Fascism and cultists.

A lot of Americans didn’t pay attention in their high school history classes, and therefore aren’t all that clear about what fascism is. Which is understandable; too many history books don’t define it, and too many historians insist, “Well it’s not really that; it’s more like this.”

Fascism was the movement led by Italian prime minister Benito Mussolini in the 1930s. It was… pretty much whatever Mussolini said it was, ’cause the movement was tightly connected with the man. And what he was all about was

• NATIONALISM—defining “Italian” by race, and insisting all “non-Italians” conform or get out;
• AUTARKY—a self-sufficient economy which needs nothing from other countries;
• HIERARCHY—the wealthy or noble are the proper leaders of society, men should rule over women, and traditional gender roles should be enforced;
• WARTIME STATUS—the nation should be on high alert against any enemies, with everyone contributing to national defense;
• LIMITED RIGHTS—or in some cases eliminated rights for undesirables.

In general, fascists think we have too much freedom, and it permits people to be immoral. Well, they wanna fight “immorality”—however they define it, and they have some really wide definitions. They’ll consider entire religions and entire political parties, “immoral.”

If you grew up Fundamentalist—particularly the sort of Fundie whose church was actually an authoritarian cult, whose fathers tried to establish their own little mini-patriarchy where Dad was king and ruled with an iron fist—fascism isn’t gonna be a new worldview to you at all. You grew up under fascism. If you didn’t flee those cults and their fruitless, godless behavior, but instead adopted their mindset, you might even think it’d be good for the country as a whole. In other words, you’d be fascist too.

This is why fascism has always had a foothold in the United States. Always; the mindset predates Mussolini. It’s been around since the very beginning, when some of the first English colonies were created to be little religious oligarchies in which Puritans (or Baptists, or Catholics) ruled. Thankfully the United States ultimately adopted the Quaker position of religious freedom. But y’notice a lot of Fundies chafe at this idea—because to their minds, the Puritans had the right idea. The U.S. was founded as, and ought still be, a Christian nation, with all non-Christians required to either conform to Christian principles or leave. And the government should have the power to enforce it—a power which includes imprisonment and death.

Now don’t get the wrong idea. I’m not writing this to alarm you—“The fascists are coming; the fascists are everywhere!—we gotta fight them before they gain power!” Like I said, they’ve always been around, and way more Americans are antifascist (“antifa” for short) than not. I’m writing this to inform you. Like herpes, fascism is a problem which is never really going away, but there are steps we can take to tamp it down really hard, and make sure it doesn’t consume us.

And it starts by knowing about one of its most popular breeding grounds: Cults.

An unclean spirit in Jesus’s synagogue.

Mark 1.23-28, Luke 4.31-37.

This happened right after Jesus went to synagogue one Friday night… and didn’t teach like the scribes. We don’t know what he taught. Probably something profound and life-changing. But despite his amazing, world-rocking message, the only words we have from his entire lesson was Φιμώθητι καὶ ἔξελθε ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ/Fimóthiti ke éxelthe ap’ aftú, “Shut up and get out of him.”

Lousy evil spirit.

Mark 1.23-26 KWL

23 Next, a person with an unclean spirit

was already in their synagogue,

and he screams out,

24 saying, “Who are we to you, Jesus Nazarene?

Do you come to destroy us?

I know who you are. God’s ‘holy one’…”

25 Jesus rebukes it, saying, “Shut up and get out of him.”

26 Convulsing him and shouting with a loud voice,

the unclean spirit gets out of him.

 

Luke 4.33-35 KWL

33 A person is already in the synagogue

who has a spirit, an unclean demon.

It screams out in a loud voice,

34 “Whoa! Who are we to you, Jesus Nazarene?

Do you come to destroy us?

I know who you are. God’s ‘holy one’…”

35 Jesus rebukes it, saying, “Shut up and get out of him.”

The demon, dropping the man in the middle of the room,

gets out of him, never harming him.

