Advent: Lent, with Christmas Lights.

[Originally published... for someone else]

How
many of us grew up with the concept that Advent was just Lent, only
for Christmas? As a child of the '90s, my experience tells me “not
many.”

Don't
worry, this isn't going to be the standard “spirituality over
materialism” Christmas special that you usually get this time of
year. After all, if 40 years of “A Charlie Brown Christmas” isn't
going to convince the Internet, then one blog post isn't going to tip
the balance. Besides, if you're reading this post, it is unlikely
that you need convincing. I can't see many of my readers involved
in a Black Friday shootout over the latest gadgets.

However,
how many of us take the time to prepare ourselves, spiritually, for
the coming of Christmas, and Jesus' birthday? Assuming that neither
you nor I are involved in the latest riot at a toy store – my gift
shopping was done in August – we are free from any special
psychosis-inducing event that comes with the materialism of the
season. But what of the day-to-day?

Let
us consider, for a moment, just how special Christmas is. Yes,
Christ was incarnate, etc, etc … does that really matter? After
all, Christmas isn't
considered the most important part of the Catholic calender, Easter
is. There's a reason that Handel's Messiah
has the “Hallelujah Chorus” in the section covering Easter. And,
for Easter, we pull out all the stops, don't we? We fast, we abstain,
we confess.

What
do we do for Advent? If we go by what your average church encourages,
probably not as much as we should. While Easter is the
day
in the Eucharistic calender, Christmas is what makes Easter possible.

So,
something to dwell on, if you would (I abhor the word “meditation”);
try something that our Pope would be familiar with – the Jesuit
practice of imagining. In this case, just imagine if you were the
creator of every speck of dust and every watt of electrons, and you
make a choice to become – at best – a foot-long, 12-pound
creature without the brainpower to utter a coherent sound. And you do
this so that you can clean up the mistakes of people who really
should have known better. Isn't that a strange thing to do?

It
was Fulton Sheen who once described the reason that Jesus had to be
incarnate in order for our salvation. He explained it very simply as
a form of retribution, of repayment. If you steal my watch and ask
me to forgive you, I will, but I want my watch back. Now, what
happens when you offend against an infinite Being that is so far
beyond our experience, the wonders of time and space are dwarfed?
What kind of repayment can we utilize to make amends? Only something
just as infinite – in this case, someone.

Yes,
I agree, this is quite of bit of depth coming from someone
who dedicates pages to shootouts in between bits of history
just so he can revenge himself on Dan Brown, et al, but I have my
moments.

In
the memory of the Infinite Being who became a mewling infant, let's
try to put in as much effort to Advent as to Lent. Visit a
confessional, give up something if you like. Just … something.

As
for me? I take a page from St. Augustine, who once said that “Singing
is praying. When one sings, one prays twice.” 

There's a reason
that I'm always on the hunt for a perfect rendition of “Angels We
Have Heard On High”. 

Week in Review: 6-25-2011

Monday was my Father's Day post. All about my father.



The music blog was one part Two Steps from Hell, one part Tom Smith.





Tuesday was my review of the man who should be running all of Star Wars: Timothy Zahn. So the post was called The Wrath of Zahn.  There's a bonus if you can ID what the blog post title references..



The music blog for Tuesday had a super villian in love, and muppets.



Could I make that up?



I have mentioned in a few other places my character Hashim Abasi. He shows up in A Pius Man, and he's a cop ... from Egypt.  The post is about writing with current events.



The music was an interesting counterpoint: with evil pizza, evil computers, and a body count.



And, for a bonus: my friend Jason discusses leaving Afghanistan.



My week ended with an Index: if you wanted my Lenten and Easter series, it's all here. Have fun. Or try to.



Then, we enter: The Eye of the Storm.



And, if you've been keeping track, my self defense columns from the week are

Evaluating a self defense class 

Defending against chokes from the front

And a review of a local, New York self defense school.

Snarky Theolgy 6: Easter: HE IS RISEN

Today's work of art is provided by the ever-charitable Matthew Funtime.  I don't know about you, but I find it funny as heck.  But then again, I am quite possibly a sick, sick man.



And it's Easter, so there.



When I first started this blog series, I promised you I would introduce you to the rabbit hole that is my faith, but I wouldn't shove anything down your throat as far as my belief in it.  This still holds. I'm going to do a little walkthrough on the story of Easter Sunday.  Pretty much it.



As mentioned in my surprisingly popular blog post on Lent, Easter is more of an estimated time, and it's conveniently located at the start of spring.  Or, if you live on the East coat of the United States, when spring is supposed to start.  It was put in near Passover, and there were a whole bunch of computations put into the matter that I don't pretend to understand. 



I want to say it was programmed up against a pagan Roman festival of Ester, though I think I may have had my wires crossed there, if only because the Catholic church did something similar with Christmas, put up against Saturnalia, a pagan feast that involved an orgy of food and drink and other things that happen at orgies -- it's still celebrated as the office Christmas party.



Anyway ....



