The Promotion of Jesus

Academic biblical scholars generally don’t believe Jesus claimed he was divine during his lifetime. He might have claimed he was the Messiah, which is not the same thing as claiming to be divine. A messiah is one who is anointed in the sense that the ancient kings of Israel were said to have been anointed. Not all Jews of the first century were expecting a messiah, and there were different understandings of the Messiah among those who were, but the Messiah wasn’t necessarily expected to a divine figure. It’s interesting that Jesus was executed for supposedly calling himself the king of the Jews. That was a political charge, and if he actually did say that, the Romans would have seen it as sedition. The Romans had political control of the region. They were the ones who chose client kings or governors such as Pontius Pilate. Anybody who said anything different would have been challenging their authority. But it’s not clear that Jesus went so far as to claim even that. Maybe he called himself the king of the Jews privately among his apostles, but not publicly.

Jesus’ death and the belief by some that he was resurrected changed things. Following this event, scholars claim that a variety of beliefs about Jesus emerged. In recent years, scholars often subscribe to the idea that there was a general progression toward a greater and greater exultation of Jesus from the time of Jesus’ death to the end of the first century. There is some evidence that suggests immediately after the death of Jesus, some of his followers came to believe God had adopted him as his son. Jesus become divine through adoption. Others came to think that Jesus was adopted by God at his baptism by John. The Gospel of Mark, which scholars believe is the oldest gospel, seems to imply that. Mark doesn’t have a birth narrative. Mark’s gospel begins with Jesus’ baptism.

Ehrman thinks that Paul believed Jesus was an angel who was elevated to a higher status following his death. If that’s correct, then Paul’s view would be a kind of hybrid. Jesus was divine before his earthly existence, but he was only an angel. Then he got a promotion after his death as a human being. Paul’s letters are believed to be the oldest surviving Christian texts. They predate the gospels. (But scholars believe that some of the letters in the New Testament attributed to Paul were not actually written by Paul.)

In the gospels of Matthew and Luke, you’ll find the birth narratives. (And they are different from one another, but this time of year, they are often conflated in the Christmas plays.) They suggest the idea that Jesus was divine from birth. God impregnated Mary, and she gave birth to a special divine child, the son of God.

John is the last gospel, and it is quite unlike the three earlier gospels. The author skips over the birth narrative, and in this gospel, Jesus is presented as a lofty figure from the start. Jesus claims to be at one with the father, and he claims to have been with the father since before creation.

So to start off with, you have this poor carpenter fellow from a small town who was inspired to start teaching an apocalyptic message about the imminent arrival of the Kingdom of God. He tells his followers to prepare for this by repenting and to start living as though they were already in this kingdom…love your neighbor, don’t engage in violence, share your stuff with the poor. He goes to Jerusalem during the Passover celebration, gets in trouble with the authorities and gets himself killed. After that, his followers, or some of them, come to believe he was resurrected. Then he goes from the adopted son of God, to the actual son of God who was divine from conception, to a divine being that predates creation.

Of course, the Gospel of John didn’t settle the matter. There were all kinds of interpretations of Jesus in the second century. Some (the Ebionites) claim Jesus wasn’t divine at all. Others (the Docetists) claim he was divine but not human. Some stuck with the adoptionist idea. Some thought a divine spirit entered Jesus’ body at his baptism and then left his body before he died. But the proto-orthodox believed, as the author of the Gospel of John, Jesus was a divine being who predated creation and that he became human so he could suffer and die for the sins of humanity.

However, that view leads to the question of Jesus’ relationship with God. Are their two gods? God the Father and God the Son? Or is Jesus divine but somehow subordinate to God the Father who is really God. Many of the proto-orthodox accepted a modelest view. There was only one God, but God had different modes. He could be God the Father. He could be God the Holy Ghost. And he could be God the Son. Just like a human being can be an aunt, a sister and a postal clerk. Some person, different modes.

