The Other Cheek

Divinity: Jesus, Metaphysics and Metaphor

Annie and I had a conversation about the meaning of Jesus-is-g-d talk last night before watching Rendition on the computer in bed (not a good idea if your plan is to sleep shortly after the movie ends). This in anticipation of our hopeful (or maybe resigned) decision to go back to a church this Sunday. It will be Easter of course, the traditional church-going holiday for wayward disciples, but that didn't factor into our decision to go (at least not consciously, though thinking back I realize that the last time we went was Easter two years ago...). It's more just a feeling that the weekend after Spring Break is our best chance to actually get out of bed before nine on a Sunday. So we talked about our developing views on the nature of Jesus, Annie falling closer to our evangelical roots and thinking that he either is g-d or he isn't. For my part, I haven't found any systematic thought to cling to. I continue to ascribe to the Christian faith because of the story of Jesus, and his divinity is certainly a part of that story. It has to mean something, but the idea that he is literally the product of g-d's sexual relation with a human woman can't find a comfy spot in my mind. It's not like that's a story uncommon in historical mythology. Greek and Roman gods were fairly regular sources of human genetic material. I just can't make the story harmonize with my intuition or scientific understanding of how things work.

What can I then make of Christ's statement, "Before Abraham was, I Am." Here is where I can't be specific. I can't go with the classic liberals and ignore this part of the Gospel. Remember, I'm endeared by the story, and that means this part too. So Jesus is g-d. That's a starting point for me in trying to understand his nature. My next step is to look at the language. I'm hampered here by lack of formal study in any of the actual languages involved. That's less important to me than it might be, though, because I don't believe in the divinity of the text. It's not necessary that the story be spoken by g-d or that it be historically accurate. It's a story after all, and stories are often retold. The rendition I know happens to come in English, and that's not likely to change my conclusions anyway. I'm always open to influence from the various Greek and Hebrew scholars I'm fortunate enough to interact with from time to time, but I don't have to start with the original text for my purposes.

My first question about the language ('Jesus is g-d'): Is this a metaphysical statement? Is it the same as saying, for example, 'I am human?' I can't see how this can be the case. First, it requires an understanding of what it means to 'be g-d.' I admit to an inevitable ignorance of parts of the answer here. G-d as we so far understand her, is not available for physical examination the way people are. (Here I need to note that I do not believe in immaterial forces like classical souls or spirits. If g-d is a person or even a thing, then she must have a physical presence somewhere in reality. This statement is slightly different from reductive materialism in my thinking for reasons I won't address in depth here. If you think of me as a materialist, it won't inhibit understanding of my current arguments.) Given this inaccessible quality to g-d's supposed existence, I don't think it is meaningful to talk about things 'being g-d' in the metaphysical sense. Of course, meaningful language is not restricted to clinical descriptions of physical reality. There are real systems and relationships pervading our existence that can often be described only in what we sometimes call 'figurative language,' but which I prefer to describe as metaphor. Metaphor is commonly thought to be the purview of poets and novelists, but in truth, it under-girds the bulk of our linguistic communication in the form of 'conceptual metaphor.' (See the work of George Lakoff and Mark Turner for in depth studies of this phenomenon.) Understanding this part of the nature of language, it makes more sense to me to think of 'g-d' as a metaphor, a linguistic tool for discussing the moral, intentional, and ephemeral aspects of an only physical universe than as a physical being.

So 'g-d' is a metaphor, all our as yet physically inexplicable but deeply intuitive ideas about goodness, purpose, and will expressed in the form of a conscious benevolent creator person. Does it make any kind of sense for the man Jesus to 'be' this g-d? Only when we abandon the idea that the language we are using is somehow a linguistic photocopy of the physical reality for a more accurate understanding of language as a tool for making communal sense of our experience. A better description in our parlance might be 'Jesus is divine.' This subtle shift of syntax focuses our meaning on shared attributes, or 'likeness' instead of 'sameness.' Imagine a planet 'Q' that is in all physical attributes identical to our planet Earth (except for its physical location in the universe) with an identical physical history. Q would 'be' Earth in the same way that Jesus 'is' g-d even though it is in a different place and composed of different material; it would be 'Earth-like' just as Jesus is divine, or g-dlike. The man Jesus embodies many or all of the attributes that compose the metaphor g-d.

One final clarification I need to make is that in saying 'Jesus' I do not necessarily reference a historical person. This is not a claim about the historical reality of the man Jesus, just a claim that that history is irrelevant to my understating of the Gospel. Stories are powerful agents for effecting human behavior whether they are 'true' in the metaphysical sense or not.

