About that Christian Mercy …

           John M. Crisp introduces an excellent column on "Solving the puzzle of children, war" (17 April 2017) with the Christian trope contrasting the "god of wrath and battles" of much of the "Old Testament" with the kinder, gentler God of the New.

            It's not that simple. The peace-and-love Jesus of the Beatitudes goes on to say, figuratively, "[…] I have not come to bring peace but a sword" (Matthew 5.2-12, 10.34). And both figuratively and Prophetically, John of Patmos presents a kick-ass Christ in his Apocalypse, "clad in a robe dipped in blood," with a "sharp sword with which to smite the nations" and "tread the wine press of the fury of the wrath of God," crushing the unsaved like grapes (Revelation 19.13-16). Later in the Book of Revelation, we get beautiful visions of "a new heaven and a new earth," for the saved. "But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, as for murderers, fornicators, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars" — and later members of the wrong church, or those God just chose to damn — "their lot shall be in the lake that burns" forever (20.1, 4; 21.8).

            In history, in A.D. 1099, the takingof Jerusalem to climax the First Crusade included a massacre near Temple Mount where Christian sources concede or brag, "[…] the slaughter was so great that our men waded in blood up to their ankles [...]" — or bridles and knees. "None of them" — Muslims in the area — "were left alive; neither women nor children were spared." The Jews of Jerusalem were burned.

            Deusvult; God willed it.

            So there's Jesus's " mercy and peace" that Crisp says, "we've never really tried"; and that lack of trying goes far back. Since antiquity, many have accepted Jesus only once that wimpy preaching gets toughened up.

Righteous Gentiles, Anti-Semites, and Overrating Attitudes

Where there are no men, be thou a man. — Rabbi Hillel

            Toward the end of Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning, Timothy Snyder notes a small but important and surprising fact: some of the heroic people who saved Jews during the Hitlerian Holocaust, were anti-Semites.

            Snyder notes that the Jews saved by "righteous gentiles" speak very little of the motivation of their saviors, and that the righteous gentiles speak of their motives just as little or less. They usually dismiss what they did as just behaving "normally," just doing what people do, or what any human being should do. These good people, of course, were not behaving normally, not in the statistical sense of "normal"; and in terms of cold-blooded economic theory of rational actors pursuing self-interest; they were not even behaving rationally.

            In the midst of horrors, these righteous few maintained what George Orwell called by the modest term "decency"; they maintained Menschlichkeit (Yiddish, Mentshlekhkeyt): where indecently few people were acting like humane human beings, they remained human.

            But not necessarily because they liked Jews, and in these our sentimental days, when we want people to like us, when attitude really counts — this is important.

            Some of these quiet heroes saved Jews on patriotic grounds: If the Germans wanted the Poles to deliver up their Jews, to give the Germans the Jews in Poland for killing, a loyal Pole resisted, even if he or she would just as soon have Jews out of Poland, and in the 1930s had voted for political parties endorsing doing just that.

            Some thought that murder is murder and that it was their Christian duty to resist murder, even the murder of Jews. For traditional Christian haters of Jews, Jews were people cursed as Christ-killers; but Jews were still people, not subhuman as Nazis saw Slavs (and Blacks), or, most relevantly, nonhumans, as orthodox Nazis saw Jews.

            A fair number took very seriously Jesus' Parable of the Good Samaritan, and saw it as their Christian duty to help strangers in trouble. And some helped people they knew or a good-looking Jewish girl they had a crush on or adopted babies or children because they had lost their own or could use child labor on the farm.

            And most Jews were not killed by professional murderers at Auschwitz or the other death camps, but were shot by more or less ordinary people, some of them very ordinary police officers, and a fair number more or less indifferent to "the Jewish Question." Anti-Semitism obviously had a role in the destruction of the Jews of Europe — including anti-Semitism in England and the United States — but one could not predict from the virulence of anti-Semitism in any given country just what percentage of its Jews would survive the war, how many would be murdered.

