Just as "Huckleberry Finn" cannot logically be read as a racist text the New Testament cannot be read with any amount of logic as a document of persecution, suffering or redemption. That either can be referred to as a text or a document is open to bebate but both are undeniably narratives: they both tell a story, and presumably enable a culture to make sense of itself, but, it is Easter, and, increasingly, like everything else under this regime, Easter scares me.
Even to the most casual observer, the narrative of Jesus and his cruciifxion and resurrection as suffering to atone for everyone else's sins seems odd: suffering is what most of us wish to avoid, and here someone with the capacity to instantly ease the suffering of others, by healing the halt, the lame, and the blind, by feeding the masses, does not know or has not already decided to be persecuted and is powerless to stop it? He could walk on water, calm the sea, move a mountain, but he was persecuted? Jesus was a victim? For our sake, because we are sinners?
For what sins did Jesus ever say this deliberate act was specifically for? Huck knew what sin he had committed: he went on the lam with Jim, an "escaped" slave, and was tormented by guilt because Jim was, in his eyes, not only a fellow human being but the one human being who had been kindest to him in his life...but Jim was a Negro,and Huck himself was such a sinner that he did not desire go to Sunday School, or to study the Bible, and was generally unsanctified...but if Huck had read the Bible, and learned his Sunday School scripture, as a Christian, would he have been anything like Jesus? Would he have been sanctified enough to know that helping Jim in any way was immoral? Or was he more like someone who had embraced the philosophy of Jesus from the words of whomever this person or persons were that have come down to us and we pretend to still regard?
I would argue that we regard the words of Jesus as complete crap and his fabled actions as even less than that or we would not behave the way that we do toward each other and every other living thing. WE, as a global society, deny the universe before the cock crows even once on any corner of the globe, we deny and denigrate every living thing on this planet including ourselves. Polar bears are drowning, baby walruses are floating out to sea to cry themselves to death in fear and hunger, yet the humans that most vigorously invoke the name of Jesus Christ would HATE me for saying such a thing...it is Easter, it is spring...why do Christians hate reality?
In this biblical locale, I was amused to see a re-enactment of local christians taking turns shouldering a cross down the main street of Hendersonville...the local news camera focussed on a heavy-set woman with glasses and a rather unattractive bangy haircut, the kind of hair cut that she uses a blow-dryer for and styling products and one wonders why?...she was huffing and puffing and had like five other people helping her carry the damned thing. As sure as I know that she dyes her hair, I know that this woman hates me because of what I think, what I feel, and what I AM. Her face was screwed up in painful revery as she experienced the pain of Jesus Christ, and she will have Tivoed that broadcast for her generations to come, to show them the way and the life...Amen! But, she will always hate me, and anyone like me, in the name of Jesus...now, that is odd!!!