Cedric Mayson Spirit Level Many comedians have quoted the spousely spat which ends: “Darling! I have already made up my mind. Please don’t confuse me with facts!” It is also the attitude of religious conservatives with minds closed to anything except their cherished beliefs. “God has revealed this … the Bible says that … the Church teaches thus … I won’t listen to anything else.” End of debate. Such people refute arguments you have not made, and insist texts say what they do not. Arguing with them is as pointless as discussing communism with PW Botha. The Spirit Level column is about our spiritual strength, not our religious institutions. We are all spiritual but we are not all religious. However, there is a major overlap, and the quest for spiritual integrity must heed the witness of religion, while guarding against the heresies which have plagued humanity from human sacrifice to apartheid. Unlike our parents, we can hold in our own hands accurate translations in our own languages of the scriptures of all written religions. They include some of the most wonderful literature in the world. The Qur’an is acclaimed as a once-off divine dictation to the prophet Mohammed. Hindu, Jewish and Christian scriptures were written, edited and rewritten by hundreds of people over many centuries with varying degrees of inspiration. For 2E000 years huge debates have rocked the Christian community over the life and teaching of Jesus. The vibrant history of the church – catholic, orthodox, protestant, indigenous and ecumenical – reveals a constant development of understanding in the context of each age. This has intensified in the past 200 years as the facts of Christian scholarship have liberated us from earlier confusions, which the so-called fundamentalism originating in the United States attempts to deny. Numerous South African congregations have been kept in ignorance of modern Christian teaching which is one reason for people leaving the church. They find 18th-century theology as unreliable as 18th-century science, but most clergy don’t enlighten them.
Twentieth-century unravelling of the story of Jesus is fascinating. The raw material is in the four gospels. John’s great treatise was written later, and designed to persuade readers that Jesus was the Messiah (not God, it should be noted: John 20.31). But Mark, Luke and Matthew were written to tell the story of Jesus (Luke 1.1-4). Nearly all of Mark is quoted in Matthew or Luke, with editorial adjustments because Matthew was writing to Jews and Luke to gentiles. So Mark was written first. But more than a century ago, readers noticed parallel passages in Matthew and Luke which were not in Mark, and realised they were quoting another source. Scholars call this lost gospel Q. Then they noticed that Q does not contain stories of Jesus: there is nothing in Q about the incarnation, miracles, crucifixion, resurrection, or church. The Q passages record sayings of Jesus, his teaching, as if someone was following him around with a pad and pencil and jotting it down.
So Q is crucial. It is also very similar to sayings of Jesus quoted in the Gospel of Thomas discovered at Nag Hammadi in 1945. The Q picture is not of respectable people living in Jewish or Roman society and chugging off to church on Sundays to a religion focused on sacraments, rituals and traditions.
Q reveals a group of people, a Jesus movement, a social formation, who believed Jesus’s Good News that God’s ruling power (basileia, meaning “kingdom of God”) was at work in human society, to tackle the problems with mercy, love and purpose. It was their job to proclaim it and to follow Jesus. He encouraged people to believe in their vision and live by it. They sought a way of life based on faith in the power of God’s spirit in their normal human pursuits, loving their enemies, doing good, being generous to all people, using the power of forgiveness and faith, and cutting themselves free from oppressive religious strictures. They shared together in a simple, humble lifestyle, seeking neither riches nor high places. Working for God’s rule was a risky undertaking, demanding self-sacrifice, courage and support of one another, because others wanted to dominate them for religious or political or economic reasons. But Jesus and his followers were convinced that their faith and commitment would overcome the world. This was the reality behind all the later cults of cross and resurrection and church.
People of Africa today want a robust meaningful theology that can cope with transforming a nation, global poverty, an oppressive Western culture and Aids. Many have emerged from the struggles in Africa and seen themselves as part of groups that are set on changing the world. We heard that last week at the International Conference on Aids and the African National Congress national general council. The Jesus of Q is completely at home in both of them, and a similar message of faith, care and empowerment emerges from Hinduism, Judaism and Islam. A secular spirituality is emerging in Africa, a faith which will not be bound by the fears, inhibitions and oppressions of a previous age, but grips us with vision and drives us forward. People who want a cop- out religion are confused by the facts of a hands-on faith. Like Nicodemus, they need to be born again to see the ruling power of God.