Please note that due to the software used, not everything in this transcript will be accurate.

Good Friday

John Dickson (Studio)

That’s the very questionable comedy, Talladega Nights, starring Will Ferrell as the champion NASCAR driver and dubious theologian, Ricky Bobby. Ricky’s family is trying to give thanks for their meal and this simple, middle-American task is complicated by the fact that everyone seems to have a different view of Jesus – an occurrence that’s much more realistic than the rest of Talladega Nights. One of the things I have tried to emphasise with students when teaching the Jesus of history – whether in my years at the University of Sydney or now at Wheaton College – is how important it is to avoid projecting our own ideas and preferences onto the figure Jesus. Instead, as best we can, we should read the ancient sources, including Gospels, on their own terms. In the first few lectures, I point out how the first 150 years of modern secular scholarship – around 1750 to 1900 – was marked by projecting Enlightenment assumptions and liberal ethics onto Jesus. A number of academics saw him as a ‘wandering humanitarian’ who was later co-opted by nasty religious people who elevated him to ‘saviour’ and ‘divine’ status. The idea was brought crashing down by the polymath Albert Schweitzer – a theologian, musicologist, philosopher, and later physician. He showed how each of these enlightened portraits imposed modern ideas on Jesus and overlooked ancient evidence. Schweitzer wrote that Jesus had become, “… a figure designed by rationalism, endowed with life by liberalism, and clothed by modern theology in an historical garb.” Ouch! Scholars now work with the ghost of Schweitzer looking over their shoulder. So, historically speaking, the goal is to let Jesus be Jesus. But that doesn’t mean we’re still not making the same mistakes. Deepak Chopra, a teacher of eastern enlightenment promoted by Opra no less, authored ‘Jesus: A Story of Enlightenment’. In it, Jesus blends western and eastern philosophies to become … well, perhaps a slightly elevated version of Deepak Chopra. There’s Aussie Jesus, created by artist Reg Mombassa, for the surf brand Mambo – complete with images of Jesus miraculously handing out pies and beer at the football. Christians do the same thing. They domesticate their lord, producing either ‘Meek and Mild Jesus’, all tolerance and love, or right-wing Rambo Jesus who endorses our political or military adventure, or the ‘theology-only Jesus’, who only came to earth to die for sins. Director Mark once bought me four t-shirts with different Jesus’s on them – his favourite was the not-so-meek-and-mild Jesus, complete with machine guns and grenades. For the record, I never wore it. We can all be guilty of co-opting Jesus to fit our personal agendas. There’s a basic cultural admiration for this figure, so we find ourselves projecting our best thoughts onto him. We’re pretty sure we’re right about certain stuff, so Jesus must have approved that stuff, too. Easter week is a good time to question all this, to question ourselves—to put it bluntly, to verify whether the Jesus we’ve either embraced or kept at a distance is the real Jesus or just a reflection of our own preference. 

Undeceptions theme

Reading

As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples, saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and just as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ say, ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here shortly.’” They went and found a colt outside in the street, tied at a doorway. As they untied it, some people standing there asked, “What are you doing, untying that colt?” They answered as Jesus had told them to, and the people let them go. When they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks over it, he sat on it. Many people spread their cloaks on the road, while others spread branches they had cut in the fields. Those who went ahead and those who followed shouted, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest heaven!” Jesus entered Jerusalem and went into the temple courts. He looked around at everything, but since it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the Twelve. – Mark, Chapter 11

John Dickson (Studio)

In his final week, Jesus rode a donkey colt into Jerusalem—to great fanfare. It’s the most extravagantly public thing Jesus has done so far. What’s going on? One of the things that’s often missed in studying Jesus is the way he frequently acted out his message, in the style of OT prophets. The prophet Hosea in the 700s BC married an adulterous woman to demonstrate God’s own marriage to unfaithful Israel. The prophet Jeremiah in the 500s BC wore a wooden yoke around his neck to symbolise how the rebellious people of God would become slaves of another empire. And the prophet Ezekiel, in Babylon, made a clay image of the city of Jerusalem and erected siege works against it, in public, like a boy playing toy soldiers, to demonstrate the fate that awaited God’s once holy city. Jesus offered similar pieces of ‘theatre’ to drive a point home. He chooses twelve apostles – his ‘sent ones’ – to mirror the twelve patriarchs of the tribes of Israel. They would be the new leaders of a renewed Israel. He welcomed sinners to his dinner table – completely against the scruples of the day – to indicate the invitation God was offering the unworthy. He washed the feet of his disciples, demonstrating the position of humility they should take on. And in the famous ‘Last Supper’ he broke bread and gave his disciples wine as an enacted parable of his body and blood given up for others. The point is: Jesus’ entry into the city of Jerusalem is a piece of prophetic theatre — recalling a very specific OT hope.

