The Divine Conqueror
The Divine Conqueror
The words of Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909) often come to my mind: “Thou hast conquered, oh pale Galilean. The world has grown grey from thy breath.” These words were not originally stated by Swinburne; “Thou hast conquered, oh pale Galilean” was originally spoken by the Roman emperor Julian about the acceptance of Christianity under the emperor Constantine. I am reminded as well of the words of historian Will Durant, that Caesar and Christ had met in the arena and Christ had won.
Both of these statements are unfortunate. Jesus is not a political conqueror, nor is he a gladiator. He did not teach a political theory as the superintending boundary for people. The aligning of politics with his name is a huge risk to both a political position and to the Christian faith. History is replete with such examples. Various nations have claimed that he walked there or have yearned to be the site of the New Jerusalem, as in the imaginings of William Blake.3 These sentiments may be moving and powerful, but they bring fearsomeness to the scene. Making England the site of the New Jerusalem (or the seat of God) may be a noble idea, but throughout their history the English have certainly not behaved as citizens of a holy city. For that matter, neither have the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and now more recently the story is retold in America. A man recently made a strongly critical remark to me about America and added, “How can a Christian nation act like that?” I surprised him by asking, “Who told you it is a Christian nation?” It made for a fascinating discussion.
It is true that the unshakable principles and ideas on which America was founded are clearly Judeo-Christian. But with each succeeding generation there has increasingly come the desire to shake off the lessons and ideas from the past. America is rich in wealth but poverty-stricken in understanding the reasons for its wealth and has an abysmal ignorance of history, its own as well as anyone else’s. In fact, aided and programmed by the news, anything a week old no longer holds any interest. We live with the remote control in our hands, changing scenes by the minute. I remember one politician telling me that most politicians don’t even fear a scandal anymore because they know it will soon be swept away by the next day’s news.
Our inability to focus or stay the course is reflected in our spirituality in America. It is amazing how jelly-like it is, how it shifts and shapes itself to the individual as truth is remade in his or her image. We would do well to remember the famed aphorism that anyone who refuses to learn from history is forced to repeat its mistakes.
To that end, the message of Jesus Christ is both timely and timeless. He continually contradicts us in the way we experience ourselves as alive and compels us to redefine what we mean by life. His answers are absolute because both love and truth are absolute, as is evil. These are the issues that ultimately haunt our souls. For Elizabeth Lesser to cavalierly say that twenty-first-century spirituality prides itself in being a dynamic blend of myth and beliefs is to say that the truth is only the truth today and may change into something else tomorrow. How can one build a life on such a foundation? She is right in admitting that the New Spirituality has myths within its scope. It sounds very magnanimous to present the cultures of some of these myths as unspoiled and worthy of being restored. But the truth of these cultures is often very different. The victimization of women and children was rampant and brutal in many pagan beliefs.
And Lesser has ignored that the most serious myth of the New Spirituality is that untruths can co-exist with truth without making the system toxic. She should know this is not possible from her own sad experiences that she herself points to. And she is not alone… We all have learned through personal tragedies and mistakes that mixing the truth with untruth creates a toxic environment. None of us are spared. A lie seldom comes in recognizable form. It is usually smuggled in as small grains that poison the whole. That is why Jesus referred to the enemy of our souls as the father of all lies.
I propose to explain in this chapter why Jesus is the Truth and why he dispels the myth of mere spirituality.