Reason to Believe

As a philosophy brat matriculating at a very Baptist university, I sneered at almost any expression of faith or belief. Reason was the highest faculty, the taskmaster who must scrutinize each cognitive step. This prejudice, whether justified or not, hardly led to a serene, or even productive existence then since it was less principled than reactionary. I knew very quickly that my philosophy must burrow its own pesky niche in that homogeneous community, but principled independence was not a stand I was emotionally equipped for at 19 or 20, or 21. So I attached myself predictably to a community of outsiders upon whose laurels I could rest. I did take a spot at the vanguard of this tribe of misfits because having satisfied my need to belong, I found my natural outspokenness again. I wrote inflammatory letters to the editor of our school paper and hammered on the most radical elements of any issue in class discussions.

None of that would have been pernicious had it been genuine, but of course, I was expressing not myself, but the idea of myself that my tribe had given me. Community is the greatest of human endeavors but requires caution like any extreme force. Community comes in literally every flavor after all, and we must always stand sentry against the possibility of collectivity and group-think.

I love the liberal arts because they seek to empower individuals with the tools to live in community. They give us the philosophy to make rational choices about what the good is and isn't but also the knowledge of culture and history and the natural world to make those in an actual context. There is a world out there after all, that we must live in or die.

The prayer of St. Francis is probably my favorite religious text. When Dennis Kucinich quoted it as his favorite scripture during one of the earliest democratic primary debates, I was significantly smitten. It's not the most obvious choice, though, for a rationalist. Sowing love where there is hate is fine, but second virtue is faith over doubt. How can I plead for that everyday when I'm not really even sure what faith is? Plus, I've never seen doubt as a vice. For the philosophically minded, it's seen almost exclusively as a virtue. I've never had a good answer to this particular concern, but the tension resolves as I try to make my philosophy applicable to the world.

I'm not a pragmatist. The abandonment of actual good is a realism my intuition won't allow for reasons that will seem obvious in a second, but that good must exist in the actual world, not just the world of my mind. While the idea of faith leaves a pretty rancid taste on my intellect, applying it to the actual living of my life shows me its utility. If I look at faith as a tool for making my life and my world better, then it sheds my mental objections quite well. As a tool, faith stops being about belief and starts acting. Faith in the Kingdom of Heaven for example, allows me to rationally apply the edicts of that Kingdom to my own behavior, which has the actual effect of justifying the faith I've warily cultivated. The Kingdom is real if I live it, but I'm unlikely to live it unless I have faith in it. Fortunately, this is a mobius strip I can insert myself in simply by swallowing the initially bitter pill of faith.

The Apartheid of Gender

The end of apartheid in South Africa is my favorite moment in history. The story of Nelson Mandela, Bishop Desmond Tutu and all the millions of people in South Africa and around the world who stood up and stared a violent, imperial institution in the eye is irrefutable evidence of the truth of hope. No one can ever demand that reconciliation is impossible because they have shown it is not. Now though, I wonder how we in the free world can turn our efforts to another institution of oppression: the brutal restraints placed on women by many conservative Islamic regimes.

There is a profound change teetering on the ledge of happening in our country today. By the end of this year, we may have broken through a significant barrier in our nation's moral progress. To elect a woman or black man to our highest office would be significant for us as a people, a sign that prejudice and superstition are on the run in our zeitgeist. A barrier we've not even looked at, though, is our shameless culpability in the vicious suppression of women's rights in the Middle East. Not only do we ally ourselves with many governments intent on the the continued raping of human dignity, in Iraq, we have helped to strip women of privileges they once enjoyed.

A measured look at Saddam Hussein shows that though he was surely a megalomaniacal monster, he was not a religious zealot. Under his rule of Iraq, women (especially urban women) were the beneficiaries of some of the most liberal gender laws in the Islamic world. Now that we have installed a government of practical if not yet formal theocratic ideology, those freedoms for women have vanished. Women who have the audacity to work, shed the veil, or wear makeup must face constant fear of beating, rape and murder.

How is it that we have not yet seen the kind of public outrage over the plight of these women that predominated our public conscience concerning the oppression of blacks in South Africa? Where is our decency as a free people? How can we claim to support freedom for all people while propping up these abominable institutions with our dollars and our bullets? Where is the hope that these women too can breath the honey-sweet air of self-determination and personal identity? How many women must we rape for another barrel of oil?