That’s a neat way of looking at it, and many Christians sort of seem to think that way even now, but the problem is, the proto-orthodox were kind of stuck with those first century gospels. Those were the gospels they had promoted as authoritative, and in those gospels, Jesus and God are presented as two different beings. And Jesus prays to God. So was Jesus talking to himself? Eventually, modelism was condemned as heresy, and the Orthodox explained how you could have God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost and still have only one God with the unfathomable doctrine of the Trinity.

 

Here is my crass, materialistic Christmas wish list.

I’m not expecting these things, but I, too, have my desires. Some you can’t buy with money, but here are a few that come with a price tag.
 
Nearly everybody who knows me can guess that a cottage in the woods is at the top, but that’s not very practical. Even though I’d settle for something quite modest, buying and maintaining a cottage would take more money than I’ll probably ever have. There’s also the problem of transportation. I don’t drive. And not only would I need to get out for practical things like going to the store and doctor’s appointments, I know from experience that I would need to get away from time to time. So I would also need travel money. I love the woods of West Virginia, but one of the things I hated about living in that state was the feeling of being stuck. If I had the money to go to D.C. or New York a couple of times a year, it would have made all the difference.

Living in a rent subsidized apartment in Portland is one of my dreams, and that is perhaps achievable, but it’s going to take some time and effort.

I’m pleased that my books sell and make money. It’s wonderful to get those royalty payments. But self-publishing costs money. I’m not a computer nerd, so I have to pay others to format my manuscripts. Books also need cover art, and I have to pay for that, too. I have one book that is available as an ebook and as a paperback. Two others are only available as ebooks. I’d like to get those into paperback format, but it would cost money. And I’m working on a fourth book, and I have two others in mind. As I said, my books are making money, but they probably cost almost as much as they make. Writing books is a labor of love, not profit. I would love to be able to afford to hire professional editors, but they are wildly expensive.

My toaster oven died on Thanksgiving, so I need a new one. I love toaster ovens, and I use mine every day. I plan to buy one on the first. I need one that is fairly large because it’s a substitute for my full-sized gas oven. The gas oven is too hot, and it burns everything. It also sets off the smoke detectors. I hate it. So I use the toaster oven for everything from toasting sandwiches and heating leftovers to baking biscuits and small cakes. I’ll get one, but it’ll mean I’ll be poor next month.

I didn’t know anything about Merced or the Central Valley when I moved here. I had no idea how dry and desolate it is. I don’t like it at all. The reason I chose Merced is because it was affordable, I could get an apartment immediately, and it was close to San Francisco and Yosemite. I imagined that I could visit both regularly, but as it turns out, I can only afford to visit Yosemite once a year. Even that is quite expensive for me, so I’m always thinking about where I’m going to get the money for my next trip to Yosemite.

I really want and need an apartment sized washing machine. Every time I go to the Laundromat it is an ordeal. I hate the place. It’s loud. It’s dirty. It’s filled with kids running around. There are few places to sit while you wait for your clothes to wash and dry. Every time I go, I have to interact with people I would rather not talk to. Something always happens that I find gross. I always either find some stranger’s panties or socks mixed in with my stuff, or I see someone stuffing filthy, unwashed bedding and clothing into the dryers. By the time I get home, I’m literally sick. My head is pounding, and I’m so exhausted I have to go to bed. Not from the physical exertion but the stress. Anxiety takes a lot of energy. That’s why it’s linked with depression. You can get an apartment sized washing machine that connects to your kitchen sink for less than $300. That isn’t so very expensive, but it is to me.

As anyone who visits my wall here on Facebook knows, I love photography. For a long time, it was a mystery to me how photographers were able to create such beautiful images, so I began to study the process a little bit. Now I need some practical experience, but I need a DSLR camera. According to several online sources, the Nikon D3300 is a good entry level camera, and if you buy a kit with a couple of lenses that give you a focal length range from 18mm to 200mm, then that’s just wonderful. I saw an ad earlier that a kit like that for $500.