So, when last we left our Deity, He was about six feet under.  More accurately, He had been put into a cave, a tomb on loan to him from Joseph of Aramathea -- a wealthy businessman, disciple of Jesus, and he was either unconcerned about sharing a crypt, or he figured he'd only be loaning it out.



Also, someone was intelligent.  When Jesus was put into the crypt, one of the Sanhedrin suggested that "Well, this Jesus guy hinted that if we put Him into the ground, He'd come back.  Might we suggest a few guards to make certain that none of the groupies steal the body?"



Since politics were, in large part, the reason for putting Him into the ground in the first place [see last week], this seems like a reasonable suggestion.  If Fred Phelps ever made a suggestion about coming back from the dead, when he died, I'd want an armed guard just to make sure he'd stay in the ground, one way or another.



Also, while Jesus was getting the heck beaten out of Him, His acquaintances, are, largely, nowhere to be seen.  The women in His life are the only ones who moved within swinging distance. His Number Two man has already sworn up down and sideways that "Nope, don't know Him, never saw Him, no idea what you're talking about, bye," thereby setting a standard that church bureaucrats never fail to live up to.



So, the moral of the story thus far is that you can be a good little boy all your life, and still get nailed to a set of 2x4s, while all of your friends pretend you never existed. 



Sounds like high school. 



So, this God is so wimpy, weak, and pathetic that He gets publicly humiliated, whipped, beaten, and publicly executed next to the Hekyll and Jekyll of death row, and His backup are rejects from the Keystone Kops.



Let's say that it's about thirty-six hours after the 2x4s when the story gets interesting.  Mainly because the Twelve apostles are (1) down to Eleven and (2) are busy hiding in their hotel room, hoping that they don't find themselves in a similar position to the guy they'd been hanging out with for the previous three years.



Maybe they didn't think the crypt had seating for twelve.



So, the Roman soldiers are on guard at the tomb, like most guards, are bored out of their mind.  They don't fall asleep, because Roman soldiers are, more or less, the equivalent of marines, only the penalties for slacking off on duty are tougher.  Much tougher. 



And then ... why did the earth just move, and why is the tomb now empty?



I don't need to be a mind reader, a psychic, or posess any measure of ESP to telling you exactly what went through the minds of those soldiers at that moment. 



"No es in profundus feces."



Or, in English: "Oh darn.  We're in trouble."



Hmm, now what?  These Romans, who have been shipped to the back end of the Empire, have no interest in taking any more abuse from the locals, and really didn't want to be parked in front of a grave all night long in the first place, probably pondered their options.  They could either (A)  go to their nearest Centurion (Sergeant), and get the heck kicked out of them, or, (B) "You know, those old Jewish guys wanted the dead guy watched.  Maybe they can come up with something."  The story goes that the Sanhedrin came up with something perfectly reasonable -- "Just say you fell asleep, the body was stolen, and here's monetary compensation.  Since, let's face it, if you say that the guy just vanished from the crypt, well, what's Latin for 'funny farm'?  Yes you'll get a beatdown, but this should make it worth your while."



A few hours later, after dawn, two of Jesus' closest female associates come up to the tomb and find it empty.



Their first thought: "They stole Jesus!  Those bastards!"



Soon after, Jesus pops up again.  "Yes, I was dead, but I'm feeling much better."



In theory, it could have been mass hysteria and people seeing things ... but no one ever hallucinates the same thing when there's mass hysteria.



Also, I'm trying to imagine those eleven boneheads called the apostles sitting in a room.  Their dead friend came in, walked through the wall, had an extended chat with them, and ... they never compared notes on what just happened?  Not impossible; the apostles were never a brain trust, but I think something like that would make most people take a step back, reevaluate their sanity, and compare notes....



And, of course, someone could have stolen the body ... why they would have stolen the body would make sense if I could believe any of the original bozos as having the potential to be Fred Phelps in progress.  After all, if Jesus didn't pop up of His own accord, it would have been obvious that, nope, no Messiah here.  They would KNOW that they were part of a fraud, risking their necks for a hoax. So, that would be sort of stupid.



The only reason I can come up with to disappear the body would be as part of as a massive power play ... Considering all of the candidates for such a conspiracy ended up being crucified, fed to the lions, and having been immortalized in the Bible as not being the brightest lights in the night sky, I'm thinking .... no.  After all, the apostle Peter turned out to be the leader of this ragtag bunch of fishermen and ex-thieves.  His nickname translated as "The Rock," or "Rocky," or, perhaps most accurately, "Rockhead."  He ended up being crucified himself.



Welcome to the moral of Easter: you have Heaven and Glory ... though you're still going to have to go through a Good Friday of your own, even if it's only death.



Narrative-wise, the Easter story makes sense.  The story is now back when the Bible begins.  As we see in Genesis, the point is ..... People Are Stupid ("I tell you don't eat the apples, was that so hard?").  And that the God of Abraham does not come in a show of force.  He comes in a gentle breeze.  He doesn't pick an empire and adopt it, but a bunch of nomads and farmers.  He picks a stuttering nervous wreck found floating on the Nile.  He picks the smallest and weakest boy of a family of brothers, from the smallest tribe.  You have the thing with the 2x4s, and the Twelve morons.  And there were more wars for survival fought over the years, it looks like everything AFTER the 2x4s meant a problem once every hundred years or so.



