So I read a book by John Dominic Crossan called, God and Empire. There is a little more to the title, but that is really all you need to know. For those of you who don't know Crossan was one of the people who worked on the Jesus Seminar, which was on a quest to find the historical Jesus. This of course implies that the Jesus in the Bible is not necessarily 100% accurate to who the real Jesus of Nazareth was. There is a lot of controversy surrounding this man and his work. Although many are intimidated by his work, it seems to me that he actually has a much deeper spiritual life because of his work with the historical Jesus. Also, just so you know he has also done work on the historical Paul and I believe the historical John of Patmos, although that may not have happened to the same degree that Jesus and Paul has been worked out.
The basic assertion of this book, and I would not call it meaningless, is that civilization has been a series of empires with violence as the normalcy and peace in this imperial world view is only achieved through victory. I think that we can see this worldview still at play today. Crossan believes that God is non-violent, despite many Biblical writings that disagree. He believes that Jesus was a voice for non-violent social change, and that he was constantly saying things that would upset the Roman emperor. For example, Ceasar Augustus was considered through his mythology as being the Son of God, so Jesus claiming that he is the son of God is a threat to the throne. Also, Jesus's main message was that the Kingdom of God, not Rome, was here today and it was a non-violent kingdom which promoted peace through justice, not victory. This is an entirely different worldview that is a major challenge to the work of empire.
One interesting point that Crossan brings out of all this is that God is non-violent and God's justice is not retributive like we often think of justice, but distributive. God's justice is about equality. The Biblical writers had to struggle with these two worldviews. The violent imperial one and the non-violent reign of God. The struggle between these two views can be seen from one book of the Bible to the next and sometimes we can see the struggle within one text. Many of the profits move back and forth from a God that punishes people violently to a vision of God cleaning up the world in such a way that lambs will lay with the wolves and no one is hurt. This is the work of humanity trying to interpret its world through two very different lenses. The normalcy of human civilization (violence and injustice) or the Reign of God which is non-violent and just.
I believe that these two worldviews are still very active in today's society. And the normalcy of civilization is still peace through victory, and our sense of justice is skewed to mean some kind retaliation, either by an individual or a state. We are still facing the same norms of civilization today. What we need to focus on then, is not what happens when we die, but rather how can we show God's reign in this world today? What can we do show God's love in non-violent, non apocalyptic way? How should we live and encourage others to live in the non-violent Kingdom of God? Jesus taught us that God's peaceful empire is here on Earth, the great divine cleanup (eschaton) is happening now. I don't believe that God is going to cause us to have a huge fight to clean up this world like at the end of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. Instead, I believe that the eschaton is something that has been going and will continue to go into the future. It is brought about by the non-violent voices in the world, who want peace and distributive justice for all, not just Americans, Christians or Jews but everyone in the entire world. I think I have rambled enough on this one. Embody the reign of God and encourage other to do the same.
Shalom,
Mark
P.S. Here is a Woody Guthrie song about Jesus Christ that has some interesting assertions of its own.
