As many of my recent blog posts do, this one starts with: I was recently having a conversation with a brilliant friend, and I was excited when I was forced to think about something in a new way. I love that feeling! Not only do I get to play with a new idea, I get to do so while sharing it with a treasured friend!
The conversation had made its way to our religious upbringings, although I don’t remember exactly how we got there; part of the joy of discovery. My friend Lyn was raised in the Catholic Church; I grew up mostly in the Episcopal Church of the late 70s and early 80s, and went to a couple of years of Catholic school, so we had much common ground. Lyn made an observation that immediately resonated with me: “I never quite understood how Christ’s suffering was supposed to absolve me of my sins, 2000 years later.”
It was an Aha! moment – I have frequently felt the same way, though I hadn’t ever articulated it so clearly. And as we shared our experiences with the popular interpretations of this idea, the idea itself seemed to get weaker and weaker. So many people seem to take the idea of Christ’s sacrifice as a license to live life how they want to, secure in the knowledge that their sins will be forgiven, so no problem! Isn’t that convenient?
As a “not an actual historian” who likes to read history (see the Story of Civilization series of posts, soon to be continued) and as a “not as actual Bible scholar who hasn’t read the whole book yet” who is interested in how religion helps weave the tapestry of culture, I took a stab at an idea about what the real value of the Christ story is, and what makes it so historically unique, and indeed revolutionary, that it remains powerful even in diluted and misunderstood forms two millennia later.
A Brief, and Probably Inaccurate, History of Polytheism
For many millennia, before the advent of writing and of history itself, mankind told stories about the gods. A frequent modern interpretation goes something like this: “people in the old times weren’t very smart, so when something they didn’t understand happened, or something was scary, they made up silly little kid stories about unseen and very powerful gods to explain it.” Of course, I think our ancestors deserve quite a bit more credit than this rather condescending view affords them. The same Greeks who had a multitude of gods and myths knew the Earth was round and measured its circumference to within 1% of the actual figure. With a stick. (Eratosthenes) The same Egyptians who had a multitude of (very similar) gods and myths built architecture more beautiful than anything built today, and aligned the pyramids to geographic north with incredible precision, again within 1% (Imhotep and others). Never mind that modern people are so mystified with how the pyramids were built that many people rely on a deus ex machina (Aliens!) to explain it. Similar examples can be found in every major culture, whether in India, China, Persia, the Norse lands, etc.
So what would it look like if our ancestors were actually much wiser than we commonly give them credit for? We might interpret the old gods and myths something like this: complex stories, rich in symbolism, much of which few modern non-scholars recognize, that served to transmit the wisdom of the centuries about how to navigate the difficulty and complexity of life. From this perspective, we see the purpose in each character, and the lesson in each story becomes richer and more meaningful. Yet we are left with gods, who although immortal and very powerful, are imbued at the deepest level with very human flaws and foibles. Zeus the philanderer. Hera the jealous and vengeful wife. Bacchus the immoderate partier who never grew up. Diana the goddess of both love and war (what a rich topic that is!). Vulcan, the forger of weapons with the tender heart whose gift is to appreciate beauty and whose curse is to remain outside its grasp. Hades, the guardian of the darkness. The cast of characters is nearly universal across cultures and across time. Yet in one respect, they aren’t exactly Gods as we think of them. They aren’t perfect beings distinctly different in character from humans. They aren’t superhuman; they are only super-humans. Human in temperament and character, but super powerful.
The Old Testament God
In my limited understanding of the Old Testament, we see a transition from polytheism to one God. But to me, the God of the Old Testament is again a super-human. He is jealous. He is vengeful. He demands sacrifice. He requires praise. Like the Greek gods, he frequently walks among humans on Earth. He judges whether the sacrifice is worthy and punishes swiftly and harshly if it isn’t. He wipes out entire cities. He turns people to pillars of salt. He even becomes so disgusted (is there a more human emotion than disgust?) that he wipes out all of humanity! Have we not, in the Old Testament, merely merged all of the old gods into one new, more powerful but still very human, god?
Of course, this is not to say that the Old Testament doesn’t contain nearly endless wisdom about the experience of being human. In fact, in its symbolism and story, it is extraordinarily rich and complex, and undeniably wise. Yet it seems that a large majority of the stories are meant to warn us of the perils of certain choices. The distance between an offering made from hard work being found unworthy to resentment, anger, vengeance, and nihilism is but 5 short verses in the tale of Cane and Able. How applicable to life, even today, that one should take notice when one finds himself feeling resentful, because that road can become very dark, very quickly, with great and harmful consequences. Likewise, the tale of Job reminds us again that sometimes virtue, instead of being rewarded, is punished, not just by other humans (as is so frequently the case), but by god and satan, or perhaps just the stark reality of life.
The New Testament Christ and God
Which brings us to the Christ story, which I recently heard described by Jordan Peterson as not only a tragic story, but technically speaking, the most tragic story possible. Here we have the most virtuous person, probably ever, who is being led to execution precisely because of his virtue. And he’s going to be executed in the most excruciatingly painful way possible, with a death deliberately designed by world’s global superpower to punish the worst of the worst. On top of that, he was betrayed by his friend. For money. Even worse, the authority in charge of the ordering his execution knows he’s innocent. And even worse, so does literally everybody else. And even worse, he is publicly shamed, mocked, and humiliated on the way to his execution. And even worse, Pilate offers clemency to one of the criminals being crucified that day. And that guy is guilty. And literally everyone knows it! Perhaps the only thing that I can think of that is more tragic than Christ’s experience is that of his mother, Mary, watching and witnessing all of this with grace. This act, of giving his life for humanity, is what gives rise to the interpretation that his sacrifice, specifically being punished precisely for his virtue, acts to cleanse humanity of our sins. But what of the rest of the Christ story? Might it fill the gap and also transform the Old Testament god into a different and new and more important and more useful character altogether?
In Christ, we find not just sacrifice, but we find an aspirational example, counter to the old gods in their flawed multitudes and the old god with his many, very human flaws. Through the journey of the Gospels, we witness an example, not of the perils of failing to properly balance the order and chaos in the world, but of how to live a virtuous life, to our full human potential in a way that improves not only our own lives, but our families’, our communities, and the world around us. In the process, the Old Testament god himself is transformed, and becomes a new God who is not a super-human, but who is superhuman in the sense of having transcended the inherent and unavoidable flaws of being human. And how revolutionary is that, that the Christ story transformed the nature of God himself?
We now have God as a loving father, a God who guides rather than demands, a God who forgives rather than enacting vengeance, a God of infinite patience who encourages us to thrive, a God who asks only one thing of us: do your best. And then gives us an example of what that can look like. And in so doing offers the challenge that it is hard work. And shows us the reality that we will be unfairly and perhaps tragically persecuted for it, not by him, but by life, by the condition of being human. And that we can handle that tragedy with grace. And that accepting the personal, individual responsibility for doing our best is worth it, precisely because it matters deeply, in the sense that each person who does so makes the world a richer place for everyone else. And in that way, God provides a purpose to each of us. A purpose not to please God, but a purpose that is pleasing to both God and to humanity.
And isn’t that way better than a life spent merely trying, unsuccessfully, to avoid tragedy and perhaps enjoy some momentary hedonistic happiness?