Most of these things are not outrageously expensive. It’s not like I’m asking for a first class trip to Paris. (I wouldn’t turn it down, but I know that’s really out of my reach.) And I suppose if I had a decent income, I could probably get everything on the list within a year…except for the cottage in the woods. But I don’t have a decent income. I only get by. And I’m thankful for that. I’m glad I have a bed to sleep in, a bathroom, food in the kitchen, a computer, my Kindle Fire, and all of you, my internet friends. So maybe I should just stick to asking for world peace for Christmas.

Doubting Apostles

The Book of Acts, Chapter 1, Verses 1-3, New International Version (NIV):

“1 In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach 2 until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. 3 After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God.”

Interesting that according to this account, it wasn’t merely Doubting Thomas who had some trouble accepting that Jesus had been resurrected. The Book of Acts claims he stayed with the apostles for 40 days and gave them “many convincing proofs that he was alive.” Why would they need “many convincing proofs” if they were willing to believe from the start? They knew Jesus, and yet, according to this account, it took quite a lot of convincing for them to believe in Jesus’ resurrection even though he was standing right there in front of them.

The fundamentalists claim the Bible is literally true and inerrant, so they can’t very well dismiss this account. Yet they claim we have to believe Jesus died for our sins and was resurrected or we’ll be punished. They tell us we simply have to take it on faith. But The Book of Acts tells us not even the apostles were willing to take it on faith. And Paul didn’t believe it either until he had his own vision of Jesus.

I’m not trying to attack anyone’s faith here. Belief in Jesus is fine with me. I’m casting aspersions at fundamentalists who insist that their assertions must be accepted by everybody. I think faith, or the lack thereof is a deeply personal thing. I don’t think it’s at all strange that humans would have a variety of beliefs, and I don’t think this is a problem so long as we’re willing to live and let live.

Family, the "Gay" Episode

I found this episode of the old TV series Family on YouTube recently, and I watched it today.  Rites of Friendship was the one in which Willie finds out a close friend he grew up with is gay. It originally aired on Dec. 28, 1976. I was 11 years old. I already knew I was gay.

Zeke is home from college, and Willie runs into him at a local taco place. They make plans to spend some time together and catch up the next day, but that night, Willie gets an urgent call from Zeke. He’s in jail, and he needs Willie to bail him out. Zeke was in a gay bar, and when it was raided, he tried to flee. When a police officer stopped him, Zeke punched him. He was desperate to get out of there because he didn’t want anyone to find out he’s gay, especially his homophobic father.

Today it seems insane that a gay bar would be raided, but this was 1976, and I guess gay bars in suburbia still had a hard time of it, and LGBTs were often harassed by the police even though things were getting better.

I think someone could use this episode to write a dissertation on changing attitudes toward homosexuality. In a way, this episode indicates that acceptance and tolerance were on the rise. The fact that it was made and that Zeke is portrayed sympathetically is good, but his sexuality is presented as shocking and problematic. Zeke is never shown with other gay men, and he never mentions having a special or romantic relationship. He sneaks off to gay bars occasionally where he presumably meets men for one night stands, but that’s never dealt with in any detail. Apparently he’s known he was gay for years, and he’s kept it from everybody, including Willie, all that time.

The Lawrences don’t condemn him, but they are scandalized. Mr. Lawrence, who is a lawyer, agrees to represent Zeke, and Mrs. Lawrence wants to help if she can. But she claims that even though she thinks of herself as a reasonably sophisticated woman, this news has taken her aback. When Buddy appears at the breakfast table and asks why everyone is acting so strange, Mrs. Lawrence tells her that sometimes ignorance is bliss. Later when Mrs. Lawrence is in the backyard with Nancy, she is still in a stupor over the fact Zeke likes to do that with men. Golly, it’s just so unbelievable. Imagine a guy wanting to do that with another guy.

