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"Scandal – Justice - Faith" by Henry Hasse
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Note:Most of the thoughts and words in italics below must be credited to Robert Brinsmead,
an avocado farmer in Duranbah, NSW 2487, Australia. The rest are my own
embellishments, all of which I have made my own and which also tell of the
growth and development of my personal faith, even from as little as a year ago.
I now believe this, am very thankful for Mr. Brinsmead’s offerings, and find
myself compelled to share them with you. Important: None of what follows is shared with the intent of
convincing you of anything. What you make of them is entirely up to you.
Scandal – Justice - Faith:"Easter,"
as it has come to be called, declares to us the scandal of God’s justice. (The
use of the term "scandal" will soon become apparent. Just think of it in terms
of how the church leaders, the teachers of the law and tradition thought of
Jesus, his treatment of the poor, sick and oppressed, and his teachings of the
kingdom of God as compared to their own oppressive teachings.) The
historical Jesus of Nazareth used his real Hebrew name Yashua (Joshua). In his
native Aramaic he called himself bar Nasha (Hebrew: ben Adam), not a title,
meaning son of man (Adam), human one, or this man. Every
important feature of Joshua ben Adam’s life was a scandal to the Jewish
leadership. His
conception and birth was surrounded by very irregular, tragic circumstances. He
was a Galilean whose rugged and independent spirit was despised by Jewish elite
in Judea because no prophet, much less Messiah, could ever come from that
northern hillbilly province. His
public ministry was likewise a scandal, having a reputation as a glutton and a
drunk, ignoring the holiness code, living and eating with unclean folk, ignoring
the canons of honor and shame by his non-discrimination, even baptized by John,
a baptism of repentance! Worse,
he was put to death, condemned and executed as just another Galilean
rabble-rouser hanging on a tree and scorned by God. He died utterly discredited,
abandoned by all and apparently forsaken by God.
Everything about this unfortunate man would soon have been forgotten if it were
not for "Easter," as the church of Constantine began to call it in 325 A.D.
His resurrection convinced his dispirited little band that Joshua had been
honored by God as a sign that God himself was keeping his promise to the
human race; namely, that in spite of their humanity, they did, after all,
possess the breath of his spirit of life, a precious gift, a spark from his
fire, which was not about to disappear without a trace after the decease of
their mortal body as it returns to the elements of the earth. That is to
say: Yes, everyone is human and does not always do the right thing, but God
does always do the right thing, as he did in and through his promised image,
Adam II, and he keeps his promise to save and set free all mankind from their
hopeless, self-chosen wrong ways of oppressing others, including the resulting
penalty of death, or separation from God. When this man, bar Nasha, gave
himself up to mankind’s oppressive religious and civil authorities, accepting
their condemning and deadly judgments, ("Take me and let these go."), he
ransomed us from the same fate. Because of his loving action for us, God thereby
graciously offered him and all mankind his kingdom of peace with no strings
attached. God weighed the justice of men and found it to be unfair, so he raised
bar Nasha from the death that had falsely penalized him and invited him into his
kingdom to be his right-hand man, his son. And because of his loving work, we
too are invited into his presence to live as his sons and daughters, members of
his family. Can you believe it? In the meantime, he does not leave us helpless.
It is his loving spirit that has the power to turn us around with this good news
and patiently teach us to be kind and loving and caring, following in his way
instead of the oppressive and deadly ways of the world and its religious powers.
Now we can practice the privileges and responsibilities of family membership. Compared to
mankind’s justice under the law, is not this justice of God scandalous? Unlike
the cross event, the resurrection into God’s presence and kingdom is
an article of faith just like the existence of God. Neither one is
historically provable.
Pressure
to Explain the Scandal:
Unfortunately, the pressure to embellish his story and explain away the scandals
of his life was too much for his followers. At first, the Word of God was the
word of the resurrection. It was the "Easter" gospel pure and simple. They
taught that mankind’s authority and justice under the law was now powerless as a
result. They spoke of the promise of his peaceful kingdom, the elimination of
all oppressive behavior, the responsibilities of family membership as children
of God, and the pouring out of his spirit to make it so even now. They spent
no time arguing about Joshua’s divinity, his virgin birth, his providing a
salvation by blood atonement, his incarnation, not even the Trinity or the
sacraments, each of which were added by the church generations later, along
with endless other doctrines and traditions, all based upon these
embellishments. In fact, it is interesting to note here that nowhere did Joshua
ben Adam ever say, "Write this down," and none of his followers ever recorded
their own experiences with him as eye-witnesses. The four
Gospels were written between 70 and 100 A.D. and contain the traditions of
second and third generation Christians. There is only one solitary eye witness
in the entire New Testament: Paul, who wrote only two brief statements: "I saw
the Lord," (I saw a lordly person.); and "He appeared to me." Eight words
are all we have, not from a witness of the so-called Easter event, but from a
witness who actually saw the risen one much later, no longer shrouded with a
mortal body – and that experience supposedly blinded him for three days,
focusing his attention and concentration on the meaning of his encounter.
