The Daily Message
Competing figures of Jesus
It is now fashionable the critical analysis of the situation created around the celebration of God‘s Birth, named as the Christmas Holiday, in the memory of a possible character who generously offered a small cave for Joseph and Mary, the night when the Savior was born. More recent than the greatest Christian holidays of Easter and Whitsuntide, the celebration of God‘s birth stands for current critique both from the Christian clergy and other persons, from journalists, artists to representatives of other religions. The most fervent attacks are directed to the dilution of the holiday and its association with the commercial, the pomp and the lack of limit of the civilized societies.
At a certain level, the critique may have grounds, because, almost from a reflex, any person associates nowadays the celebration of God‘s birth with the presents and the Christmas tree, the carol and the white bearded Santa dressed in red clothes, without knowing that the roots of these elements have nothing to do with Christianity. Some come from the ancient influences of pagan religions, as the carols and the presents, and others are more recent, as the red and white Santa, the extremely successful product launched by Coca Cola, generalized today in the entire world.
This critique would be truly superficial if around the celebration of God‘s birth only common opinions, without resonance would become obviously shared. The problem would seem much more important if currently, marked by such dilutions of content and vulgarizations of the Christian message, there would still exist any possibilities of presenting this message so that it draws the attention, and retain somebody in the space of fundamental questions and produce such a redeeming effect.
To suggest a possible response to the above question, we may begin with J. Pelikan‘s thesis, according to which, along the history, in specific époques, certain „figures” of Jesus imposed, qualities of his complex personality that had a great impact on the mankind and the world. A relatively recent figure, of the XXth century, is that of the „liberator”. Jesus‘ personality was the motor sustaining certain religious, social and political actions of great dimensions, as, for example, the abolition of modern slavery in America and Asia and even the fall of the communism. Such a visible presence of Jesus‘ personality in the world was emphasized especially in the frame of some initiatives of resolving major problems of the world. The prophets of those times, great personalities as Martin Luther Kin, succeeded in imposing a vision deriving form certain specific features of Jesus‘ personality, making it operate at a personal level, being powerful in moments of crisis and reviving them movements at the level of groups of people. This historic and cultural experience of Jesus worked in delicate moments, both for small communities and at the level of large nations or extended areas. The impact was similar to a „disenchantment” of the world, the man being capable of returning to the fundamental data of the Christian truth, occasioned by the impact of a certain figure of Jesus both on the personal and social life. This model repeated itself in various moments or periods of history, with a greater or more diminished impact. It we were to continue this print, Pelikan‘s idea would suggest the question of whether one of the biblical figures of Jesus can be contoured in our days, and its effect be similar.
Before asserting that if we can actually talk about a closer or more revealing figure of Jesus, at the beginning of the third millennium, we would like to show that in a world as the one today, such a figure or even Jesus‘ entire personality would find itself in a highly concurrential situation. Not only do we find ourselves in postmodernism, according to the philosophers, and the period of glory of Christianity seems to have set, but we also sense that for the present man Jesus is only an alternative to be considered, in a context with exciting and tempting offers. We suggest in the following paragraphs some of these offers and rival presences for the Christian Christ, without pretending to be exhaustive:
- Maybe the most recent example that comes to mind is the current dispute created by D. Brown‘s „The DaVinci Code”. We hereby assist to the best sellers‘ vice created by the huge force of mass culture. Jesus has today a powerful competitor in the images about his personality created by the so called mass culture. The ordinary books that sell immensely, the bad movies, with mystery scent and vintage items, the pseudoscientific and partisan documentaries, together with other similar presences of the new culture offer a variety of deformed images of Jesus. These images, not only do they torment and dilute Jesus‘ real identity, but they are also presented in the name of new ideals, spread by various exponents of a cultural and religious „liberalism” or of some movements that promote the detachment from everything symbolizing tradition. Mass culture, adapted to the man eager for information, but without critical spirit and instruments of selection has the habit of imposing himself and producing the sensation of a quality omniscient man. This is the starting point of the immediate illusion that any informed person, even well informed, is also an intellectual. And when these people become opinion makers, it is all lost. From this perspective, the one that represents an assiduous competition to any of Jesus‘ authentic figures is the opinion maker with the quality of informed man. In this situation, we find not only the producer of mass culture, from the public space, but also the clergyman, who is superficial, irresponsible, according the current model of mass culture. The poem of the Grand Inquisitor by Dostoyevsky is an eloquent example of how the church can create a false image about Jesus. The poem presents us a Christianity which tames the masses of people for whom the only important things are safety and the every day food. For this category of people a specific Jesus was imagined, as a creation of a small group of people, the clergy, with the purpose of administration all the passions of the crowd.