Willie is the one who has the hardest time with it. He immediately starts backing away from Zeke the moment he finds out, and it’s obvious he wishes Zeke would simply disappear. He doesn’t like being reminded of it, and he resists Zeke’s efforts to talk it out. On the one hand, it’s understandable. Willie and Zeke were close friends for years. Willie thought they told one another everything, but then he finds out Zeke has held something important back from him. That, of course, would make him question the intimacy he thought they shared. But it’s also pretty obvious that Willie finds it icky that Zeke is a guy, and he likes doing that with guys. Golly, what if during a sleepover, Zeke was lying there imagining putting Willie’s willie in his mouth. The horrors. Nothing like that is said directly, but you can tell from the panicked look on Willie’s face that he’s picturing it and imagining it, and it’s driving him nuts. I wanted to smack him because Zeke is so patient with Willie and so willing to try to explain. His friendship with Willie obviously means a great deal to him, but right up until the end, Willie acts like a jerk.

I remember seeing this episode as a boy, and it was a revelation. I hoped that Zeke would come back in later episodes, but, of course, by the next week, Zeke was gone, never to be heard from again.

 

Thanksgiving

When I was a boy, no one gave me much encouragement or helped me develop many practical skills. No one showed me how to build a campfire or refinish a coffee table, and I was strongly discouraged from making the effort on my own. My parents were not especially cruel people, so I can’t say exactly why they consistently did this. What were they thinking? Well, I suspect, generally speaking, my mother was afraid I’d get hurt. She suffered from schizophrenia, so her fears were often exaggerated. I imagine she envisioned me losing limbs and my eyes getting gouged out. My father, on the other hand, was a pessimist, and I suspect he thought I would be disappointed if I failed or if an endeavor didn’t work out perfectly. Those are the best explanations I can come up with. Of course, what happened was I grew up feeling incompetent and incapable.

I moved back in with my parents following my head surgeries in the late ‘90s. I was in my early 30s by then, and my parents were still discouraging me, still telling me I couldn’t do anything. Then in 2001, my mother slipped on a patch of ice and broke several bones in her hand. It was a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving, and mother’s arm would be in a cast until after the new year.

My father refused to even make sandwiches or heat soup for himself, so either I was going to have to make Thanksgiving dinner, or we were going without. I had made a few dishes but never anything like Thanksgiving dinner. However, it had been a rough year for all of us. Mother suffered a psychotic breakdown the previous Christmas, and she had been in and out of the hospital for months. There had even been talk of putting her in a long-term treatment facility. She was not stabilized until October. So I wanted the three of us to have a nice Thanksgiving. I broke out the cookbooks, made plans, bought everything I needed, and on Thanksgiving, I went to work.

The meal I prepared was, of course, not up to the standards of a five-star restaurant, but it was pretty darn good. I was pleased, and my parents were pleased. We had a good holiday. I think I finally became an adult on that day. I found some amount of self-confidence, and I began doing more. This was fortuitous because my parents’ health was on the decline, and I soon assumed the role of caretaker. I think in the end, both my parents were glad I was no longer afraid of stoves, washing machines and lawnmowers.

Still Catching My Breath

I’m so grateful I will never again be required to attend school with throngs of jackasses and budding psychopaths. Some might try to dismiss or diminish my experience by saying it surely wasn’t that bad, or it could have been worse. Well, not every minute of every day was hell on earth, but there wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t experience terror, and no, I’m not exaggerating. Fear just isn’t strong enough. I was terrified. Especially when I went into the boys room or the locker room.

Thankfully, I wasn’t one of those kids who got beat up, so yes, it could have been worse. But that doesn’t mean the danger of assault wasn’t something I lived with all the time. I learned to keep my mouth shut. I learned to keep my distance. I successfully avoided confrontation. I was good at that. A master. But the fucking threat was real, and it was pretty much constant.

And I knew I was alone. I knew I couldn’t count on teachers, my parents or fellow students to protect me. They would have done nothing to make the environment safer. It was just accepted that kids would be cruel and mean. If a boy couldn’t take it, he was expected to man up and learn how to fight. If you were a boy, and you couldn’t protect yourself, you were considered pathetic and not worth anyone’s trouble.

Every day I heard the most unimaginably hateful things said about boys like me…faggot, cocksucker, queer. The words were said with derision and utter contempt. The hate speech usually wasn’t directed right at me, but I heard the words, and I got the message. Often dozens of times a day. No one, not a single fucking soul, said anything in defense of the homos. Not ever.

