Jesus was obviously living in a culture much like our own, in which the majority of people adapt to a dead society by becoming inwardly dead themselves.”]Before I dare to delve into the New Testament, a disclaimer. I’m not a Christian, don’t believe in Jesus as ‘The Crucified Lord,” and feel that organized religions are inimical to the religious mind. That said, one of the most fascinating verses in the Gospels is, “Let the dead bury their dead.”
The line is so striking, and so original, that Jesus must have actually said it. But what in God’s name did he mean by it?
The story goes like this. “And as they were traveling along the road, he said to a certain man, “Follow me.” And the man said, “Let me first go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their dead.””
Most people, including religious scholars and theologians, are mystified by this remark, and have no idea what it means. But it seems clear as a bell to me.
Jesus was obviously living in a culture much like our own, in which the majority of people adapt to a dead society by becoming inwardly dead themselves. So when he came upon someone who was inwardly alive, he asked him to go with him. (I doubt he commanded anyone, or anything, contrary to some of the stories in the NT.)
This particular fellow said he had to fulfill a duty that very few of us could or would say no to—burying his deceased father. But Jesus succinctly told him to let the inwardly dead bury the outwardly dead.
A direct insight into the man Jesus is possible when you scrape off the encrustations of Christ mythology. No one said this better than the author of America’s Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson (who was reviled as an atheist by the pious preachers of his time) when he said:
“The whole story of these books [the Gospels] is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it. Nevertheless, there is internal evidence that parts of the New Testament have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts of it are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills.”
[captionpix imgsrc=”https://thecostaricanews.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Rdr_let_dead_bury_dead01.jpg” align=”right” captiontext=”The dead need to be told to get out of the way, because they’re clogging up the arteries of the earth and humanity.”]So much for fundamentalism, or for that matter, evangelicalism. Christianity has no greater claim to the actual teachings of Jesus than Buddhism does, since his grief-stricken followers, unable to comprehend his crucifixion, turned the failure of Jesus’ mission into his raison d’etre.
Given how moribund our Western culture is, which is nonetheless being aped East and South, it’s fascinating how the regents of reason maintain that we are so much better off than when we were barbarians, as if man no longer is barbaric. Desperate screeds like the latest book by Steven Pinker, the ironically lugubrious “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined,” purport to show how far man has come.
Of course, such apologias miss the point completely, “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” I would rather live a short, intense life, with each day deeply appreciated because it holds the real possibility it could be one’s last, than live long, and deteriorate.
This brings us to the question: Can the dead return to life? Not the dead dead (I don’t think the resurrection stories are about resuscitation at all), but the living dead, who apparently like to watch movies and shows about themselves, since there are so many of them now.
But the first question is whether the living can come together, to question and ignite insight. Even so, perhaps the living cannot unite, and intelligence cannot carry the day on this planet, without adequately addressing the dead.
Why wasn’t Jesus able do so? It goes beyond complicit Jewish leaders turning him over to the wretched Romans, who nailed him to a cross like they did to tens of thousands of others.
The dead need to be told to get out of the way, because they’re clogging up the arteries of the earth and humanity. Not that man is or ever was anything great. But until recently the spiritual potential of humanity remained essentially intact.
There aren’t an infinite number of crossroads for humankind to change course, and if this isn’t the last one, we sure as hell need to act like it is.
by Martin LeFevre for TheCostaRicaNews.com