Jerusalem, the Mount of Olives, Bethany. These are just place names to us, but to the Jews they were sacred geography. We don’t have much sacred geography nowadays. I almost have it … There used to be a large sign on the northern side of the town of Cooma near the Australian snow fields (yes, American friends, there is snow in Australia) and it read: “Cooma: Gateway to the Snowy Mountains.” I remember the excitement I felt as a child passing through Cooma on the way to our annual holiday in the Snowy Mountains. My entire body would tingle with expectation as I wound down the window and felt the chilled mountain air streaming across my face. It is one of my most potent early childhood memories. And I still do the window thing all these years later—and I’ve passed it onto my kids. This childhood sense of anticipation, though, is nothing compared to the excitement of ancient Jews as they streamed toward Jerusalem for the annual Passover festival and arrived at the town of Bethphage and Bethany—“gateway to the holy city”—just a few kilometres from Jerusalem. Once pilgrims made their way up the road to the top of the Mount of Olives, they would be greeted by a magnificent panoramic view of the holy city, just a kilometre or so away. At the front of their view was the huge Jerusalem temple, a site larger than the largest football stadiums in the world today. Now, for the Jews, nothing in their calendar compared to coming to Jerusalem for the Passover festival. When Jesus arrives at this spot in the week before his death, having journeyed from Galilee in the north with his followers, the scene is electric. And Jesus amps things up: he arranges his donkey ride into Jerusalem, deliberately acting out the centuries-old words of the prophet Zechariah.

Reading

Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. He will proclaim peace to the nations. His rule will extend from sea to sea and from the River to the ends of the earth. – Zechariah, chapter 9.

John Dickson (Studio)

The crowds know what’s going on, and that’s why they explode. This is the moment that Jesus goes public. He is declaring himself as the king of the eternal kingdom promised by king David a thousand years earlier. He doesn’t need to say anything. He doesn’t say, “I’m the great king you’ve been waiting for.” That’s not how ancient Jewish communication worked. Prophetic theatre is enough. And the crowds get it – they cheer ‘Hosanna!’ (God saves!) and ‘Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father, David!’ Jesus’ opponents get it too. Legally speaking, this was one of the grounds of the Roman charge brought against Jesus before the governor, Pontius Pilate: “We have found this man subverting our nation. He opposes payment of taxes to Caesar and claims to be Messiah, a king.” (Luke 23) The great Jewish expert on Jesus, Paula Fredriksen of Boston University, says “A straight line connects the Triumphal Entry and the Crucifixion. A pilgrim crowd noisily proclaiming the coming of the Kingdom, not to mention the coming of their King, would certainly provoke Pilate’s attention and concern: With much less provocation, he had swung into bloody action before.” Paula Fredriksen, Jesus of Nazareth: King of the Jews. Vintage Books, 1997, 242. But what happens next is a bit anticlimactic … or maybe ominous. After this massive public build up, Jesus does and says nothing. He just walks around the Temple … looking. Over there priests are offering sacrifices … here the Pharisees are teaching … there officials are selling merchandise … and Jesus looks around at everything, like he’s taking stock. Or like a king inspecting his officials. But then he turns around and heads out to Bethany. The ominous tone carries over into his next two prophetic signs.

Media – Omid Djalili

John Dickson (Studio)

That’s comedian Omid Djalili making a joke about King Charles’ reported habit of talking to the green inhabitants of his gardens. And you can see why a story like that would make the rounds. It raises eyebrows when kings talk to plants. Then you read about Jesus …

Reading

The next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. Then he said to the tree, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard him say it. – Mark, chapter 11.

