In a conversation with my son and his girlfriend on Corpus Christi, which is a public holiday in our area, we talked about the fact that it was established as a feast-day as late as the 13th century. We started talking about the value of traditions and customs and we duly interrupted by a rather rude person who managed to contradict almost every statement we made. In the course of the conversation however, it became blatantly clear that the concern I was expressing was being personified by the sceptic who kept on interrupting us. He was giving me a wonderful chance to make something understandable by his presence.
He, like most of us in the alleged “civilized†world, was a fine example of a “rich man†who had difficulty in even seeing the “realm of Godâ€, let alone entering it. All religious teachings or those which are regarded as such were all “rubbish†in his sight. The Christian teachings were the worst of them all of course. He accused Christianity of fooling the uneducated, duping them into a poverty which only satiated the clerics and paid their way. It was a broad broom with which he swept Christianity away, and he couldn’t see how he was doing more damage than good.
I told him about the story of the darnel or ryegrass that was sown with the wheat and ruined the picture of the wheat harvest, preventing the cereal plants to grow and causing green blotches throughout the field. The disciples had asked why it is, if what God does is good, that sometime people were led astray, and he gave them this example, showing the patience of the farmer who will only throw out the weed at the end of the day. He would be stupid to tear out the weed, for he would do more damage than good. My critic turned on me in fury and said, “There you go! Another example – nothing but a tautology! It says nothing!â€
My sons girlfriend stepped in and said, “I think it is quite plain. There is nothing to get upset about just because things go wrong here and there. It is down to having faith and trusting in the good outcome.â€
This only inflamed his temperament even more, “Faith blocks progress, prevents development …†and proceeded to rant and rave about all of the things that had gone wrong over the last 2000 years. In doing so, he brought up numerous subjects that I had earlier used as examples for the fact that through the incessant machination of the modern, nothing had really been achieved – except that our resources have been used up at an incomparable rate, and a minority has relative comfort at the cost of the civilisation illnesses like Diabetes mellitus, Arterioscleroses as well as those illnesses associated to such causes.
I was quite amazed really that someone who had been to university could be the personification of Erich Fromm’s modern man, who chooses “to have†rather than “to beâ€. Such people usually avoid such potholes in their rhetoric path. When he stormed me with his pledge to pure rationalism, the case was sealed. I had won game, set and match without hardly hitting the ball.
It left me wondering whether the problem with modern religion, especially in its fundamentalist expression, is that it just can’t sit back and let others talk themselves into a tizz-wazz, but has to give some comparable verbal diarrhoea of their own. How different Jesus seems to have been. A man of few words, but words that had been weighed before they were issued. It isn’t the number of words, but the effect they have. Most words burden us, his are there to lighten the burden we are already carrying by serving as a yoke. It is sad therefore, when sermons are burdening.
I hear Jesus astounding them all by bringing tranquillity to his listeners, even if this caused derision inside families. The religious militants and the conservatives were only opposites of the roman occupying forces, but just as “badâ€. The suggestion that to yield, or that a detachment from events and occurrences could be a blessing has always caused an uproar amongst the indignant and has seen sons and daughters, husbands and wives thrown out of families and communities out of fear of being regarded weak.
He spoke against the religious activism of the Pharisees, against the militancy of the Zealots, against the Compromise of the Sadducees, and against the seclusion of the Esssenes, although he was known to all. God has given life, we must live it and not be lived by others. Therefore, we need to relax and “let it be.â€
Any thoughts
Shalom