            As hinted at in the Stanley Milgram obedience experiments and other work in social psychology, character and attitudes count, but not always in straightforward ways or for a whole lot: context is important, and "character" can be complex. One "moral" of Snyder's study in Black Earth is that people who are indifferent to people like you, or who even like your kind of folk might turn you in for extermination; people who dislike "your kind" might know and like you personally and might save you. Or people who don't particularly like you or your kind at all might save you for all sorts of reasons, including a cold sense of duty or decency.

            When the world moves into barbarism, your friendly neighbor might betray you for a little extra food and your apartment; Sister Attila the Nun, that cold-hearted horror, might give her life to keep you alive.

            People are strange, and in times and places "Where there are no men" — where normal human behavior is inhuman(e) — it is very difficult "be a man" in the sense of acting humanely. And those who do the right thing will do so for a mixture of reasons and some odd ones.

            Those reasons may not include much of their personal likes and dislikes, and they may even overpower a generic but deep-seated hatred.

Quick Catechism for Why Bernie Sanders Is Headed to Hell (and You Probably Are Too)

"'And Bernie Sanders, who doesn't believe in God ... how in the world are we gonna let Bernie [...]?' asked Mark Burns, co-founder and CEO of the Now Network [...]" opening for Donald Trump. "'Listen, Bernie got to get saved, he's got to meet Jesus. I don't know, he's got to have a coming-to-Jesus meeting,' Burns added [...] ahead of a Trump event in Hickory, N.C."

I sometimes joked to my students that we were living an old joke about the University of Chicago as "Jewish professors teaching Catholicism to classrooms of atheists" — except I needed to explain Protestantism as well, and my students were almost all believing Christians, even if they weren't always very sure of what they believed. .

Anyhow, this much for a "Rich's Notes" cheat-sheet oversimplifying a couple millennia of Christian theology but giving context for what the sort-of Reverend Mr. Mark Banks said about a secular Jew like Bernie Sanders, which would also apply to a religious Jew like Joe Lieberman and maybe to most Roman Catholics and lukewarm Protestants.

First off, there is no salvation unless you make it to the Father. No matter how well you live your life, if you're not with God you're going to Hell to burn forever in the Lake of Fire (or more interesting and baroque torments if Dante got it right). After that,
      No one comes to the Father but through the Son. But how do you come to and through the Son?
             No one comes to the Son but through Holy Church: By Baptism and the other Sacraments of the Church one is washed free from Original Sin and kept in line for salvation.
              Alternatively and simultaneously, "By Faith and Faith alone shall you be saved." And how does one have capital "F" Faith (i.e., the true one)? Well, one experiences Christ and accepts Jesus as one's personal savior (capital "s" optional). Now, does one do that by striving on one's own? How can sinful, fallen, degenerate, innately depraved Man come to Faith?
                    Not on your own: God saves whom He will save and damns the rest — the great majority. So, By Grace and Grace alone will you be saved, except you probably won't be.
                           However ... "A tree is known by its fruits," and there are signs of Grace, including one's living a godly, productive, prosperous life in a godly community and gets accepted by a Church that is a gathering of the saved and live by its rules — like in the good old days of Plymouth Colony and Massachusetts among the Separatists and Puritans who left their stamp big time on what became the US of A.

Got it? That's some basics out of your old-time, hard-assed Christianity in the tradition of St. Paul in a bad mood, plus St. Augustine and Luther and Calvin and our own colonial-era Jonathan Edwards and the Mather boys Cotton and Increase. 

So of course Bernie Sanders doesn't believe in God in any way that counts, and there's a fair chance you don't either. Or at least that's the mainstream, or at least a central major stream, of Christian belief, with more liberal ideas always around but often losing out. The ideas of St. Augustine became "Catholic"; his competitors got anathematized and excommunicated. The Medieval Church loosened up a bit — for political reasons Dante has a Roman emperor in Heaven — but Martin Luther and the Reformation brought back tougher doctrine (including, with Luther, on Jews).

Personally, I have no problem with such doctrines, except when combined with unCalvinist ideas on free will and choice and the idea that it is the duty of Christians to save the heathen: in which case devout Christians can become annoying. And demanding a US that is a Christian nation where only those who've come to Jesus can hold office — well, that violates the prohibition of religious tests in our Constitution and undermines the USA as a secular Republic that guarantees freedom of religion. 