The Death of the Author

*The lights come on again after the storm, and he sits down at the computer to write once more.*

Listening to a discussion of A Wrinkle in Time this morning on NPR, I heard a woman claiming to have worked with Madeleine L'Engle to adapt her classic novel into a film call in to quibble with the interpretations being offered by the panel, citing her knowledge of the late author's intentions as definitive proof of her own interpretations' correctness. It annoys the hell out of me when people make these arguments. It also pisses me off when authors make public statements about what their books "mean" as though something as profound and complex as any good novel must be could be hardboiled into something as lifeless as a dictionary entry.

At a party recently, I had a discussion about religious ideas with a guy I'd met there. He'd grown up Catholic and wandered through a couple of variations on the church theme before walking away altogether much like myself (though my journey was far more guilt-laden coming out of the Baptist Church). Discussing my own current religious beliefs I said, casually and somewhat pompously I'm sure, in the manner of superficial party chatting, that stories were my religion. I liked the sound of that when I said it and so decided to believe it was true. That probably says something about the nature of belief, but in this case, after further thought and examination, I think it probably is true. I don't care about the theology of Christianity that seems to me the primary concern of most churches, but the stories of Jesus and the prophets has the power to shape the world as it enters my mind. They also give us a language with which to discuss sacred or ineffable things (all that through a glass darkly stuff). Those stories, and all others, are powerful not because they have one meaning, but because they inspire a multitude, a tangle of contradictory understandings that can interact independently with one another and further illuminate our minds. This undermines the whole inerrancy idea that undergirds my inherited religion, but that talk is meaningless to me. What does it even mean for a story to be inerrant? Language is too slippery to ever express anything univocally no matter the strength of any particular voice; that's the lasting good work of deconstructionism, the knowledge that nothing means only "what it means."

Inerrancy is the mean old uncle of people who appeal to an author's statements in arguing their personal understandings of different texts. The foremost problem with such arguments is that they assume the wholly deniable premise that any text actually has a "correct interpretation." Roland Barthes told us this 40 years ago in his essay that lent its title to this post. The moment the author puts down the pen he relinquishes all power over meaning. His story might mean something very specific to him, or he might intend for it to mean some specific thing to the people who read it, but his power to make that happen has been spent in the writing. If the writing does not make it mean what he means it to mean, then it doesn't mean that, no matter how much he or his acolytes bitch. If stories were to speak with only one voice, then we might as well have done with telling them for they would cease to serve any purpose grander than explication, a mindless listing of the facts.

Cry, The Beloved Country

Wow. Another book my mom hounded me to read for years before I picked it up turns out to be amazing. You'd think I would have learned something from To Kill a Mockingbird, but I've always been slow to follow instructions. This story was simply astonishing. Deep, emotional, painful. Biblical in the scope of its narrative.

The thought that sticks most in my mind is Msimangu's fear that when the white people of South Africa finally came around to loving, the blacks would have turned to hatred. The story ends with a sunrise, a vision of the dream deferred. I wonder what it would have been like to read this book before Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu took the stage and showed all the world the conquering power of love and reconciliation. Stephen Kumalo's hope would have seemed an illusion then, a dream never to be realized in a thousand generations. And yet... here we are. All is not right there anymore than it is here or anywhere else, but a great power was overthrown by the goodness that prowls the minds of all men, waiting for its moment to pounce. Reason and prudence keep it confined so well, propping up the myth of selfishness. That myth we've embedded so deeply in our politics.

A couple of years ago I was fortunate enough to hear the Arch-Bishop Desmond Tutu speak at Oklahoma City University. He said many wonderful things, wise and powerful, but the greatest of all was his argument that man is "fundamentally good." He put a point on the second word with his high, whistling voice that has echoed in my mind ever since. Afterward I met in a restaurant with some friends where we discussed what we had seen and heard. The consensus at the table was that this statement was the inevitable naivete of a genuinely good man. Now I see that a man having lived through a history as excruciating as South Africa's cannot be considered naive by any standard. He had seen the great evil this world can do, yet he proclaimed a waiting goodness greater by far. The myths of violence and hate are so strong for us that we easily dismiss his arguments, when really he needs none. The very story of which he is a part affirms to truth of his words. Reconciliation is possible anywhere if it was possible there. It waits only for men and women to fall pray to the goodness within them.

The end of "The End"

There are no happy endings because there aren't really any endings at all. Not if a story is good enough and characters interesting enough to be worth reading. I thought about the end of the Harry Potter saga for a bit yesterday, and realized that there was no way the majority of people could have been satisfied with it. There were diehard fans who frequented message boards and had their own pet theories about how the story would end. There were uptight literary types who had their own aesthetic ideas about how such a story must end to remain 'honest.' There were plenty of people all over the spectrum upset that it was ending at all. The fact though, is that for people who connected to the people and themes in J.K. Rowling's books, the story didn't end on July 21, 2007, or the day after or the week after or whenever they turned the last page of the epilogue. The characters had real lives in the minds of millions of people, and just no longer having a narrative window into what those lives are like doesn't mean that they are over.

