Some thoughts on Jesus 5
I find much to admire in the teachings of Jesus—his embracing of the downtrodden and his inveighing against hypocrisy resonate particularly—but I find many flaws as well. If you approach Jesus as the infallible Son of God, these flaws seem perplexing, and the most common strategy amongst believers is to ignore them or, worse, embrace them. My object today is to highlight a few of them.
A couple aspects of Jesus’ moral philosophy give me pause. Most famous is the Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Luke 6:31). The flaws of this are well-known but little-discussed. The Golden Rule makes no allowances for individual differences; it essentially assumes a common set of wants for all people. It also doesn’t address the possibility that people might want things that aren’t good for them. Finally, the Golden Rule has no dynamic component; it can’t cope with behavior that deserves to be punished. This isn’t to say that the Golden Rule isn’t a useful rule of thumb, but it’s a shaky foundation for a general philosophy of morals. (In modern game theory, “tit for tat” appears to work much better.)
Jesus is also famous for advocating that you “turn the other cheek” in response to evil men (Matthew 5:38–40):
38“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ 39But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. 40And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well.
While this idea was used effectively by Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., they had unusual opponents. It’s hard to imagine “turn the other cheek” going very far against Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, or indeed the Roman Empire. (It didn’t work out too well for Jesus, after all.) Perhaps to their credit, many Christians ignore this idea, but that’s a bit troubling as well.
Apart from some dubious moral ideas, Jesus also seems to support the rather naïve “everything will work out” philosophy espoused by countless televangelists. I’m thinking in particular of a passage in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:25-28):
25“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? 26Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? 28And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin.”
This idea that God will take care of you takes a beating in the real world, of course, but Jesus’ analogy is also broken. The birds of the air are in a constant struggle for survival—against predation, disease, starvation—and their mortality rates reflect this. So too the lilies of the field, who labor mightily to grow so as to shade their rivals and spread their seed. Indeed, these biological analogies point in the opposite direction: “Life is hard—just look at the birds and the lilies!”
Don’t get me wrong—I don’t expect Jesus to have a strong understanding of population ecology. Nor do I expect him to have a subtle approach to morality informed by modern game theory. But that’s because I don’t believe him infallible. If anything, placing him in context—the son of a woodworker living in an oppressed outpost on the fringes of the Roman Empire—makes his achievements that much more impressive, warts and all.
Merry Christmas, everyone.
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“The Golden Rule makes no allowances for individual differences; it essentially assumes a common set of wants for all people.”
I think that’s an overly literal interpretation. If we allow that most people would like others to respect their individuality, this criticism becomes toothless.
That’s true if you know someone well enough to make allowances for individual differences, but I was thinking of the Golden Rule as a more general principle. The only way the Golden Rule can work for strangers is to make an a priori assumption that what they want is basically what you want. My point is that that assumption isn’t necessarily correct.
My view of general philosophy as distinct, I suppose, from game theory, is that it supports stations of privilege, visceral to intellectual. I’m never intrigued by philosopher kings; it seems their job to oppress the lower stations, and that only. Buddhism, doesn’t it take a brahman to garner any audience whatever? Confucianism, alike? Sartre built his fame around a pathological case in Nausea, a person of would-be cultural interest: ~I have gone farther than humanism~. In my view, general philosophy is no more than a comfortable park bench for the relatively privileged (which includes all of white america, in the large sense.)
Plus, the bit on the sins of the father?– that is strictly amoral.
Now and then I tell the story of Che Guevara, whom to those I tell, Che might as well have been the second coming. It’s only a shame that “Jesus didn’t write.” We don’t have his Motorcyle Diaries. It’s also a shame that Jesus performed riotous acts in the name of “The Son of Man.”
Jesus, or his team of fishermen ergo, created a philosophy unto the poor, not thereupon the poor, however distorted this may have become… but Jesus and Che are, more to the point, and opposed to infallible, unassailable. We have precious few public figures outside of literature who are bona fide unassailable. Agreed?
Hm, can you recommend a good book or web site for game theory newbs? It’s been a couple years since reading anything on it. Thanks.
“Placing him in context” presents a larger problem than you might think. Keep in mind that we have little proof that there ever was such a carpenter’s son; we have only words written and rewritten many times since his presumed lifetime. Words written by many different people, or groups of people. People and groups whose motives we may find disagreeable. Consider the problems raised by the Gnostic Gospels, the Synoptic Problem or the Deuteropauline letters.
Consider the likelihood of an underground, fragmentary and revolutionary cult eventually becoming the prevailing religion of an empire. Can we expect this transition from anarchy to orthodoxy to have occurred with zero change in teaching? Or in teacher? With this in mind doesn’t it seem less surprising that we can often find conflicting accounts in this book?
