Bad Theology
Text for today: Luke 17 vii-x
Jesus delivers a brief discourse against the idea that all human beings are of equal worth. Observing that no slave-owner will reward his property for following orders, He orders His disciples to obey God's commands without expecting His thanks, and to abase themselves as unworthy servants because they will only have done their duty.
The nature of the Father's love for His children emerges rather starkly in His dearly beloved Son's implication that slaves who do their duty are unworthy. With His famous dislike of hypocrisy, Jesus can hardly have wished His disciples to be insincere sycophants; hence He must actually have believed, or at least intended His disciples to believe, that doing one's duty to God is at best a neutral activity. Certainly it is not praiseworthy: the workman may be worthy of his meat, provided that he is spreading Jesus' doctrine and living on the hospitality of others (Matthew 10 x-xi); but as a servant of God he is worthy of nothing more.
Since the sole duty of humanity is to love God with all its heart, soul, strength and mind (Luke 10 xxvii), and since God has created human beings in such a way that they are incapable of fulfilling this duty and attaining the kingdom of Heaven without His help, it follows that for as long as the world endures there can be no such creature as a satisfactory slave for the Father: all human beings are unworthy by design. Doubtless the Father's eternal rage at this unfortunate state of affairs is a motivating factor behind both His much-proclaimed desire to destroy the bulk of His creation in fire and brimstone, and His penchant for treating even HIs most faithful retainers with the utmost contempt and disregard.
Jesus felt keenly the loneliness and resentment of the dedicated henchman whose master proves as tyrannical towards Him as towards others, as witness His occasional lapses into self-pity such as Matthew 8 xx. As a result, there is in this case a refreshing, peasant practicality to the Saviour's advice: when one's life in the hands of an all-powerful, arbitrarily murderous tyrant, it is of course only prudent to abandon all pride and sense of self-worth, to do as one is ordered, and to grovel.
Jesus delivers a brief discourse against the idea that all human beings are of equal worth. Observing that no slave-owner will reward his property for following orders, He orders His disciples to obey God's commands without expecting His thanks, and to abase themselves as unworthy servants because they will only have done their duty.
The nature of the Father's love for His children emerges rather starkly in His dearly beloved Son's implication that slaves who do their duty are unworthy. With His famous dislike of hypocrisy, Jesus can hardly have wished His disciples to be insincere sycophants; hence He must actually have believed, or at least intended His disciples to believe, that doing one's duty to God is at best a neutral activity. Certainly it is not praiseworthy: the workman may be worthy of his meat, provided that he is spreading Jesus' doctrine and living on the hospitality of others (Matthew 10 x-xi); but as a servant of God he is worthy of nothing more.
Since the sole duty of humanity is to love God with all its heart, soul, strength and mind (Luke 10 xxvii), and since God has created human beings in such a way that they are incapable of fulfilling this duty and attaining the kingdom of Heaven without His help, it follows that for as long as the world endures there can be no such creature as a satisfactory slave for the Father: all human beings are unworthy by design. Doubtless the Father's eternal rage at this unfortunate state of affairs is a motivating factor behind both His much-proclaimed desire to destroy the bulk of His creation in fire and brimstone, and His penchant for treating even HIs most faithful retainers with the utmost contempt and disregard.
Jesus felt keenly the loneliness and resentment of the dedicated henchman whose master proves as tyrannical towards Him as towards others, as witness His occasional lapses into self-pity such as Matthew 8 xx. As a result, there is in this case a refreshing, peasant practicality to the Saviour's advice: when one's life in the hands of an all-powerful, arbitrarily murderous tyrant, it is of course only prudent to abandon all pride and sense of self-worth, to do as one is ordered, and to grovel.
2 Comments:
At 7:42 pm ,
Brian M said...
It really is nasty stuff, isn't it (Christianity).
My favorite is still the American comedian, George Carlin (RIP) and his rant on the topic.
At 10:33 pm ,
Philip said...
I think Christianity is neutral; it merely means those who regard their own idea of Jesus as a messiah, moral example, invisible friend or whatever.
Curiously enough, many critics of the more idiotic and intolerant variants still seem to regard the primitive hellfire preacher in the Gospels as some sort of paragon; I don't know if Carlin falls into that category, but Bill Hicks (RIP) certainly did.
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