Was Jesus Mad?

 

Historical figures can be hard to figure out. One I find difficult is Jesus of Nazareth, the man whom Christians go one and on about. Was, or is, he a god or God? Or was he mad as we would (and do) label a person making such a claim today?

 The playwright George Bernard Shaw believed Jesus became convinced he was a god who if killed would come back to life. His analysis of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament is rather distant than the one I heard in Sunday school. It appears in his essay, “On the Prospects of Christianity” written in 1912 as a very long preface to Androcles and the Lion.

 To Shaw, Jesus starts out in the gospel sane and interesting, but undergoes a change. He writes:

 One day, after the disciples have discouraged him for a long time by their misunderstandings of his mission, and their speculations as to whether he is one of the old prophets come again, and if so, which, his disciple Peter suddenly solves the problem by exclaiming, "Thou are the Christ, the son of the living God." At this Jesus is extraordinarily pleased and excited.

 Convinced of his divinity, Jesus goes to Jerusalem, and “assumes all the traditions of the folk-lore gods, and announces that, like John Barleycorn, he will be barbarously slain and buried, but will rise from the earth and return to life.”. Various events happen, he causes a disturbance outside the Jewish temple, and when he is betrayed by Judas, Shaw writes

 One of his followers shows fight, and cuts off the ear of one of his captors. Jesus rebukes him, but does not attempt to heal the wound, though he declares that if he wished to resist he could easily summon twelve million angels to his aid.

 But, following his own ethics, he doesn’t resist, and after trial and the urging of the Jewish establishment, he put to death in an extremely cruel way, by crucifixion. Shaw concludes that “[i]n His prolonged agony of thirst and pain on the cross at last breaks his spirit, and he dies with a cry of ‘My God: why hast Thou forsaken me?’”

 Shaw’s analysis is interesting but there are problems with it. The playwright was imaginative, and wrote several plays still produced today. However, Shaw was not a biblical scholar; he asserted that Matthew as the oldest gospel, but it’s almost universally accepted that it isn’t. Shaw argument that the bible shows Jesus’ personality changing after Peter’s pronouncement that his is “son of the living God,” I think is questionable. Jesus nowhere in the bible says he is God – that idea becomes important later in the history of Christianity, accompanied by great controversy that lasted nearly 300 years, settled only after the Emperor Constantine stepped in and pressured Christian leaders to end it. They pretty well did so by writing the Nicene creed.

 G.K. Chesterton, a contemporary of Shaw, the creator – among many other things – the Father Brown detective stories, and a prolific Roman Catholic Christian apologist, was a good friend of the playwright. They enjoyed debating, publicly as well as privately. Chesterton wrote a critical biography of Shaw in 1909, and even that failed to end the friendship which continued for decades.

 Said Chesterton of Shaw: “He understands everything in life except its paradoxes, especially that ultimate paradox that the very things that we cannot comprehend, are the things that we have to take for granted.” I think this means that by accepting paradox, one can believe that Jesus was both mad and also, in a very real sense, divine. The ancients (except the Jewish people) had little problem with this way of looking at some: Caesar Augustus insisted he be taken as a god; but he was also the very human head of the Roman Empire for 41 years.

 What do we moderns take of men more recent in history than Jesus, for instance Shakespeare, Newton, Bach, or Einstein. Can we comprehend how Shakespeare could create Hamlet, or Newton explain the movement of heavenly bodies, or Bach compose well over a thousand pieces, or Einstein explain so much about the universe, without calling upon the idea of divinity? A divine spark? They were men, we accept; were they gods?

 We can think of Jesus as mad. Millions think of him as a god, or even – paradoxically – capital “G” God. Is that the truth? Or, as Pilate asked before sentencing Jesus, What is truth.

 

 

Afterword:

Chesterton also wrote: “I believe what really happens in history is this: the old man is always wrong; and the young people are always wrong about what is wrong with him. The practical form it takes is this: that, while the old man may stand by some stupid custom, the young man always attacks it with some theory that turns out to be equally stupid.” I say, that includes what I have written.

