MARCHING AS TO WAR

Last Sunday, June 4, I posted an essay arguing that Republicans, and particularly Evangelical Republicans, had a distorted view of the teachings of Jesus.   My friend Nicole responded with historical examples from Roman times to current events that suggested Christian behavior has almost always had very little to do with the actual teachings of Jesus.

In terms of nation-state politics, I will concede the point.  I’m less sure about her assertion that “there has never been a golden age of Christianity where it was having a broader positive impact on any group of people or the planet.”

If there was a golden age of Christianity, it would have been among the original followers of Jesus, well before anyone thought of calling them “Christians.”  Since then, I assume that the broader positive impact of Jesus’ teachings has been largely personal.  Individual lives are made better, and perhaps salvation is attained, though that’s impossible to measure. 

I might offer the Quakers as an example of Christianity’s broader positive impact on largish groups of people.  And I’m sure that over the centuries, there have been thousands of congregations and spiritual communities of various stripes whose faith led them to be better human beings.

But nation-states?  Towards the end of Jesus’ ministry, the Pharisees were following him around, trying to get him to say something that would either contradict Jewish law or annoy the Roman authorities.  One of them asked him (Matthew 36:40): “Master, what is the great commandment of the law?  Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment.  And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

I can’t think of a country – ancient or modern, with or without an official state religion – that has conducted its affairs according to those two principles.  

That’s my short response to Nicole’s comment.  Naturally, I have other thoughts on the topic.  

It is a truth universally acknowledged that, when a religion expands beyond its initial time and place of origin, it begins to change.  Jesus was a Jewish prophet in ancient Palestine.  During his earthly ministry, he told his disciples (Matthew 10:5-6) not to preach to Gentiles or Samaritans, but rather to focus their efforts on “the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”  After his resurrection, he changed his instructions (Matthew 29:19-20):  “Go ye therefore and teach all nations … teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.”

One of the early church’s first doctrinal disputes arose over attempts to bridge the inevitable cultural gaps the disciples encountered as they took the gospel to all nations.  It hinged on the meaning of “observe all things.”  Did that mean that Gentile converts had to follow Jewish dietary laws, or undergo circumcision?  Simon Peter, in Acts 10, was told in a vision that this was not necessary, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him to bless the decision. 

Thus began the slow separation of Judaism and what came to be known as Christianity.  When Jesus’ teachings spread from Palestine, they were inevitably understood differently by individuals and cultures unfamiliar with the original context of the teachings.    

As the biblical scholar Bart Ehrman has noted (in Jesus Before the Gospels), “The Gospels we have are not stenographic accounts of the things Jesus said and did. They contain stories that had been passed along by word of mouth decades before anyone wrote them down.”  When they were finally preserved in written form, the language used (for the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament) was Greek.  No doubt Greek accommodated the general import of Jesus’ message, but it’s hard to believe that the change from Jesus’ Aramaic to Greek didn’t result in some subtleties being lost in translation.  And so it went, from Greek into Latin, and centuries later into modern European languages, and finally into over a thousand other languages worldwide. 

As Ehrman also noted (in Misquoting Jesus and other books), ecclesiastical and secular politics also played a role in confusing later generations about what Jesus really said.  Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were originally written for different audiences, and tell different, if mostly complementary stories.  There were dozens of other gospels floating around, used in good faith for decades by some churches.  It wasn’t until the 5th century that there was general agreement on which books of the New Testament were official and which were heretical.  Modern Biblical scholarship has even cast doubt on the authorship of several epistles historically attributed to St. Paul (Ephesians, Colossians, 2nd Thessalonians, I & II Timothy, and Titus if you’re keeping score at home), though they remain in the official canon. 

In other words, Christianity is complicated.  I’m sticking with Jesus.

With that as prologue, I have another take on the original question, which is whether the teachings of Jesus – adulterated as they inevitably have been while being assimilated into radically different cultures over time and space – have had “a broader broader positive impact on any group of people or the planet.” 

It occurred to me that one useful way to consider that question would be through the lens of a subgenre of science fiction known as alternate history.  What would the world look like if Jesus had never lived, or if his teachings had died out with his original followers two thousand years ago?  Here are some of the major issues.

