Good Friday commemorates the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth. As a child, I had difficulty understanding what was supposed to be ‘good’ about the execution of a man that was supposed to have been God’s gift to mankind. I later learned that the ‘Good’ might just be a bad translation and it should be God’s Friday. But, that is not really important. The goodness of Jesus’s execution comes from the belief that:
God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life.- (John 3:16)
I always found this belief to be a stumbling block. I never had any desire for eternal life. I never could understand how I would spend my time. For me, eternity is best measured in the doctor’s waiting room. Talk of personal salvation had no resonance for me. But other parts of Jesus’s message did resonate with me. For example, Jesus said:
“When you pray, be not like the pretenders, who prefer to pray in the synagogues and in the public square, in the sight of others. In truth I tell you, that is all the profit they will have. But you, when you pray, go into your inner chamber and, locking the door, pray there in hiding to your Father, and your Father who sees you in hiding will reward you” (Matthew 6:5-6).
I used to think about those words when I was sitting in church in my uncomfortable clothes. Why were we all praying together in public like “pretenders”?
Jesus railed against hypocrites. He shouted down those that made a great deal of the forms of religion without internalizing the message of religion…which is compassion and humility.
Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. (Luke 14:11)
“Beware of the scribes, who like to go around in long robes and accept greetings in the marketplaces, seats of honor in synagogues, and places of honor at banquets. They devour the houses of widows and, as a pretext, recite lengthy prayers. They will receive a very severe condemnation.”- (Mark 12:38-40)
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18-19)
It was this dual message that spoke to me. We should look after the poor, the afflicted, those that have taken the wrong path in life. And we should beware of ostentatiously religious people that do not back up their show of faith with any generosity or compassion.
So, on Good Friday I prefer not to dwell on the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth. I prefer to think of his message to the living.
“God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”- (Matthew 22:32)
And I’ll leave you with a passage from Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Gay Science. I don’t think Jesus would have disagreed.
2. The intellectual conscience
I keep having the same experience and keep resisting it every
time. I do not want to believe it although it is palpable: the great majority
of people lack an intellectual conscience. Indeed, it has often seemed
to me as if anyone calling for an intellectual conscience were as lonely in
the most densely populated cities as if he were in a desert. Everybody looks
at you with strange eyes and goes right on handling his scales, calling this
good and that evil. Nobody even blushes when you intimate that their weights
are underweight; nor do people feel outraged; they merely laugh at your doubts.
I mean: the great majority of people does not consider it contemptible
to believe this or that and to live accordingly, without first having given
themselves an account of the final and most certain reasons pro and con, and
without even troubling themselves about such reasons afterward: the most gifted
men and the noblest women still belong to this “great majority.” But what
is goodheartedness, refinement, or genius to me, when the person who has these
virtues tolerates slack feelings in his faith and judgments and when he does
not account the desire for certainty as his inmost craving and deepest
distress—as that which separates the higher human beings from the lower.Among some pious people I have found a hatred of reason and
was well disposed to them for that; for this at least betrayed their
bad intellectual conscience. But to stand in the midst of this rerum concordia
discors [Discordant concord of things: Horace, Epistles, I.12.19.]
and of this whole marvelous uncertainty and rich ambiguity of existence without
questioning, without trembling with the craving and the rapture of such
questioning, without at least hating the person who questions, perhaps even
finding him faintly amusing—that is what I feel to be contemptible,and this is the feeling for which I look first in everybody. Some folly keeps
persuading me that every human being has this feeling, simply because he is
human. This is my sense of injustice.
Regardless of your personal beliefs, I wish you a happy holiday and hope you have time to spend with your loved ones.
I was gonna post on this, but you already have a holyday thread so I’ll just post the link to this WaPo story on evangelical Christians holding Passover Seders and changing things around a bit. Weird. via AlterNet.
Not religious myself, but find the allegories fascinating.
that is a little creepy. Christmas has already corrupted Chanukah, now they are horning on Passover.