Movies tend to overdramatize this scene. Your average Jesus movie shows Jesus, peacefully offering koans to a group of fawning students and skeptical Pharisees, when suddenly some wild-eyed madman forces his way into synagogue. Clothes disheveled. Hair unkempt. A little foam on his lips. Looking like Charles Manson after crawling through the desert two days without water. Because movie devils are profoundly stupid, this critter’s ready to pounce on our Lord—the one guy with the power to annihilate it with a word.

Any chance it was like that in real life? Nah; you just read the gospels. Get those movie images out of your brain and lookit the text. And bear these historical details in mind.

Sabbath began at sundown Friday night. Synagogue services began immediately afterward. People would enter the building—men up front so they could ask questions, women in the back where they were expected to not ask questions, sometimes separated by a partition but not always. Once everybody was in, the synagogue president would bar the doors to keep latecomers from interrupting. If you were late, you stood outside and listened as best you could, or you turned round and went home.

So if you were a raving lunatic, you couldn’t burst into the service and interrupt Jesus. All you could do is shout a lot, beat the doors, throw stuff through the windows… but you weren’t getting in.

Got that? Good. So how’d this demoniac get into the building? Simple: He entered along with everybody else. You had to be ritually clean to enter synagogue, and this guy looked clean. Had he appeared out of place, or off, he’d’ve been sent away. He wasn’t. He looked normal.

Entered with everybody else. Stood there in the crowd. Sang psalms. Listened to the scriptures and their translation. Listened to Jesus’s lesson… up to the point he got noisy. Nobody suspected he had a demon in him. Y’see, not every demoniac looks like a madman. Not every madman does either.

Judge not. Or judge. Depends on the context.

Matthew 7.1-5.

Christians and pagans alike love to fling around the following Jesus quote a lot.

Matthew 7.1 KJV

Judge not, that ye be not judged.

Usually for one of two reasons. Both incorrect—though sometimes with good intentions.

1. Be kind to other people. When they offend you personally—when they’re clumsy or awkward, boorish or rude, look and smell and dress funny, have horrible taste in music and movies and comedy, or even sin in ways which really bug you—remember God still loves them, and so should we. Besides, it’s not like we don’t sin either. Or have our own offensive flaws.
2. Hey, don’t you judge me. “Judge not,” right?

Since kindness is one of the Spirit’s fruit, it makes sense to remind people to be kind and compassionate towards the weird or the sinful. When he was on earth, Jesus didn’t drive such people away; he ministered to them and befriended them.

Thing is, he didn’t just tolerate them: He forgave them. And forgiveness means they did do something wrong; otherwise there’d be nothing to forgive. Forgiveness indicates we do judge them—as either sinning or trespassing against us. But forgiveness means we’re gonna overlook it, and pay God’s grace forward. It’s not mere tolerance, which ignores their behavior, pretends they didn’t sin, pretends we’re not bothered… and festers within us like a sour tumor.

As for those folks who quote that verse in order to use our religion to their advantage, so they can evade judgment and consequences… well, they’re just being jerks.

Baptism: Get saved, get wet.

BAPTISM 'bæp.tɪz.əm noun. Religious ritual of sprinkling water on a person’s forehead, or immersing them in water, symbolizing purification, regeneration, and admission to Christ Jesus’s church.

[Baptist 'bæp.təst noun, baptizand 'bæp.tɪ.zænd noun, baptismal bæp'tɪz.məl adjective.]

Whenever the ancient Hebrews did something ritually unclean, they had to ritually clean themselves before they went to temple. How they did this was to simply immerse themselves in water, then wait till sundown—after which point they were ritually clean.

Since they were only required to go to temple thrice a year, they really didn’t have to do a whole lot of ritual cleansing. That is, till Pharisees decided every form of worship required people to be ritually clean. So if you went to synagogue—whether daily, or just Friday nights for Sabbath services—you needed to be ritually clean. Gotta wash!

How Pharisees (and today’s Orthodox Jews) did so was to create a מִקְֶֶוה/mikvéh, “collection [of water].” Basically a vat or pool large enough so a person could stand upright underwater. It had to consist of “living water,” by which they meant running water—and because Pharisees were big on loopholes, any kind of running would count. Water could be dripping into it and dripping out of it; that’d count. You stepped into the mikvéh fully clothed, then walked out. Then awaited sundown.

