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His message still matters
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Date Posted on this Site
June 23, 2006
Publication
Toronto Sun
Publication Date
April 2, 2006
Published Content
His message still matters
By MARIANNE MEED WARD
Every year we engage in certain rituals during Lent — the 40 days prior to the Christian holiday of Easter.
No, I’m not talking about the folk who give up chocolate, or coffee, or alcohol to symbolically suffer in memory of the story of Christ’s sacrifice for sins on the cross.
I’m talking about the inevitable stories that come out this time of year questioning orthodox understandings of Jesus’ life and death.
The latest comes from Maclean’s magazine, whose cover story last week poses the question “Did he really die on the cross?”
It’s a timely question for reasons other than the season.
Right now, in a London courtroom, author Dan Brown is defending his novel The Da Vinci Code against charges of plagiarism.
On the attack is historian and religious scholar Michael Biagent, who argues that the premise of Brown’s book — that Jesus wasn’t crucified, but married Mary Magdalene and fathered a holy blood line — is ripped off from Biagent’s own non-fiction text Holy Blood, Holy Grail.
The idea that Jesus didn’t die on the cross isn’t new to Biagent, though — so plagiarism may be tough to prove.
The early Gnostic Christians (largely discredited by the institutionalized Christian church) are the primary source for the theory that Jesus escaped death on the cross.
Among other things, the Gnostics believe the primary goal of life is the pursuit of mysticism or “special knowledge” (gnosis). They tend to believe in a remote, unknowable God.
They believe that divine nature exists in all of us. And they believe we are redeemed through the mediation of a redeemer figure — sometimes represented as Christ, and sometimes by other mythological figures.
But unlike orthodox Christians, for Gnostics redemption isn’t in the details. It doesn’t matter if Jesus died on a cross or lived to father children. He still represents the possibility of redemption.
It’s a message that is increasingly at home with many spiritual seekers.
Jesus’ divinity, his birth of a virgin, his death and resurrection, and the claim that he is the only way to God — these “truths” don’t much matter.
What matters more — and it should — is Jesus’ message of love: Love your neighbour (namely anyone in need) as yourself.
You don’t need to believe the orthodoxies of institutional faith in order to practice love. And many people know that (thus the popularity of Brown’s novels) — even if churches are reluctant to part with their sacred cows.
For centuries, the Christian church — both Catholic and Protestant — has made the sacred cows equivalent to the faith.
You couldn’t call yourself a Christian unless you accept the Apostle’s Creed, or Nicene Creed, for example, which affirm Jesus death, resurrection and divinity.
There are many churches today that would exclude you from their definition of Christian for not believing these things to be literal truths.
And that’s a shame. This misplaces the focus of faith, oversimplifies it to the point of unrecognizability in fact. And that comes dangerously close to heresy.
Not the first time, unfortunately, that the institutional keepers of the faith have subverted and distorted it.
I’m not arguing for Biagent’s take on Jesus. I don’t know what version of Jesus life and death is true. But it doesn’t change anything either way — and it shouldn’t.
I believe there are truths in all religions — but I don’t have to believe that Allah was God’s messenger, or that God appeared to Abraham, or that all the Hindu Gods are literal beings, or that the Buddha is reincarnated in order to learn from Islam, Judaism, Hinduism or Buddhism.
And I don’t have to believe in Jesus’ divinity to follow his teachings, either.
In fact, if more of his self-proclaimed orthodox followers — the ones who will cut off relationship with you before they admit that the Bible isn’t 100% accurate and literal — showed love, the world would be a better place.
My Response Letter
Ms. Meed Ward is right about one thing: the world would be a better place if more people showed love.
But she is not being completely truthful about Jesus and His message. It wasn't only about love of neighbour. It was first and foremost about love of God (the first and most important commandment) and that requires faith, the kind of faith that is affirmed in the various creeds of the Church that she so readily dismisses.
That she says it's a shame there are churches that won't accept you if you don't believe in Christ's divinity, death, and resurrection is like saying it's a shame that there are hockey teams that won't let you join unless you know how to skate!
This seems like less of an opportunity to examine Lent and the corresponding media coverage and more about slamming Christianity and the Catholic Church.
Jason Gennaro
Was my response published?
No
Did I get a response?
No