The Gospel According to Jeff Foxworthy
When I lived in Georgia I discovered a delightful willingness of Southern people to laugh at themselves, a healthy attitude which might be good to adopt for those of use who call the rest of the planet home. One of the chief commentators about the trailer trash/Southern good-ol'-boy network is Jeff Foxworthy, whose famous one-liners usually end with: "...then you might be a Redneck."
My favorite was this one, paraphrased as follows: "If your idea of quality entertainment is a six pack and a bug zapper...." (You know how it ends.)
People from all regions laugh at this because it's an image of a simple lifestyle, a caricature. It's funny because it both celebrates the Redneck worldview while poking good-natured fun at it. Jeff Foxworthy understands the red-clay world of the Georgia countryside and speaks its language. Talking for and from the lower-middle-class worldview which Foxworthy's Redneck constituency represents, it would make no sense to for him to discuss the foibles of commuting to work in Manhattan from upstate Connecticut. He works inside the mythos of Saturday night tractor pulls and automatic transmissions in the bathtub. It is the source of of his material, and through Redneck humor he is able to connect with something universal about the human condition.
Now, let's look at the early Christian church with this in mind... (Don't quit on me, I'm actually going somewhere.) It isn't a comedy routine, but it certainly speaks to the human condition in the metaphors of a time-and-place locus which is quite alien to us today.
It is immediately apparent that the tools and metaphors of the first generation church were inherited from their culture. They didn't invent the ideas of sin and sacrifice. They surely would not have chosen for Jesus to meet such a tragic and abrupt end. They responded to these events with the cultural symbols available to them, manufacturing a Christ-of-faith myth both to explain his horrific crucifixion and to respond to the post-crucifixion appearances of the Risen Lord.
There is no doubt to the historicity of the underlying events themselves. Consider the vantage point of Paul, who is the only undisputed first generation Christian writer whose work is available today. Paul clearly testifies to those appearances and cites over five hundred others who can be called upon to corroborate his claims:
"For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me." (I Cor 15:3-8)
Whatever actually happened, the theology which developed was based on a lot of complex components. People were trying to understand what had happened among them, and they went to the metaphors of the day, i.e., sacrifice to set the balance right between heaven and earth. This idea of offering sacrifice to reconcile humanity with the gods was an almost universal theme in Hellenistic religions and therefore a bridge between paganism and traditional Judaism. In the time of Paul the Jerusalem Temple still had its daily animal sacrifices for the remission of sins. How else could the followers of Jesus understand the unexpected collapse of the teaching and healing mission of Jesus due to his untimely death by crucifixion? If Jesus was truly sent by God, it must have been planned that way, the early Christians reasoned. But for what purpose? Ah, of course! Jesus is the Lamb of God whose self-sacrifice sets the balance right between heaven and earth for all time.
We don’t have to agree with their conclusions to understand the way they probably arrived at those ideas. However, the untimely death of Jesus DID matter to the early church, and they responded by creating a world-embracing mythos based on sacrificial theology that was nigh on to universal in the ancient world. Our task is to separate the threads and find the golden strands woven into this yarn, while allowing the ancient authors to say what the really said without re-interpreting them to make New Thoughters out of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, the Q Source and Paul.
I am currently writing a new book on Christology, and the mythical-mystical-metaphorical-metaphysical are all delightfully co-mingled in the mess. But I invite you to explore the formative documents of the early Church with the same kind of keen insight that brother Foxworthy brings to his cultural milieu.
Who knows, perhaps you'll come away muttering: "If you think Jesus showed people the way to God-within them, you might be a Christian..."
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2 comments:
Since I think that this might have been my paper, it is only correct and proper for me to defend my offspring.
Besides Paul, what other contemporary sources that we know of, documents the resurrection? The historian Josephus was not a contemporary of Jesus (37-100 CE)and the Antiquities were not published until 93 CE ( http://www.jesus-institute.org/life-of-jesus-ancient/jesus-josephus.shtml). Certainly, the myth could have perpetuated in that 60 year period. And as for Paul, he exceeded some of the finest New York advertising agencies in "spinning" the truth. Of course, when you think that Jesus is returning soon and you have millions of gentiles to convert...maybe we can understand Paul.
My final conclusion, in my paper, was that myth and symbolism is as old as time. And isn't is highly coincidental, that is almost every culture in the world, the myth of the hero being falsely accused, killed, and rising from the mortal to the immortal, is found? Does it really matter, to New Thought, whether Jesus was crucified and resurrected?
Jenny's comments reveal a clear and open mind; she is unwilling to accept Paul's word that the events of the resurrection occurred as reported. But I reiterate my original position: Absent any information to the contrary, the very bottom line in all this discussion is that the first generation church passionately believed Jesus was still available to them after his death. That is NOT an endorsement of the resurrection’s historicity; it is merely stating the undisputed fact of history that the early Christians believed in the resurrection strongly enough to die for its reality.
My question to you is this: What ideas do YOU believe in strongly enough to die for? How willing would you be to die for a myth?
We have no way of knowing what happened the first Easter. What we do know is that it changed the world.
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