This ritual washing, they called βάπτισμα/váptisma, “immersion.” Yep, it’s where we get our word baptism.

If you were a new Pharisee, your very first baptism would be when you joined the synagogue. And that’s where John the baptist got the idea for his form of baptism: If you were repentant, and wanted to turn from your sins to follow God, start with baptism.

Since Jesus (though he personally had no sins to repent of) submitted to John’s baptism, and instructed his students to baptize any new students, Mt 28.19 baptism has thereby become the rite of Christian initiation. You’ve decided to follow Jesus? Great! Now get baptized in water. Get forgiven. Receive the Holy Spirit. Ac 2.38

There’s another form of baptism, called baptism of the Holy Spirit, which I discuss elsewhere.

Like every sacrament, we Christians get obsessed with doing it “properly,” and believing all the correct things about it. Sacraments, you recall, represent something God’s doing. Not so much us. We do the ritual, but God does the spiritual reality behind it, and that’s the relevant part. Still, you know how self-centered we humans get: “Oh, if you did it that way, it doesn’t count.” As if God’s not gonna embrace a new follower because we used a bottle of water instead of the nearest river.

Proud heretics.

Some months ago a coworker asked me what “heretic” meant. Apparently there’s a brand of wine called Heretic, and a northern California microbrewery called Heretic Brewery, and she wanted to know whether it’s a liquor term.

I was kinda curious about that myself later, so I looked it up. It’s not. But my internet search led me to a company called Heretic Spirits, who had this on their website:

HER·E·TIC /'herəˌtik/ a person holding an opinion at odds with what is generally accepted.

Heretics are driven by new ideas and experiences. They possess a soul that yearns for the nourishment of new and exciting sensory experiences. We call this the Ravenous Soul and it represents the core of all that we do.

Okay, you will find their definition in a typical dictionary. But it’ll be the second definition; the one developed much later than the original definition, which is “a person or belief which differs from established religious orthodoxy.”

The word descends from the Latin hæreticus and the Greek αἱρετικός/eretikós, “able to choose.” Over time, Christians used it to describe those who’d chosen poorly. Wrongly. Incorrectly. Dangerously so, ’cause if you believed some of the junk Christian heretics taught, you could profoundly undermine your relationship with God, if not destroy it.

But to be succinct, I usually refer to heretics as people who are wrong. And that’s what I told my coworker “heretic” means: Wrong.

“Wrong?” she said. “Why would you name your wine ‘wrong’?”

Because heretics don’t think they are wrong.

Prayer in the Abraham and Abimelech story.

The first time we ever read the word “pray” in the bible—the first time holy scriptures were even written which use the word פָּלַל/palál, “praying”—it’s in Genesis 20, in the middle of an odd little story which goes like so.

Genesis 20.1-18 NLT

1 Abraham moved south to the Negev and lived for a while between Kadesh and Shur, and then he moved on to Gerar. While living there as a foreigner, 2 Abraham introduced his wife, Sarah, by saying, “She is my sister.” So King Abimelech of Gerar sent for Sarah and had her brought to him at his palace.

3 But that night God came to Abimelech in a dream and told him, “You are a dead man, for that woman you have taken is already married!”

4 But Abimelech had not slept with her yet, so he said, “Lord, will you destroy an innocent nation? 5 Didn’t Abraham tell me, ‘She is my sister’? And she herself said, ‘Yes, he is my brother.’ I acted in complete innocence! My hands are clean.”

6 In the dream God responded, “Yes, I know you are innocent. That’s why I kept you from sinning against me, and why I did not let you touch her. 7 Now return the woman to her husband, and he will pray for you, for he is a prophet. Then you will live. But if you don’t return her to him, you can be sure that you and all your people will die.”

8 Abimelech got up early the next morning and quickly called all his servants together. When he told them what had happened, his men were terrified. 9 Then Abimelech called for Abraham. “What have you done to us?” he demanded. “What crime have I committed that deserves treatment like this, making me and my kingdom guilty of this great sin? No one should ever do what you have done! 10 Whatever possessed you to do such a thing?”

