Jesus & anti-semitism

I was in school last week and asked what I thought of the first episode of "Christianity: a history". I had to confess that I hadn't seen it, but they were keen to give me a synopsis anyway. I gave my initial responses, which seemed to go down well, but I've watched it now online and here is my more considered reaction:


Its a programme about the role of Christianity on anti-semitism: the Jews, we are told were persecuted and murdered throughout the middle ages and beyond because they killed Jesus. The programme explores the responsibility of Christianity for the ill-treatment of Jews.

Of course, the fact that Jews could be persecuted or killed in the name of Jesus is very disturbing for anyone with any kind of sensitivity. It really is a shame that Christianity could not have more universally deplored the treatment of Jews as another example of scapegoating, on a par with the scapegoating of Jesus.

On the other hand, I have long been convinced that ideology (whether Christian or not) simply doesn't have that much power to control people's behaviour. I'm not saying that we are not influenced by our faith position - of course we are, but we also shape that faith position. I'm pretty confident that the persecution of any group occurs primarily for social, political and economic reasons, and ideologies are shaped to support what people want to do, rather than the other way around.

Anyway, on to the programme. It has, of course, all the typical hype of religious broadcasting - pretty conventional ideas (like Jesus was a Jew or baptism was originally a Jewish rite) are heralded as though they were groundbreaking new discoveries! I like its desire to restore Jesus to his original Jewishness. The programme asks:

"How does it harm a Christian's faith to restore Jesus to the jewish world in which he lived? Jesus never once expressed the intention of starting a new religion. His ambition was to renew Judaism, to reawaken it to its own grandeur, not to abolish it."

It was pretty poor, though, in its presentation of Paul. It presented now discredited scholarship as though it were accepted fact. Paul we are told was anti-Jewish. No quotes or evidence were given and I presume the TV makers weren't thinking about "There is no difference between Jew and Gentile we are all one in Christ Jesus". It is now commonly accepted that Paul wasn't critical of Jew per se (in Romans, for example), but Judaizers (Jewish Christians who claimed Gentile Christians should be circumcised etc). Paul was as thoroughly Jewish as Jesus was, and like Jesus, was not trying to start a new religion, but seeing the true expansion of Judaism to the whole world. Christianity wasn't a religion at all until some time after Paul's death.

Hints at animosity to some Jews is evident in the New Testament - I don't deny that. Post 70AD texts were written just as Judaism was throwing Christians out of the synagogue. But anti-semitism itself is a creation of the Middle Ages and served the political and social agenda of the middle ages.

Will Christianity, I wonder, ever recover its tarnished image or forever be seen as the tool of oppression? I wonder if Channel 4 will show the other side of Christianity - the way it has been a tool for liberation and equality as much as oppression. What can Christians do today to present an alternative vision of what Christianity is all about?

The programme can still be watched here.

Goats + Air Crash Investigation + losing our Humanity

I was talking to my jumbo pilot brother in law the other day when he was asked about the recent Madrid plane crash that killed 153 people (mainly families off on hols) last month. His reply really struck me and we had a very brief chat about it. I can't remember the exact words he used but this is a summary of the gist of his unexpected response blurred in with my thoughts-

• Everybody always wants to know 'what happened' which is also saying 'who is to blame'
• This is very hard to say and often takes ages to work out and, whilst this is vital to prevent it happening again, its not the most important thing (this was a bit shocking coming from someone who spends his life 30,000ft up in one of these machines)
• Bry said -What about the people who died, their families and those badly injured and still in hospital - what about the real life human beings caught up in this awful tragic event.
• With the 24hr media cycle to maintain and the growing 'blame & claim' litigious culture explaining and blaming rob the people in the story of their humanity (as they become statistics and emotive/gore pics/porn?)

Does this explain/blame response, a classic scapegoating response (see other scapegoat labeled post here) help us to keep our own vulnerability, culpability and responsibility at bay. I mean does it help us rationalise it all so we -

• Are not to disturbed by what could be a very important, humbling and refocusing reminder of our own mortality and relative lack of control of the world around us
• Don't think for to long on how we might be in any way to blame for this or other 'regretable accidents' (Doesn't our wanton consumerism and the profit motive not drive short turn arounds, long lifetime aircraft, bare as possible bones maintenance etc (add in your own non aviation eg's Exxon Valdez, Bhopal?) Do we not all allow 'the system' to override our better judgement? Do we not all make more or less catastrophic balls ups of stuff on a regular basis? Also, doesn't a fear and blame culture make it harder to get to the truth in an investigation thats trying to make sure things are better next time. Openness and humility lead to learning and growth (repentance?) in processes and people.)
• Are conveniently unreflective on the suffering and needs of our fellow human beings and doing what we might be able to do for them or others facing similar suffering closer to home

Warning long pondering sentences ahead -
So...I am trying to work out what this says about what God did by being willing to be the scapegoat in Jesus, to be the victim, to be pointed out as the designer of the supposed problem tile on the space shuttle, the bad apple spoiling everything, the thrashed and publicly trashed. To show what... that this scapegoating thing is a massive self preserving diversionary tactic that doesn't work, that we reveal the stuff we should really be ashamed of in the act of scapegoating, that Gods love is bigger than our convenient guilt systems (in fact not just bigger than guilt but bigger than even death in the Resurrection) . That, like Bry says, the bottom line is the dignity, value, comfort and life of real people that matters. That God's love (victim and perpetrator embracing love), rather that the idea of God=Fear and Blame, is the door to learning and growth = repentance and then onwards and outwards to the best chance of dignity, value, comfort and abundant life for all.

Hmm... bit dense and rambly in places but thanks Bry and folks - any thoughts?

Who's to blame?

Who does America blame for the 9 / 11 attacks and for the insidious threat it represents to the American way of life? It can't blame the suicide bombers because they are dead. It certainly can't allow their own policies in the middle east to come under scrutiny. So, they find refuge in the age-old scapegoat solution. And such are the inmates of Guantanamo. Arbitrarily chosen - they represent the threat to the American way of life and on them the anger and fears of the community can be expended.

The biblical language of 'scapegoat' recalls the atonement when a goat was taken and the violence, fears and conflict of the community could be transferred to the goat, which was then sent into the desert.

It is a different kind of atonement language, though, than penal substitution. God does not expend his anger in order to satisfy his wrath, but human beings expend their anger to appease their wrath.

So Jesus, as atoning sacrifice for our sins, is the scapegoat for the world. This is not God expending his wrath on an innocent man, but human beings expending their wrath on God! It is God as scapegoat for the violence of the world.

Many would see this as nit-picking about abstract and irrelevant ideas, but I'm pretty sure it should make a radical difference to what we do. If penal substitution works from the premise that God is sometimes violent and that violence can bring salvation - then we can condone violence today and see violence as redemptive. Jesus, as scapegoat, though, works from the premise that the scapegoat is innocent and should be treated as such. It works from the premise that God stands on the side of the scapegoat to expose the scapegoating tendency and so bring an end to it. If that is true, we should do all we can to speak out against the 'punishment' of the innocent at Guantanamo Bay and the violence enacted on this scapegoat.

So, what are we going to do about it?