I'm not a fan of author's interpreting their own work. My view is that once the words are on the page, they are their own, impressing whatever images and reactions they will into readers' minds, and the author's intentions for them may or may not be realized, just like a parent's intentions for a daughter or son might never take shape in the child's own life. J.K. Rowling is welcome to believe that Dumbledore was gay, but she no longer has the power to make that true or not because she did not write it into the story. So maybe it's true and maybe not, but most likely is that it's true and not true at the same time and in the same way. Narratives, you see, have a power above logic that the "real world" of course does not. A narrative exists independently both on the page and in the mind of each reader. The last page of a book is therefore not the last page of the story; it is simply the place where the writer chooses to stop talking.

Too much is made of "good" endings. We expect closure from our books and films that exists nowhere in the life which is the substance of art. There may be right endings, in which the author chooses a good place to stop her telling of the story, but as for good endings in the sense that the writer has tied all loose ends, the closest thing is the end of a tragedy when protagonist and antagonist lay dead on the stage. Even those, however, are not true ends as we can see from Fortinbras' entrance at the conclusion of Hamlet. Science fiction would have the option of a supernova that destroys the entire planet on which the story has been told, but even then there is more, though there may be no one to see or tell of it.

What I really like at the end of any story is a sense that the writer hasn't indulged himself or me with an attempt to force honest storytelling into an acceptable resolution. Whether ending happy or sad, in marriage or in death, all I ask is that good stories end themselves as good stories. If that means a comma instead of a period, so be it.

Beloved

I just finished Toni Morrison's classic, and I found it well-deserving of the dramatic praise it continues to receive. I found myself thinking of Swift's "Modest Proposal" as I read, and the absurd moral demands of our oh-so-fallen civil societies. For Swift it was the cannibalistic mercantilism of Great Britain and the Irish property holders. Toni Morrison takes on slavery and the post-slavery oppression of black Americans. In both cases, the effective opinions of the respective governments suggested moral landscapes that are intractable for the human conscience. For whatever reason, God or an inherited compulsion to pass on our genes, we cannot stomach the idea of infanticide when it looks us in the eye. Both of these works succeed as satire because they deftly show that within the framework established by society and its laws infanticide is a moral imperative (in the case of Beloved) or a pragmatic solution that falls easily within the societies moral logic (as with Swift's essay).

Living in today's America, I'm forced to wonder what a logical application of our social morality would illuminate. Take the issue of immigration. Never have I seen an issue in which the debate so easily dismisses all the human factors. There is never any discussion, even by political opponents of the Immigration Nazis, of the fact that immigrants are people. People trying to live better lives for themselves and their families. No one ever talks about the large percentage of the pittance we throw them to under-gird our economy that gets sent back to support families in other countries. Hardly ever is there a discussion about what "getting tough on illegal immigration" means for millions of children. This issue is personal for me because I'm seeing every day the effects new "tough" immigration laws are having on my students, but no one without a personal stake seems to care. I realize that there are problems that need solutions, but the demagoguery has caused the majority of people in this country to forget that we aren't talking about just "illegal immigrants." There are families, daughters, sons, mothers, fathers whose lives many of the proposed "solutions" will quite literally destroy. Apparently 'illegal immigrant' much like 'slave' and 'jew' in the past, is a label that once applied, strips the bearer of all humanity.

Birthday

I'm 25 today. Birthdays have never really been my thing. I don't like being the only one in the room opening presents. This isn't so much anti-materialism as a fairly powerful aversion to having a room full of my closest friends or family all staring at me, waiting for a reaction. Christmas is a lot more fun, when you can open gifts more discreetly and then find a more casual moment to show appreciation to the gift-giver.

Anyway, 25. It's probably a good time to divulge a huge personality flaw: I am terrified of dying. Annie and I went to see The Fountain with the McCartys when it was in theaters. I loved the film. Absolutely loved it, but I think I was the only person in the world who wanted to cheer when Hugh Jackman says, "Death is a disease, and I can cure it." It was like everyone else intuitively realizes that this kind of thinking is pathological, but come on. Who really wants to die someday? Of course, if I'm suffering the pains of some horrific disease or simply the agony of a warn out body, I may begin to wish for an end, but now? At 25? I want to live forever. I want time to do every single thing that is out there to be done. I heard a while back on NPR that someone living in the world today will probably live to be 150. The age scientist was so excited by the idea. I just found it depressing. One person will live to be that old? So my odds are 1 in 6,000,000,000, and that's just to get to 150. We might not even have people living on Jovian moons by then.