11 Abraham replied, “I thought, ‘This is a godless place. They will want my wife and will kill me to get her.’ 12 And she really is my sister, for we both have the same father, but different mothers. And I married her. 13 When God called me to leave my father’s home and to travel from place to place, I told her, ‘Do me a favor. Wherever we go, tell the people that I am your brother.’ ”

14 Then Abimelech took some of his sheep and goats, cattle, and male and female servants, and he presented them to Abraham. He also returned his wife, Sarah, to him. 15 Then Abimelech said, “Look over my land and choose any place where you would like to live.” 16 And he said to Sarah, “Look, I am giving your ‘brother’ 1,000 pieces of silver in the presence of all these witnesses. This is to compensate you for any wrong I may have done to you. This will settle any claim against me, and your reputation is cleared.”

17 Then Abraham prayed to God, and God healed Abimelech, his wife, and his female servants, so they could have children. 18 For the LORD had caused all the women to be infertile because of what happened with Abraham’s wife, Sarah.

Some weird cultural things I gotta unpack for you now.

Why there are so many “nones.”

A number of my fellow Christians are extremely anxious about the rising number of “nones,” meaning the people who check “none” when surveyed about which religion they practice. They don’t do Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, any of the New Age nor capital-p Pagan stuff; nada. They do no religion. They’re “none.” There are a lot of ’em, they’re growing in numbers and percentages, and my fellow Christians are worried it’s a trend.

It’s actually been going on for a mighty long time. It’s just that, up to the past hundred years or so, it was way easier to be a hypocrite than tell the truth. Way easier to say, “Oh yeah, I’m Christian; I go to St. Herod’s,” even though they hadn’t set foot in that church building since they were baptized as an infant. And they psyche themselves into thinking they’re not lying about this; they kinda like Jesus, and consider him the best moral teacher, and they’re certainly not antichrists. And they were baptized after all. So okay; “Christian” it is.

Likewise people who figured they were Jews ’cause they were circumcised; people who figured they’re Muslim because their parents are Muslim; but none of these people are religious, as demonstrated by the fact they put bacon on everything. Did you know if you wind a strip of crisp bacon in a cinnamon roll before you bake it, it’s twice as awesome? Mmm, bacon. Wait, what was I writing about again?…

Anyway my fellow Christians are agitated ’cause they think they’re losing ground. Some are agitated for political reasons; they love that Christianity holds a supermajority in the United States, and are terrified what might happen if that ever changes. They fear it won’t even be America anymore. I remind them this is all the more reason they need to put laws in place forbidding government-enforced religion… but they’d rather fight a culture war instead of doing good deeds and spreading justice.

And still they wonder why Christianity isn’t growing like they think it should. Well duh; they’re not spreading Christianity. It’s just Christianism, the worldview of people who think they’re Christian but don’t obey Jesus.

The Prodigal Son Story, part 3.

Luke 15.25-31.

There are three natural parts to the Prodigal Son Story:

1. The son leaving and squandering his inheritance.
2. The son returning and his father rejoicing.
3. The elder son objecting to the celebration out of jealous bitterness.

By consensus Christians have always interpreted this story to be about someone who repents of their excessive living and turns to God, with the father as God’s stand-in.

And by consensus Christians have always interpreted ourselves as the elder son. And… we kinda don’t like comparing ourselves with this irritated man. So we insist he’s typical of other Christians. Less gracious ones. But not us.

’Cause we know better, right? We know Christianity is all about proclaiming God’s grace. And God forgives everyone! Any repentant sinner, anyone who tells God, “I can’t save myself, so you’ll have to do it,” anyone who says the sinner’s prayer and makes Jesus the Lord of their lives.

So to be like this elder brother, and say, “Oh, those dirty sinners coming to Jesus to save them—those people can’t be saved. Those people aren’t worthy of salvation”—that’s just nuts. Were we unsavable, or worthy of salvation, when we came to Jesus? Of course not, but Jesus died for our sins anyway, and we too can be saved. Anyone can.