- Another concurrential situation for Jesus‘ authentic figure is the current world religious revival. Today, even for the devout Christians, under the impulse of new spirituality movement, Jesus has serious competition from all the spiritual masters of the humanity, from Confucius, Zarathoudstra, Budha, up to the new Dalai Lama or Maitreya. The attraction of oriental mystics, the dynamism and the short term productivity of some spiritual exercises represent only some of the sensitive points of new religious movements that turn the spiritual life an animated an tempting reality. Of all this influence of the current spirituality the most common is emphasized the religious syncretism, which gives Jesus an extremely colored and attractive figure. Not only is Jesus a great spiritual master, but also a synthesizing figure, unifying the entire masterpiece of the masters before him. For such a Jesus, tolerance and pluralism and labeled as key words. The appearance of lots of books presenting Jesus in the gallery of the great spiritual masters, as well as the idea of a unifying synthesis of religions in the presence of Jesus are only some expressions of the current „ harmless” presences of the religious competition for the biblical Christ.
- Together with the non-Christian religious movements, we may nominate the alarming rhythm of multiplication of the Christian sects, or of the sectary spirit within the current Christianity, in the existing confessions. In such a situation, Jesus is seriously concurred by the leaders of the church, whether it is about the Pope, the Patriarch, the priest or the pastor. The risk of the degeneration of the spiritual authority seems to be more emphasized these days, so that different religious servants may, without and explicit intention, substitute Christ in the relationship with the humans, or transmit the world a deformed image of Christ. In such situations, the argument is the same as always: spiritual rebirth, but the result seems different. If in the past, through actions of prophets, as Francis of Assisi or Simeon the New Theologist, the result was the obvious spiritual revival, many current pretended prophets only create new sects instead of reviving the church. Thus, a confusing situation is reached, so as at the bosom of Christianity we find more and more „Christs”, each and every one more adorned, more transformed, closer to the tastes of small group of people. The danger of this varied image of Jesus id that there is a tendency to justify the situation by adapting it to the spirit of the time. We live the age of marginalization, of small group orientation, of tolerance and excessive, pathologic diversity. For such groups or orientations, the Christians have taken the risk to create a specific Jesus to respond to their specific needs, moreover, to accept their specific pathologies.
- Of all the XXth century‘s diseases, the project of social engineering is the most terrible and diabolic ones. Whether they were left oriented (communism, socialist, social-democracy) or right oriented (fascism), more or less excessive and pronounced, their purpose was the same: to create a new type of man. Maybe we do not see the connection with Christianity or with the real identity of Jesus. The connection is as obvious as possible if we are to accept that a major theme of Christianity is regeneration, human restoration. The new man promoted by Christianity, according to Jesus Christ‘s pattern, was brought numerous replicas though these methods of social engineering. The problem is as delicate as they are now trying to justify the result by resorting to the false model. We must be realistic and clearly grasp it: the current Christian is 99% a social and cultural product and the almost insignificant rest is the influence of the Church or the Christian philosophy. Thus, Jesus finds a powerful rival in the model of the „new man”, created through the social project. In this direction, the most common practical situation is encountered in the double measure or standard. The current Christian tends to be schizophrenic. At the world stock exchange he intends to follow the model imposed by the society he lives in, by the social project he is part of, and within the Christian community he tries to imitate another model, the Christian one. The result is anticipative: usually the imposed one is the model of the social project, the social engineering that has a powerful coverage in the coordinates of the type of social existence we find ourselves in presently. The problem is that social engineering not only is against Christ, but also proved to be against any type of normal social existence, with future development possibilities. The result of these social projects continuing today, in forms more or less radical, was and will be the same: the mass man, the man without a spine, the man incapable of response, without responsibilities.
- To the above mentioned elements we may add a sufficiently refined and thus extremely dangerous one. The signals coming from the philosophy, the science and the art attention us with regards to a time of dilution of the concept of absolute of absolute truth. We are living the time of relativity, installed everywhere in the field of spirit. In such a situation, Jesus competes with many relative truths about the world and life, about the man. The Christian revelation must face other revelation; the Christian truth must confront other truths that seem to have a better rational, logic or scientific coverage. We find ourselves in front of the false thesis of the opposition between religion and science. This false thesis seems to have affected so radically the modernity that we hardly manage to come back on this point. The confrontation is so high leveled, in universities, schools and other research institutions, but also in churches in the civil society and press. Christianity promotes a Jesus corresponding to the Divine revelation, the answer to all fundamental questions of man, a Jesus that is the truth, the absolute truth. Or, the rupture produced between the religious knowledge and the scientific one, blew up any possible reference to the Christian biblical truth, to the figure of Christ as absolute truth. We are assisting to at least two different discourses, two different registers about truth, which the today man barely assimilates, or puts into dialogue in his own life.