I was traumatized. I was afraid. I was right to be afraid. I was like a spy in enemy territory, and there were no safe houses. I couldn’t turn to anybody. I was alone, utterly and completely.

And when I got home, my mother who suffered from schizophrenia, had the radio on constantly because she was listening for coded messages, and she incessantly talked to invisible people. She slept on the sofa right outside my bedroom door. It was an unending stream of stress. There was no escape. It went on for years.

So pardon me if I’m on disability. Excuse me if, at age 50, I just want to stay in my house by myself most of the time and not talk to people. I’m not comfortable around people, and I’ve already tried to “get some help.” So don’t you dare tell me to get over it. I survived, damn it. Most of those who think I could have and should have managed more would not have survived.

I’m still catching my breath, and my heart is still racing, but I take comfort in knowing that I will never have to go back there, back to those years and that miserable life.

Compelling, highly erotic and disturbing.

Netflix will stop streaming Strangers by the Lake (2013) on the 13^th. It’s been on my queue for months, but I never got around to it. When I saw the cutoff notice, I thought it was now or never. I’m glad I watched it. I found it to be compelling, highly erotic and disturbing. I don’t think I’ve seen so much male nudity in a non-porn film. Some of the guys are quite nice to look at, and the main character is slim, boyishly cute and nice, so he was certainly my type. I was surprised that some of the sex, which there is a considerable amount for a non-porn film, was real and not simulated. But not all of the guys are what most would consider hot or sexy. There are many chubby men, and middle aged men, and even a few older men. This lake is where they go to let it hang out. They don’t hide their bodies from one another or their sexuality. It’s all out in the open. But physical desire can cloud judgment. Budding friendships are put on hold if there’s a chance to be with an attractive man in the bushes. And if you discover that the guy you’ve been longing for might be dangerous, you put yourself at risk and you compromise your morals for the chance to have a few fleeting encounters with him knowing you could end up dead or sent to prison as an accessory.

 

The Parking Lot Conversion

Evangelical Christians will come up to you in parking lots, Laundromats and fast food restaurants to tell you about Jesus. They’ll bang on your door to tell you about Jesus. As if we hadn’t heard it all before. But they say that maybe this time we’ll listen with an open heart and receive Jesus.

They claim that if we read the Bible in the right way, with an open heart, it will persuade us. It’s like magic. But if we close our hearts, we won’t get it.

Our lack of belief is our own fault. And that’s important in the minds of fundamentalist and evangelical Christians because not having the right belief, not believing that Jesus died for our sins, means you will be punished. God will hurt you, and you will deserve it because you refused to listen to all those nice strangers in parking lots who tried to warn you…I mean tried to tell you the good news. And you didn’t read the Bible with the presumption that it would magically reveal the truth to you. If you find it confusing or unlikely or unbelievable, you’re just a nasty piece of work.

It doesn’t matter that the world is full of crazy people, and you’d be pretty loopy yourself if you believed everything every stray nut ball told you in a parking lot. The world is pretty full of crazy books, too. A little skepticism is a good thing, generally speaking, but we’re supposed to somehow know to make an exception when a strange evangelical approaches us out of the blue and wants to talk to us about something as personal as our religious beliefs. And out of all the books in existence that make fantastic claims, such as ones that claim sewing magnets into your clothing will cure you of cancer, we’re supposed to take their book on faith. We’re supposed to take it literally and believe it is the word of God. Because that’s so obviously true, right? This book that begins with a talking snake and ends with a loving god throwing the unfaithful into a lake of fire. That bit about people like me being abominations worthy of death, according to the interpretation of evangelicals and fundamentalists, is also a little hard to swallow.

It’s funny how this formula didn’t work on their hero Paul. He didn’t read the New Testament with an open heart because it didn’t exist yet, and he wasn’t persuaded by Christians who told him about Jesus. In fact, by his own admission, he denounced and persecuted Christians prior to his conversion. So what convinced him? Did he finally listen to an evangelical in a parking lot with an open heart? No. Paul claims to have had a vision of the resurrected Jesus himself. He says, that’s what convinced him.