John Dickson (Studio)

It seems so extreme, even spiteful. Was Jesus ‘hangry’?  No. It’s deliberate piece of prophetic theatre—like Ezekiel attacking a clay representation of Jerusalem. Mark tells the story in two parts – the cursing first, and then, as Jesus and the disciples leave Jerusalem, they see that the tree has withered. This bit of theatre ‘bookends’ what happens in the temple – we’ll get to that in a bit. But to understand this bit of theatre, you have to know that the fig tree was used by Old Testament prophets in their denunciations of Israel’s leadership. Here’s Jeremiah:

Reading

“All are greedy for gain; prophets and priests alike, all practice deceit. So they will fall among the fallen; they will be brought down when they are punished,” says the LORD. “I will take away their harvest,” declares the LORD. “There will be no grapes on the vine. There will be no figs on the tree, and their leaves will wither.”  – Jeremiah, chapter 8

John Dickson (Studio)

Jesus wakes up that morning with the intention of showing his disciples the meaning of what he’s about to do in the temple. He announces he’s hungry and goes looking for figs – two months before fig season! – and he finds nothing, which suits his purposes fine. The tree has been put to the test at a time when it wasn’t ready, and Jesus’ curse withers the tree. The great atheist ethicist Peter Singer accuses Jesus of an anti-environmentalist vibe.

Reading

The most influential early Christian thinkers had no doubts about how man’s dominion was to be understood. ‘Doth God care for oxen?’ asked Paul, in the course of a discussion of an Old Testament command to rest one’s ox on the sabbath, but it was only a rhetorical question – he took it for granted that the answer must be negative, and the command was to be explained in terms of some benefit to humans. Augustine shared this line of thought; referring to stories in the New Testament in which Jesus destroyed a fig tree and caused a herd of pigs to drown, Augustine explained these puzzling incidents as intended to teach us that ‘to refrain from the killing of animals and the destroying of plants is the height of superstition’. – Peter Singer, Practical Ethics 

John Dickson (Studio)

Yes, a fig tree was harmed in the making of this scene! But so what? If it’s ok to chop down a tree to make Singer’s book; if it’s ok to kill a tomato for my sandwich … it is surely ok for Jesus to curse a fig tree as a powerful prophetic theatre about the doom coming upon Jerusalem’s leadership. Peter Singer is just doing what we all do—projecting his preferences onto Jesus, in this instance to show how Jesus fails to be a good environmentalist. But … as I keep saying  … we’ve got to let Jesus be Jesus! The same applies to the third, most dramatic, of the prophetic signs. Jesus has already inspected everything in the temple. He’s thought about a ‘sign’ he wants to give, and he does this…

Reading

On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple courts and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts. And as he taught them, he said, “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’” – Mark, chapter 11.

John Dickson (Studio)

At Passover, families were required to make sacrifices of various animals. Rather than bring your own stock, you could purchase an animal on site. But what began as service became something that was very easily abused. If you go to my beloved NSW Snowy Mountains without food or drink, you end up paying $10 for a drink and $20 for a hamburger. At Passover families were at mercy of the priestly price. Jesus condemned the practice. And he drove them out. The ‘Money changers’ Mark mentions had different role. Every Jew had to pay a temple tax. But officials accepted only Shekels of Tyre – the purest silver. The silver denarius of the time (like the one I wear on a necklace) was typically only 80% silver. The Shekel was about 90%. So, everyone had to change their money. And, of course, there was an exchange fee – charged by the priests. It reminds me of a time I was filming a documentary in Israel, at Tabgah, the traditional site where Jesus delivered a miraculous catch of fish to Peter. The priest of the little church there said we were welcome to visit the site with all the pilgrims there, but if we wanted to film, well there would be a fee – a hundred dollars, US. Jesus was not into that sort of profiteering. He overturned the tables of the money changers – and the “benches of those selling doves.” The doves were sold to the poor who couldn’t afford a lamb to sacrifice. Leviticus 7: “If he cannot afford a lamb, he is to bring two doves.” These priests were profiteering at expense of the poor, and doing so in the name of God. And so Jesus goes for their seats, specifically. Mark says Jesus “would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts” – which is no small task when you consider this was no local garage sale. The Temple Courts were more like a massive outdoor market. I’m not sure how Jesus pulled this off. Perhaps the crowds were just so astonished – even afraid of him? – that they did what he said. But once he had everyone’s attention he launched into a speech based on the words of the prophet Isaiah. Just enough to make clear he thought Israel’s priestly class were corrupt: “a den of robbers.” And that’s not far off what the prophet Jeremiah said in his figtree statement: “All are greedy for gain; prophets and priests alike, all practice deceit.” Jesus hasn’t just interrupted a church service with a ‘thought-for-the-day’. There were 15,000 priests rostered on the temple service for the passover period.  Jesus has just called them a pack of thieves. And overturning the priestly tables and benches was a sign that God was planning to overthrow them. They got the point: “The chief priests and the teachers of the law heard this and began looking for a way to kill him, for they feared him, because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching.” Another great scholar, E.P. Sanders of Duke University — not friend of traditional Christianity — writes of this temple incident: “The gun may already have been cocked, but it was the temple demonstration which pulled the trigger.” E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism. Fortress Press, 1985, 305. And that brings us to so-called Good Friday. Stay with us

