Confusion about the Holocaust confuses understanding  antisemitism

Column by Rev. Irene Monroe on 17 March 2022 1 Comments

Race is a social construct and not a biological fact. However, the deleterious effects of America's dominant black/white racial paradigm excludes other racial groups whose skin color and phenotype complicate the racist model.

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Question

 
When Jesus died on the cross, did God die?

Answer

 
Dear David,

I wish that I could hear more context from you on this question! I’m curious what prompts you to ask it?  what are your thoughts on the nature of death in general? and so on. But, based on your words here, I’ll say: I don’t have an answer for you; but I do have a response. It’s somewhat paradoxical - a few truths coexisting here that might on the surface seem contradictory, but hang with me for a bit ok? 

I don’t think God dies, but at the same time I think God is death just as God is life. I think God is found in all life, all matter, all energy; and since the nature of life is to be finite or cyclical, God is there is the cyclical nature of death and rebirth as well. Remember the Law of Conservation of Mass that states “Matter is neither created nor destroyed,” but it can get re-arranged in different configurations? I think God is like that. 

And at the same time I think God is like the alchemy the ancients sought to harness. Remember how they wanted to transmute base metals into highly valuable ones, and find an elixir for immortality? I think God is like that too. God can show us the true value of what’s in our hands, and reveal to us the timelessness of our souls.  

So much of the Christian story is a blend of these two stories: one - a story of birth, life, death, re-birth; a main theme of the whole story being that death is not an end but merely a transition to another form. Another - a story of the nature of things we thought were “base” - such as the body or the earth - being revealed as “gold” or spirit. 

I love how quantum physics gives us some language for spiritual matters, like in wave-particle duality; a thing is a particle but it’s also a wave! It’s both at once, or either, depending on who’s observing it. 

So my roundabout response to your question is: Yes! And No! Yes, in my view Jesus was an embodiment of God (as are you and I) and when his body died God experienced death. AND! Of course God can’t die because God is constantly rearranging Themself in patterns and configurations, particles and waves, “from glory to glory,” as the scriptures say. And it’s that ever-changing changelessness that makes God God. 

Death and change are only failures from a very limited human ego perspective. A wider lens shows us the beauty of death as a transition to a new form, an alchemical progression on a journey. So, if God dies, no biggie! What’s next?

~ Rev. Fran Pratt

 

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