The "capacity for sin" and other dodges

Lent is a-coming on March 5, and so is that ever-popular perennial: sin.

Be merciful, O Lord, for we have sinned.
For I acknowledge my offense,
and my sin is before me always.
Psalm 51:5

In Genesis, Original Sin was the disobedience of Adam and Eve to God's command to lay of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Eve, and then Adam, ate of its fruit and brought death, work and hard maternal labor into the world. As taught by Augustine (with his preoccupation with sexual concupiscence), Original Sin was sex. Without getting too literal about the how sin came into the world, Original Sin, to me, is the ever-present temptation to harm others and ourselves, and to injure our relationship with God. Babies are born into Original Sin. And observation suggests that even the waters of Baptism don't wash it away. I don't need a Satan to explain this. My human nature is potent enough to explain every desire I have to be cruel, to take what is not mine and to be lazy and uncaring. Original Sin may not explain this tendency, but it describes it to a "T".

But "capacity for sin" is not the focus of Lent. We can all admit capacity to sin without actually having to admit having done wrong. Lent can then appear to be about grief over sin, when it is nothing of the sort.

Lent is about our actual trespass into the realm of sin -- our actual violations of our relationships, duties and obligations. When we have used violence, now or in the past. When we have lied, or killed, or cheated, or lusted or ignored God. It's not about potential, but actuality.

Jesus said that prostitutes and tax collectors would enter the Kingdom before those who pretended to no sin (Matthew 21:31-32). Why is that? Because prostitutes and tax collectors cannot pretend to be pure and sinless. Their sin is public and unhideable.Whereas the sin of others can be hidden behind a cloak of decency and rectitude. Prostitutes and tax collectors enter into the Kingdom where forgiveness is possible because they have moved into the Kingdom's anteroom: acknowledgement of error. Forgiveness is only possible when one has an acknowledged sin that needs forgiveness. To hide behind one's mere capacity to sin, or one's ability to keep sin private, is to be exiled from the realm of forgiveness. Not that God refuses forgiveness. To use a car wash example, if you don't admit your car is dirty and refuse to drive into the cleansing waters, your car remains dirty -- and not because the car wash wouldn't take you

Our sin makes us feel bad. It pricks our conscience. And that's as it should be. The fact that churches play on people's guilt is not a reason to ignore sin. Let churches be places where sinners can be reconciled and freed from guilt. Not places where they are made puppets to the egotistical need of priests and "holy people" to feel superior.

You're Killing Me -- a review of Bill O'Reilly's "Killing Jesus"

 

You have to admire Bill O'Reilly for his storytelling skills. He can certainly weave a compelling tale. It's a shame that many of his facts are so wrong.

 

"Killing Jesus" lays out the "history" of Jesus of Nazareth. It's a history long on religious certainty and short on religious scholarship. Bill seems to have relied more on tales he learned from the nuns in parochial school than on the work of experts in the field. He has Matthew writing his gospel first, between 50 and 70 AD, when scholars have Mark writing first around 70 and Matthew around 85. He is certain that Jesus was born in 6BC (to make him fit Luke's chronology). He has no doubts than John the Galilean fisherman was the same man who penned the gospel of John and the Revelation, when that is extremely doubtful. Without question, and based on no citations, this John died when he was 94. Not 93, 89 or 96. Mary Magdalene was a prostitute. Apostle Andrew was lively. Herod was debauched.

 

Bill makes the rookie error of trying to combine al the gospels into one story, which violates the different stories they each tell. Seeing that John's Jesus cleanses the Temple at the beginning of his ministry while the Synoptics have this event at the end, Bill has him cleanse it twice, even though John likely moved the event in order to signal the inaugurating of Jesus's mission. O'Reilly's treatment of Jesus's countrymen leans toward the anti-Semitic. The priests were extorters of the people. The moneychangers were greedy and conniving. The Pharisees were priggishly fastidious and power-hungry. The high priest (who undoubtedly spoke Greek!) was little more than a pro-Roman lackey. O'Reilly's disdain for the sacrificial aspects of the Temple was almost palpable. Not to mention repeating the near-slander about the prophecies that Jesus "fulfilled," ignored by the very people supposedly on the lookout for them. News flash, Bill: the Jews of the first century were definitively not looking for a suffering, crucified Messiah.

 

"Killing Jesus" reads much more like a treatment for a movie. It's long on infusing the gospel's bare narratives with  movement and actions -- like the dove at Jesus's baptism landing on his shoulder, or the crowds witnessing this event falling to their knees. O'Reilly doesn't bother to distinguish Jesus's titles of Messiah, Son of Man and Son of God, taking the gospels as straight history when they use them. You'll get no clues about Jesus's eschatological understanding of the Kingdom of God. It's such a shame that Bill obviously spent no times reading some of the great teachers about Jesus's life, even the Catholic ones like Father Raymond Brown, preferring to pass on tarted up (and bloodied up) stories of Jesus's life that,  while striking and memorable, are unhistorical.

 

If you have not read about Jesus since Sunday school, you might pick up a few tidbits. Roman rule was brutal. Jesus and his father Joseph may well have worked in Sepphoris, the Hellenized town near Nazareth. But the few tidbits are overwhelmed by an enormous number of errors and misunderstandings -- literally on every page. The audio version even shows how little O'Reilly paid attention to the pronunciations of biblical names -- Antipas, Eleazar and Capernaum.

 

On the whole, "Killing Jesus" is less about the history of a first century Jewish prophet than about Bill O'Reilly cashing on his name-recognition and supposed "tell-it-like it is" approach. Better not to read it, than to have to unlearn practically everything in it.