Well, like many others, I’ve not had a personal visit from the resurrected Jesus who came down and told me like it is. All I’ve had are a bunch of yahoos tell me what they believe. I suspect many of them weren’t even aware that Jesus was Jewish or that the gospels weren’t written in Jesus’ lifetime or that the King James Version of the Bible isn’t the original version.

The Fertile Soil of Happiness Is Green

They say money can’t buy happiness, and that’s true. There are plenty of people with money who are miserable. But those who dismiss the importance of money tend to be the ones who have plenty of it. Let’s not forget the really important things money can buy aside from luxury goodies like sports cars. Money buys education. Money buys health care. Having enough money means you can buy good, healthy food and pass on the processed stuff and the cheap high fructose corn syrup. Money means you can afford the transportation cost to and from the places that sell the good food. Money means you can afford to get out in the world and dress nice which greatly increases your odds of finding friends and romantic partners. Money means you can live in a place that feels like home.

I’ve been, more or less, stuck in the desert town of Merced for eight years. I have never liked it. It has never felt like home to me. My little rent subsidized apartment is far from luxurious, but if it were someplace else, I’d be much happier. It is not simply a matter of me cultivating “inner peace.” Thankfully, Yosemite is near, and I have the good fortune of spending a few days there every year. I know how I feel in Yosemite as opposed to how I feel here in Merced. The difference is vast and profound. Living in Yosemite, of course, is out of the question even if I could afford it. It’s a special place, and a lot of people want to visit, so the park can be overcrowded, especially in the summer months. I’d settle for someplace less special but more to my liking. I’m going to work on it, but given my finances and my limitations—I don’t drive, and I have extreme social phobia—it’s going to take some effort.

The Tiny House Movement has really caught on in recent years. Living simply and within your means is at the core of the philosophy. But I would like to point out that those who are attracted to this idea tend to be well educated, and even though those tiny houses cost far less than conventional houses, they aren’t exactly cheap. They are well built, and they are custom made to match the aesthetic sensibilities of their owners. If it were just a matter of living in a cheap house, people would buy a tiny house trailer or camper with pressed wood paneling and cabinets made from particle board. Another aspect of the Tiny House Movement is mobility, the freedom to live where you want to live. You need at least some amount of affluence for that to be a reality.

My mother suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, so she was disabled and unable to earn a living. But because she was married to my father, she was ineligible for regular and consistent government assistance. When my father had to retire due to his own health problems in the early ’90s, she lost her medical insurance. Thankfully, her psychiatrist went on treating her schizophrenia without billing her and providing her with free samples of the antipsychotic medication she needed. But she went without regular checkups, blood tests and mammograms. In December of 2003, she was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer. She died in February of 2004. She was 63. Even after she went to the doctor for a backache in September (we would later learn the cancer had already metastasized at that point, and a tumor had attached itself to her spine) her diagnosis was delayed because her doctor knew she didn’t have any money, and he didn’t want my parents getting hit with the bills for expensive scans if it turned out all my mother had was a backache that would resolve itself in time. Would regular checkups and mammograms have caught the cancer in an earlier stage and saved my mother’s life? Who knows? But those with money at least have the option of having regular checkups and mammograms.

My mother comes from what is sometimes referred to as the underclass. That simply means her family has been poor for generations. Being around my mother’s sisters and brothers and their kids while growing up in West Virginia gave me an up close and personal view of what that kind of long-term deprivation can do to a family and how it becomes self-perpetuating. Being poor is one thing, but growing up in a family that hasn’t had a break in over a hundred years means no one in your family has gone to college. No one. Not a single individual knows much about science or history or literature. So no one in the family knows first hand the true value of education. No one in the family knows anything about other cultures, unless they were sent to another country to fight in a war. You’ve watched relatives die early deaths from preventable and treatable disease. The community knows your family has been poor forever, and many look down on you. You’re treated differently. No one expects much from you. Teachers don’t encourage you. You grow up knowing you’re less valued. A sense of fatalism and defeat creeps in and settles deep in your bones. You develop unhealthy habits like smoking, drinking too much, taking drugs or overeating. You do it because it provides temporary relief. You start early, and it becomes second nature. You might get in trouble because the rules and customs of society don’t benefit you, so you’re less inclined to respect the law. You start having babies before you even have a chance to figure out how you can break the cycle and escape.