Media – Christopher Hitchins

John Dickson (Studio)

That’s well-known atheist Christopher Hitchens weighing in on the inherent dangers – even abhorrence – of Christianity’s call to embrace weakness. Enemies are to be loved, forgiven, welcomed. Something Hitchens said made no sense whatsoever. A cultivated weakness in the face of enemies, he believed, was not only immoral, it was dangerous.You can see why some people have concluded that there’s something decidedly masochistic about Christianity. Christians look at the gruesome death of Jesus on Good Friday and, well, they call it ‘good’. Do Christians have a penchant for suffering? For weakness? For perverting what ‘good’ actually is? According to another great atheist, Friedrich Nietzsche it’s ‘all of the above’.

Reading

One should not embellish or dress up Christianity; it has waged a war to the death against the higher type of man. Christianity has taken the side of everything weak, base, ill-constituted. Christianity is called the religion of pity. One loses force when one pities. Suffering itself becomes contagious through pity; sometimes it can bring about a collective loss of life-energy which stands in an absurd relation to the insignificance of its cause – think of the case of the death of the Nazarene. Pity thwarts the law of evolution, the law of selection. It preserves what is ripe for destruction; it defends life’s condemned. In every noble morality pity counts as weakness. Aristotle saw in pity a morbid and dangerous condition. Nothing in our unhealthy modernity is more unhealthy than Christian pity. – Friedrich Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ

John Dickson (Studio)

This ‘death of the Nazarene’, Nietzsche says, corrupts the noble pursuit of power, survival of the fittest, natural selection. Because Jesus’ death was all about divine “pity”, it locked Christian culture in a social death wish, always trying to preserve what nature wanted to discard. Actually, the original German of Nietzsche’s statement uses the noun das Mitleid, literally ‘compassion. English translators soften Nietzsche’s critique by using “pity”, as if he is only criticizing condescending sympathy. He isn’t. He is claiming Christianity’s advocacy of suffering with the weak, caring for the poor, the sick, and the marginalized — ‘compassion’ — is a weakness. Jesus’ death on the cross on that first Good Friday was all about divine “Mitleid” for humanity. Nietzsche was a huge fan of the Greeks and Romans, of course. They too saw Christianity as a bizarre fettish for a loser! Roman aristocrat and chronicler Cornelius Tacitus describes Christianity as a kind of disease.

Reading

Christians derived their name from a man called Christ, who, during the reign of Emperor Tiberius had been executed by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilate. The deadly superstition, thus checked for the moment, broke out afresh not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but also in the City of Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world meet and become popular. – Tacitus, Annals

John Dickson (Studio)

Tacitus goes on to tell us that, as a sick joke, Nero rounded up these meek Christians and demonstrated to the world just how pathetic they were.

Reading

Confessed members of the sect were arrested; vast numbers were convicted. And derision accompanied their end: they were covered with the skins of wild beasts and torn to death by dogs; or they were fastened on crosses, and, when daylight failed were burned to serve as lamps by night. Nero offered his private gardens for the spectacle, and gave an exhibition in his arena, mixing with the crowd mounted on his chariot.

