his friend, his brother, his student, and quite possibly the only person he ever cared about, in service of an ideal which is short-sighted and flawed. If there was ever a time when you say, "Hmmmm, maybe I need to get writing on 65 or so theses to nail to the door of a Jedi temple somewhere," I'd say it would be right about when the Jedi tell you to betray your friend for nothing more than being young.  Because, let's face it, while the Jedi want to get 'em young so they can properly indoctrinate them while they don't have enough cognitive development to question the intelligence of the rules, they also then release onto the world what are essentially teenagers with raging erections and abstinence-only sexual educations.  If your training in how to be good consists of "Don't be bad," then you need to update the manual a bit.

So Obi Wan gets his chance, and it looks like he's going to learn something, but instead of apologizing (yes, I know, at this point George Lucas didn't have the whole back story figured out and Vader was just supposed to be the Big Bad) and saying that he deserves whatever Vader wants to do to him, Obi Wan makes with the cryptic and vanishes into a puff of smoke so he can go on giving Luke bad advice and lying to him.  "So what I told you was true, from a certain point of view."  No.  No it wasn't.  It made you seem like less of a dick, and since you never actually told Luke the whole truth even when you finally owned up to your lie, he still had to figure out the whole "maybe I can bring my father back" thing for himself.

The paralells between Jedi training and abstinence-only sex-ed are getting more and more staggering.  "Oh, I'll lie and tell my [child/padawan] that [sex/the Dark Side] with [anyone but your spouse/your not-really-dead father] will give you [hyper-electro-AIDS and also ruin your life/either dying or winding up ruining everything], and there's no way my [child/padawan] will learn the truth [on the street from kids only slightly more knowledgable/his not-really-dead father] and wind up [having sex/trying to take on the Emperor] without [protection or any idea of how to have a good experience/knowing that maybe there's a reason why I didn't want him to learn to fly by jumping off the Empire State Building].  That's the only way to keep my [child/padawan] [pure/from breaking a rule which actually sort of needs to be broken]."  What happens?  Luke hears about sex from Vader, winds up knocking up his sister and scarring both of them for life, and Obi Wan doesn't get to be a Force ghost voyeur when Luke has all the crazy Jedi sexy times that he otherwise might have had.  Something like that.

I'd like to think that Obi Wan and Yoda both learn the error of their ways when Anakin shows up at the end.  They don't seem surprised to see him, so maybe he showed up to them first and let them know.  Maybe he let all the dead Jedi know, because the dead Jedi, right or wrong, surely didn't bring balance to the force.  They didn't do bad things, any more than Yoda and Obi Wan can be blamed for their complicity in the Jedi system to a point.  But the rest of the Jedi Council and the Jedi of the galaxy who were snuffed out by the Dark Side certainly didn't do good.  They died in the fight against a monster they created, and while that's fitting, it's merely fitting.

And lastly, Luke didn't bring balance to the Force.  He helped, sure, but if he had died and then Vader and the Emperor had gone up with the Death Star, no Force balance would have happened.  He turned away from the Dark Side, but in his case that was a bit like looking down the path and deciding that, tempting or not, the other path was a better one.  He might have taken a step or two, and that he was able to turn back is commendable and certainly not something the Jedi of old would have been able to countenance, but he still was only affirming that it takes more than just not being evil to be good, and that he wanted to be good.

Here's where people have a problem with Return of the Jedi (aside from Ewoks).  Many people think that Luke is a failed messiah because he doesn't get to sacrifice himself for his friends.  He does very little, in the grand scheme of things; he finally sees himself, recognizes his past failings, and renounces them, but then he gets his ass handed to him by the Emperor.  Lesson?  Don't jump off the Empire State Building?  He should have, in letting go of hatred, tossing aside his weapon and renouncing the Dark Side, somehow defeated evil by his very sacrifice.

But the secret (perhaps even to George Lucas himself, because chances are extremely good that this interpretation is only possible because Lucas steals from good sources) is that the story isn't about him, and never has been.  He just has to be there to see Jesus.  He goes through Hell and comes out the other side, but he's not the one the story needs to sacrifice.  If he dies, he can't take the balance and bring it to everyone else.  He can't take this new reconcilliation and spread it if he explodes or is incinerated by evil for no good reason.  He must be there at Golgotha (yes, I am full-on going there) and then he has to survive, even if it means he doesn't share in the glory.  He has to see the resurrection on the moon of Endor as he burns his father's armor.

Because Anakin is the Messiah, the One, the fulfillment of the prophecy, the one who brings redemption.  He is so far down the Dark Path that not only is it dominating his destiny, it's probably somehow leeching back into the past and dominating that as well.  No, he's not the Emperor (can Satan be redeemed, or is irredeemability part of what makes one Satan?) but he's as close as it gets.  And rather than sticking to what he knows is true and realizing that there's no hope for him, that he made a mistake and can never come back from it, he says "Fuck it," and turns around anyway.  Maybe he doesn't know he's turning.  Maybe he just thinks he's going to save his son and then die trapped in the Dark Side forever.  But he still turns.

In the end, that's what's important.  People think that, if you've done bad things, you have to feel bad and sorry and apologize sincerely and only then can you be forgiven.  But it's what you do that matters.  Even if you don't make amends because of a desire to do so, to be forgiven, making amends is the important thing.  Do the right thing first and figure out why later.  Save your son first and realize that it wasn't you saving him after all, but the other way around.  That's why that moment between Luke and his father at the end of Return of the Jedi are so important (and why RotJ is the best film, Ewoks notwithstanding, but I'm being much more controversial when I say that than when I said the prequels were bad).

Whatever you believe, you can learn something from the Jedi.  Humans are imperfect.  If you expect perfection and remove the imperfect from your religion, either you're lying to yourself or you'll soon be out of your religion as well.  Inclusion and redemption rather than exclusion and retribution.  Think about it.

* "Kill Mary, full of knives, darkness is with thee. Now she is among dead women and if Jesus were alive we'd kill him too.  Holey** Mary, pray for mercy as we jam even more dull knives into you, now is the hour of your death, Zmen."  I'm going to Hell anyway so I thought I'd have plenty of reasons.

** See what I did there? It's a great joke.