Mortals (45 page)

“Ke itumetse, rra. I will do that. And when you repent it is called
teshuvah. Teshuvah is saying sorry. And Jesus was for a time following John the Baptist. And it is teshuvah when you are pushed into the water and washed, when you are baptized. But in fact, there was no coming down of God from all these teshuvahs of John the Baptist, and time was passing by. And so Jesus turned away from John. He was impatient. And then the king put John the Baptist to death, so as to teshuvah, it was the end.”

“And then what did Jesus do?”

“Jesus said if you cannot summon God down by means of war—although these daggermen were still raising up from time to time, if you cannot summon God by washing and bathing, and if you cannot summon God by repenting all past sins you have made and going into the water for a sign, then perhaps, he said, the Jews can summon God down by emunah.”

“Okay, good, and does Jesus continue with baptizing?”

“No, we do not see that. Only in one place in the Bible does it say so, but we think that is wrong.”

“And how would you explain what emunah is and what it meant among the Jews of that time? I know you have this in large letters on your study cards. It is
important
. In fact you may feel free to read off the definition anytime until you have it in your memory,” Morel said.

“Ehe, rra. Emunah is complete trusting faith, complete trusting faith, as children have it. It is becoming as a child in every way. It is to never question but only always believe. You take no thought for yourself, and in that way you show your trust in God to care for you. I remember very well what is in this book of Vermes. Emunah demands the total commitment of the soul to God. You must do away with all things in yourself that would make God hate you, were you a child, bothering him. You must wish him to be left in peace even when his eye falls on you. You do not pester him with oaths in his name, because when you take the name of God in an oath you are forcing him to become a party in some little disputes you have with your neighbors. So as well, you must avoid ill-doing because all people stand as your brothers under God, and God the father is best pleased when there is no fighting in his home. He hears
everything
, the God of Jesus, so we can see why these oaths pelting him like rain must be displeasing, very much. And when it comes to stories told by Jesus, we see that so many of them are about God, and are saying he is above everything a father who is greatly pleased, most pleased, when one of his lost sheep or sons who has been erring is returning home. And these he loves much more than those who have stayed in the fold and been obedient
toward him for the most part. But that is the nature of a father, Jesus is saying to us …”

Morel said, “Well, but stop there because we are going to go through the proverbs and parables later, to see how they show this craze for childish devotion, for emunah, every one of them. Maybe that will be after we eat something.”

There was a sound of chair feet scraping and then of boot heels knocking on the hard floor as Morel commenced pacing back and forth in front of his audience. Morel was partial to cowboy boots. The refreshments to come included maize porridge and chicken stew. Morel wanted refreshments served at all Apostles of Reason occasions, he told the new cadres. He explained that they were a draw. They should be served not sooner than three-quarters of the way through an event.

“Emunah is what, above all, we must understand and make others, the ones trammeled and trapped and stumbling in the nets of Christianity, understand, because it is the whole heart and soul of the message of the Jew Jesus.
Everything
that he taught is secondary to emunah, including every rule and regulation of his religion. All the six hundred and fifteen rules and regulations of the Torah, which Jesus continues to accept with all his heart and being, are made subordinate to the one goal of building up emunah, and emunah is what? Is being as a
child
, becoming childlike, in absolute faith, unquestioning faith. We all remember that the chief commandment of the Torah, the one held by Jesus to be a summary of all the other commandments, the commandment that you must love God with all your mind, heart, and soul, is no more than a formulation of emunah, and the commandment that stands second to this, that you must love your neighbor as yourself, is aimed to stop all strife displeasing to a father, as Themba has just said. So with Jesus, emunah is all, namely that the trust, the emunah, of a child is the conditio sine qua non for access to the kingdom.

“Think about what this means. All of you. Think. It means that being like a
child
, a boy instead of a man, is the most basic condition you must meet for salvation!”

Feeling had come into Morel’s voice, true urgent feeling. His register was lower.

“So but can we not
see
what we
have
in these beliefs of Jesus the Jew, in this early branch of Judaism, which we must never forget his religion was, and remains forever, since he never changed it?

“When we tell Christians that the closer they are to the original Jesus the more they should consider themselves Jews, they jump, they want to
scream, because they have been poisoned by the hatred of the Jews spoken in the Gospels. The new sect of Christian Jews defamed their rivals, the other Jews, and put their lies in the mouth of Jesus the Jew.

“No, it drives Christians crazy to be told that if they truly love Jesus, they’re Jews. So we have to be wise as serpents and gentle as doves when we blast them with this news.”

Morel was continuing. “This is what I wanted to say. We have to see that what we have before us in the religion of Jesus is as clear a crystallization or distillation of what is going on in
all
religions, one way or another, as we could pray for. That is, the falling back into the status of a child before some figure or idea identifiable as a version of the all-powerful lawgiving father, a patrimorph, as I proposed we call it, a patrimorph, a thing in the shape of a father.

“Go back to your notes and see that I called religion
organized regression
, and the falling back is to that time when we were coming to consciousness of the world during our helpless infancy and childhood, a period longer for us than for any other animal. This period is called
neoteny
, the scientific name for it is neoteny. I hate these names but we need them,
patrimorph
and
neoteny
 … And this falling back into a time when our father was a god to us strikes us when we are in pain and suffering, with nowhere to turn, as can happen. As
does
happen.

“And then we fall back and become a thing like a child, a
pedomorph
, just to give the last of these technical names, a thing like a child, and we feel, again and again, with the help of the costumed liars of whatever church, we feel safer, happier, secure in the shadow of our father. And then they do what they like with us, of course. We fall back and we feel
rejuvenated
, notice the word. We are a species cursed with the shadows of fathers, and false fathers. This weakness is the abyss that is always at our heels, that we drag about with us, that follows us, dogs us. The abyss is sweet. There is real comfort there. We are made so that we wish to pitch ourselves into it. That act releases sweet chemicals that infuse us, our brains. The abyss. It is the common sand every church is built on, all churches and temples are built upon.