John Dickson (Studio)

All of this took place in Rome. And on Rome’s Palatine Hill—the living quarters of the imperial machine, we’ve found scratched into the wall of a guardhouse — or maybe schoolhouse — a piece of anti-Christian graffiti that mocks a Christian named Alexamenos. It depicts a deity of a crucified man with a mule’s head – a symbol of stupidity. Alexamenos’s arm is raised in homage. And beneath it is written in bad Greek, “Alexamenos worships his god.” In that small picture (which we’ll put in the show notes) we see the clash of two worldviews. The Greeks and the Romans looked at crucifixion and saw shame, weakness, loss. But Alexamenos – and his fellow Christians – saw things very differently. The cross was anything but a failure. In that ugly cross God showed his compassion for the world. To co-opt Nietzsche in a way he would hate, in the cross God’s, “… pity preserves what is ripe for destruction and defends life’s disinherited and condemned.” But then there’s Albert Camus … He shared Nietzsche’s atheism but he lived on the other side of two world wars. He saw the cross as a beautiful if untrue answer to humanity’s deepest suffering.

Reading

Christ came to solve two major problems, evil and death. His solution consisted, first, in experiencing them. The man-god suffers, too—with patience. Evil and death can no longer be entirely imputed to Him since He suffers and dies. The night on Golgotha is so important in the history of man only because, in its shadow, the divinity abandoned its traditional privileges and drank to the last drop, despair included, the agony of death. – Albert Camus, The Rebel

John Dickson (Studio)

Camus died tragically in a car crash in Jan 1960. 40 years later a friend published an account of his personal conversations with Camus in the 1950s. Howard Mumma was a Methodist pastor of the American Church in Paris. He reports that Camus would come to hear organ recitals at the church and then sometimes sermons. The two talked about philosophy and theology. Mumma says Camus even talked to him one day about being baptised … In his public work, he had insisted the universe was utterly silent – nothing and no one to pity us. Perhaps privately, before his death, he heard a whisper. I don’t want to claim too much about Camus. I don’t want to make of Howard Mumma’s reports. But I have known two other French atheists move from  Nietzschean disdain of Jesus and Christianity, through to a Camus-like longing for Divine compassion, and all the way to a full blown trust in the love of God revealed at Easter. You can hear both stories in our episode ‘French Atheism’ – But there’s more to say about the history and meaning of Easter.  I hope you’ll stay with me …

Media – Kimberly Dear news report

John Dickson (Studio)

I’ve mentioned this news event before.  Kimberley Dear described how Robert Cook pulled her close so that her head rested on his shoulders moments before the plane crashed. He died; Kimberley survived. Kimberley’s sister reported, “[Robert] met Kimberley, as far as I know, that day. I would do that for her but I can’t believe that a stranger who just met her would knowingly give up his life for her.” I’m not a fan of attempts to offer modern parallels to the meaning of Jesus’ death. There is a danger that you’ll trivialize one or the other, and in any case my point isn’t that Robert Cook was just like Jesus. What’s striking to me is that most of us will hear the story of Robert Cook and immediately find ourselves wowed by it. It’s because we know perfectly well what he saved Kiberley Dear from and how he did it. But most don’t have that reaction to the death of Jesus … because we’re unsure what his death was meant to save us from or how his death could do it. A bit of theology and a dose of history might help. 

Reading

He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. – Isaiah, chapter 53

John Dickson (Studio)

This is a prophecy written centuries before Jesus—we even have a physical copy of the passage that predates Jesus. It speaks of some strange figure who would die for the sins of others. Judaism had long practised animal sacrifice for the sins of Israel—that’s everywhere in the Old Testament. It was the central purpose of the Jerusalem temple, JEsus would later condemn. But what’s unique about Isaiah 53 is that here it’s a human who was “pierced for our transgressions” who bore in himself “the punishment that brought us peace.” We have to conclude that there is at least one theological precedent for the idea that would become a central claim of Christians: that Jesus died for our sins—our wrongdoing that warrants divine punishment! But some have argued this precedent is too random, too passing, to provide any real justification for thinking of Jesus. The great Jewish scholar Geza Vermes refused to think a Galilean Jew like Jesus could come up with the idea that he would die for sins. That must have been a later invention of the apostle Paul, is what he said. Perhaps Paul was reading Isaiah 53 one day and plucked it out as an explanation for Jesus’ death. Over the years, I’ve seen many sceptical people say things like this. But there’s a historical detail even Vermes doesn’t seem to have considered. We have a non-biblical document from roughly the same time as Jesus that clearly speaks of martyrs of the past bearing at least some of the sins of Israel. Here’s a quote or two. The first describes the dying words of a martyr named Eleazar:

