Jealous Kind - Essay

Jealous Kind

I don’t believe the Bible is anything but a political document. I can’t tell you every step I’ve placed my philosophical foot upon to come to this conclusion, but I am satisfied with it. It’s involved books that are Biblically both pro and con, indigenous myth and spirituality and my own observations - a veritable swamp of fact and fiction pointing, as far as I can tell at this point, to the idea that the canonical book we call the Bible is suspect at best with regards to teaching us the machinations of God, let alone recalling the words of Jesus, let alone the “verbatim to the comma” way it is held in reverence by those that would take it literally. Worse, in my experience many Bible believers appear to feel they can come to know Jesus through the Bible itself, as if it were a kind of celestial telescope into the mind of God. Madness;both the mind that is illustrated in a literal interpretation of the Bible and those that think it is somehow the Way to God. 

I am forced into the position of believing what feels right and letting the rest go. This is an easily maligned position to take. One might say if any is true, it’s all true and if any is false, it’s all false. Of course this position is just as easily maligned. Half-truths, mistranslations,contradictions and metaphor are the property of both spiritual and political documents of any kind, and that is not arguable. In the end, it is up to each of us to determine how to treat the Bible. And in the words of popular songwriter Neil Peart, “if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.” 

Here’s what I do think the Bible is: a start. For one, it introduced me to the man Jesus, even if I am unable to accept him as anything more than an ascended master (whatever that really means). He taught me that it is ok to be homeless and that some of the greatest people that walk the earth are.The way he lived is amazing to me. He wasn’t born into wealth. In fact, his situation was far from it. But what I do glean and feel I can trust from the book tells me that he walked away from what he could have had in the way of earthly comfort. He made enemies of every significant power that might have made his life easier had he capitulated just the tiniest bit. But he refused. Instead,he often didn’t even have a place to sleep. Instead, his spiritual leaders plotted his death and got the Romans to carry out their thinly veiled in justice in horrific manner. 

One episode from his life seems metaphorical to me. The event may actually have happened as it is reported in the Bible or it may not have, but I am going to take a little liberty here. I suspect whatever liberty I take is a lot less than what has already been taken elsewhere in the book.  And at least I am admitting it’s not the way it was. However, I am suggesting that my metaphor might be the way it is 

The event I am referring to is told about in all the gospels except Luke. You may be familiar with it. The biblical account has it that Jesus showed up in the temple at least once, maybe twice, and found people doing business there. He overturned tables and said the businessmen had made the temple a “den of thieves”. John’s account has him enforcing his will with a multi-thonged cord. The fact that people were transacting there doesn’t appear to have been the problem. Rather, the type of business that was being conducted, that of changing money, seems to have been the thing. Apparently,then as now, it could be a situation where it was easy to be less than scrupulous. (If you don’t believe that changing money can be less than a fair transaction, trade your pesos for dollars in the San Jose del Cabo airport. I did that once. Once.)

So here is my metaphorical license. The moneychangers are the keepers of souls. Look around, search your experience, and tell me that we business people don’t sell our souls in a sense. At the very least, we are forced to make ethical decisions that disallow our full participation. It may be deciding to spend more time with family instead of getting the drink after dinner with the boss,or verbally disapproving of a particularly violent merger, or any number of business ethics conundrums. This is not counting those decisions relating to daily commerce (do we really want to know why our clothes are so relatively inexpensive, our food, our natural gas?). The culture itself has no such filter. It has no mind, conscience or bottom. It is up to the individual participants to provide these. Money itself makes the culture of an insane world turn, mainly because it is so easy to adore.

When I read the stories of Jesus overturning the tables and generally kicking ass on the businessmen that were enslaved by the culture of the day, I picture myself as a child in a cage under one of those tables. I picture you too. I imagine Jesus wreaking havoc not so much in the name of jealousy,but in the name of finding me, and you, and all our friends, and getting us away from these guys that only care about money. I see myself has having no hope until I see his mighty feet come into view, and I hear commotion, and my own jailor swear and light breaks upon me as loudly as the busting vases that made his table look so nice from the outside. 

And then I see, in my minds eye, everything pause in mid-air, still. My tormentor’s bulging eyes show frozen fear and his veins betray severe distress and anger exploding from his body. I see kids that had moments before been climbing out of cages or running for the door. But for this moment,all is still except for me and Jesus. The tabletop removed, I watch him gently open the latch without the least anger or frustration. In attitude, he almost thanks the lock for the part it plays. And then pushing aside the top of the cage under which I am trapped, he places his hand inside and reaches for me. I see my child’s hand reach up. And I comprehend that in some way, in some misapprehension of the concept and role of Time, each freed child has this experience and this relationship with him. You, too. We’ve all been released individually.It is only my perception that shows them leaving the cages alone.  

I admit that I don’t know what to make of the Man from Galilee. I don’t see him as the Bible paints him in most instances, but I do see him as a liberator; a liberator of those that are beaten down or feel themselves so. Of those that feel trapped, that don’t know what else to do, so they strip, or whore, or drink, or fight, or wander, seemingly lost.      

So although I am in no way a standard Christian, I still believe in Jesus. I know him. He visits me and I feel his presence. And when he does, time stands still, and the earth holds me like Mary once held him. And he frees me, and helps me stand. 

And we walk out of the temple of the angry, of the captives and the captors, hand in hand.