Money will not assure a happy life, but it does provide fertile soil.

Those Crazy Bedbugs

The Acts of John was written in the second century, and it concerns the life of the apostle John following the death of Jesus. John is described as a kind of early Christian superhero who raises people from the dead, ruins pagan temples and commands bedbugs to go stand in the corner while he sleeps in the bed. There is a lurid tale of a man who attempts to have sex with a dead body which supposedly is all about the promotion of chastity. So it appears Christians have been spreading wild sex fantasies while at the same time promoting prudery for centuries. Clucking your tongue in disapproval while masturbating has to be some kind of art form.

The descriptions of Jesus as a kind of phantasm who can appear to people in different forms is what got the book put on the Orthodox shit list. I guess they were okay with obedient bedbugs and necrophilia.

Income Inequality

It is true that the United States, the countries of Europe, Japan, Australia and a few others enjoy a standard of living and a degree of comfort that is unparalleled in the history of the human race. So it’s probably not surprising that many think the citizens of these countries have it made in the shade, and if they don’t it must be their own damned fault. But some of these countries have serious social problems, and it turns out, the greater the income inequality directly corresponds to higher levels of misery.

Infant mortality, life expectancy, teen pregnancy, drug addiction, mental illness, homelessness, crime and incarceration rates, these things are serious problems no matter if there is a lot of money floating around in the country in question. Many talk about how their parents and grandparents lived through the Great Depression and managed to live decent lives with far less. The difference is poverty was common, and there wasn’t so much income inequality. Some might have been a little better off than others, but few were wildly and insanely better off. If you saw someone with holes in their shoes, you felt for them. You knew you might have to wear shoes with holes in them soon. Most couldn’t afford to look down on someone with holes in their shoes.

If all the kids in the neighborhood get an orange and a modest gift on Christmas everyone is happy. But if a significant number get a truckload of gifts, and a few get a lot of gifts plus a trip to Disneyland and a pony, the kid with the orange is not only going to feel cheated, the other kids are going to treat him or her differently. The status of the kid with the orange has been lowered, and this will eventually lead to pathology.

The United States is the worst in regards to income inequality, and our social ills are the greatest as a result. Yet many continue to blame the poor. Many who are struggling to maintain some semblance of middle-class comfort blame the poor. They know they’re working hard and not getting ahead. They know they could end up applying for food stamps or a housing subsidy themselves, yet they still blame the poor. Then they go and vote Republican like brain dead zombies.

The Sexy Gospel of Mark

The Gospel of Mark is believed to be the oldest gospel in the New Testament. It is also the shortest.

In 1973, Morton Smith, a highly regarded ancient history professor from Columbia University, published a book in which he claimed to have discovered a copy of a letter written by the second century Church Father Clement of Alexandria concerning Mark. In this letter, Clement claims that there was an expanded, secret version of Mark.

Clement provides a quote from the Secret Gospel of Mark, and it is remarkably homoerotic.

This passage is supposedly between Mark 10: 34 and 10: 35...

“And they come into Bethany. And a certain woman whose brother had died was there. And, coming, she prostrated herself before Jesus and says to him, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me.’ But the disciples rebuked her. And Jesus, being angered, went off with her into the garden where the tomb was, and straightway a great cry was heard from the tomb. And going near Jesus rolled away the stone from the door of the tomb. And straightway, going in where the youth was, he stretched forth his hand and raised him, seizing his hand. But the youth, looking upon him, loved him and began to beseech him that he might be with him. And going out of the tomb they came into the house of the youth, for he was rich. And after six days Jesus told him what to do and in the evening the youth comes to him, wearing a linen cloth over his naked body. And he remained with him that night, for Jesus taught him the mystery of the kingdom of God. And thence, arising, he returned to the other side of the Jordan.”