- Although it may seem exaggerated, we conclude these examples of competitive situations for Jesus‘ figure and place in the present world by bringing into discussion the newest invention in politic matters: anti-terrorism. Neither terrorism nor anti-terrorism is here directly aimed, but what derived from all this politic and social debate about them. Recent terrorist events not only did they brought to the treaty table the great powers but also launched a political project without precedent, they allowed the restructure of some fundamental concepts like that of personal and social liberty, as well as those of authority/ power, security, protection and defense, thing that has been impossible to imagine until now. For a Christian it is almost unthinkable that countries as USA, into the avant-garde of fighting for human and citizen rights, should make propositions for obstructing these personal liberties in favor of a pretended national or international security. It is unimaginable how European countries with a profoundly Christian tradition, voted and accepted in crowds laws that are in contradiction with these values, which break fundamental rights, from the presumption of innocence until the right to intimacy. By modifying some fundamental concepts as those mentioned above, the Christian‘s life enters into new coordinates which are in conflict with the data of his/ her faith. Through these international politic measures, we get closer to a type of modern slavery, which not only does infringe the human‘s personal rights, but also degrades any other possibility of ever being able to think which the real rights are. It seems dangerously to me exactly this point, the incapacity to discern. As Rougemont would say, „only him who is not free asks for his freedom”, but what if you lack the capacity of understanding what free is?
In a world we have tried to catch through some elements as those mentioned above, it remains very vivid the question: which one of the figures of Jesus could have a more significant effect, which one could counterattack better the figures that competes with it? We consider that the effort of the church, of the Christians should concentrate, with all risks, on a presentation to the world of the eschatological figure of Jesus. Not that the other figures lack relevance, but we consider that this figure could have the gift to deal with the competency situation in which the Christian community is encountered and in the same time be a visible voice in the present world. The eschatological figure of Jesus comes as a replica to a world that neglects the transcendent component of the existence and to a Christian with a diluted reference to eschatology. Then, it comes to meet a strong opposition and hostility of the age spirit, the anti-Christ spirit, which denies the returning in body of Jesus and all the consequences which derives from this belief (as: valuing the material world, the human creation, the body which is destined to salvation, the social responsibility etc.). Also, such a figure would have the gift to give to the church the judgment, so necessary, to qualify the truth from lie, light from dark, authentic from false. More, the eschatological figure of Jesus points some truths, which need a careful reconsideration nowadays:
- Through the return of Jesus, this age, this eon, is ended, the Christianity offers a clear and different conception from the usual one, humanistic about history and all the results gained through history. In this way, for Christians, history is a lined one, has a beginning and an end and has a very clear purpose. In history the Christian project is not the one to build a better world by scientific, politic or social means, but to save this world, to remake its coordinates for the connection with God. This thing supposes first an effort to give sense to all the things from history, to find them a correspondent in Christ, in the divine Logos, which, at His arrival will reunite all things. There an important project for the world we live in, for a world fumbling in search for a meaning, rationale ...
- As an eschatological being, Christ gives to the human new coordinates for his existence on earth. Christian life is in a tension between „already” and „not yet”, is a life which supposes a continuation between „here” and „beyond”, between time and eternity. Christian‘s life becomes one lived „as if”, in the image of the last day, hurrying its arrival through a special quality life. The quality of Christian life is not a replica to the conditions particular to the age we live in, is not an adaptation to now. On the contrary, it is given by the quality of the new reality, the Kingdom of Heaven, where the Christian has entered, taking with him this world.
- The figure of an eschatological Jesus is one of the judge, who calls the world for repentance, to responsibility in front of God and in front of his own conscience. This image straightens human existence and gives the authentic judgment of values and of the price at stake in the actual existing data. Also, the eschatological figure of Jesus is one of a triumphant, of the one who triumphed over sin and death. The immediate consequence of this truth is Christian hope, but not a naïve one and without cover but a utopian one. It is about a hope that governs historic existence, a hope in the permanent assistance and sustain of Christ in absolutely all thing which happen, but it also has into consideration a hope for revival, for meeting with Christ in the parameters of the future eon.
- Finally, but not last, Jesus eschatological is a pneumatic, is a human with Holly Spirit. This truth brings light over history in the way that it offers the model of an existence which saves us from history, from the conditions of decay and all its implications. The Christian is called to a life of the Spirit, a life as a charismatic reality, is called to a life of the body, of communion, after God‘s face. This truth claims an understanding specific to church life from which practical consequences arrive extremely important. Also, the truth that Jesus is a human with Holy Spirit shows light over the future, over what we will be when reviving, over the destiny of eternal life. The human is called to become as Jesus the pneumatic, the restored one by the work of the Spirit, the man who no longer dies, the man united with God forever.
Iassy, 16 December 2005
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