30 April 2007

On 6 April 2007, The Philadelphia Inquirer published The Reverend Donna Schaper’s article, “Jesus, fully human and fully divine”.  (If you recall from my previous blog, “Kitsch at the Expense of the Hallowed Symbol”, the Reverend is minister of Judson Memorial Church, in the heart of New York’s Greenwich Village.)  It has taken me about one month to accept and to ingest this twin occurrence: that The Philadelphia Inquirer would actually publish such an article and that a person of such symbolic magnitude would propose such ideas.  Indeed, this meditation of hers is thoughtless, careless, and irresponsible.  Even more debilitating is that it leaves no room for individual agency – and empowerment from that agency.  

Schaper begins her article by proposing that “Jesus died with our sins” rather than “for our sins” so we can accept that “Jesus is really human and has his own faults.”   She goes on to declare that Jesus is the “ideal human. […] But not necessarily perfect.”

So in this world she is dreaming up for us, Jesus, the ultimate Biblical symbol of Holiness, is to be relegated to the human.  In other words, the Divine is the mundane.   Furthermore, the mundane is thoroughly imperfect.  To sum up then, rather than see the world as ‘God is in us’ and thus elevate ourselves towards perfection and mastery and rather than attaining towards our higher self through exemplary leading and living, we are asked to see the world as ‘We are in God’.  In the latter world, the Holy is holy, and not even that elevated because it can no longer incorporate holiness or perfection.  It is unequal to the task of transcendent excellence.  Instead, it is a transient worldly lackluster sphere of limitation and imperfection.  Far from having an example then, we are thus left with no replacement for guidance, brilliance, and elevated direction.  

In effect, we are being asked to trade-in the celestial for the terrestrial, and relish in our imperfections.  Rather than grow and flourish, we are left to recede and deteriorate – never the wiser, never the better, and certainly never enlightened.  A rather lackluster prospect indeed!

Interestingly, in quite the opposite move to Pascal’s famous wager, we have plenty precious to loose in accepting Schaper’s proposition.  Indeed, we loose a paragon of excellence, truth, and beauty in perfection, along with perfection itself and the transcendence that accompanies that paragon.  In one fell swoop, she manages to throw away the works of the Greeks and the Ancients – their genius, their ideas, their creativity, their brilliance – and leaves us in an ersatz world of embraced imperfections and staunch ‘fallenness’.

Heaven on Earth or Living inside the Inferno? It seems the further I navigate through the wormholes of her thinking, the more rancid the layers of her ideas become…

Throughout the article, she emphasizes  - “beg” is the word she reiterates - the need for “Jesus to have his own shadow” and by so doing she is also “begging for room for each of us to do the same.  We can get over that Atlas thing and let somebody else water the plants from time to time.” 

The way to obtain this coveted shadow? 

By “equalizing the giving and receiving in charity” – a problem in her eyes because to her, those “who can’t receive often can’t really give.” 

I think one of the very first lessons in morals parents teach their children is not to shirk responsibility.  I believe it was one of the first inculcated into me, aside from honesty, loyalty, and respect.  Of course there is that old adage that if you do not do it, no one else will, so you better take on the responsibility and just do it.  I think Nike’s whole marketing premise is based off this notion.  So when did ‘passing the buck’ gain moral acceptance and religious sanction? 

Is she serious that we need to “get over that Atlas thing and let somebody else water the plants from time to time”?!?  Now, that “water the plants” analogy is from her little anecdote about a friend of hers whose last concern before passing away is that someone water her plants.  Rather than extol her as the ultimate ‘poster child’ for the green movement and rather than praise her unselfish example, Schaper points to it as a “vice” because the woman did not learn to equalize receiving with all that she had given – not even on her deathbed.  So Schaper would rather the woman’s last concern be self-serving rather than giving.  You know, there is an old latin maxim, “de mortuis, nil nisi bonum” – of the dead, speak nothing but good.  I rather think Schaper would have benefited heeding that advice.  Solely for space of time, I move on…

I think this is a pet peeve of mine – accountability – and this is a very important value.  When we accept ownership over our responsibilities, we enable individual empowerment to action.  In effect, we take the ‘driver’s seat’ to effect change and create a world of our own, with our lasting impression as a mark of our call to presence.  I can not stress it enough.  If we all adopted the attitude Schaper asks of us, nothing would ever get accomplished, and at the rate we are going, it is a miracle that we have accomplished as much as we have already!  By all means, we should be encouraging the momentum, creating means to propel it ever further and forward.