A number of biblical scholars believe that Smith might have perpetrated a hoax, but they’ve not been able to prove it, and other scholars believe that the Clement letter might be legitimate. Smith, who is now dead, claimed to believe the quote from Clement’s letter gave insight into the historic Jesus and that it describes a private baptismal ritual he could have regularly performed on his male disciples.

Threats of Eternal Punishment

I saw a political cartoon earlier that kind of irked me. It showed a person sitting alone in a small, characterless room. The caption read, “The afterlife for atheists.”

I believe there are two rather large and probably unexamined assumptions that were made by the cartoonist.

Many might believe in an afterlife, but no one really knows there is one, and if they think they know, they can’t prove it. I hope that we go on in some way after we die. I don’t like the idea of disappearing, and I like to imagine that my parents are out there somewhere enjoying themselves. But I don’t claim to know that there is an afterlife. I can’t even say I believe there will be one. I hope. That’s what I do, I hope.

The second assumption is that you will either be rewarded or punished in the afterlife depending on what you believe in this life. According to orthodox Christianity, you’re supposed to believe Jesus died for your sins in order to be worthy of heaven. This strikes me as very odd. Many people believe Jesus died for their sins, but that’s mainly because they were brought up with the idea. But many of us who have reflected on this tenant find it to be peculiar.

Assuming there is a god and this god is loving, would a loving god make someone live alone in a small windowless room for eternity for not believing a rather bizarre and unlikely story from 2,000 years ago? That doesn’t make any sense to me.

I hope there is an afterlife, as I said. I hope it’s pleasant. If there is, I can’t imagine anyone being shut out of it, or shut in a small, windowless room, or thrown into a lake of fire for not concretizing an ancient myth and accepting it as fact.

The Big Break

I discovered David Sedaris sometime in the late ‘90s. I ordered Naked from a book catalog. I liked the description, and I got the sense the author might be gay. The book was fairly popular, and I had seen it around. Being the perv that I am, the title and the picture of those boxer shorts caught my eye. The catalog was selling it at a reduced rate, so I bought it. I’m glad I did. I loved it. I’ve read several of Sedaris’ essay collections since then, and I’ve enjoyed them all.

I’ve noticed that a number of Sedaris’ essays suggest he was pretty poor as a young adult. He was born in a small town in New York, but his family moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, when he was still in grade school. His family was solidly middle class, but Sedaris’ financial situation seems to have taken a sharp dive after he moved out of his parents’ house. He mentions living in slummy apartments and working dead end jobs many times. So I looked up his Wikipedia page and found out his talent as a storyteller didn’t start paying off until he was in his mid-30s.

A radio host heard him reading one of his stories about his family in a nightclub and asked him to be a guest on his show. Sedaris is small, and he speaks with a squeaky, elfin voice. His stories are funny and self-deprecating, but just below the laughs, there tends to be an honest confrontation with some of the darker aspects of human nature. So I can imagine a radio host thinking he would be a great guest. Sedaris’ performance led to NPR invited him to read SantaLand Diaries on Morning Edition in December 1992. The audience loved him, and soon he had a book deal.

Sedaris has lived in France and now he lives in England with his partner. He’s regularly invited to read his essays all over the United States, so he travels a lot, and he’s a regular guest on TV and radio shows. He has caught up with the standard of living he enjoyed when he was young and surpassed it, but he was nearly middle aged before this happened.

Sedaris admits that the radio host who discovered him turned everything around. Short, elfin men with squeaky voices tend not to be taken seriously, especially ones who are socially awkward like Sedaris, so it’s not likely he would have went very far if he had chosen a more mundane profession, and he could have lived out his life in obscurity and poverty if that radio host hadn’t seen his performance in the early ‘90s.

Sedaris has a lot of talent, and he is cunningly perceptive as well as funny. I’m glad he made it, but his success story shows that no one is truly self-made. Sedaris did the work. He began writing his anecdotes in 1977. But the radio host had to give him a break before things started moving. NPR gave him another break. Then his publisher gave him a chance.