 

 

 

 

 A Parliament vs a Congress

Unfortunately for Americans, their revolution took place too early, and afterwards they were stuck with in inadequate form of government. It’s always given them trouble, the worst a Civil War which led to the death of well over half a million young men. Now it has led to the possibility of the death of their democracy also. Canadians, in a more northerly part of North America, escaped the American fate by delaying their independence from Britain by more than half a century.

 Except for various forms of democracy in ancient Greece or Rome, early government was simple: a king (rarely a queen), a group of barons, and subjects. Occasionally a king had to call together the barons and ask for resources to put down a revolt or finance a foreign war. Over time, the barons began to ask for rights in exchange. Over time the barons formed a proto-parliament, insisting that the king meet them regularly. With the rise of a middle class, the parliament became not just made up of barons but of others, too. While power had been slowly devolving from king to parliament over the years, in 1776 George III in 1776 had considerable influence on Britain’s colonial policies.

 The men who led the American Revolution, the so-called “Founding Fathers, weren’t all that fatherly. They included many relatively young men. In 1776, John Adams was 39; Thomas Jefferson 33; James Madison a very young 25. George Washington was only 44. Young men are idealistic, and they were very much influenced by the ideals of the Enlightenment – by John Lock’s argument all men having a right to life and liberty, by Jean Jacques Rousseau’s ideas about popular consent of the subjects, by Baron de Montesquieu insistence that a king’s power must be checked by an elected body.. Out of these largely untested ideas came the Declaration of Independence and a few years later, a constitution.

 Worried about the power of a king – or that a president who might turn into a king the constitution set up a division of powers so that supposedly the legislature and the judiciary could hold the president in check. That it crippled a government that could seldom act quickly and decisively was not seen a problem. It couldn’t resolve the slavery question except by Civil War. These young fathers thought all involved in governing the new nation would act independently, with dispassionate reason. They made no provision for political parties. However very soon political parties formed, and an electoral college, supposedly of wise men chosen by state legislatures, fairly quickly became political, also.

 The problem is that, when it comes to power, the decision as to who is to govern comes not so much from reason as from self-interest. One wants what is best for number one, for oneself, one’s family, one’s own community. That may coincide with what the majority think is in the so-called “public interest.” But it probably won’t. Rationally, Thomas Jefferson knew slavery was wrong, but he died holding well over 100 people in servitude.

 Meanwhile, the parliamentary system evolved. King George’s III’s increasing mental illness reduced his power till he did in 1818. A son, George IV, became regent in 1811, and succeeded his father upon his death in 1818. George IV had no direct heirs, so a second son, William IV gained the throne in 1830. Neither were good at governing, and both were dissolute in their royal life style. Then in 1837 Queen Victoria, who had lots of strong opinions -- but they were about manners and morals, not about how to run the country. On matters of state, she became almost a figurehead, especially when the prime minister was William Gladstone, whom she hated. She much preferred Benjamin Disraeli, who flattered her as a “fairy queen” and arranged that she be given the title Empress of India, but who kept power for himself and parliament. By the 20th Century, the English monarch was a true figurehead, acting only upon the advice of his or her prime minister.

 The result in Britain – and in Canada, which adopted the British system in 1867, and even its figurehead queen – has been a government with the power to govern decisively unhampered by the whims of a monarch. Meanwhile, the United States government bumbled along for decades, hamstrung by a system of government that didn’t work very well. It relied far too much on politicians being rational, which they aren’t. Today, its limitations are very evident, and it appears unable to solve its problems. Health care is too expensive and spotty; roads and bridges and other infrastructure is decaying; the education system is uneven; the national debt is growing at an alarming rate.

 Interestingly, without Americans realizing it, its congress is taking on many of the attributes of a parliament. This is most evident in how the Republicans in both the House of Representatives and the Senate are acting like members of parliament, unquestionably supporting the government. So-called “bipartisan” legislation on any important issue – that is, legislation worked out after relatively rational discussion and compromise – is impossible. The economic, cultural, and hence political divisions in the country are sharp. However, the safeguards within a parliamentary system of government are lacking: the ability of a caucus to dismiss the executive mid-term by vote (or the threat of a vote) of non-confidence; that senior government officials, including the president, to be democratically elected, as the US cabinet is not; a public service led by highly professional executives; the regular, required question period; the presence of a unified opposition with a single leader; the ultimate authority of a head of state who can refuse undemocratic rule. In the US, the president is the head of; state.  