Second and third generation reports say: Peter said that he saw him and
Mary said that she saw him, but not a word directly from Peter or Mary.
These reports also say that the rest of his band also saw him and that a large
group saw him, but not a word from any of them either. The hush
of awe and wonder remained with the movement for 40 years. The later the
accounts, the longer the explanations; the further we get away from the event,
the more embellished and fantastic the stories became. Also, after the Roman
Legions destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 A.D. and began a systematic
destruction of surrounding Jewish settlements, killing or dispersing their
inhabitants throughout Europe, Christians were thereby encouraged to separate
themselves and their religion from anything Jewish. The Gospels and Epistles
reflected this need. Paul,
closest to the event, takes only four sentences to express his faith in the
resurrection, but then proceeds to pass on the embellished stories and
explanations told to him. Mark, decades later, needs eight. After him,
Matthew expands the report to twenty. Luke, later still, reports in fifty-three.
And the fourth Gospel, two generations after the event, long after the last
eye-witnesses were deceased, expands the account to two full chapters,
describing what the author could only know by hearsay. The further the distance
from the event itself, the more colorful was the description, and yet,
admittedly, not all that different from the embellishments and stories told by
many preachers today in order to make their point while attempting to bring the
meaning "home" and current to their listener’s lives and experiences. The good
news of the resurrection did not remain central in the church’s life for very
long, and was instead relegated to its appointed place in the church year
and rarely mentioned during the rest of the year. Very soon, the central
issues became Joshua’s divinity and his blood atonement to pay for the sins of
the world. In history, Catholicism’s center became the Incarnation and
Protestant’s center became the blood atonement by substitution. One had to
explain away the embarrassing circumstances surrounding his birth and the other
returned to the old Jewish traditions of bloody sacrifices as payment for wrong
doing and regaining acceptance from God in order to explain away the
disappointing circumstances of his horrible death. The
whole Christian theological system began with the supposed premise of God having
a law which required mankind’s perfect obedience. God’s law decreed zero
tolerance! One strike and we were out! Therefore, our disobedience
required a perfect bloody substitute. And our salvation then became the
vindication of this justice of the law. Unfortunately, and more importantly,
this view of the cross event diminished the scandal of God’s real resurrection
justice and surprising generosity while returning mankind to the justice of the
law. Worse, it transformed the risen one into the Deity himself and
put an infinite gulf between him and the rest of humanity. When we
consider how these traditions and "holy" writings came about and how they were
used to divide the church later, and how they still do, perhaps Joshua, who was
wise enough to see how the Jewish writings and traditions of the past divided
and oppressed his people, was especially careful not to have any of his
teachings written down and later misused. Never-the-less, followers many
generations later did not recognize this danger, and proceeded to add "new"
writings to the "old" Jewish writings at Rome in 382 A.D., then reaffirmed their
choices of authenticity in 1563 at Trent. Some 330 years later, it was
determined that they were all "holy," and authored by God via inspiration. (Pope
Leo XIII) That was only about 114 years ago! We can only ask: What will church
authorities and religious scholars oppress us with next?
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Back to
Basics – Justice: Doing the Right Thing:First, a
few words on the faceless laws of nature, or natural laws of the
universe, which rain and storm and flood, or erupt and quake and burn, perhaps
even collide with or explode, but do not distinguish who may be in their path.
In fact, they usually require a survival of the fittest, unless one has a
"mustard seed faith." An evolving, developing, and ever active universe has no
interest in justice or doing the right thing as if it were somehow thoughtfully
godlike or human in order to bring out the best in survivors. Therefore, we need
to be wary of blaming God or mankind for very natural disastrous
scientific events. It misrepresents God and assumes far too much power over
nature by mankind. There is
a legal kind of justice or pay-back justice, which has a useful purpose
in a civil society where minimum standards of discipline have to be maintained.
