Our modus operandi is prejudicial. We operate with prejudices. It is, on one level, a matter of evolution, a matter of being able to automatically, non-reflectively, assess a situation via socially assimilated valuations. As with all evolved skills, it is not without flaw, not a closed and perfected system. The prejudice is engrained by osmosis as a singularity of vision, a singularity of response, hopefully equipping us to navigate the ordinary with some facility. It functions as a tool for survival; it mal-functions as a scleroderma of rationalization. In some this may be evidenced by the blind espousal of an academic theory, in others by an unbending religious ideology, in others by the whole orientation of personality toward close-mindedness. Pre-judging thus becomes a devolutionary trap rather than a practical tool of survival, a predisposition to not judging, to not being open to the reception of facts as they arise upon the horizon of experience and to their rational filtering.
Holy Writ tends to contrast this human pre-judging with divine fore-giving. We define the present and the future according to the past; God is the freedom to create a future ex nihilo, without the burden of present or past, to literally, fore-give. The scriptures are muchly given to celebrating the divine freedom from the confines of past and present. They envision a God that goes about making everything from a new nation to a new whole of creation via a “new testament”. Christianity is of a mind that this creativity of the Creator is reflected in human creativity, in the ability to engulf and propel some extent of the potential of a moment towards its transcendent. This creativity is not subservient to a set of rules, it makes the rules. It is essentially volitional and iatrical, the intensity of a valuation of the good in the situation such as to thrust it forth into the better situation.
Now, we all pay lip service to this as a good thing. We admire Jesus’s liberty to respond creatively to situations (your sins are forgiven, the Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath, etc.). Most of us buck when we are faced with doing the same. Courts are rather consistently excoriated for leniency. We want peace, order and good governance. Jesus’s creative absolution as of the woman caught in adultery (whose case was considered in my last posting) is an offence to all three of these civic qualities. Creative absolution, an inverting of the Law into something to serve me rather than that to which I must be subservient, may be something I find comfortable in the confessional, in the relationship betwixt God and Me, but not so when another becomes the focus of justice. Is Jesus’ action the ideal? Is our attitude the practical? How do we, how ought we, understand the reconciliation, the balance, which justice is meant to restore in society, or between God and man? Where is the restoration to the offended, the compensation by and rehabilitation of the offender, the significant act which re-establishes the broken social contract, heals the disrupted divine covenant? Are we so caught up in our prejudices as to be unwilling to pay the price of helping others “sin no more”? Is it easier, is it more comfortable, is it cheaper in body and soul to build a jail or to rehabilitate? Is it easier to demand punishment than to create the society wherein punishment is moot? In terms of faith Jesus is God’s justice, but in terms of the quotidian flow of human events Jesus is an endless fusillade against those once thought sacred scales. They that see Jesus as only sweet and gentle have not looked at him well.
What does the creative absolution of Jesus provide? It provides upheavals. It provides a stark contrast betwixt the ways of God and those of men. God is all about freely giving. Man always thinks in terms of economics, of cost. Salvation for God is about giving himself freely and totally. Salvation in man’s mind is about having to pay a price. Jesus’ portrayal of the divine path inverts the human vision and valuation of life. It affronts the human need for permanence and order. There are no answers carved in stone, no image of god carved in stone. Indeed, there are no stones, either for throwing or for sealing a tomb. There is, however, the assurance that within us dwells the spirit of God, the spirit of Jesus as God’s Christ, the Spirit Christians audaciously have named “Love”, and it is promised that this Spirit will lead in the right direction. This makes our faith a journey toward the manifestation of heaven upon the earth, a trek of constantly reconsidering the situation, realigning ourselves to the world, and resisting the temptation to claim finality for any of our answers. It is neither uncomplicated nor brief. Christianity has spent two millennia trying to reach a New Jerusalem, and for all the progress, does anyone, other than God, know how much further and farther we need go? Yet, making heaven manifest on earth is no hopeless task, no faithless venture unless we concede it to be thus. Creativity trumps judgement and prejudice, past and present. We have in our arsenal of faith the power to fore-give and absolve everything and everyone. Christianity is the proclamation that we—humanity–are slave to no one, to no thing, that we have within the divine creativity purposefully, toward an end, that we have the resources and resourcefulness, the graces and abilities requisite to any situation—as long as ego does as God does, and empties itself of self to enter the situation in total freedom. Perhaps we will not make an end of the trek today, or tomorrow, but therein is no case to cease either looking forward or moving on, only to trod, toddle, march, perhaps one day even to fly toward that giving, that gift, that fore-giving that is ever be-fore us and from thence defines us, defines us as free—by the grace of God.
The Lord ever went before them, a pillar of cloud to show the way by day, and a pillar of fire to show the way by night, that in both the darkness and the light the people might follow after The Lord. (Exodus 13)