What role did Christianity play in the expansion or contraction of the Roman Empire (eastern and western)?  How would it have been different Christianity?  Would the pagan incursions have come earlier, later, or not at all?  Without state supported Christian opposition, would the Huns and/or the Mongols have established large, stable khanates extending into Europe?  Further north and west, would the Vikings have abandoned raiding in favor of colonization in northern Europe and eastern North America?  What would any of those societies have been like? 

If you assume that Muhammad’s visitation from the angel Gabriel and the rise of Islam in the 7th century would have happened even in the absence of Christianity, how far into Europe would the caliphate reached?  Would eastern Islamic expansion have stopped in India, or would it have pressed into Russia and China?     

We know that in medieval times, scientific progress in Islamic countries was superior to that of Christian Europe.  The Islamic golden age ended in the 13th century when the Abbasid Caliphate collapsed in the wake of a series of Mongol invasions, culminating in the Sack of Baghdad in 1258.  If the Caliphate hadn’t also been forced to deal with two centuries of military pressure from Christian crusaders, might it have been able to repel the Mongol invaders and extend the golden age?  Would there have been an Age of Exploration led by Islamic navigators that reached the “New World”?

We know that China had a large ocean-going navy in the early 15th century.  Dynastic instability caused them to pull back from their explorations, leaving the field to European Christians a few decades later.  What might the world have looked like if China had had a chance to regroup and send its treasure fleets out again? 

What would happen to the pre-Columbian civilizations in the Americas?  Would they have expanded, or were their borders in 1491 more or less the limits of their sustainability? When would the first contacts with Old World civilizations happen, be they Chinese or Islamic?  And most importantly, would Old World contagions like influenza and smallpox lead to virgin soil epidemics that would decimate indigenous populations just as surely as the ones brought by Christian conquistadors in the 16th century? 

What about Africa?  Would Islam have moved south of the Sahara more rapidly in a world without Christianity?  Can we assume that pagan (or Islamic) Europe would have no interest in colonizing Africa, and that the slave trade as we know it would not have existed? 

And the civilizations of Oceania, from Australia to Rapa Nui – would they have been left alone for a few more decades, or even centuries, in the absence of Christian European expansionism?  Would their cultures have remained stable in relative isolation, or would they have evolved in some way? 

Those are all interesting questions, at least to me.  But the big question is, would the world be a better place in any of these alternate universes?  Maybe someday there’ll be a computer simulation sophisticated enough to predict probable outcomes, and informed opinions will be possible.  For now, here’s what I think. 

Humans are imperfect creatures.  We all know it.  Even those who are born to privilege eventually see themselves and their loved ones getting old, getting sick, and dying.  That sucks. 

And every society, every culture, develops an explanation for why things suck, and how to make things stop sucking, or at least suck a little less.  Those explanations are called religion.  Some of the explanations get really complicated.  They feature elaborate rituals, dietary restrictions, and behaviors tied to the phases of the moon.  Other explanations are simpler – what goes around comes around, so do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  Interestingly enough, a lot of “civilized” cultures gravitate towards complicated explanations. 

Sometimes these competing explanations encounter each other.  When that happens, the affected societies rarely slow down and say, “Hmm, that’s interesting.  Maybe those guys have a point.”  Usually they fight instead.  And usually it’s a winner take all game.  “Conversion by the sword” is what they called it when Christians and Muslims were in their rapid expansion phases.

My theory is that if Christianity didn’t exist, some other religion (or religions) would have expanded into the niches left empty by its absence.  Every bad thing that Nicole cites would have been done by someone, somewhere, to somebody in the name of some god. 

But here’s another interesting thing.  To all appearances, most of those competing explanations actually work pretty well for people who believe them.  Muslims are happy being Muslims.  Christians are happy being Christians.  Same for Sikhs, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, and so forth.  Maybe it’s all one big placebo effect. 

Still, whatever explanation you prefer, we all eventually get old, get sick, and die.  (You can skip getting old, but the other two are pretty much inevitable.)  What happens after that?  That’s where the theological rubber meets the road. 

Is there really a Christian heaven and hell?  If there is, then Christianity will have helped its believers immeasurably.  The same is true for every religion with an afterlife component.  And the irony is that we won’t know for sure until we die – if then. 

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.  For now.  Thanks, Nicole, for giving me the opportunity to think more about these topics.