Chrismukkah
oh sweet festivus. bring out the aluminum pole and let us start the feats of strength! nobody eats until georgie pins frank to the ground!
Relating to the Nietzsche excerpt, I think it was Mencken who, in discussing similar human foibles associated with our propensity for “blind faith”, urged us to overcome our fears and compulsions about our beliefs with the stern admonition to “Question Everything“!
my personal favorite:
“What strength, what value can one’s convictions hold if one fears to question them?” S.B. Jones
Has anyone seen the National Geographic special on the Gospel of Judas? It shows the best available science being applied to an 1800-year-old manuscript. Truly fascinating stuff.
The point relevant to this holiday and this political moment is that Jesus’s trip was spiritual, not material. The ancient manuscript says Jesus asked Judas to help get the man Jesus killed so the spirit Jesus could accomplish its mission. Being spiritual in nature, the mission explicitly includes separation of church and state: “Render unto Ceasar what is Ceasar’s and unto God what it God’s,” Jesus taught. The rule-makers of the religious right would pale if they were capable of abstract thought.
Sorry to go on so. “The Gospel of Judas” will be played again Sat., April 22, at 9 ET, according to the link above. There’s also more info and some video there.
Spring in the Ozarks is magical, and I hope it is wherever ya’ll are, too.
I saw about 3/4 of it, but haven’t caught up with the end yet. It’s a fascinating look at an alternate point of view, something normally in our culture reserved for science fiction authors who speculate on what would have happened had Kennedy lived, or had the Axis won World War II, or similar alternate timelines.
As they say in the program, the idea of Judas being a good guy is almost unthinkable. And yet, what if it were true?
That Gospel of Judas stuff is a sham. Every year at this time there are stories like this. I majored in religion back in the 1970s, and the “Gospel of Judas” was well known as one of many, spurious “Gnostic gospels.” They were never considered canonical. They were the equivalent of popular literature 1700 years ago. Back in those days, during the time of the Council of Nicea, for instance, fine theological points were often the subject of broad popular debate and even promoted with jingles. There is some historical interest to the Gnostic gospels. But it’s nuts to think they are “gospels” like the canonical gospels, and it’s a sham to treat this as if it were some kind of new discovery. There are new discoveries in this area from time to time, like the Dead Sea Scrolls. But the Judas gospel is about as far from being a new discovery as one can get.
The Gospel of Judas is pretty old. Some scholars think it is contemperaneous with the Gospel of John. But it was mentioned by Irenaeus of Lyon in 180. Irenaeus saw it as heretical, but it still had currency at an early date.
And since I’ve never been able to read it, while I have read the 16-20 other heretical gospels, I’d say that this is a major new find. At least for scholars.
I haven’t seen the National Geo. special yet, and I hope to. I’m reacting to some news articles I’d seen, which reported it as a new discovery. Also, several people in a discussion forum told my wife that this was a “brand new discovery” that turned the scriptures upside down and so forth.
By the way, it’s impressive to see BooMan citing St. Irenaeus. That’s learned.
Iranaeus is the theologian whose name I was trying to remember, I think.
What’s new about the discovery is the unearthing of the text of the document, not its existence. As for trumpeting it as “a discovery that turns the scriptures upside down,” there was some of that in the promotion of the special, particularly in the form of leading questions (“Could this manuscript . . . ” etc) and anytime you have something like this there will be people who take the ball and not only run with it, they carry it straight through the end zone, up the stairs, out of the stadium and into the basketball arena next door.
That would definitely be an exaggeration. It won’t turn the Gospels on their head. I’d be happy, though, if we could get rid of Matthew, Luke and John, and use the original Mark, without the added parts on the end.
If you want a Gospel, why not pick the earliest and most unadulterated version available…and stick with it?
I can’t stand all the neo-platonism is John. It totally corrupted the original, in my opinion.
