Common Dreams / Published on Tuesday, December 26, 2006 by the Boulder Daily Camera (Colorado)Ira Chernus
Throughout this Christmas season, two things have been inescapable: songs about Jesus and news about war. Even those of us who are not Christian might do well occasionally to ask, “What would Jesus do?”
But then we’d have to ask, “Which Jesus?” The Jesus of Matthew, who loves even his enemies and turns the other cheek? The Jesus of John, who loves only his friends who do His Father’s will? Or the Jesus of Revelations, who fights against Satan by any means necessary -- bringing not peace, but the sword -- until all evil is finally subdued? Perhaps the real Jesus is that little baby in the manger. Like every baby, he is pure potential. He can become anything and everything.
If I were a Christian, in this world so full of violence (perpetrated more often with dollars and euros than with guns and land mines), I’d opt for Matthew’s Jesus. But historically speaking, I’d be in the minority. Over the centuries, the most popular Jesus has been a sort of “house blend,” drawn mostly from Revelations, the Gospel of John, and the letters of Paul.
Paul was the guy who invented the idea of original sin, plunging Christianity into a paradox it has never yet escaped. Most Christians have turned to Jesus to find spiritual security. But their tradition has told them that Jesus’ archenemy, the Devil, is inside them from the moment of conception, always tempting them to disobey their Father in Heaven. They could never be sure they would withstand the test.
Some versions of Jesus assured them that their sin would always be forgiven. Yet other versions suggested that Satan would always rule this world, that they were bound to be less than perfect and thus, perhaps, eternally doomed. So the religion that held out a promise of security simultaneously took it away, leaving its believers to grapple with uncertainty, anxiety, and insecurity.
That’s one reason -- perhaps the main reason -- that so many Christian soldiers, from the days of Constantine to the days of George W. Bush, have gone marching out to war. By enlisting in the battle against Satan and his minions, they could prove (to themselves, above all) that they were surely on the side of Jesus and his Father. The problem is that, since Satan’s temptation never ends, the need to prove their own virtue by fighting the “evildoers” never ends either. So they are condemned to eternal war.
The only Christians who escape this dilemma are those who choose Matthew’s Jesus, the lover of enemies. They have no “evildoers” to fight. In their world, it’s OK that it rains on the just and the unjust alike, because they are offering their love equally to all. Or at least they are trying their best. And when they fall short of perfection (as they are bound to), they don’t blame their problems on some enemy across the border. They just try a little harder to love everyone.
Matthew’s Jesus is the only one who offers real security. He knows, as Martin Luther King Jr. reminded us, that all of us, from the best to the worst, are tied together in a single garment of destiny. He knows that even George W. and Osama are tied together; neither can flourish unless both do, together. Only this Jesus has no one to fear. That’s why, if I were Christian, I’d choose him -- not from mushy sentiment, but from hard-headed common sense.
In fact, I’m Jewish. With Hanukkah just ended, that great celebration of the Jews’ victory over “evildoers,” it may be worth recalling that Jesus was a Jew, and of all the Christian Gospels, Matthew’s was most clearly aimed at Jews.
Now Jewish soldiers go out every day to make war on Palestinians, the vast majority of whom want nothing more than to live peaceful ordinary lives in a tiny state of their own. The Jewish soldiers, too, go out to allay their people’s fear -- the fear that gentiles will always be anti-semites bent on destroying the Jews. The idea of “the Jewish people” for most Jews, like the idea of Jesus for most Christians, evokes endless insecurity.
Some day we Jews may decide that a life filled with perpetual insecurity is just not a reasonable way to live. It can’t make us happy. Then we’ll find some new way to interpret our Jewish identity as a path of nonviolence and universal love. We can do that if we want to. “The Jewish people” is a symbol as adaptable and malleable as Jesus.
“America” is adaptable and malleable, too. We can choose what it means to be American. We don’t have to send our youth out to fight endless wars against endless enemies, just to reassure ourselves that America is really the good guy. We don’t have to live in a state of constant national insecurity. Instead, we can ask, WWMJD? What would Matthew’s Jesus do? We already know the answer.
Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is the author of "American Nonviolence: The History of an Idea" and "Monsters to Destroy: The Neoconservative War on Terror and Sin." Email to: [email protected].
