The Unaccountable Blessed Moments

It can be a tiring thing, to try to study the Gospels.  True, it can be a comfortable and soothing experience, to allow oneself to be carried along by some preacher's fair-flowing distillation of the "gospel message," as though the foundational premise of true religion was not the existence of God or the horror of being lost, but rather the assumption (particularly ludicrous in the scope of Jesus' teaching) that the test of salvation is found in whether one's life has been put together thereby.  Jesus spent much of his earthly ministry tearing people's lives apart.

The most glaring example of fair-flowing distillation of the "gospel message" is the absolutist Protestant cant about salvation by "faith alone."  The preacher can spend months on the radio cherry-picking and glossing-over passage after passage so that the listener given over to "faith alone" need merely gulp down the rancid milk of a manipulated theology.

The fatuous nature of the "faith alone" contention is highlighted in a gospel story (or, in unsparing analyses, a set of gospel stories) traditionally held to be that of The Rich Young Ruler.  Jesus' recountings of the story (and its linked postscript about the Camel and the Eye of the Needle) flit and waver between the salvific binary of Eternal Life and its lack, on the one hand, and the notion of "becoming perfect" (as ancillary to salvation) on the other hand.  This story is not truly suited to the radio preacher, who has little to gain from frankly presenting the true gospel message, which consists of fragments of apparently-discernable theology that grind and jostle against fragments of other countervailing, apparently-discernable theology.

This is the phenomenon that I have chosen to refer to as "trodden shards."  Reality, if it is to be understood as Jesus presents it, must be seen as a shuddering concretion of apparently homogenous (or at least internally quiescent) crystallizations, grinding more or less vigorously against other elements, from the equally-crystallized to the almost-pulverized.  We can see the playing-out of this physical metaphor in The Story of The Rich Young Ruler.

We see the man go away saddened "because he had great possessions."  In one camp of gospel interpreters, it is held that the man refused to "do" what he had to in order to be saved--but do not we all (in notions of works-based salvation) fall short in some measure of the "doing" scale?  In another camp of gospel interpreters, the man simply misunderstood the "how" of salvation--but does not the notion of God's sovereign election (for how else could saving faith be reckoned not the believer's accomplishment?) render the man's aversion to shedding his wealth immaterial?  All we really know is that the man went away saddened, and that Jesus, while proclaiming the dangers of wealth to salvation, says that all things are possible with God.

But do these limited textual elements constitute all we can "know" about the rich man's situation?  Sure, he went away sad, but might not sadness beset him even if he resolved (like the parable's defiant son, reconsidering and going to work in the vineyard) to do the work of his master, in this case Jesus?  Is it really so easy to divest oneself of great wealth, particularly if in numerous and disparate holdings?  Many decisions would have to be made (including the decision of the point at which he no longer possessed wealth of note.)

To whom in particular should he sell his holdings, given that such purchasers would become the effectual lords of their new employees?  (And this is to say nothing of the notion that the rich man was a "ruler"--possibly so under the Romans merely contingent upon being wealthy and therefore influential.  What would prevent his erstwhile "subjects" from being oppressed--and despoiled--by their new rulers?)  And how easy can it be really to distribute great--though necessarily finite--wealth to the poor?

And could the Rich Young Man really cease to be what he was, and become merely a follower of Jesus?  As Jesus presages in the Parable of the Unjust Steward, the Rich Young Man might well possess a potent store of good will among the people, making it impossible for him to experience internally the abject deprivation of Jesus' followers.  Conversely, the Powers That Be, fearing the residue of his influence, might assign to him the intended fate of the resurrected Lazarus.

I present the above as the merest example of The Trodden Shards.  There is much that is good and much that is evil--and much that is understandable and much that is not.  The fairest presumption would be that existence, to us, would be a clashing jumble of parts.  Instead our religion--as distinct from that of Jesus--is intent on smoothing over our existence any number of concocted sheens.  Even the theologians' favorite--that ours is a "broken" world--is a farcical bait-and-switch.  The "world" itself (as we know it and as we have ever known it) has always been broken.  Was the world "whole" in which Eve (and possibly other female creatures) were intended to feel only a modicum of birth-pangs?  Was the world "whole" in which the serpent was permitted to slither about?

The very particles that comprise our very selves coalesce in wondrous beneficence and then are shattered apart in inevitable decay.  The magnificent processes that support our health and vitality nurse in their vitals conflicts that predestine us to death and decay.  The tantalizing and momentary insights we have are not merely partial and deficient--they are often contradictory.  To embrace such conflict--or, more properly, to seize upon the unaccountable, blessed moments of facing such conflict--is what it means to give up one's life.  And this is what it means for Jesus to grant us life more abundantly.