Crippled by choice

Humans dread the freedom offered by Christ and relish in the slavishness of law. How smartly have we fortified Christianity with rigidified fences of legalism! The all-embracing Ecclesia initiated by Christ at the expense of his sweat and blood has now been exclusively institutionalized as the Church with dogmatic and doctrinal impediments. This made Christopher Lynn Hedges, an American journalist, Presbyterian minister, and Princeton University professor to write;

Paul Tillich wrote that all institutions, including the church, are inherently demonic. Reinhold Niebuhr asserted that no institution could ever achieve the morality of the individual. Institutions, he warned, to extend their lives when confronted with collapse, will swiftly betray the stances that ostensibly define them. Only individual men and women have the strength to hold fast to virtue when faced with the threat of death. And decaying institutions, including the church, when consumed by fear, swiftly push those endowed with this moral courage and radicalism from their ranks, rendering themselves obsolete.

To be precise no law, institution, dogma and doctrine is greater than humanity. Kahlil Gibran opines, “Doctrine is like a window pane. We see truth through it but it divides us from truth.” Places of worship should not be demeaned as morality clubs but should be the revelatory sites where people experience the divine at its summit. The flavour of this experience cannot be realized until we relinquish the servitude of the parochialism of law and delight in the freedom offered by Christ who boldly affirmed “The Sabbath was made for humankind and not humankind for the Sabbath; so the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.” (St. Mark 2: 27-28)

The Gospel portion set apart for today according to the Syrian Orthodox almanac is St. Luke 13: 10-17 wherein which Jesus the Christ heals a crippled woman in a Synagogue on Sabbath. The response of the leader of the synagogue is of indignation as according to him Jesus ‘violated’ the Sabbath by performing healing. He is not happy that the woman who was crippled for 18 long years has finally been healed rather he is more concerned about the law being broken. If the woman was crippled by fate the synagogue leader was crippled by choice; and the greatest accusation for the people who are crippled by choice is rendered by Jesus himself – Hypocrites. People who are crippled by choice can never experience the healing offered by Christ. Therefore anything that cripples someone even if it has the connotations of divinity should be implicitly rebuked and abandoned. All laws are outweighed when it is the matter of affirming the justice and dignity of a human being

It is also good if we could briefly have a look at the politics of Sabbath. Sabbath is a law that precedes the Decalogue (10 commandments). The intensity and sanctity of Sabbath is usually legitimized by acknowledging that God rested on the seventh day. John Dominic Crossan, a biblical scholar challenges this version of story in his book ‘God and Empire’. May I succinctly expound his argument.

Creation story is post-exilic. When the Israelites were in Babylon as captives they were influenced by various creation myths and stories of Babylon. For instance Enuma Elish was one such Babylonian creation story. When Israelites returned to Israel after the exile they wanted to frame a creation story portraying a God powerful than the god(s) of Babylonian creation stories; a God whose word was only enough (unlike Babylonian gods) for the creation to happen.

Now the linguistic expression used in the Bible to show any creation to have happened is “And God said let there be”. The framers of the creation story have been so smart that they clubbed two creations on day 3 and day 6 so that they could make God rest on the 7th day to increase the sanctity of Sabbath. Thus, the Hebrews formulated a creation story pertaining to their cultural and religious ethos. Crossan further asserts, “The Sabbath day has nothing to do with freedom from work so that one may go to some place of worship. It is about the distributive justice of rest from work for all who work as worship itself.”

I am reminded of a story. Once King Bimbisara enquired Buddha the value of the laws and scriptures written till date. Buddha asked for a beam balance. On the one side he asked the King to place all the palm-leaf manuscripts he could gather and on the other side to place a boy ploughing in the field. The portion of the little boy lopsided. Buddha smiled and silently conveyed that even a kid is more valuable than any scripture and law.

Lent is a time to experience the healing of Jesus the Christ as most of us are crippled by choice. We are confined by our self-imposed misconstrued restrictions and regulations. It is time to be enlightened. As Immanuel Kant, the German philosopher explicates, “Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's understanding without guidance from another.”

I conclude with a picture that captured my heart

Prayers

Dn. Basil Paul