The special doesn’t claim that the idea of a “gospel of Judas” is anything new. In fact they make references to the theologian (whose name I forget) who declared in about 180 that there should be only four gospels instead of the at least 30 or so that were circulating at the time. One of the ways they authenticated the finding of the Judas codex was because of this theologian’s pronouncements against some of its statements, which match up with the manuscript.
What is new is that they now have a copy of the actual MS, as best it can be restored after a number of years of neglect and disintegration, carbon dated to around 280 or so. That doesn’t make anything you said about it any less true, and ultimately it will take its place among the other apocrypha, an interesting look into the early Church and a subject for discussion among people interested in such things but little more than that.
Why little more than that? If a writing has worth, in and of itself, does it matter where it originated from?
I’m speaking in practical terms. There are other writings in the apocrypha that have worth, but when was the last time you heard someone discussing any of them on the bus?
of the manuscript. I’m the furtherest thing from an expert, but the gnostic gospels interest me because they offer different points of view. Apparently this was really an “old discovery” now rendered readable by scientists. My curiosity is enhanced precisely because they have been kept out of the canon, perhaps by people more motivated by maintaining power over the flock than shepherding them — sorry about the mixed metaphor;.
Having spent 40 years of my life in structured religions, I was thoroughly frustrated with the contradictions.
Like you I was always conflicted. The Bible or Book or Mormon or whatever text I read said one thing…and church was another thing.
In all the theologies of all major religions there is a call for peace and brotherhood and love. It is these beliefs that call to my spirituality. I am a deeply spiritual person, Pagan if it must be given a name.
As I searched for meanings, I found that as Mohammed and Jesus were martyred, so would be others. Each who teaches peace and love has been betrayed by those that fear these teachings.
To know that with the crucifixion of Jesus, the Christ, a man of peace died for his beliefs. There are many that walk in his footsteps…on a daily basis. There are leaders that have died for the teachings of peace, Ghandi, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and so many others.
On Good Friday, I take time to ponder the teachings of others. The teachers of peace that died that we might see differently.
May we all remember the peacemakers. May we each walk in the path of caring and acceptance during this holy time.
Do you have a source for your statement that Mohammed was martyred? The Wikipedia article on Mohammed says only that he died in 632 after what sounds like some sort of affliction of the brain, perhaps an aneurysm (that’s a guess on my part, I don’t want to try to Frist a diagnosis).
Your post is well taken, though. There comes a point where someone like Jesus or Gandhi or King becomes a threat to the status quo and the people whose livelihood and power depend on the status quo staying that way start working toward their removal or demise. They don’t seem to learn from history that creating a martyr usually accomplishes the exact opposite of their goal.
Have a peaceful weekend, Sally.
His life was one of austerity (self-chosen) but there were multiple attempts on his life by those that opposed his life.
His life is one we could all follow: when others brought war he defended his people, yet he taught peace above all else.
That part doesn’t surprise me. In fact one of the defining moments of Islam, the Hegira (Mohammed’s flight to Medina from Mecca) came about because the Quraysh, the guardians of the Kaaba, saw him as a threat to their particular status quo and sought to do him in.
I’m just an interested observer, though. Here is an article from Islam Online that explains the Hegira from the Islamic point of view.
The predominant structured religions on the planet, as paractised, have precious little to do with the theology/philosophy upon which they are supposed to be based. This is why murder in the name of God has been the greatest cause of premature human death on the planet since the dawn of organized religion in distant antiquity.
The men of peace who’ve graced this planet all espoused fundamental human values that transcended any requirement for a religious context in order to give them meaning.
This is why Jesus, Buddha Muhammad, Ghandi, King and others were such towering spiritual figures. They transcended the murderous brutality and divisiveness of religious rivalry and lust for power.
A good holiday to all!
The Christian mythologists tell us that Christ died for the sins of the world, and that he came on Purpose to die. Would it not then have been the same if he had died of a fever or of the small pox, of old age, or of anything else?