Reading

When he was now burned to his very bones and about to expire, he lifted up his eyes to God and said, “You know, O God, that though I might have saved myself, I am dying in burning torments for the sake of the law. Be merciful to your people, and let our punishment suffice for them. Make my blood their purification, and take my life in exchange for theirs.” – 4 Maccabees, Chapter 6

John Dickson (Studio)

Toward the end of the same document, the author makes clear that he believes Eleazar’s death was not the only one with such saving power. All of the martyrs during the despotic rule of Antiochus IV Epiphanes (2nd-century BC) atoned for Israel’s sins:

Reading

These, then, who have been consecrated for the sake of God, are honored, not only with this honor, but also by the fact that because of them our enemies did not rule over our nation, the tyrant was punished, and the homeland purified—they having become, as it were, a ransom for the sin of our nation. And through the blood of those devout ones and their death as an atoning sacrifice, divine Providence preserved Israel that previously had been mistreated.  – 4 Maccabees, Chapter 17

John Dickson (Studio)

My point here is not that Jesus understood his death in exactly the way the author of 4 Maccabees understood the deaths of the great martyrs. But it proves what Geza Vermes doubted: that Jews in the time of Jesus could and did think of some human deaths like the temple sacrifices. They bore the punishment of others. The deaths were a substitute. Suddenly, the words of Jesus at the Last Supper, the night before his crucifixion, sound like just the sort of words a first-century Galilean could have said. Having condemned the temple system, overturning the priestly tables, Jesus got alone with his followers passed around bread and wine and spoke of his body and blood “poured out” like a temple sacrifice: “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.” Jesus’ death—according to his own words, not some later theologian—was a sacrifice on our behalf to establish for all time a new covenant, a new relationship, with the God to whom we must all give an account. To quote another German—one Nietzsche would have deeply disagreed with—the great Martin Hengel of the University of Tübingen concluded his groundbreaking study of the origins of the New Testament idea of atonement: Jesus celebrated the Passover meal with his disciples and in it … in a symbolic action he related the broken bread to the breaking of his body and at the end of the meal the wine in the cup of blessing to the pouring out of his blood, through which the new eschatological covenant with God would be founded and atonement would be achieved for all. 

Reading

Those of us living in the developed countries of the West find ourselves in the tightening grip of a paradox, one whose shape and character have so far largely eluded our understanding. It is the strange persistence of guilt as a psychological force in modern life. If anything, the word persistence understates the matter. 

This paradox has set up a condition in which the phenomenon of rising guilt becomes both a byproduct of and an obstacle to civilizational advance. The stupendous achievements of the West in improving the material conditions of human life and extending the blessings of liberty and dignity to more and more people are in danger of being countervailed and even negated by a growing burden of guilt that poisons our social relations and hinders our efforts to live happy and harmonious lives. – Wilfred McClay, The Strange Persistence of Guilt

John Dickson (Studio)

