Scourged by Why

We describe our world with who, what, where, when, how, and why.  Jesus displays no care for such things.

Who?  Jesus does not care if Abiathar was High Priest, or someone else.

What?  The temple services might be said to have been always implicit in the day-of-rest Sabbath, but Jesus does not care.

Where?  The true worship of God will be irrespective of place.

When?  For Jesus, something might have happened and yet be expected in the future, such as the coming of Elijah.

Without a definite framework of who, what, where, and when, there can be no settled notions of why or how--and such unsettling is central to the teachings of Jesus.  The "why" of the human predicament is the claimed province of the theologians, and it can be seen how their fevered attempts to establish a causal basis for their pet theories has distorted the insistent thrust of the Genesis narrative.

For example, the theologians are powerless to face Jesus' positive enmity for marriage and family.  After all, Jesus describes marriage as permanent because the union of man and woman as "one flesh" was decreed from "the beginning."  What the theologians fail to realize is the fact that "the beginning" of human society was not an optimal divine plan--and cannot be expected to be treated by Jesus as though such a beginning was God's will.

Adam, in a great "why" that cannot be explained, was alienated from a simple communion with God--the "it is not good for the man to be alone" episode.  All else proceeds from this, and all else drags with it the rattling chain of the initial "why?"  Why was Adam not content with the garden?  Why was Adam not content with his animal companions?  The prophet Nathan did not scruple to describe a lamb as a wholesome part of a man's family--and only the subsequent and unnecessary mingling of flesh in Genesis can give rise to puerile sniggering about bestiality.

I say "unnecessary mingling of flesh" because there is no explicable reason why Adam would be presented with a creature that could think and feel like him, and would exclaim only about her fleshly attributes.  Not even a "blood of my blood and heart of my heart" were we given, but rather the base "bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh."

The theologians will have the birds of paradise singing rapturously at the appraisal of Eve by Adam, while it would be more appropriate to imagine the (marriage-free) angels weeping in pity.  The more unctuous of preachers will describe sex as one of God's great gifts, but it is stricken at its core by the great searing scourge of humanity--the primordial "why" of our alienation from God.