Believers have their faith that they’ve got the correct copy of the Truth (capital T). Those of us who find our faith lacking have to piece things together a little more carefully. What is initially presented as a monolithic “real Truth” resolves instead into a motley collection of smaller truths– or rather, “things that may or may not have been at least somewhat true at some time or another.”
Back to the point: putting those words entirely into their original context may be next to impossible. But we can consider them models– tools for perceiving and interacting with the world around us. As such there are times they are useful, and times they are not. Perhaps they fit into your context at some point. Perhaps not. As the venerable Egg Shen once said, “We take what we want, and leave the rest. Like your salad bar.”
Your complaint against the Golden Rule just doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t ignore a set of wants for people, but instead appeals to common sense. Do you want people to kill you? rob you? beat you? The only way you’d want that is if you had serious issues and even then the argument should be whether you have the reasoning faculties to know what you want. Gimme a break, the Golden rule is just common sense, stop trying to over analyze it. Sheesh, you’re sitting here dumping on Jesus’ use of the Golden Rule – have you taken a look at anyone who has published anything on ethics? Do you feel the same way about Socratic Virtue theories? Plato? Kant? Many of the greatest minds in ethics start with similar theories – yet with a small paragraph you claim to single handedly unravel Jesus’ moral guidelines! Most ethical theories ask a person to do some personal reflection before taking action or to consider if your act were made public knowledge – would you still commit the act. Yet you aren’t here complaining about any of the greatest philosophers on ethical code – you’ve selected Jesus. So perhaps you have some personal issues with Jesus and those issues fuel your attack. You didn’t even intellectually tease out other ethical theories that fall in the same bucket. And so your argument is just very lazy. So you actually found the verse of scripture that would be the target of your attack, but you didn’t actually do any real work to strengthen your argument.
Concerning turning the other cheek. Again, you miss the point, Jesus was addressing Jews who were hung up on fines associated with various acts. 200 zuzim for smacking someone and 400 zuzim if done with the back of the hand, etc. The problem was that people were setting up a point system for these acts and as a result instead of seeking forgiveness people were seeking revenge that totaled the same number of points. As you might imagine say someone commits 3000 points against you you’d be focused on that number and the number of things you could do to that person before equilibrium is achieve. When Jesus said turn the other cheek, everyone knew what he was referring to. The point being to focus on forgiveness and not revenge. To the person that said it’s impossible to discover relevance and context – how about trying first before launching an attack on Jesus.
Lastly, your point about birds is just weak (as are all of your points in my opinion). Do you have a chart on bird mortality now versus then? Do you think bird even have the capacity to fear whether or not they will eat tomorrow? That would be the only argument that makes sense. Predation was not even the point – the point was about worry for tomorrow concerning what you will eat. Until you’ve come to me saying that you’ve interviewed a statistically significant number of birds while measuring the number of neurons firing when you asked them about what they will eat tomorrow – you simply haven’t done even a mediocre job of disproving that bird don’t worry about what they will in fact eat tomorrow. I think if you do the study – you will find that they don’t spend time worrying about tomorrow worm; and that God does in fact provide for them. (They don’t work a job, make money, and then go to Safeway to purchase worms)
The bigger issue for most people is simply to let their guard down and give God a shot. People are so worried about things not making sense to them with their limited understanding and after looking at something without going beyond superficial exploration – and it’s sad to see you cheat yourself out of something wonderful. You probably don’t approach anything else in life with such a cynical attitude. If you did you wouldn’t have anything worth having in life, like love – Does love make sense to you? Do you analyze it the same way you’ve done with the Golden Rule? Have you decided that love is stupid because you can’t figure it all out with your finite understanding? No, by now you’ve probably figure out that you may not have all the answers when it comes to something as wonderful as love – and that if someone were to write a blog saying “love doesn’t make sense and therefore no one should live life including love in it” – you might find yourself saying, “dude, I think you’re missing the whole point, you’re over analyzing things that require common sense – and besides, why should you cheat yourself out of something as wonderful as love just because of your limited understanding.”
Perhaps you should embrace Jesus and His teachings and dig a little deeper, seek to experience God and stop the silly analyses.
When I talk to folks, I always used the “music in the car” analogy. Have you seen people singing and dancing in their car? Sometimes you can’t even hear the music – they totally look stupid to you, but you’re outside the car looking in. Why don’t you try getting in the car, experience the music, dance a little bit instead of standing at the curb critiquing the dancing fools in cars that go by.