One cause for hope is that I share my birthday with Kristen McCarty. I realized this morning that Henry David Thoreau went to Walden Pond when he was 28. I called Kristen to tell her the news and suggested that since he was somewhere between our respective ages then, that if we start living intentionally now, then together we're basically just like him. Of course, there's no slavery for us to help end. We'll just have to bring about world peace and global prosperity, end global warming and human trafficking, and convince Pat Robertson and James Dobson to take better-late-than-never retirements far away from video cameras and microphones.

Like the late great Harry Chapin once said, "If only every one in the world was as truly wonderful as I am, there would be no problems..."

Happy birthday to Claude Monet and the guy who played Henry Blake on Mash.

Politics

I don't plan on writing about politics that often. Discussions about it tend to be so tribal in nature that they rarely yield even understanding of one another's positions, much less actual progress towards consensus. Now though, I will venture my sad look at the Democratic field for the presidential nomination.

Hillary Clinton

I'll start with the front-runner. I came very close to supporting her because it is about freaking time this country stopped viewing possession of an external sexual organ as a prerequisite for our highest office. There is nothing important to do that a woman somewhere isn't capable of doing. Nothing. I have a goddaughter, and I would love for her to grow up in a world where no one ever wondered if a woman could be elected president. I would love any hypothetical daughters of my own to be born in such a world. So my reasoning went: if all candidates are pretty much the same in terms of what they can or will do if elected, then why not go with the person who would change so much of the symbolic landscape of American civics classes.

Unfortunately, she's not the same. She's the same on health care. She's the same on gay marriage and capital punishment (which is to say she's just as chicken-shit as the rest of them). She's the same on abortion. She not at all the same on war. She's a full-fledged hawk, and she will kill close to as many people as the current president has if not more. We would never get out of Iraq while she was in office. There is also the seemingly forgotten tragedy in Rwanda. One of the greatest crises facing the world right now is the ongoing genocide in Darfur. Since President Bush's administration has resolutely refused to actually do anything about it, we will have to count on the next president to take immediate and bold action upon taking office. Sadly, Senator Clinton does not have credibility on this issue. It's a bit touchy for me to project the colossal moral failure of her husband onto her, but she has certainly never denounced her husband's resolute refusal to do what he alone could have done. I will not take chances on such an important issue. If she is nominated, I will find a third party candidate to support.

Barrack Obama

I fell pray to the hype surrounding Barrack after the Democratic Convention in 2004. I told my parents that night as I watched his speech at their house, "He's going to be president someday." I still think that's true, but I hope the day comes after 2008. That's not because he's too young or unqualified, but because instead of being the agent for change in the campaign that many thought he would be, he has become more and more like a typical candidate. After never having run a negative campaign add in his short career, he has turned increasingly negative as he failed to close the gap on Senator Clinton. Instead of speaking boldly on the great moral issues of our time like the war and the right of consenting adults to marry whomever they choose, he has slid to the center and shown the same weak-kneed liberal squeamishness that has eroded all substance from the Democratic Party and its platform. I hope that a crushing defeat in this campaign will send him back to the Senate with an understanding that he must actually be different if he wants to make the changes he has the ambition and potential to make. I'll vote for him if I have to. I won't even be too hesitant about it, but I will lament the opportunity he had to be better.

John Edwards

Of the three Democrats who are actually running and have a chance to win, I like John Edwards best. I think he learned from running with John Kerry what I want Senator Obama to learn from losing this time around. I think that he will be unashamed of almost all his liberal instincts during the general campaign and even more so if he's actually elected. I think he has a genuine desire to help the poor and to bring a spirit of self-sacrificing citizenship back to the American people.

Now, it's possible he's a bit of an empty shirt, incapable of the statecraft and administrative skill necessary to accomplish any of his goals. I also think he won't win, but "where there is doubt [let me sow] faith, where there is despair, hope." If the primary comes and Al Gore hasn't entered the race, I'll be hoping he wins. My vote will go to Dennis Kucinich. Again.

Pat Robertson, the least Christian man in America?

So apparently, even the pet issues of the Christian Right (abortion and gay bashing) are less important to Pat Robertson than his favorite and only golden calf: winning. I swear to G-d, if Satan's handmaiden were the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, she would have Robertson's support.