The declaratory sentence which, they say, was passed upon Adam, in case he ate of the apple, was not, that thou shalt surely be crucified, but, thou shale surely die. The sentence was death, and not the manner of dying. Crucifixion, therefore, or any other particular manner of dying, made no part of the sentence that Adam was to suffer, and consequently, even upon their own tactic, it could make no part of the sentence that Christ was to suffer in the room of Adam. A fever would have done as well as a cross, if there was any occasion for either.
This sentence of death, which, they tell us, was thus passed upon Adam, must either have meant dying naturally, that is, ceasing to live, or have meant what these mythologists call damnation; and consequently, the act of dying on the part of Jesus Christ, must, according to their system, apply as a prevention to one or other of these two things happening to Adam and to us….
If I owe a person money, and cannot pay him, and he threatens to put me in prison, another person can take the debt upon himself, and pay it for me. But if I have committed a crime, every circumstance of the case is changed. Moral justice cannot take the innocent for the guilty even if the innocent would offer itself. To suppose justice to do this, is to destroy the principle of its existence, which is the thingitself. It is then no longer justice. It is indiscriminate revenge.
This single reflection will show that the doctrine of redemption is founded on a mere pecuniary idea corresponding to that of a debt which another person might pay; and as this pecuniary idea corresponds again with the system of second redemptions, obtained through the means of money given to the church for pardons, the probability is that the same persons fabricated both the one and the other of those theories; and that, in truth, there is no such thing as redemption; that it is fabulous; and that man stands in the same relative condition with his Maker he ever did stand, since man existed; and that it is his greatest consolation to think so….
Putting then aside, as matter of distinct consideration, the outrage offered to the moral justice of God, by supposing him to make the innocent suffer for the guilty, and also the loose morality and low contrivance of supposing him to change himself into the shape of a man, in order to make an excuse to himself for not executing his supposed sentence upon Adam; putting, I say, those things aside as matter of distinct consideration, it is certain that what is called the christian system of faith, including in it the whimsical account of the creation–the strange story of Eve, the snake, and the apple–the amphibious idea of a man-god–the corporeal idea of the death of a god –the mythological idea of a family of gods, and the christian system of arithmetic, that three are one, and one is three, are all irreconcilable, not only to the divine gift of reason, that God has given to man, but to the knowledge that man gains of the power and wisdom of God by the aid of the sciences, and by studying the structure of the universe that God has made….
I well remember, when about seven or eight years of age, hearing a sermon read by a relation of mine, who was a great devotee of the church, upon the subject of what is called Redemption by the death of the Son of God. After the sermon was ended, I went into the garden, and as I was going down the garden steps (for I perfectly recollect the spot) I revolted at the recollection of what I had heard, and thought to myself that it was making God Almighty act like a passionate man, that killed his son, when he could not revenge himself any other way; and as I was sure a man would be hanged that did such a thing, I could not see for what purpose they preached such sermons.
from Age of Reason: Thomas Paine
Thanks for writing this, BooMan.
interested, I wrote down my thoughts on Lent and how my spirituality colors my liberal worldview here at my blog.
Whether “eternal life” appeals to one depends on what their definition of it is, I suppose. The popular idea what those who go to heaven will sit around all day playing their harps and singing praises to God sounds to me like the most boring thing I can imagine. Not that I wouldn’t like to be able to play the harp (or lyre, which is what is usually depicted) but I don’t sit around down here all day and sing the praises of my parents. Why would you want to do that forever after you die?
No, if there’s an afterlife I hope there are computers or something equally fascinating to occupy my time. And dogs. I’m with Will Rogers on this one. If there are no dogs in Heaven I want to go where the dogs are. Hey, maybe they’ll be worshipping me.
All except for that idiot chihuahua over on the corner of 83rd who just yaps at me every time I go by. Well, OK, maybe him too. Maybe that’s his idea of heaven.
