Sunday 6 October 2002

Pic of the day: It's crusade time again! (Illustration picture from DAoC.)

Are we sheep? Naaaah!

If anyone else had repeatedly referred to all Christians as sheep, there would be righteous indignation enough to sail a small ship in. But when the Lord Jesus Christ says the same thing, we just politely ignore it. OK, not quite ignore it ... there's the occasional pretty song on the topic, and such. But it's not something that occupies our thoughts in daily life, I think. And at least it's one of the things that even hardcore fundamentalists don't take literally. Thank God for that. Waking up to see fundies on all four on the lawn would be too much.

I have found myself wondering if Jesus had a dark sense of humor. The gospels show us Jesus weeping, and angry, and even afraid. But he is not known for laughing. I can kinda identify with that ... laughing is much harder to do when you are alone, and I guess no one had been so alone as Jesus since before Eve was created. Still ... some of Jesus' expressions seem to imply a sense of irony. Such as when he implies that his opponents believed that humans were created for the Sabbath, rather than the other way around. Or his wry observations of people praying on street corners in order to get attention from humans, who they were presumably not praying to, rather than God. Not exactly laughing matters, but there is a tinge of irony in it. Or the parable of the guy who was beat up and left in a ditch, and the pious people just passed him by until some heretic immigrant took care of him. "Who of these acted like a neighbor?" asked Jesus. Sounds like irony to me.

***

When Jesus repeatedly referred to his believers as sheep, did he do so with a knowledge of how stupid they would act for the next couple thousand years? The reason I started to think of this was a tract I got in my physical mailbox, called Fire of Hell. It was an outright attempt to scare the reader with images of continual torment. In contrast, another character in the story witnessed it all from his position in Jesus' lap.

I sometimes think that Christians tend toward the sheepdom described in Orwell's Animal Farm, where the sheep enthusiastically repeat any slogan they have been told, without thinking. First they go "Four legs good, two legs bad!" and then after a little re-instruction, they change it to "Four legs good, two legs better!" when the pigs decide to walk on their hind legs and wear top hats. The idea that words mean things seem to have slid past them. I believe this is also the case with Hell.

When Jesus quoted the passage about the fire that is not quenched and the worm that doesn't die, did he know that people would take that completely out of context? In the book of the prophet, it is clearly stated that these were dead bodies. Corpses. "And they will go out and look upon the dead bodies of those who rebelled against me; their worm will not die, nor will their fire be quenched, and they will be loathsome to all mankind." (Isaiah 66:24.) Yet in Christian imagery, God has somehow decided to keep the sinners alive for eternity so they can suffer. Did God change his mind for the worse? Or have the pigs taken over the farm and taught the sheep a new gospel?

A faith worse than death, indeed.