The Fruits of the Earth

It is an old story, and you know how it goes. There was the farmer, and there was the shepherd; brothers they were, and men of faith. And the time came for them to make obeisance to the Lord, and the shepherd brought the first and finest of his lambs, and the farmer brought the first and finest of the fruit of the earth.

And the Lord looked with favor upon the shepherd’s sacrifice, and upon the farmer’s sacrifice he looked with disfavor. The fruit of the earth are not a suitable sacrifice. There must be blood.

There was blood. The farmer, enraged that his hard work was not enough, slew his brother. This is the third sin recorded: fratricide.

A little while later, and the High Priest of the Lord comes out of nowhere and greets the chosen of the Lord, Abram, with a sacrifice of bread and wine. The Lord has not yet established His people; He has not given the Law; the Levites are nowhere to be found; Levi himself is three generations hence; still, there is a High Priest of the Lord.

So much is made of the identity of this High Priest that little mention there is of this: he greets Abram with an offering of bread and wine — the fruits of the earth. Indeed, it seems from the text this may be the very act that marks him as High Priest.

The offering of bread and wine is unusual in ancient times, for the reasons we have already seen, and yet here, it marks the mysterious High Priest as a man of the Lord, and is seen in the context of the Lord blessing Abram. The covenant with Abram was later consummated in a ritual in which — per the legend — God bound himself to Abram, but Abram fell asleep partway through.

Yet little while later, and another High Priest of the same order institutes a ceremony with his followers: he takes the bread and the wine and he identifies these fruits of the earth with the sacrifice he is about to participate in. This sacrifice involves the murder of an innocent man and — by some accounts — the redemption of all mankind.

The parallelism strikes me: the farmer offers the fruits of the land — an unworthy sacrifice — and then kills the innocent shepherd. The shepherd offers the fruits of the land, and then, though innocent, is killed by those who oversee the offering of sacrifices under the law.

And the followers of the shepherd, from that day forward, have made a sacrifice in memorial that yokes the unworthy to the worthy; the grape and the grain — fruits of the earth — to the flesh and blood of the lamb.

gauche
16 Jun 10

Two Sons

A certain man had two sons. And when they were still boys he separated them and spoke to them gravely. To the younger son, he said, “You must always pay heed to what you brother says, for he is your elder, and his experience will be to your benefit.”

To the elder son, he said, “You must never command your brother, for he is your charge and your responsibility, and any harm that may befall him will be on your head.”

So much for power.

gauche
16 Jun 10

Faith without Empiricism

Of course empiricism is a threat to Christianity. Christianity makes certain claims about the world that are concrete and verifiable. I submit that these claims, the interesting ones, are not metaphysical but historical. It is no threat to Christianity that we cannot put original sin into a petri dish for further study, nor that, urban legends notwithstanding, the soul has defied our efforts to measure it.

Original sin is in some sense a metaphor or a shorthand for the knowledge we have that we do not measure up, that we know a better version of ourselves than we ever were, that late at night we sometimes have saudade of the selves we can never be.

The soul is in some sense a metaphor, or a shorthand, for the perception that we continue to be ourselves even though by now every cell in our bodies has been replaced four or five times, even though we have new obligations, new relationships, new experiences. That thing that remains, whatever it is, the thing that once tasted basil and now tastes vanilla and yet is the same thing.

And more than metaphor, these things are mysteries and miracles: particularly the persistence of the soul. The persistence of the soul is built into the resurrection of the body, but I know, and the first Christians knew, that the body dies, and is eaten upon by worms and plants. The persistence of the soul, and the resurrection of the body are miracles, and by definition I cannot give you a coherent metaphysics that includes miracles.

No, the miracles are safe with me. The danger to Christianity is in the facts. That on a date certain there was born a man, Pontius Pilate. That an innocent man was put to death outside Jerusalem. If, for instance, there were never any such place as Jerusalem, that would do more to harm Christianity than if you could not measure the soul. That God became man is a doctrine; that unto us a child was born is a fact.

I think we want it both ways: we want empiricism when the facts are with us, and doctrine when they are not. We want to say, “these are the facts” on the one hand, and “it doesn’t matter the facts: this is what I believe” on the other. But the doctrine is subject to a second-order empiricism as well. Whether I believe something is a fact: it is something about which predictions can be made. It is something about which psychology can speak.

To be a witness does not consist in engaging in propaganda, nor even in stirring people up, but in being a living mystery. It means to live in such a way that one’s life would not make sense if God did not exist. — Cardinal Suhard

We should be terrified of the predictions that can be made about us when we claim that we believe the doctrines. We should be terrified when we say, in the safety of our houses, that we believe God became man and walked the earth, that He never owned property, that He ate with prostitutes and walked among the lepers. That when He lived as a man, He was a man worthy of emulation. We should take care to consider the last time that we ate with prostitutes or walked with lepers.

If you say, “I believe that the lives of children are stolen away by hungry demons,” then, when your child becomes sick, we will expect you to sacrifice a chicken to appease the demons. The fact of your belief is testable, even though the substance of your belief is not.

We should be terrified that the data on us will show that we do not, in fact, believe what we claim to believe.

gauche
13 Jun 10

The old man

I watched the old man
falling off the wagon
smiling, shaking hands,
standing a round here and there
the whole way down.

I watched the old man
liven up the room
with an off-color joke
a little loudly
and the brayish laughter
of easy friends.

I watched the old man,
as the decades fell off,
undoing all that hard work
spilling promises and ice
all over the table.

I watched the old man
falling off the wagon
and I wished his family could see
how happy this moment is for him.

gauche
10 May 10

Corruption

To let the few innocent suffer for that the many may be spared. This is the apotheosis and essence of utilitarianism, of corruption, and of Christianity.

gauche
03 May 10