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 A recent visitor to the Dowbrigade household remarked
on a carved wooden light-pull which spells out the name "Jesus" in the
form of a fish. Perhaps, being aware at least of our traditionally Jewish
surname, he wondered if we were covering all our bets as we awaited surgery.
Nothing could be further from the truth, but it did get us thinking about
our opinion of Mr. Jesus H. Christ.
Despite the fact that Christianity comes in a poor fourth
in the rank order of personal religious influences on the Dowbrigade,
behind our formative Judaism, our lifelong attraction to Buddhism,
and our experiences with a variety of Native American animistic spiritualistic
traditions, we hold the figure of Jesus in utmost respect within our
personal pantheon of heroes and holy men.
Basically, we believe Jesus was one of us, a charter
member of the Chosen People, who was heinously betrayed by the Romans
not once but three separate times, on the way to having his legacy so
distorted and corrupted as to be unrecognizable.
The record seems to indicate that Jesus was a sizzling
hot young rabbi out of Galelei, oozing charisma and brilliant light,
a volatile sort of mix of mystical inspirational religious leader, and
a dangerous political catalyst for resistance to the Imperialistic Roman
Empire.
The Romans, 2000 years ago, had the world by the balls.
They were making the first great stab at Globalization, dominating the
known world militarily, culturally and economically. They, like their
spiritual descendants currently pushing the Pax Americana, realized that
controlling the world was impossible without controlling the Middle East,
the axis
between Europe, Asia and Africa. The Middle East, then like now, was
full of fierce warrior tribes who refused to be controlled and weren’t
afraid to take on the most powerful forces on the Earth at that time.
In short, Jesus and his followers represented one of
the most serious challenge to Roman power for 500 years in either direction.
As a result, they hunted him down like a rabid dog, and eviscerated him
three times in person and in posterity.
First, in a pathological display of torture and cruelty,
beautifully captured in Mel Gibson’s Agony of Christ, they humiliated
and exterminated him in the most savage and public manner possible.
Next, they hunted down and exterminated his followers
like vermin, crucifying them, feeding them to the lions, using them for
Gladiator fodder.
Finally, and most perversely, they co-opted his legacy,
deformed and distorted and grafted it onto the diseased stump of empire
which morphed into the Holy Roman Empire and later the Roman Catholic
Church. They used the memory and legacy of a great Jewish holy man for
crude,
venal political and economic ends, in the process sparking religious
wars responsible for millions of innocent deaths. In our humble opinion,
one of the most egregious crimes in human history.
Unfortunately, due to this final betrayal, multiple
translations and re-interpretation of the original texts, twisted and
tangled interpretations by linguists and political masterminds, and a
complete loss of the original moral and philosophical context, it is
today impossible to parse out the original Christian message from the
manipulative claptrap and psycho- babble which constitute modern "Christian"
theology.
But there is one thing to which we can testify unequivocally:
Jesus can get you high. We have seen too many people authentically high on Jesus to believe its just the placebo effect. Somehow, through all the centuries of corruption
and abuse, all the commercialization and cooption, all the false Crusades
and sleazy Televangelists. the Jesus brand has maintained some of its
transcendent power.
Jesus can still touch people, change their lives and
behavior, make them see the world in a different way. It is the message
of Love, Redemption and surrender to a higher power. A potent and potentially
world-changing mixture, capable of being used for good or ill.
Lately, most of the mentions of the Rabbi Christ
we have been hearing sound to us like a soaring Jimi Hendrix guitar solo
in the background of a commercial for a Japanese SUV. It’s like
Johnny Damon died, was reanimated, reoriented and reconstituted by George
Stienbrenner as a member of the Evil Empire.
We like the fish thing, though…
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