Wilfred McClay is a professor of history who holds the Victor Davis Hanson Chair in Classical History and Western Civilization at Hillsdale College. His article, The Strange Persistence of Guilt, is a little history of guilt in the Western world, written for The Hedgehog Review, a secular, sociopolitical journal – link in the show notes. In it, McClay points out that there were two pivotal moments in the Western story of guilt. One came with the 19th century atheist we’ve already spoken about, Fredrich Nietzsche. The other arrived with the early 20th century father of psychology, Sigmund Freud. Nietzsche famously declared “God is dead!” Human beings should therefore free themselves from any sense of moral obligation to a higher law. The only law that matters is the law of nature. McClay argues that we have all been influenced by Nietzsche’s outlook – his assault on the concept of guilt. Remember, Christianity weakens society. Only a weakling thinks they are subject to a higher law. Only a weakling hesitates to pursue nature’s law of strength over weakness. The second turning point came with Sigmund Freud. McClay argues Freud is really the father of our therapeutic culture. We live in a culture obsessed with individual healing and self-improvement. Freud set about removing all the psychological relics of religion. And one such relic was the feeling of guilt, which Freud thought needed to be cured, just like any other physical ailment. Perhaps I’m being a little unfair, but it seems to me a lot of the counseling movement in the world today is Freudian in outlook, desperate to remove from clients, all sense of guilt to cure us from that sense. Guilt is just like anxiety or resentment or depression. It just needs to be treated. In short, McClay argues that Nietzsche tried to do away with objective guilt, and Freud taught us to cure ourselves of subjective guilt. It’s no wonder then our culture has an aversion to sin judgment and the meaning of Christ’s sacrifice. And yet, as Professor McClay points out in this article, guilt remains in our culture often unnamed. It’s certainly not dealt with. Listen to what he says…

Reading

Guilt has not merely lingered. It has grown, even metastasized, into an ever more powerful and pervasive element in the life of the contemporary West, even as the rich language formerly used to define it has withered and faded from discourse, and the means of containing its effects, let alone obtaining relief from it, have become ever more elusive.

John Dickson (Studio)

Westerners hate talking about guilt in our therapeutic self-esteem culture. We’ve been schooled to shun it, and yet it remains. We sense that we’re condemned, even if we don’t know why or before whom or what to do about it. Is this an emotional ailment – or a rational intuition of a creature accountable to a higher law? Professor McClay ends his history of guilt with a kind of unresolved melancholy. The West has no tools anymore for managing guilt. But I want to say that this is precisely why Good Friday is called good. Good beyond compare. Jesus was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was laid on him. Christ’s death is the answer to objective guilt. And subjective shame. Jesus bore the punishment for our sins so that we could be objectively guiltless and subjectively shame free.  And I love that one of the opening prayers from the Book of Common Prayer, often said on Good Friday, reads, 

“Grant, we beseech thee, merciful Lord,
to thy faithful people pardon and peace,
that they may be cleansed from all their sins,
and serve thee with a quiet mind;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Objective guilt, subjective shame, answered in the death of Christ on our behalf.

A story is told about the late Archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Martini—man, I hope it’s accurate. Apparently, in a public lecture, he told this lovely anecdote. He said he knew of three young men in Rome years ago who spent a debauched night out on the town together, which ended with them all sitting drunk on the steps of an old church in Rome. And high above them on the outside wall of the church was a huge crucifix. For a moment they looked up at it, remembering the lessons from their childhood, and then one of them gave a dare. One of us should go in and find the priest on duty and confess to him all of the things we did tonight. And shock him by inventing further sins. And then just as a joke, do whatever penance he offers. One of them piped up, said, I’ll do it. So, he walked in, found the elderly priest on duty, sat down, and in excruciating detail began to describe all of the actual sins of the evening. And some of the invented ones, barely holding back the mockery. The priest apparently just listened patiently and then said, I want you to do something for me. Outside our church is a large statue of Jesus on a cross. He died for your sins. I want you to go down the front steps of the church, turn around, point your finger at it and say out loud, I know what you’ve done and I don’t give a damn. Will you do that? It didn’t sound like any penance the boy had heard before, but he thought he’d do it. He ran outside. His friend’s eager to hear what happened. He walked down the steps. He turned around and the statue somehow looked bigger, more serious than he remembered. He pointed his finger at it and rehearsed in his mind, his words: I know what you’ve done. I don’t give a damn. He couldn’t do it. In fact, in front of his friends, he knelt on the steps in remorse and respect. When the Bishop of Milan told this story, he ended by saying, I want you to know the story is true. I was that young man 40 years ago in Rome. And it was the pivotal moment in his life. What was it that changed him? Not a piece of religious penance, but confronting his guilt and shame while looking at the cross. My question this Easter, dear listeners, is: “How would you finish the sentence in the light of Good Friday? “I know what you’ve done and…” For some it may be, “I don’t give a damn.” For others, “I need more time to think about this.” For others, still, “Thank you” … for Good Friday … good beyond compare. God bless.

Undeceptions theme