Saturday, December 25, 2004

Phooey on John 3:16.

At one point in my religious development the passage in the Bible that touched me the most and never failed to make me cry was Daniel 3:16-18, to wit:

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego answered, and they were saying to the king: "O Nebuchadnezzar, we are under no necessity in this regard to say back a word to you. If it is to be, our God whom we are serving is able to rescue us. Out of the burning fiery furnace and out of your hand, O king, he will rescue us. But if not, let it become known to you, O king, that your gods are not the ones we are serving, and the image of gold that you have set up we will not worship."

This may strike you, cherished reader, as a curious favorite passage, and I have never met another whom it affects as it does me. The strength of the sentiment lies, for me, in the youth's uncertainty: "If it is to be, our God . . . is able to rescue us," and the unspoken caveat, "but he might not." The three youth's devotion was in no way tied, therefore, to their personal salvation. In fact, it seems unlikely that they had any idea of or hope for an afterlife, as such ideas are all but absent from the Hebrew Scriptures. It was unimportant whether they live or die, prosper or suffer, except as it related to larger issues. For a long time, this struck me as the most noble and genuine form of religious sentiment: that one's purpose is not to live rightly in anticipation of a reward, but to weigh in on the cosmic balance in the case of Good v. Evil, and then to return to the dust. Thus I have never had any desire to exist posthumously in heaven, or even to be resurrected somehow. I simply want to have lived purposefully and well.

I have since come to realize that the universe is not so fragile as to rely on my performance in this life to settle some overwhelmingly dramatic issue of good and evil. Instead of a delicately balanced scale upon which my actions are weighed according to their virtue, I have come to see the universe as an enormous, whirring organism with which I can either be in sympathy or discord. In other words, I need the universe far more than it needs me. It is appropriate, therefore, that the following verse has has come to replace my old, Hebrew favorite:

After being baptized, Jesus immediately came up from the water; and look! the heavens were opened up, and he saw descending like a dove God's spirit upon him. Look! Also there was a voice from the heavens that said: "This is my Son, the beloved, whom I have approved."
Matthew 3:16,17

At one point I wanted nothing more than the experience of throwing myself into the fire to prove my disregard for my own fate. Although that still appeals to my dramatic side, I think I want most of all to hear, with apodictic certainty, that I am approved. I think it is quite true that we have an internal voice, leading us if we listen. Some people have always known that they are meant to pursue a certain vocation, for instance, or that a certain person is their destined life-mate. I think that if I really listen honestly, this is what my voice says: "I am a son of the universe, and I have a reason." I argue with it; I deny it; but it refuses to shut up. And every time I slow down enough to hear it, it speaks: "You are enough." This is what God said to Jesus, and I believe it is what God says to all people.

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