Such legal justice or civil law, contrived by men, may or may not be fair when
legal courts judge as best they can with the only information available. This
may also be misused by a despot dictator or a greedy shylock lawyer. But its
primary and useful purpose in a civilized society is to protect citizens from
those who would do them harm, whether they are foreign or domestic enemies. All
too often, this type of justice can be misused by power-hungry legislators and
demagogues as they oppress their constituents unjustly while thinking only of
their lucrative positions. According
to religious church law, another form of pay-back justice, Joshua was
found guilty of blasphemy for questioning and challenging its assumed authority
and oppression over mankind; therefore, the church’s leadership claimed that he
should be put to death for his teaching because it undermined and threatened
their authority. According to Roman civil law, such charges of blasphemy were
meaningless; however, since his teachings certainly were causing local riots
among the Jewish leadership and disturbed the peace of Roman rule, a situation
the local Governor could not condone because that threatened his position of
authority, Joshua was subsequently sentenced to death to put a stop to a
possible insurrection. But
there is also another kind of justice which is featured in the Old Testament’s
stories of God’s acts on behalf of his people, embellished as they may
have become. They tell of experienced salvation events from their enemies and
expressed the need to explain to next generations how unusual and amazing they
were. While filled with questionable adornments, especially those describing
God’s brutal treatment of their enemies, possibly to cover or excuse their own
brutal behavior, they do portray God as doing the right thing in terms of
being faithful to a relationship, loyal to a personal commitment, faithful to a
personal promise, and showing fidelity to personal obligations. It is a
justice of love, based on unconditional acceptance, on being there for the
other in time of need, for better or for worse. From the enemy’s
perspective, God’s act on behalf of his people was either seen as foolishness,
in which case they experienced their own demise, or perhaps experienced it as
beneficial when they chose to recognize that God’s act of justice could include
them as well. The important thing was that their pagan neighbors were not to
lead God’s chosen people astray from giving him alone all worth and praise or
from treating each other with love and compassion.
Misrepresentation - Inhuman Behavior – Being Human – God’s JusticeWhen the
law is allowed to intrude as the mediating agent in human relationships, it not
only keeps us at arms length from God, it keeps us at arms length from brother,
sister, father, mother, wife, husband, child, friend, relative, neighbor, or
stranger. Worse, it misrepresents God and his ways as being terrible,
unfair, and unloving, as if he were some angry ogre playing recklessly with
his creatures and creation. A natural disaster is thereby called "an act of
God." Unjust treatment is excused as "doing God’s will." We cannot help but
be judgmental, unforgiving, discriminatory, and above all, fail to be caring and
compassionate. The justice of the law makes us inhuman and
controlling. Our ideas and explanations of God make him appear to be a
supernatural being filled with a vengeance toward all mankind who
cannot do anything right. A "faith" based upon religious laws, writings, and
traditions breeds inhuman behavior toward others, and misrepresents a loving God,
the very opposite of its intention. Being
human is just like having two arms. With one we receive and with the other we
give. We not only need God; we need others and cannot live without them. Being
human means being dependent on God’s blessings through others on the one hand
and rich in ability to do good and right to anyone on the other hand. Being
human can also mean choosing to be independent from God by refusing his goodness
from others and to not do good or right toward them as well; that is, choose not
to receive goodness and/or not to give goodness. It continues to blame
adversity on surrounding circumstances or on other folk rather than accepting
possible responsibility for it or recognizing it as preparation for
greatness and an opportunity for practicing loving acts.
According to Joshua ben Adam, we give God’s justice a human face by being
forgiving, unconditionally accepting, and graciously non-judgmental toward
others while thankfully receiving the same from them, thereby also
recognizing the source of all goodness. It means living without looking
down on any person as inferior or up to anyone as superior. Such
behavior mirrors the loving justice of God, whether willingly given to
others or gratefully received from others, always done graciously and freely,
without strings attached or expectations for returned favors.
Paradigm
for Justice of the Law:However
impressive the Galilean teacher may have been to his little band of supporters,
he appeared pathetically weak as he was quickly arrested and hurried off to a
brutal execution. He not only died totally discredited in the eyes of the
highest judicial authorities in the world, both religious and civil, but as it
appeared, he was totally discredited in the eyes of God because, after all, the
law said: Anyone hanged on a tree was cursed of God. It may also be quite likely
that his body endured the usual and ultimate insult of Roman crucifixions – no
decent burial, but thrown into pits to be scavenged by dogs and carrion. We
rather hope that there was some truth to later accounts of his burial. The
world seems to be ruled by idiots and bureaucrats who, the moment they get
behind the wheel of this juggernaut called "the justice of the law," they run
people down. Religious authorities have certainly not been exempt from grinding
up their share of human bones as well. (Papal Inquisitions) The death
of Joshua ben Adam stands as a paradigm for the justice of this world, the
justice of mankind, the justice of the law, civil or religious.