Hence every single Christian reads the Prodigal Son Story, reads about the elder son’s bad attitude, and reacts pretty much the same way: “What a dick. Doesn’t he get it? His brother repented! He’s come to Jesus! Shouldn’t we rejoice if our wayward family members repent and come to Jesus? Rejoice!”

Here, watch him be a dick:

Luke 15.25-31 KWL

25 “At this time, the elder son is in the field,

and as he comes near the house,

he hears music and dancing.

26 Calling one of the boys,

he’s asking himself, ‘Whatever ought this be?’

27 The boy tells him this:

‘Your brother is come!

Your father sacrificed the well-fed calf,

because he he got him back safe and sound.’

28 The elder son is enraged

and doesn’t want to enter the feast.

His father comes out to comfort him.

29 In reply the elder son tells the father, ‘Look!

I slaved for you so many years!

I never pushed against your commands,

and you never gave me a goat

so I might celebrate with my friends.

30 While this son of yours,

who devours your life’s work with loose women,

you sacrifice the well-fed calf for him!’

 

31 “The father tells him, ‘Child,

you’re always with me,

and everything of mine is yours.

32 We have to celebrate and rejoice,

because this brother of yours is dead and lives,

and having been lost, is found.’ ”

Okay. Now here’s how the rest of us Christians have missed the whole point of this story, and missed how we actually are like the elder son. The younger son, who left his father and family and frittered away the father’s “life’s work with loose women”? Lk 15.30 Jesus isn’t describing a pagan who doesn’t know any better. He’s describing a Jew. A co-religionist. Someone who grew up under the Law of Moses, who was educated by Pharisees, who fully knew what God’s expectations are for his chosen people, who was raised better than this. Who left his family, left the promised land, to do as he pleased. To party.

Jesus is talking about an apostate.

And what does your average Christian teach about fellow Christians who quit Jesus? That they’re going to hell. That because they saw salvation, yet rejected it, they’re no longer receiving it; they’ve committed an unforgivable sin; they’ve doomed themselves. Some’ll insist they were never saved in the first place. They’re gone. They’re damned.

Some will even cut off all communication with them, lest they get all their apostasy-cooties all over ’em.

Our inspired bible.

INSPIRE ɪn.spaɪ(.ə)r verb. Breathe (air) in; inhale.

2. Fill with a positive, creative feeling; encourage.

3. Fill with the urge or ability to do or feel something; provoke.

[Inspiration ɪn.spə'reɪ.ʃən noun.]

Whenever we Christians talk about inspiration, whether we refer to inspired prophets, inspired teachings, inspired writings, or even inspired music, we generally assume God did the inspiring. (Specifically God the Holy Spirit.) He’s the one who breathes brilliance into us.

One word we regularly translate “inspired” is θεόπνευστος/theónefstos, a word Paul probably coined. Literally it means “God-breathed,” which is how the NIV prefers to translate it in 2 Timothy 3.16.

2 Timothy 3.15-16 NIV

14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, 15 and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God a may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

People tend to fling around the word “inspired” as if it only means we had a brainstorm. That’s not what theónefstos means at all. It’s God involved with, behind, this creation process. It’s the Holy Spirit, living within the teacher, prophet, author, or artist, pointing ’em towards Jesus, getting them to describe God with infallible accuracy.

This is what Christians tend to believe about the books and letters which make up the bible: It’s inspired. The Holy Spirit got its authors to describe God with infallible accuracy.

Some Christians believe this God-breathed inspiration isn’t true of anything else. God inspired the bible, and that’s all. When God inspired Old Testament prophets and New Testament apostles, it was only so they’d write him some bible. Since the bible’s done, he’s inspired no one since. And of course this is bunk; God never stopped interacting with humanity, and still regularly inspires people. Not to write bible, ’cause it doesn’t need any more additions. But certainly the Spirit inspires all sorts of other things which point people towards Jesus.

