Part XXVIII Matthew: The Parable of the Loaves and the Fish

Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on 18 September 2014 2 Comments
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Question

I was raised as a very religious child in a Russian Orthodox household, beginning to serve in the altar at age three. At the age of fifteen I realized that many things did not sit that well with me and I felt I no longer needed the Church. I was compelled to conceal this as a great secret and kept up appearances for several years. When I finally came out, I was met with anger and hysteria. Almost twenty years later, my mother still denies the whole truth, that I do not share her beliefs. While I am in many ways still “allergic” to Christianity, your books have been a great help on a very long road to religious recovery that I began a couple of years ago and for that I deeply thank you.

I have to say honestly that sometimes it seems to me that you draw from the positive aspects of the gospel to create a version of Jesus that is incomplete and dismisses other key aspects of his ministry. In particular, there is one thing that all scholars seem to agree on that Jesus was an apocalyptic preacher. However, I can’t remember ever encountering much about this in your books. What to you is the significance of Jesus as someone who preached an end to the world and a general resurrection? Do you believe this to simply be a philosophy wrapped up in his time and place?

Also, I would greatly appreciate your thoughts on the devil and hell, aspects most Christians grew up very aware of. Can you recommend anything that specifically addresses the development of these ideas and the cultural and historical significance?

Answer

Dear Nikolai,

Thank you for your letter and a description of your upbringing in the Russian Orthodox Church. My experience growing up in Protestant fundamentalism is not dissimilar. In both traditions there is contained the symbols of security that interpret the experience of life and temper its peaks and valleys. People find their security in these forms and they cannot tolerate the threat to these systems, which questions and new ideas bring. These people are not close-minded; they are simply afraid. They are not stubborn resisters of truth; they are rather fighting for their own survival. In religious debate we often forget these realities.

We can still appreciate these religious symbols without being oppressed by them. Symbols always point to a reality they cannot contain. Growth takes place in both knowledge and human development when a small number of people can sacrifice security and embrace ambiguity. That is what you have done. It is not always a comfortable way to live, but its potential is enormous.

Of course, my vision of Jesus is incomplete, but I do not see that as having anything to do with the end of the world or apocalyptic thinking. I challenge your assertion that “scholars agree on the fact that Jesus is an apocalyptic preacher.” That is a position generally dismissed by my colleagues in the Jesus Seminar. I suspect that apocalyptic thinking was read into the memory of Jesus as a response to the traumas that engulfed the Christian movement with the destruction of Jerusalem by the armies of Rome in the year 70 C.E. The apocalyptic chapters of Mark (13), Matthew (24) and Luke (21) that precede the crucifixion indicate that each of these gospels was written after the fall of Jerusalem and that the Christians saw the destruction of the holy city as God’s judgment on Israel for rejecting Jesus as the messiah. When a man we know as John writes the Book of Revelation in the 10th decade of the Common Era, apocalypticism was clearly alive and well. Does that mean that the Jesus of history was “an apocalyptic preacher?” I don’t think so.

I have written about the concepts of heaven and hell in my book, Eternal Life: A New Vision-Beyond Religion- Beyond Theism-Beyond Heaven and Hell. In a nutshell I believe heaven and hell were created to be levers of control. By threatening eternal punishment or promising eternal bliss, moralizers sought to control behavior in this life. I find it interesting that Paul appears to know nothing of what came to be referred to as hell and that the Fourth Gospel makes its focus on the fulfillment of this life. I also find it of note that the Fourth Gospel treats the gift of the Holy Spirit to the disciples by the risen Christ as the “second coming of Jesus.”

You may be my first letter from Russia so I thank you particularly for writing.

My best,

John Shelby Spong

 

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