Scandalous Gift of God’s Justice:The God
who has called the human race from the evolutionary mud of creation into
consciousness and awareness of himself also has a destiny for this creature,
a likeness of himself, one which will not be abandoned. His justice is a
scandal to the judgment of the world. It is not calculated, measured out, and
does not pay tit for tat. It’s the justice Joshua ben Adam tried to
illustrate in his outrageous stories and act out in his compassion for the
oppressed. It was this justice he trusted in when he was overwhelmed by
utter failure and total disaster as he experienced the injustices of his
religion and this world. The
good news of "Easter" is that death is not the final answer. Like life
itself, the justice of God is a gift of inconceivable generosity. "You will
be with me in Paradise." God is not the God of the dead, but of the
living. The justice of God is based on his unconditional divine love and
promise which never at any time even contemplated locking anyone away from an
unbrokered fellowship with himself. Since the beginning of mankind’s
consciousness and awareness of God, humans have had a choice to trust this love
for them, or not, and to treat others accordingly. We still have the same
choice. Nothing has changed, all the Old Testament Jewish traditional writings
and explanations, based upon even older Babylonian writings, concerning our
origin, not withstanding. God’s justice will always outweigh the justice of
mankind.
Future
of Humanity:Joshua ben
Adam, a true human, capable of human errors, mistakes, and unloving trespasses,
for which he was baptized by John, and for which he prayed to be forgiven while
teaching us how to pray to our Heavenly Father-God, chose to trust God’s
unconditional love and act accordingly. (i.e. If accurately reported during
his arrest, and crucifixion: "Take me, and let these go their way. Father,
forgive them. They’re just mindlessly following their rules and orders.") His
resurrection, in the face of his scandalous life, was God’s assurance to us that
this unconditional love of God is true. We can depend on being with him in
Paradise, a new life that will not require the use of this mortal body of ours,
certainly not with the space-time limitations it has now, and no longer subject
to harmful bacteria, viruses, diseases, and the universal laws of nature, nor
oppressed by the laws of this world, but just like Joshua and the thief who died
next to him, humans who are now treated like family, sons and/or daughters of
God, who now experience endless explorations, possibilities, opportunities,
growth and development, within an infinite universe, possibly universes, but
without mortal limitations. An awesome future, indeed! Whoever
lives and trusts God’s loving justice as Joshua ben Adam did will
never really cease to exist in spite of what those still alive may witness,
in spite of a lifeless body buried for worm fodder, to be eaten by carrion,
drowned in the depths or burned to ashes and returned to the earth. Our life is
attached to his spirit which will continue to exist and enjoy his fellowship and
that of other’s in his Paradise, his expanding universe(s), under considerably
different circumstances. Finally, to
assume to know what God will do with his breath-of-life-giving spirit in those
who may currently mock this faith; that is, to say that the life of the one who
refuses to trust this love of God may simply cease to exist, or may even
experience something far worse for an eternity, takes New Testament
embellishments based upon the justice of the law to the extreme, still does not
yet realize how scandalous God’s justice really is, and presumes to lend
instruction to God. The more
we recognize that Joshua ben Adam was truly human and only human, the more we
will appreciate that the account of his resurrection is God’s word of love to
the entire human race without distinction of race, religion,
gender, or anything else. The more we realize how scandalous the real message of
"Easter" really is, the more we will be wowed and overwhelmed by God’s justice,
and the more we will have reason to celebrate and enjoy our life, including the
experience of loving relationships and fellowship with any and all others,
thereby already enjoying his "kingdom" to each other’s mutual benefit, and that,
even in spite of any dire circumstances that may unjustly surround us in our
current time and space. Many
religious notions need to be given up to come to these conclusions, I know. And
now what follows? Awe. Relief. Tolerance. Understanding. Forgiveness.
Generosity. Love. Thankfulness. Celebration. Anticipation…and more. Very much
more than is given up, and all of it freely given and freely received! Can you
even begin to imagine what would happen if Christian pastors, teachers, and
priests, Jewish rabbis, Islamic imams, Hindu and Buddhist priests, teachers and
leaders of the LDS, Chinese, Japanese folk religions, and many others put aside
their precious books and traditions and began to concentrate on sharing the free
and loving justice of God?
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Originally posted: 2007-SEP-08
Latest update: 2011-APR-03
Author: Henry Hasse, reviewed and revised Summer, 2007, and still believed….
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