 Once the abusive person who currently holds the presidency of the United States is gone, I hope the country can begin to deal with its problems. Given its system of government, though, I fear it may not be able to.

 

A plan for writing

 I consider myself a writer, though I haven’t written much for a while. I made my income from writing for over 30 years. Still a writer is what I am. So I’m going to write more.

 What is it about being a writer? One writes by oneself. As with speech, the audience is others. Writing is like talking to people but not as fleetingly as talk alone.  

 If put together well, the words may stick around– in saved emails, in a collection of  letters, even in books. Unless recorded, spoken words fly away, unless one is a Socrates, who had his words written down by a Plato, or or one is a Johnson, who had a Boswell.

I enjoy the physical act of writing. I’m not sure where the letters are if I look at a  Qwerty keyboard, but my body – my fingers – know. It amazes me to see what was in my head appear on the page or pop up on the screen. Revision is fun also – making a sentence more compact, or placing a paragraph so the words and ideas flow like water. Occasionally writer’s block builds a dam. Yet eventually the dam breaks and words flow again and I get a great feeling as I surf the words-wave.

 What to write about? Maybe I’ll revise some of my occasional lengthy letters on a particular topic. Maybe I can make them not quite so pompous. I may expand on observations I’ve jotted down in many notebooks. I’ll look at drawings and doodles I’ve put in the same notebooks and see what they bring to mind. Here’s hoping I can maintain a light touch.

 At regular Tuesday meeting with a group of friends, with their indulgence – I intend to read out no more than a page of the latest musings and seek reaction. If I interest them by what I’ve written, I’ll be happy. If I get silence, I will have failed. If I get yawns, my heart will sink. In any case, I should learn something. Maybe they might too. Reaction will be my only goal, at least initially. There’s so much I want to write about. Possible initial topics: Emily Carr’s paintings; why the parliamentary system is superior; staying calm in marriage; is death part of life or the opposite?; was Jesus insane? I’m open to your ideas, and  your writing. There’s lots to write about. I’m looking forward to it.

 

Neale

 After 12 to 13 years, I have decided to activate this blog again. The pre-2013 blog was mostly pictures Now I have decided to do some more writing. Alan Cooper asked if I was going to put it on the web. Why not? I'll post my essays. What I plan to do is outlined in the first entry. I hope to write something at least once a week. 

 Neale

Where I've gone

Not a lot has been posted on this blog for some time. More is on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/D.Neale.Adams. But I yet may put some things up sometime. Neale

Deer Lake canoeing

Thanksgiving day canoeing on Deer Lake in Burnaby... and trading kids in the middle of the lake.

Andrea takes a picture of Russell and Jane and a whole parcel of kids at their neighbourhood's street party, August 2013

Naomi & Gus

Naomi and Gus (at 3 months plus). They so delight in each other.

Grandsons

All the grandsons: Frankie, Finnegann, and Gustav.

Nick and Gus

Son in law Nicholas Melchin with grandson Gustav Neale Melchin-Adams, born June 27.

Memorial Window

IMG_2024 copy, a photo by NealeA on Flickr.

And here's the window that we dedicated. Simeon is holding the baby Jesus (Jack played Simeon in the Cathedral pageant for many years), Anna, and at right are Mary and Joseph. Story is at Luke 2:21-38.

Family At Window Dedication

FamilyAtWindowDedication, a photo by NealeA on Flickr.

Here we are when the window in memory of Jack Kellett was dedicated at Christ Church Cathedral. In the back are Tom Mercer (with gray beard) who created the window and Peter Elliott. Others: David, Neale, Margery, Russell, Nick; in front, Ros, Jane, Frankie, Finnegann, Naomi. A great day!

Naomi's Birthday 2013

IMG_1999, a photo by NealeA on Flickr.

We went to supper at a vegetarian restaurant, Po Kong, then to Nick and Naomi's place for cake. Great fun.

Frankie and Finnegann meet Santa at the Douglas Park Community Centre "Breakfast with Santa." At left is mother Jane and the other woman is Mrs. Santa. Photo by Rosalind.