In the beginning, the
elohim created skies and earth.
Welcome back.
I continue with my post-Christmas reflection. I have been writing about “Christian”
Christianity, and where it appears in writers like Victor Hugo and Charles
Dickens.
Christian Christianity? Is
there a “Non-Christian” Christianity? Am
I kidding me?
Of course, I am being silly, but these distinctions must be made when
some believers recast Jesus as a hardcore American Tea Party conservative, and
then re-crucify him on mammon's cross of gold.
We must hold steadfastly the Jesus we see in the gospels. What the earliest gospel writers tell us: what
he actually does and says. These are more important than the doctrinal noise that
has swelled crescendo over the centuries.
Let us return to Charles Dickens.
In my last post I shared some background that lies beneath his fiction.
Recall how Charles Dickens despised the poverty he saw in London. I’ll
let Dickens speak for himself in “A Christmas Carol.”
As we read, do we not see the heart of Jesus in his words?
For example, after Scrooge tells Marley’s ghost that he was always
a good man of business, he gets the following reply:
“Business!”
cried the Ghost, wringing his hands again.
“Mankind was my business. The
common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence,
were, all, my business. The dealings of
my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”
When Marley’s Ghost departs Scrooge, he sees what he later calls
one of many “wandering spirits” who is trying to help a, “wretched woman with an infant…”
Then he goes on to explain a serious problem that existed in the
immaterial world:
“The
misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in
human matters, and had lost the power for ever.”
The Ghost of Christmas Present sprinkled magic from his torch,
often just to make merry those whose moods had suddenly become bad.
Read the following discussion and hear the heart of how Jesus
lived beat within it.
“Is there
a peculiar flavor in what you sprinkle from your torch?” asked Scrooge.
“There
is. My own.”
“Would it
apply to any kind of dinner on this day?” asked Scrooge.
“To any
kindly given. To a poor one most.”
“Why to a
poor one most?” asked Scrooge.
“Because
it needs it most.”
One of my favorite exchanges occurred when Scrooge asked the Ghost
of Christmas Present about poor people being turned away from dining.
“You
would deprive them of their means of dining every seventh day, often the only
day on which they can be said to dine at all,” said Scrooge. “Wouldn’t you?”
“I!” cried the Spirit.
“You seek to close these places on the Seventh Day?” said
Scrooge. “And it comes to the same
thing.”
“I seek!” exclaimed the Spirit.
“Forgive me if I am wrong.
It has been done in your name, or at least in the name of your family.”
The following reply from the Ghost of Christmas Present is
priceless:
“There are some upon this earth of yours, returned the
Spirit, “who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride,
ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as
strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on
themselves, not us.”
Indeed, there are so many of our brothers and sisters who, woefully
misguided, continue to attend church, sing hymns, propound their doctrines of
self righteousness, and despise Pope Francis for being a socialist.
They are blind to how our government’s war on poverty has triumphed
in ways that early Christians could only dream. They lived in an unjust society
that exploited workers by making them slaves and destroyed dissenters by making
them lion meat.
Our government had fed more poor people than churches can
individually. Our government has clothed
more poor people, given more medical aid to poor people, and through
legislation increased minimum wages.
The only reason the war on poverty is deemed a failure is because
it never ends. There will never be a day,
a year, or a decade when this war will not be fought. Let us not quit it ever.
The ability and will to mount that kind of justice exists as a
dream buried in the stories and preaching of all the churches in the world.
How can we be more Christian than
that?
Blessings…
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