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[font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Jesus Is My Homeboy [/font]
[font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]by Robert Rowen-Herzog[/font]
[font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]By all accounts, Jesus must have one damn good publicist. This past year brought a great deal of exposure to the Son of God from multiple cover stories in Time and Newsweek; to a healthy split of box office proceeds with Mel Gibson from 'The Passion of the Christ'; to the ubiquitous sightings of Jesus Is My Homeboy t-shirts in shopping malls, coffee shops and other various post-pubescent, post-modern venues; and finally, to playing in front of standing room only crowds at his regular one-man gig in a Bethlehem stable this past December.
Like the honorable Governor of California, Jesus parlayed some of his box-office capital and success from 'The Passion' and threw his halo into the political ring. As has been documented, President Bushs favorite philosopher has provided the inspiration and, as George W. would have you believe, direct memos on how to rule the country and the world.
The Republican Party has glommed on to the Bible, co-opting and proof-texting their way to marketing it as a Family Values for Dummies tone. And as this past election cycle certainly revealed, 51% of the American public is buying it with mandating zeal. Nothing is safe from becoming a commodity to be bought and sold in these days of market-inspired culture. The teachings of Jesus, referred to here marginally as Christianity, and his very identity have not been spared this folly.
French philosopher Voltaire stated God made man in his own image, and man repaid him in kind. The neoconservatives have seemingly bought the rights to Jesus and conveniently glossed over his radical teachings on faith and justice to create a tidy image of an unquestionable spokesperson for their platform of values.
Cognitive linguist George Lakoff has laid out a brilliant template for understanding our divisive political and cultural milieu in his best selling book, Dont Think of an Elephant! Lakoff has assigned the labels strict father and nurturant parent as the defining ethos for conservatives and progressives, respectively. Despite the models dualistic limitations, the categories are frighteningly accurate.
Simply stated, Lakoffs highly effective and insightful framing tool describes the strict father model that is necessary to protect the family in a dangerous world, to teach his children right from wrong and to promote the morality of self-interest. Think, 'The Terminator'. By contrast, the nurturant parent model prioritizes empathy, responsibility and mutuality as core values. Think, 'The Cosby Show'.
This model has obvious implications for everything from social programs to market economy to, yes, even religion.
The conservative Christian movement has at its core a perception of God as the ultimate disciplinarian Father, quick to anger and ready to unleash legions of angels on New York and Hollywood, our modern-day versions of permissive Sodom and Gomorrah. The sins against morality are clear indicators of the need for punishment with this model; one can avoid such punishment, i.e. being exiled to Hell with gnashing of teeth and eternal fires and such, through disciplining oneself in adherence to the moral teachings of Christ.
This is the only way to redemption, to heaven as it were, and any deviation from this path of Thou Shalt Nots should bring quick and justifiable punishment.
A dear friend has regaled me with stories of growing up in a conservative church in a rural small town how most Sunday nights as a young boy he would lay in bed gripped with insomnia, inspired by that mornings hell and brimstone sermon that the Lord would not take his soul if he should die before he woke. Everyone else, he imagined, would be gloriously raptured and he would be banished to hell, wallowing in the transgressions of a sinful eight-year old. You can see the power of this model stay in line or else. Salvation is thus seen as merely fire insurance, keeping you, until you screw up again, out of the fiery pits.
The progressive notion of Christianity, in contrast, perceives of a God who is benevolent and loving and wishing to bestow blessings, not punishment, on His/Her people. Redemption or salvation is through grace, and this grace is ultimately personified in the life and teachings of Christ and his mandate to care for the sick and the poor and the widow. One is redeemed through this grace, through this metaphorical nurturance, and is thus inspired to nurture ones relationship with God and with others. This is Golden Rule stuff , the essence of Jesus teachings as even he described clearly, To love God and to love others as yourself.
This progressive notion of a loving God has been confused with being permissive the kind of God found only in free-love, boundary-less, pot-smoking, hippy communes of the 60s that are responsible for the moral decay of our increasingly God-less society. To use the family metaphor, it is easy to refute such a claim, in the imperative that parents must create boundaries and discipline to be truly effective and nurturant. Hey, even the Cos had to discipline Theo, Vanessa and the rest of those unruly kids on 'The Cosby Show'.
In most hawkish circles, this perception of God is clearly viewed as weak, the kind of God that John Kerry and the rest of we girly men might worship; belief in such a God would certainly make us more vulnerable to terrorist attack. Violence must beget quick, and increasingly, pre-emptive action, the predominant logic proceeds. Fight is necessary, flight is cowardly. This is a war against powers and principalities, the stuff of apocalypse, and George W. is our Divine Warrior. This notion dovetails nicely with most interpretations of Revelations, and sells millions of copies of the Left Behind series to boot.
In the midst of Lakoffs insightful, albeit dualistic, treatise on us and them, there is room for a third way the militant nonviolence espoused by Jesus. Theologian Walter Wink writes on these teachings in his essay, Jesus and Alinsky, contained in the powerful book edited by Paul Rogat Loeb, The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizens Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear. Jesus wisdom reflects a wonderfully radical response to the power of Empire, with the strongest language reserved for the religious teachers of the day who aligned themselves with the politique of state religion.
In his admonition to turn the other cheek and resist not evil, Jesus is not promoting passivity; rather, he is advocating revolt and insurrection, as Wink writes. He implores us that we respond to violence, but not with more violence. Just war theories and pre-emptive wars notwithstanding, these teachings provide those of us who espouse faith in this God of justice and peace an example of true moral authority, power and values, and offer a creative alternative to violence.
As Christians who would align ourselves as progressive, we must offer an alternative model to the prevailing perception of the punitive, disciplinarian God that is permeating our culture, our politics and our religion. As W.H. Auden writes, We must love one another or die. But this notion of loving one another must rise above mere sentimentality and disengaged idealism. While we are careful to render to Caesar what is Caesars, we must be compelled to participate politically in the face of the monolithic conservative Christian movement. Otherwise, we risk irrelevance.
In danger of promoting the very commodification that I bemoan, I dare say that as people of faith, we must reframe and market this God who is both nurturant and demanding - loving us (and them) through grace, while also issuing the mandate that we seek the justice and peace of His Kingdom.
We must act from the love of this God described in 1 John 4:16-18, God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love (NRSV).
This is a Jesus worthy of homeboy status.
Robert Rowen-Herzog is Editor of Radical Grace, the bi-monthly publication of the Center for Action and Contemplation (www.cacradicalgrace.org) in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
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