A happy and peaceful weekend to all Bootribbers, whatever you believe.
Here’s a verse from long ago, best sung with a long, wailing yodel:
All my previous dogs (except the chihuahua!) and all my future dogs will have to be there. In the meantime, it’s a little piece of heaven when my dog has company and we all laugh!
Peace.
Unsourced here, but IMS, it is from an episode of The Twilight Zone
Link
Peace
Thank you. I like that very much.
Yeah, reminds me of the old prayer, “Lord, let me become the person my dog thinks I am.”
I almost wrote, “You mean your dog doesn’t worship you?”
My earthly body is afflicted with allergies to dog fur and saliva. But, I’ve known a few dogs in my day, and I suspect Topper and Rodney will be waiting when my ticket gets punched.
My Thoughts On ‘Good Friday’ Are Many, But This Sums Up The Sadness Of Today:
“Take Me Home – A Sampler of American Artists for Peace “
This is an enhanced CD – the accompanying award-winning video can be viewed on either a PC or Mac. View the “Take Me Home” Video. Cinematographer Mark Howard.
Visit Site for links to Artists, about CD, and where you can get it.
I have been stressing out so bad over going thru all of the Medicare D(isaster) stuff and again getting the runaround–I know that I have to do that and get names, dates and times of who I talked and every conversation before I call the papers–I really needed to read something this reassuring.
Thanks again.
The biggest inconsistency among Christians today is the lack of adherence to the teachings of Jesus and the New Testament concerning revenge.
Romans 12:19-21 “19 Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” 20 No, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” 21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” (NRSV)
John 1:17 … God gave the Law through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. (TEV)
Mat 5:38-41 (Jesus) 38 “You have heard that it was said, `An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ 39 But now I tell you: do not take revenge on someone who wrongs you.
and
Rom 12:17-21 (Paul) … 17 If someone has done you wrong, do not repay him with a wrong
Overcoming violence is not supposed to done with taking of vengeance, but with giving of love.
I challenge those among us who do not consider themselves to be Christians to learn this material and quote it back to anyone who does consider themselves to be a Christian who also supports the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I have used this to instruct such Christians, and they have no response which can justify these wars on a Christian basis.
Please explore the links above for further info, including how to rebut those who would say that Christians must submit to the governments legal system willingly, or that ‘justice’ is somehow laid in the hands of a righteous warrior or civil authority. Jesus was a radical, and his prescription for revenge was love, not earthly ‘justice’ or violence.
We must speak to these people in terms of their own proclaimed beliefs. Gandhi did it, Martin Luther King, Jr. did it, so must we, if we are to win back this country. It does not belittle me use belief systems of others to instruct them in the ways and teachings of their own prophets and saviors in order to achieve a greater good.
This is a problem for some on the left. Many think that to use Christian language is to acquiesce to their beliefs. I disagree. I believe it is necessary to embrace truth wherever one finds it, and to speak in whatever terms a specific individual will take to heart.
and sisters. And may all people of good will, regardless of religious affiliation, join you in celebrating a festive and happy Easter celebration with lots of chocolate marshmallow novelties, and of course, the crowning jewel of the holiday, peeps!
You and I would probably end up being hospitalized for ingesting such a thing, but in the spirit of the holiday here is a recipe for an Easter candy turducken (take a look at the article for an explanation of a turducken, if you don’t already know).
at that thing. 65 grams of sugar. yeah.
All applicable deities help me, I want one.
That’s a lie. I want six.
But stuffed with solid chocolate eggs instead of Cadbury ones. Maybe chocolate truffle ones. I’m sure if I keep thinking about it, I can get those sugar grams into the 3 figures.
I think there is a hospital nearby…
It does look tempting, doesn’t it? See if they have a room next door to yours and I’ll keep you company as I slip in and out of consciousness.
Matthew 10:34-35:
Pax