A few weeks ago, I was talking to my rural friend Appraiser Jim about politics. He is a conservative religious voter and I wondered whether any one of his niched faith was venturing toward Obama.
His response was quick and caught me off guard: "I bet you are voting Obama -- going for the new Messiah."
I could see how people could make that claim; Obama does seem too good to be true. But, I wasn't used to someone throwing that term about so comfortably. My takeaway was simply that the religious right had thoroughly investigated Obama and rejected him as a false prophet. Go Team McCain.
But then soon after, Jon Stewart presented a modified Lion King video depicting Obama as the Chosen One. This meme was deeper and more widespread than I had realized. This is when I started paying close attention to Obama's rhetoric. This guy was good. But Messiah - fat chance. It might be possible that he is so skillful at statecraft he is planning to implement a Christian-values agenda without ever using the word Jesus. So is this what scares many fundamentalists? That someone would undertake what is essentially a religious mission without branding it Jesus-style from head to toe? Religious plagiarism has always been a capital offense.
Some might argue that to usurp a role and perform it well, you become that person. By that standard, if Obama were to step into the ring as the Messiah he is sure to fail. Even Gandhi couldn't do that. But I think Obama would be comfortable with a title closer to that held by John the Baptist, you know, a forerunner. In the best case, he is just preparing the world for goodness before it is totally destroyed by the beast. Or in the worst case, Obama is a narcissistic charlatan using the most-unassuming teachings of Jesus Christ to do good works as an act of self-aggrandizement. And would it be horrible if he succeeded at that? Oh spare me the pain.
During the fog of the recent campaign, Obama said a few things that really stood out to me. One was "This is not for me but for you." Another came during the primary when Obama said "We are the ones we have been waiting for." Here is the audaciousness of Obama. He claims that he is going to take guidance from such radicals as Lincoln, Gandhi, King. And we probably can add Jesus to that list. What a group of losers. Each one failed to usher in the day when the lamb and the lion would lay down together. In fact everyone of those radicals ended up dead. Change is tough work.
So who is the Messiah? I mean, if I were a true-believing Christian -- which I might be becoming -- would I want the Messiah to show up in a world that I had had stewardship over a screwed up so royally without so much of an explanation as "Uh, I was waiting for you?!!" Where does that get you? I am sure the Messiah would be really impressed.
Here I am going to go out on a limb. And please be forgiving if I offend your sensibilities. It is not my intent. But what if, and I mean just it is in the realm of unlikeliest possibilities, Jesus meant that we are the Messiah. Each and everyone of us -- both individually and collectively.
I mean what if Jesus really meant that the Resurrection was that of the Body of Christ -- you know, those followers who by eating bread and drinking wine each week together -- what if they collectively become the resurrected body of Christ (acting with one mind and one heart to literally save the world from physical death by apathetic suicide at a genetic level). Kind of like one of those mythological beasts in a Japanese Anime that can dissemble and reassemble into a virtual corporal entity.
And therein lies our biggest fear: the Japanese. We don't want Japan of 1941. We don't want Godzilla. And we don't want fascism, Jonestown or Heaven's Gate. This is the ever-present counterbalance to hope: an honest appraisal of group think.
Yes, working together seems to work in the "Horton Hears a Who" or in "Its a Wonderful Life" model of collective action. But in the real world with boots on the ground -- even Jesus failed. So we are supposed to sit around waiting for him and his soldiers of celestial fortune to come back an kill us all to show us how pissed he is. Basically this implies you are damned if you do, and damned if you don't. And that really doesn't make sense to me.
But if we are collectively "the Messiah", trying to make King's, Gandhi's, Lincoln's, Mohammad's, Jesus', and Moshe's words flesh, how do we keep from falling into group think?
I think this is the problem the Founding Fathers wrestled with between 1776 and 1789. Jefferson, Madison, Franklin et al borrowed democratic principles in establishing the American Union from the Iroquois Confederacy. At that time, the Iroquois advised that the American system of weakened checks and balances would likely fail eventually. Seven generations later, we can see they had a point.
This is where I keep coming back to Jesus. His words are already out there -- if not in people's homes, that at least in the neighborhood library or on the net. Jesus can readily be leveraged in today's world as a force for good. Yes, and the true meaning of a lot of things Jesus may or may not have said have been lost in translations. But think of this: The Velvet Revolution brought down a totalitarian state in eastern Europe by citizens figuring out sudoku style how the United States could create enough freedom for Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison, and Mo Tucker to do something that had never been done before.
And Jesus had a plan to do something that had never been done before.
It sounds trite to say love, peace, and happiness, doesn't it? Yet that is what Jesus said you had to have to reach nirvana. They killed him before he could implement his plan, the beast always wins if it catches on too soon. But he left some clues on how it could be done. If you go through the new testament and take all the things he is attributed to saying, some fall into the category of "if you follow this plan, you will be meek, merciful peacemakers." Other parts advise you to have intergenerational appreciation as well as respect the Tao or lifeforce of the universe.
But the only keys he gives for success are that you need to do it as a group, you have to suffer the children (and all that entails), and you have to be absolutely honest -- whatever that means. The only absolute we can really have blind faith in is his admonition to seek after truth. And doesn't that mean some truths. He didn't add a qualifier. So to follow Jesus, you have to explore for and know the truths -- no matter where they lie. And we think these guys were radicals.
Jesus essentially claimed that if you honestly looked for truth always and everywhere, relative and absolute, you will be free from the beast. And that is about as close as you can get to peace, love and happiness.
For that, even I would be willing to be a messiah.
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3 comments:
This is wonderful. Awesome, because I think it very much decodes what O is up to, to a "T." I came to a similar albeit less colorful and well-connected conclusion after reading his interview you posted down-thread.
He's a secular humanist intellectual who scanned the terrain of philosophy and religion, then settled in on Jesus, Black Jesuus, as the right vessel for social change, while also being by pragmatism and by the most effective thinkers.
And you know, not very many people have done that. Usually, as it was with us, the process is reverse. I don't think he's being cynical per se; he believes in heaven, believes in Jesus on his own level, and is trying to bring about as much of it as possible on earth.
Good to find your blog and hear you ruminating after all these years. Interesting spiritual interpretation. I like the concept, we as the body of Christ taking a role in workings of our world, and the identification of the risk.
My own spiritual journey has taken me more to the personal, more in to the exploration of the divine in each of us. I have largely ignored the church as structure given the often horrible directions it has taken society. Yet, it has also been the source of positive change.
I interpret what you are saying as taking the values as professed by Jesus and putting them into action, but within the secular political sphere directly rather than rooted in the church structure and going from there to the political. Does it have a chance of being more successful? Maybe. Does it necessarily go against the free market principles that we learned?
Obama himself has clearly stated: "I was not born in a manger. I was born on the planet Krypton and sent by my father, Jor-El, to save the earth..."
Non-believer? See it here: on YouTube
And where is the little religion in "Nano Religon?" And what about the straw bale houses, and the mention of a great place for plant gifts? You might even want to link to a pretty good gardening site .... but I can see why you like givingplants.com so much ....
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