What we need today is for our moral and religious leaders to beg us to take agency and ownership over our actions and decisions.  In a world of ever-increasing virtuality, we desperately need guidance towards our transcendence, our strength of effective action and potentiality, and above all, we need to recognize the power of our present hyphenation.  As material manifestations of human creativity and potentiality to transcend human limitations, electronic technologies help us each day towards our realized creativity, our highest potential, and our yet-undiscovered empowerment.  We all have god in us to create miracles, to assist others in need, and to further our collective transcendence.  To suggest otherwise – to suggest that the transcendent extraordinary is merely human and imperfect – is to spread and to sanction a mentality of sub-par imperfections and banal mediocrity.  To spread a notion that relegates us all to this state of underdevelopment, stripping us of our inherent potentiality, is to foster the spreading of a pernicious cancer – a cancer of far-reaching repurcussions.  And this is an insidious offense indeed!

She ends with an equally startling assertion: “Politics, money and sex are not bad: They are earthly experiences meant to be holy.”

Where can I begin?  What is going on?!?  I never thought I would live to see the day an actual minister declares Jesus to be human, imperfect, and with faults and in the same breath declare politics, money, and sex to be holy!  Have I entered the bizarro world?

My husband once suggested that perhaps this life - this present - is the real hell and we are just what is left of the wreckage.  After reading Schaper’s article, I am inclined to agree.  And I am a die-hard optimist!

And just so this does not angle itself as a diatribe aimed solely against one person, I have to mention John Leland’s article published by The New York Times on 29 April 2007, titled “Turning to Churches or Scripture to Cope With Debt.”  In the article, he offers us little anecdotes of Christian individuals with unrelenting debt burdens seeking the guidance and aid of their respective Christian leaders.  He quotes one of the individuals in debt as saying, “God wants you to be good stewards of your money.  The money’s all his.”   Leland then quotes two of the religious leaders: Mike Graham, who states, “Nothing in the Bible says you can’t borrow;” and Dave Briggs, who states, “Biblically, bankruptcy is only an option if you need time and space to pay back what you owe.” 

Ok, what is going on here?

I understand that religion to some is not just a belief system, it is a way of life.  That may be wonderful.  But when did the world turn on its head and ‘passing the buck’ become religiously sanctioned?  I am not a Christian.  I have read The Bible many times and I attended a Bible Study group for three years during my formative years and then again to get my doctorate in Religion.  I may be rusty, but I really do not recall where it endorses bankruptcy and where it states that all money is God’s.  The latter suggests that God is concerned with the earthly material possessions and again, relegates the Holy to the mundane.  It places the terrestrial in the celestial, and thus obfuscates the Light of Perfection.

In being a rather pernicious phenomenon, this tale can serve a cautionary purpose:

Beware following the primrose path of self-delusion and debauchery.  Accept your innate agency and empowerment from that agency by owning your actions, decisions, and behaviors.  Rejoice in striving towards your inherent perfection and fulfilling your realization towards your creative potentiality. 

Mine is a secular proposition: believe in your power to access the potentiality of hyphenation and you may become one step closer towards realizing that you already do.  We are meant for greatness and brilliance in our best self.  From empowerment of our individual strengths, we can build upon and cultivate a collective realization of our inherent potentiality – a potentiality of the highest transcendence.

And so we lead…

And so we live…

And so we exemplify…

Excelsior!