Hold the Apocalypse / Christmas Day 3

So, December 27 is the second of the Christmas Commemoration trifecta, honoring Saint John, who doesn’t bother much with the "nativity" of Jesus as a baby, but cuts to the philosophical chase by this mystical, masterful, bizarre "prologue" to his gospel, "

In the Beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
All things came into being through him.
What has come into being in him was life,
and the life was the light of all people.
The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness did not overcome it.

(I left out some of the redundancy, though in poetry one should resist editing.) This "John" is the one often referred to as "the Beloved Disciple." His writing had a platonic overlay (light/darkness, life/death – these absolutes which are mind-candy for the reality challenged – think of the phrase "Axis of Evil" and all it’s given us). The themes and style of writing link this gospel to the epistles of John as well as to the book of Revelation, which is where things get very challenging.

I had mentioned sometime in Advent about how this gospel has the most fingerprints on Christian antisemitism. Read this Gospel in Germany, as a follower of Luther (many Germans are Lutherans, a famous anti-Semite), add Fascism, and you get the Holocaust.

Also, Revelation is the book of the Bible which most threatens life as we know it.

Fundamentalists and Biblical literalists of every stripe use it to justify a profound disregard for creation. If Jesus is to return to take believers to heaven, accompanied by terrible battles between good and evil, and apocalyptic destruction of the earth which has fulfilled it’s purpose, then believers have no need to worry about environmental destruction or extinctions or living lightly. War in the Middle East is seen as a prerequisite for Jesus’ coming. Used up resources are just another indicator of coming bliss. Bring it on!

I guess it’s obvious why I wasn’t such a good Christian pastor. I was unable to celebrate the good in that tradition without getting apoplectic about the abuses and the ignorance which Christianity enabled.

How could I be a leader in a movement so capable of self-justifying aggrandizement and abuse? I guess I loved the possibilities of religion, the way Jesus might have longed to use Judiasm’s themes to bring comfort and joy to those excluded and hurt.

I guess I figured that a lot of Americans would be Christians anyway, so someone needed to tell the truth, to expose the negatives, to push people to take action toward a progressive Christianity, the kind that Jesus would have been interested in.

Maybe I should stop writing about Christianity. It feels like a family feud when I do.