And on the other extreme we have Christians who believe God inspires every act of human creativity. (Or even animal creativity; they’ll talk about bird nests and beaver dams as inspired.) Whereas I’m pretty sure if every time your kid builds something of Legos it makes you drop to your knees and praise Jesus for his gifts of creativity, you need a psychiatrist. Of course humans create; creativity is something God innately built into us. It’s not always inspired by God. Often it’s inspired by the hopes it’ll make us famous, or make us money. Yep, this is true of Christian artists too. I’ve seen the Jesus junk they sell at Hobby Lobby. Saying the Holy Spirit is behind all that crap? Dirty, dirty blasphemy.

But I digress; I’m trying to write about bible. And yes, the bible’s inspired. People had God-experiences, and wanted to record them for posterity. God dropped various ideas in people’s heads, and they wrote those down too. King David wrote poetry, and God nudged him to write really good poetry. Peter, John, James, Paul, Silas, Timothy, and Sosthenes had some good advice to give fellow Christians, and God nudged them to give profoundly useful advice. Inspired people wrote it, inspired Christians compiled it, and inspired Christians uphold it.

True, inspired people were and are fallible humans. But as people follow the Holy Spirit, he guides us to truth, Jn 16.13 and steers us clear of sin and error. In the moment, we can (and do) write and prophesy infallible stuff. Once done, we might (heck, do) slip up, sin, make mistakes, and fumble right back into fallibility. But the stuff done by the Spirit’s power is still good stuff. The writings in the bible are still authoritative. So we kept ’em.

The bible in “the original Aramaic”: The Peshitta.

When he lived on earth, Jesus spoke Aramaic.

That’s the language ancient Syrians spoke; the name Aramaic comes from אֲרָם/Arám, a country which later became part of Syria. Through the Assyrian and Babylonian empires, it became the main language of commerce in the middle east… until Alexander of Macedon forced everyone to switch to Greek in the 300s BC. When Israel were taken into captivity by the Assyrians and Babylonians, two generations later they were all speaking Aramaic. When they returned from Persia to re-found Jerusalem, they spoke Aramaic. So did the Samaritans up north. So did the Edomites. So did everyone.

Thing is… the bible was in Hebrew. And now (except for the parts which are actually in Aramaic) it had to be translated into Aramaic so the Aramaic-speaking public could understand it. That’s why the Pharisees came up with targums, Aramaic translations of the Hebrew scriptures which non-Hebrew-speakers could understand. Jesus could read the bible, Lk 4.16-20 and knew it extensively, so it’s obvious he’s fluent in Hebrew too. But whenever he spoke to the common people, to fellow Israelis, he spoke Aramaic. Ac 26.14

Because it’s a Syrian language, sometimes people refer to Aramaic as Syriac. The King James Version definitely does. Da 2.4 Though more recently, linguists identify Syriac as a dialect of Aramaic, if not a whole different language with Aramaic at its root. Syriac doesn’t use the Ashurit alphabet like Hebrew does; it has its own alphabet (with the same names and sounds, but it looks quite different). And while the classical Aramaic of bible times is probably extinct, Syriac is still spoken by people in Germany, India, Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Sweden, Syria, and Turkey. And it’s still the language used in the worship services of the Syriac Orthodox Church, the Maronite Church, the Chaldean Catholic Church and other eastern Catholics who use a Syriac rite, the Malabar Independent Syrian Church, the Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church, the Assyrian Church of the East, the Assyrian Pentecostal Church, and other ethnic Assyrian Christians.

Naturally there are Syriac translations of the bible. But the most important one is the one which predates nearly most other translations of the bible. Parts predate the Vulgate. Goes so far back, you’re still gonna have a lot of Syriac-speaking Christians who insist this is the original New Testament—not the Greek texts. I’ll get to that.

The most ancient Syriac translation of the bible is called the Peshitta (Aramaic ܡܦܩܬܐ ܦܫܝܛܬܐ/mappaqtá f’šíthta, “ordinary version”). Reference to “the Syriac gospel” in Eusebius’s writings in the 100s indicate it’d been started, at least, in the 100s. We have copies which date since that time, starting in the 400s. The earliest full copies we have of the New Testament, date to the 600s. And while the Vulgate became the bible of the Latin-speaking world, the Peshitta became the bible of eastern Christians outside the Roman Empire: Missionaries brought it to Armenia, Georgia, Arabia, and Persia, where it influenced their bible translations.