My, isn't it nice of Harper's Magazine to mark December with not one, but two articles about Christians losing their faith.
I'll just take on the cover piece: "Jesus Without the Miracles" by Erik Reece, writer and son of a Baptist preacher. The conceit is to compare Thomas Jefferson's Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth with the Gospel of Thomas.
The article is quite long, strange, and completely untethered from historical considerations. Completely.
The project, as Reece puts it, is to recover a "truly American gospel" in which otherworldly considerations have been banished, and we are encouraged and inspired to attend to the here and now.
The conceit fails miserably, though, because Reece walks that usual path of ignorance, in which profound thinkers tend to forget, or ignore, the fact that those who have thrown themselves most vigorously into helping individuals afflicted with earthly misery are those who also believe in the entire Gospel, which includes those other-worldly aspects like Resurrection.
It also fails because Reece's preferred redaction of the Gospels posits a totally false dichotomy:
"In all of his teacings, the Jesus that Jefferson recovers has one overarching theme -- the world's values are all upside down, in relation to the kingdom of god. Material riches do not constitute real wealth; those whom we think of as the most pwerful, the first in the nation-state, are actually the last in the kingdom of god; being true to one's self is more imprtant than being loyal to one's family; the Sabbath is for men, men are not for the Sabbath; those who think they know the most are the most ignorant....."
Oh, yes. This Jeffersonian gospel is nothing like the Gospel preached by Christian traditions that take the entire Gospel at its world. The Resurrection of Jesus has nothing to do with worldy values being turned upside down. Jesus healing on the Sabbath has nothing to do with the Sabbath being for human beings rather than vv.
The igorance is amusing - it's an ignorance, not simply of Christian tradition, but of the function and meaning of Jesus' miracles within the context of his ministry. But I suppose if you are predetermined to believe that these miracles and such are just proof-texts added by later writers, there you go.
There's also weird discourse on Alexander Hamilton, and how the miracle-based Christianity is Hamiltonian and leads to a manufacturing-based economy.
Oh.
Then there's the treatment of the Gospel of Thomas which is uncritical and historically bereft.
It's rather shocking - but not so much, given the mag's recent history under Lapham - that such a ridiculous piece would be published and, at such length. It's really long.
The question one ends up asking in the end is - why not just let go of Jesus completely? In the end, he is a genial philosopher who says nothing more startling than any other major world religious leader, all of whom, almost without exception, extol the superiority of spiritual values to worldly values (well, but of course...that's why they are spiritual leaders!) cast a suspicious eye on the things of this world, and tell their followers to be kind. Why the determination to pursue the project that the Jesus of Christianity must be a lie, cannot be the real Jesus? That is not to say Jesus has not been variously interpreted over the centuries. That is not to deny the multitude of groups, calling themselves Christian, that embody that identity in different ways and even stand in judgment of each other.
But the core remains: a determination to accept the truth of what we have been given the reasoned assessment of these texts and their historical authority, and the commitment to the entire package, sayings, miracles and life, as mysterious and challenging as it might be.
And if that is not your bag..well, okay. But why not just admit you are haunted? The Jesus of Jefferson is a bore, and the Jesus of Thomas even more so. There is nothing to recommend them rather than Kahil Gibran. Why not just let go completely?
After all, what's there to lose?
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