Happy Birthday, Jesus (Sometime Before Spring of 4 B.C.) [28 Nov. 2012]

  In Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives (2012), Pope Benedict XVI notes, as a lead in the UK Daily Telegraph puts it, "Jesus born years earlier than thought." What I find most interesting about this story has been that it was news.

            In 1950, in a totally non-controversial passage in the history textbook The Ancient World, Joseph Ward Swain of the solidly Big Ten, classically Midwestern, University of Illinois, wrote that "Jesus was not born in the year 1," or, I guess, Zero. "Two of our four Gospels tell us that he was born under Herod the Great, who died in the spring of 4 B.C."

            Working through other information in the Gospels, the scholarly consensus by the late 1940s was "that Jesus probably was born about five years before the turn of the century" — in the Christian counting of centuries — and that it's "fairly certain that he was crucified on April 7, 30 A.D." Swain adds, "There is, of course, no evidence regarding the exact day of his birth, and not until several centuries had passed did Christians agree to observe Christmas on December 25" (II.476-77).

            Of course. And then Swain moves on to the significant historical stuff about "His" — Jesus's — "Preaching and Crucifixion," the next subsection title, and then a long discussion of the rise of the Church.

            So Jesus was "born years earlier than thought" by whom?

            Americans are a people of strong faith, but as surveys pretty consistently indicate, "large numbers of Americans are uninformed about the tenets, practices, history and leading figures of major faith traditions — including their own";  and, I'll throw in, that "large numbers of Americans" includes a lot of reporters.

            The United States is not "a Christian nation" mostly because we're not a nation at all; it's "the American Republic," and the Republic is a stew or chop suey or mish-mosh (not a melting pot) of races, ethnicities, nationalities, and religions. Which is a damn good thing.

            We are, though, strongly … let's call it inflected by Christian culture, and Americans, for understanding our country, need some knowledge of Christianity. Also of the other world religions, but that's for another time.

            Christians especially should know Christianity, and it shouldn't be some sort of traumatic shock if someone tells them that it's a fair guess that Jesus was born in the spring — "when shepherds were watching their sheep in the field by night" (Luke 2.8) of 4-5 BC, and that it's no coincidence that Christmas in the northern hemisphere is a Festival of Lights like Diwali, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa: it's the winter solstice, people, and the time of the old Roman Saturnalia, so December was and remains an excellent time for a winter holiday balancing spring holidays like Passover and Easter. (The Islamic New Year, Muharram, is a quieter holiday.)

            It's Constitutional for secular public schools to teach about religion, and in principle the US Supreme court and NGOs like The American Civil Liberties Union and People for the American Way are all for such teaching. Still, serious religious education is politically risky for a school district and undoubtedly expensive: doing the job decently requires well-educated teachers.


            Someone, though, needs to do a better job, and the various Christian churches and Christian households are obvious places for serious study of the faith. One good way to start a discussion would be hitting kids with the neat paradox that Jesus Christ was born "B.C." and checking out what the Gospel narratives actually say on the subject. For that exercise, Pope Benedict has definitely supplied a "teachable moment."

Hypocrisy Isn't the Worst Sin, if One of the More Disgusting

"Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue."

— Francois de La Rochefoucauld, 17^th c.

"Rich, you really should pay more respect to hypocrisy."

— Gary Elden, middle 1960s

            Hypocrisy, abstractly considered, is a set of disconnections in individuals among what they think and say and do. Hypocrisy encountered in everyday life is kind of like biting into a rotten apple; there's just something disgusting about it.

            Significantly in our culture, it's one sin that really seemed to tick off Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus could move among whores and (worse!) the tax gatherers for The Evil Empire, the goddamn Romans, but hypocrites? "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!" (Matthew 23.27).

            As the sectarian divisions went at the time, Jesus was a Pharisee; a Pharisee was a sometimes populist proto-rabbi ("which means 'teacher'"[John 1.38]) — and prophets and reformers tend to be hardest on their own; and prophets and reformers (and God incarnate, if you believe) can get really, really, really get ticked off at colleagues in the religion biz who are hypocritical about it.

