Contrary to what Roger Rosenblatt famously wrote in Time magazine after 9/11, irony is not dead; in fact it’s never been more abundant. And one of the most peculiar manifestations of it is the way in which so-called true believers insist on a literal interpretation of the Bible, thus undermining the Good Book’s poetic power to preach far beyond the choir.
Jesus speaks largely in metaphor. With his mustard seeds, and needles’ eyes, and fishers of men, he’s a dead poet’s society unto himself. His language is rich, colorful, and provocative, and if legitimate Biblical scholars are to be trusted, he used parables to more easily reach his audience, which, though illiterate, had an ear for poetry.
In Love’s Body, Norman O. Brown quotes St. Augustine, thusly: “What more liberal and more fruitful provision could God have made in regard to Sacred Scripture than that the same words might be understood in several senses, all of which are sanctioned by the concurring testimony of other passages?”
Of course the greatest metaphor in the New Testament--in fact in all of Western Literature--is Jesus himself, a divine figure who becomes a human being to redeem suffering humanity. The metaphor has a rich tradition stretching back to Prometheus, the ancient Greek figure who was punished for giving the gift of fire to man by being chained to a rock where an eagle came each day to eat out his liver. Like Jesus, Prometheus is reborn, as each day he regenerates a new liver.
In modern times the Jesus metaphor has played out in numerous books and films. In the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, for instance, the book’s hero, McMurphy, who’s not crazy, purposely descends into the mental institution and his presence there begins to breathe life into the patients who have until his arrival all but given up. “I mean—hell,” he tells them, “I been surprised how sane you guys all are. As near as I can tell you’re not any crazier than the average asshole on the street....” McMurphy accepts his Christ-like fate as he’s prepared for crucifying electro-shock and says to the attendants, “Anointest my head with conductant. Do I get a crown of thorns?”
Similarly in the film Cool Hand Luke, the Christ figure of Luke performs a series of miracles—pulling victory out of his bloody defeat at the hands of the bully Dragline, eating 50 eggs, enduring containment in “the box” to emerge each time reborn and on the run. His example gives hope to the other inmates whose worship of him culminates with his disciple Dragline spreading the gospel of Luke to new prisoners as the camera pulls back to capture the dusty gathering at a heavily symbolic crossroads. (And please note the song Luke sings upon learning of the death of his mother.)
Famed prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi has recently come out with a book entitled The Divinity of Doubt: The God Question in which he tries to debunk various aspects of the Jesus story. I haven’t read the book, but I did see him interviewed on TV where he offered one example of his findings. He says that at the time of the original writing of the Bible, there was a distinct word for virgin and a distinct word for young woman. The earliest versions used the word for young woman and not the word for virgin, which was readily available to them, thus proving that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was not a virgin. That strikes me as being quite logical and fairly credible evidence. It also strikes me as being beside the point. Bugliosi says that to believe otherwise in the light of such evidence is to engage in myth.
Bingo, Vince!
It is typical in our age to be dismissive of myth, which is generally considered a synonym for lie. But a lie is meant to deceive or hide a truth, whereas a myth is meant to illuminate a truth through a story. Jesus as metaphor--Jesus as myth--is impervious to practical evidence, legal, scientific or otherwise. That Christ’s mom may not in fact have been a virgin is less important than the long, well-documented record that people the world over have always portrayed their redeemers--their heroes--as having been born under extraordinary circumstances. It is the first step in separating the hero out from the rest of us. It’s also a way of elevating the hero, while providing the rest of us with a ready excuse for not being heroic.
When McMurphy fails to perform the miracle of lifting a heavy panel off a floor and throwing it through a window, he rails at his disappointed apostles, "But I tried though. Goddammit, I sure as hell did that much, now, didn't I?" And Paul Newman as Luke, after a similar failure before his eager, new worshippers, yells at them, “Stop feeding off me!”
The redeemer knows that he can’t keep doing this forever and alone. Pretty soon the followers must get the message that they have to start redeeming themselves. But that’s about the point where it starts to get uncomfortable for them. Then they turn on him or idly stand by while he gets sacrificed.
The literal truth of the redemption story we keep telling ourselves over and over again is not just beside the point; it is the counterpoint. As Brown writes: “Literalism is idolatry, taking the shadows for reality; taking abstractions, human inventions, unconscious projections of the human spirit, as autonomous powers; letting the metaphors go dead, and then, when dead, bowing down before them, taking them literally.”
The seemingly dumb Chief Bromden, the narrator of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, tells his listeners, “I been silent so long now it's gonna roar out of me like floodwaters and you think the guy telling this is ranting and raving my God; you think this is too horrible to have really happened, this is too awful to be the truth! But, please. It's still hard for me to have a clear mind thinking on it. But it’s the truth even if it didn't happen.”
The truth is that ordinary people have always relied on redeemers like McMurphy and Luke and Jesus to come along to save their sorry asses, only to reject the message that salvation is a DIY thing. At the end of Cuckoo’s Nest, the Chief dons McMurphy’s baseball cap, lifts the panel and tosses it though the window, thus giving affirmation that McMurphy has not been sacrificed in vain and has risen.
This weekend, we celebrate the enduring power of the redemption story. We can do so by insisting that it’s a one and done story frozen just so in 2000-year old amber, or we can celebrate it by realizing that we are each the second coming.
Cross-posted from my blog (and if you don’t think this belongs on a political website, you don’t know metaphor).