“Our task is to become fatherless … khutsana.”

Morel stopped for something, a glass of water, probably.

“Emunah is
the whole of it
, in the message of Jesus the Jew. We must make this clear to, to …”

A new voice broke in. “To the multitudes.”

This was Kerekang’s first intervention. There was more to come. Kerekang’s tone was wry, but carefully wry.

Morel continued. “Yes, the multitudes. Oh yes. Emunah … Please notice that every act that is being urged by Jesus is meant to amplify, in a believing population, the proportion of it, the part of it, that resembles a mass of distressed and neglected but trusting children. When he tells his followers not to take any thought for the morrow, for example, not to think ahead about where the next meal is coming from, he is recreating in that attitude the situation of a child unable to get its own food and depending on the goodwill of the family under the control of the sovereign father. We’ll see this over and over, clearly shown, when we come to examine, when Themba comes to examine, the parables and proverbs attributed to Jesus. But the overall picture here is unmistakable—Jesus is engaged in an experiment in collective emunah with the Jews of Palestine, conjuring or coaxing them into the shape of an enormous
baby
in order to bring God downstairs to tend it and change the world forever in the bargain.

“What was moving in the mind of Jesus to lead him to this we can only guess. But it seems likely that what he sought through mass emunah was to undo the sin of Adam, whose
dis
obedience plunged humanity into death and misery and labor and pain in childbirth for women and on and on, undo it by turning disobedience into its opposite, perfect obedience, spectacular compliance with the will and whims of Yahweh.

“Emunah! We must make ourselves call things by their right names, comrades. If you were asked to come into a church so that you might join others in groveling, would you go in? No, but if they call it worship, you go.

“Now once we can see that the whole work of Jesus was this campaign to pump up eruptions of emunah, we can then see that it must follow that, correctly considered, there is
no moral instruction
to be gotten from his message, from his original message. Jesus tells those who would truly follow him that their duties to him, their duties to emulate him, are greater than, for example, their most sacred duties to their parents, such as burying them speedily when they die.

“What we see out of all this is that every act you must do is
instrumental. No good act is done for its own sake, because it is good. None. Not one
. Every act is done to flatter and arouse the imaginary father to descend to earth! No, more exactly, every act is an attempt to
shame
God into taking action. Jesus
knows
God’s jealous and murderous and capricious side, his murderous vanity even when it comes to his closest servants. He punishes his beloved agent Moses with death over some
insanely
minor shortcoming, depriving him of the privilege of entering the promised land with the people he has led through the wilderness for forty years. Jesus knows all
about God. And he knows perfectly well also that God’s acts of benefit are for the most part generic, as in letting the sun shine for all and sundry, while his enmity is specific, personal in a way, and often petty, as when he condemns to death some perfectly nice Jewish children for the sin of teasing Elijah about being bald, as we discussed. He has them eaten up by a bear! He is a jealous God. He says so himself. Jesus knows. He knows God sent the serpent.

“No, this emunah … ah we are so pathetic … no one more than Jesus himself. So here is the task he has given to himself …

“On the one hand it is to trick God into acting by calling up
surges
of unsustainable piety. And on the other hand it is to trick the people into feats of piety by misrepresenting God as an angel of goodness and loving kindness. The sleight of hand Jesus performs is everywhere. Look closely! He deceives even himself as he goes on about love and forbearance, devising to trick God downstairs through acts of organized innocence, get him to come downstairs and
crush the shit out of the enemies of the Jews
. Through the weakness and need of his people God will be induced to crush not only the Roman oppressors but
also the bad Jews who doubted the message of Jesus
.

“He is secretive, this Jesus. He is Prometheus, in what he attempts.

“His evasions are stupendous. He calls men to imitate God, the famous Imitatio Dei we spoke about. The sheep in the churches nod and think this is fine, this must be ethics. But look closely. Jesus says be like God in performing feats of giving and forbearance and
ask nothing in return
, expect no compensation. But this is not like God at all. God
requires
. God will forgive your debts only if you forgive the debts of others. There is nothing unconditional here. God is famous,
notorious
, for laying down conditions—ask Lot’s wife. God is continually setting out conditions, a chief one being, and you can find it in his dealings with Abraham and Job,
never question my motives
. What does ‘Judge not, lest ye be judged’ mean? It means imitate God
only
in those ways that do not intrude on God’s power to judge and punish. Leave the punishing to Daddy God. It would be arrogant not to, because God
likes to punish
, consign people to hell or misfortune for their shortcomings. Making judgments is the province of adults, and if God is to like us enough to come downstairs, we must remain as children. ‘God loves a terrified face,’ it says in the Psalms.

“This is a God who loves deals, covenants, all of that. No, the famous Imitatio Dei is a confidence trick, another one, to flatter God that you are acting as he, in his sunnier moments, may, at times.

“This is a
complete story
, let us never forget, from beginning to end it’s all there.

“The story of Jesus the Jew is the story of an experiment in mystical mass psychology that
fails
. It
fails
. It is a complete story whose end features the disciples of Jesus denying him, and running away, and he himself, the poor man, asking Yahweh why he has forsaken him, why he has not come downstairs, alas, alas. Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? are the hardest words to hear. The author of the experiment is being tortured to death and he says My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And then he dies. That’s it.

“I am sure it went, with poor Jesus, after his time with poor John the Baptist,
what more can we do
, we Jews? Well, we can be children, we can be worms, we can be spat on, hit, we can double the length of the errands the Romans require us to run, we can be
pathetic
 …