            So the gut reaction is familiar enough, and it's especially appropriate for Christians. Christianity is big on right belief, as St. Paul and the Protestants insist ("sola fide," fella), by faith and "by faith alone" shall ye be saved; and by your intentions shall ye be judged, as asserted by the Venerable George — George Carlin — although I couldn't find that exact quote on line. So it makes sense that the Jesus of the Gospels was upset by religious scholars and teachers who may have been punctilious in their observance of the Law but lacked generosity of spirit and maybe just generosity: Jesus was big on helping the needy, and even aliens, convicts and the detained (Matthew 25.31-46).

            The successors of those proto-rabbis, though, agreed with Jesus on good deeds but sometimes had a less absolutist view on motivation, on what constitutes "acts of love and kindness." And in the manner of teachers, some of the rabbis told a story about what many Christians ought to see as hypocrisy — it certainly features disconnects among thoughts and words and deeds — but in which hypocrisy might have its uses.

            Anyway: There was once a man well known for his piety. One day the man went to his rabbi and said, "Rabbi, I am a great sinner." The rabbi thought, "Oy, another overly-fastidious kvetch" (Ned Flanders on The Simpsons reflects a real variety of the nervously pious), and the rabbi mumbled at the man, "Oh, I'm sure it's nothing terrible."

            The man replied, "Rabbi, I'm a hypocrite."

            This got the rabbi's attention, and he told the man to explain.

            "Well," the man said, "I'm scrupulous in observing Torah and all the mitzvot and even the smallest rule making 'a hedge around the Torah'; but I don't obey out of love of God or, or even fear of God, nor a sense of gratitude nor out of regard for people, much less love for them. I do what I do because it's easy for me, and I like the reputation for piety."

            "So it's a kind of pride," said the rabbi, "and indeed hypocrisy."

            "Yes," said the man, "am I not a great sinner?"

            "Hmmm …," said the rabbi, and in the manner of rabbis and teachers and maybe just Jews answered the question with a question.

            "Would you like to be sincere?" asked the rabbi, "to act well because you love the Eternal 'with all your heart, all your soul and all your strength'" (Deuteronomy 6.5), "and 'your neighbor as yourself' — and the stranger, as well?" (Leviticus 19.18, 19.34)?

            "Yes," said the man; "so what should I do?"

            The rabbi thought a moment and then said, "Keep doing what you're doing."

            "Continue in sin!?" said the man, "in hypocrisy?!"

            "Continue to behave well," said the rabbi, "and try to do it for better reasons. God knows the intention behind your intentions; and maybe from habit better motives will follow. And even if they don't, you'll be doing no harm and at least some good."

            And the man went off to do what he was to do, with listeners to the story —in good Hebraic tradition — required to fill in an ending, if they want one.

            Now usually when we're disgusted by hypocrisy it's when people disobey the injunction to "Practice what you preach," and some hell-fire condemner of vice gets caught in the wrong bed or hanging around the "right," so to speak, men's room.

            But if hypocrisy is keeping words, actions, and motives in line, "to do the right deed / for the wrong reason" is also a problem. And it, too, can bother us.

            We Americans are really big on "I like" or "I don't like — your attitude." We want people to be sincere and authentic and "well-motivated" and want people to help us and show respect for us and be good to us because those people really respect and like us and want to help.

            Okay. Usually. Certainly if you are looking for a friend. Less so if we're not talking about friends but just people you want or need to deal with.

            It's easy and totally proper to despise politicians and preachers who condemn others for their own vices. Shakespeare's Duke Vincentio says of the puritanical judge Angelo, who condemns a man for fornication and then attempts to coerce sex from the man's sister, an almost-nun, "Shame to him whose cruel striking / Kills for faults of his own liking!" (Measure for Measure 3.2). Still, don't delve too deeply if people are treating you hypocritically, but decently.

            Hypocrisy is vice's little "curtsey" to virtue, and my friend Gary and one rabbinic tradition have a point. Don't go overboard with respect for nasty people doing the right thing for all the wrong reasons — but go along. You may get your stomach turned by politicians who despise your group but will help you out for your votes, but you may be better off with them than with their more honest opponent.

            "Hypocrisy isn't the worst sin, but it is the most disgusting," indeed. But we shouldn't forget the part that's it's far from the worst of sins, and can be useful.