Sunday, March 14, 2004
Misplaced Passion
I have not seen yet Gibson's "Passion", but it is almost amusing the controversy that has broken out. I say "almost" because it is very sad that there appears no spokesmen from any camp that are able to speak the truth about the subject, "Who killed Christ?". It doesn't matter what your position is on the subject of Jesus Christ in this matter, the truth can help the position of any interested party. The truth can bring peace and remove the sense of fear for all concerned.
So we have this question: "Who killed Christ?". Are Jews the "Christ killers" that they think Christians believe? I understand that this is a concern for the Jews. For them it portends the coming of another wave of anti-semitism. They hear strong echos of a time in the last century, when such arguments fueled the rise of the Nazi party in Germany. IMHO, what enabled this is the advent of redactionist theology and form criticism in Germany some 80 years before Hitler's rise to power. In those schools of thought, all that smacked of the miraculous was stripped from the biblical narrative. By this means, they hoped to be left with only a "pure" ethic. The problem is that it is the miraculous that validates the ethic. So the ethic that remains is on the same playing field as any other ethic. Without God's signature on the ethic, it is just another way of seeing things. And that is what brought about the apathy in Germany (the area that had such a strong foundation in looking to the Bible as truth) to all things biblical. But there was a memory, an inertia, to the former beliefs of the German people. This is a very dangerous situation. Because then a leader like Hitler can use false "god words" to influence the population. In their ignorance of what the Bible really said about Christ and how and why he died, they were quick to eat anything Adolph said.
So then what is the truth? Who killed the Christ? What was the Jew's part in this matter? They did indeed arrest Jesus. They did deliver him to judgment. But why didn't they just off the guy? Wouldn't that have been easier and quicker? To answer this we have to use biblical and extra-biblical sources. The biblical sources, because its important (even to the non-Christian) to understand what is supposed to be the correct Christian position on the subject. Extra-biblical because there are things that writers of the biblical account understood about the situation and took for granted, but two millennia has made these things not necessarily household knowledge.
The truth is that the Jews knew that they couldn't kill Jesus without getting the Romans pissed off at them. There were things that the Romans did when they conquered a nation. They would, for one, setup a puppet local government. The local kings that the Romans installed were of the Herod family. The Herods were not pure Jews. They were half Jew and half Edomite and definitely not of the line of David. That would make them in the eyes of the Jews not of the royal line. The Herods in turn setup as the high priests, the Sadducees. These were not members of the tribe of Levi as they should have been. The other thing that the Romans did is take away the right of local government to exercise capital punishment. So, for the Jews to kill Jesus (a high profile personality) would have been seen by the Romans as an usurping of their authority. Not that the Jews were unwilling in all circumstances to make an end run around the Romans and execute a person. The Jews stoned the lowly deacon Stephen, who was the first Christian martyr. But they wouldn't risk that with the high profile Jesus.
So the Jews delivered Jesus to Herod Antipas. But Herod wouldn't want to offend the Romans, so he sent him to the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate. Pilate didn't want to kill Jesus. For one thing, his wife warned him to be careful about what he did with this man. She had a dream the night before about Jesus that had really scared her. That had put him on edge about Jesus. But he didn't see any reason to kill him. In the examination of Jesus, Pilate asked him "What is truth". Jesus just stared at him. Then Pilate immediately turned to the crowd and said "I find no fault in this man". But the Jews had one more ace up their sleeves to force the executioners hand. You see, Pilate was not only the governor. He held the office of "Friend of Caesar". This didn't mean that they would hold each other's head in the vomitorium. It was a political office. The Jews said "This man allowed himself to be declared King of the Jews''. "If you allow him to get away with this, you are no Friend of Caesar's". This had happened only a week before, on Palm Sunday. That was it. There was only one thing that Pilate could do. He sent him to be crucified. It is a commonly held belief that Pontius Pilate eventually became a Christian.
So, Hitler was wrong. It was not Jews that did the actual killing of Jesus. It was the Italians. Oh, wait. They were the allies of Germany.
But the thing that is so laughable about the whole thing is that the Jews could use Christian doctrine to defend themselves against incrimination. Because everyone (except Judas Ischariot) is off the hook. Jesus said:
No man takes my life from me. I have the power to lay it down and I have the power to take it up again.
and again:
The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and be a ransom for many.
There were times that the Jews tried to kill him. They once grabbed him and tried to drag him to a cliff to throw him off. But it says that he just walked away from them. So if he could walk away then, why wouldn't he walk away from those guys in Jerusalem?
That was why he came to earth. He wanted, at least in his purpose, to die. He knew that was why he was here. Ultimately, the only purpose for coming. The Jews should be pointing to that every time they are called "Christ killers". He said that he wasn't murdered, he wasn't executed. He was sacrificed. He was the "Lamb of God" that would atone for man. The Law and the Prophets is lousy with mention of Him coming and dying as a sacrifice for the Jews, God's chosen people through which the Messiah would come. He was the actual of what all those millions of sheep that were sacrificed in the Tabernacle and the Temple were only a type and shadow of. That's primitive Christian doctrine, that Jews should show those that would label them as "Christ killers". Jesus sold everything He had, His divinity and His body, to buy that field in which the pearl of great price was hid that He talked about. Go ahead, rub any ignorant Christian's nose in it. Anyone else for that matter. That's what the book says.
Posted by Michael @ 03:50 PM PST [Link] [Karma: 3 (+/-)] [Make Comments]