Welcome to the Catholic church.  Everywhere you don't want us to be....



What, you thought I was going to end on an uplifting, soulful note?  Sorry, wrong blog.



This concludes my Snarky Theology posts.  I hope you've enjoyed reading them.  I've enjoyed them so much ...



I hope to never do it again. Thank you.



Next week, I will not be doing a blog.  I will post a short story.  One for Sean A.P. Ryan.  Which means there will be blood.



A Pius Man, slipping theology and history in between the gunshots since ... well, whenever I get published.



See you next week.

Snarky Theology 5: The Passion, Jews, and Good Friday.

Yes, I know I considered doing a post on Atheists, but it didn't really fit into snarky theology.  More like snarky good behavior...



This Friday is Good Friday, so guess what I decided to do instead.



You got it, we're looking at the last 24 hours of the pre-Mortem life of Jesus of Nazareth...



Yes, pre-mortem, as opposed to the postmortem life.  Back when I started these Snarky Theology blogs, I told you I had lived in a strange sort of rabbit hole. 



This one is going to be blogged more or less by random trivia I've had kicking around in the back of my head for a while now, so forgive me if there are any minor mistakes.  I would hope no one would try to use me for a footnote on a historical paper.  And, once again, this is my attempt to translate, to the best of my ability, Catholic theology into plain English.  If I thought Catholic education was worth a darn as far as educating Catholics in their own religion, I probably wouldn't bother.  But I don't, so, here we are.



Now, as far as Good Friday is concerned, that particular story has gotten a bad rap in the last few years, thanks to one particular film.



Does anyone remember when the film  The Passion was released by oddball, drug addict, and possible nutcase Mel Gibson?  Before the movie even premiered, people kvetched.  They talked about “passion plays,” they discussed pogroms, they whipped out everything that tried to say that the film was anti-Semitic. There are even a few idiots out there who try to say that Christianity, by its very nature, is anti-Semitic.



I saw The Passion with my friend Jason Bieber, who is an observant Jew.  When he saw the film, his commentary focused more on the bad acting of all the Romans, and was full of trivia about everything that had ever happened to actor James Caviezel during the filming of the movie (arm dislocated, flayed, struck by lightning).



Now, Professor Jason Bieber, currently of Florida State University's London Study Center, gave his evaluation of the history of anti-Semitism, which I think could be summed up as "It's not Catholic doctrine; the Popes tried protect Jews against anti-Semitic mobs. But people are stupid."



Anyway, so, just to clear away a lot of the stupidity, what exactly happened on Good Friday?



Believe it or not, a lot is explained by The Passion … only if you read the scholarship around the events, and if you have a very, very good editor.  Start by cutting out the boring parts with Judas and the hermaphrodite devil, and you have a start ...



In the film, if you blink, you miss dialogue that explains a lot (darned foreign-language films). If you saw The Passion, you might have noticed that, after Jesus was brought in the temple, the temple guards were shoving out a whole bunch of people. These people were shouting “Why are you meeting in the dead of night? Why isn't the full council here!”



The word used, if you listen closely, is “cabal,” implying a small clique was involved.



Something the film didn't mention, and would make the first half-hour make more sense, is what happened earlier that week.  Even if you've never been ten feet near a bible, you might vaguely recall that there is a story about Jesus going into the temple of Jerusalem, kicking over some tables, and driving out merchants with a whip, because they're trying to make money off of the religious pilgrims passing through Jerusalem for Passover.



One of those people Jesus drove out was the son of the elders who turn Jesus over to the Roman authorities. Guess what, it's personal. Hence Mel Gibson's council of elders being of about six guys.



Another factor, also touched on in The Passion, but from the political side, was best looked at in, of all things, Jesus Christ, Superstar. The Romans had come eleven times into Israel in a period of ten years, in order to quell riots. And now, all of a sudden, they have this moron, a carpenter with his own little cult of followers, coming into the holy city to the sound of trumpets, his way lined by hordes of people...



From a government point of view, "This cannot end well. This is bad politics, and cannot be good for business."



Pontius Pilot, Roman Governor of the State of Israel, was also in the movie The Passion. Mel Gibson says he tried to design him as this gray little man, this average, ordinary schlub.  It sounds like he tried to design Pilate on Eichmann, who was also a gray little man ... Given how screwed up Mel was, is, and may always be, I wouldn't be 100% sure that it was his idea.  He was responsible for keeping the peace.  And eleven invasions in ten years is a fairly cruddy track record.



Anyway, only the Roman authority in Israel could authorize an execution.  Bringing Jesus to Pilot, and viewing it in context, the argument for putting down Jesus could be read as “this annoying carpenter is trying to stir up rebellion against Rome, put down the little prick so we can get on with business.”



From the side of Pilot, it has to look odd – this Jesus twit is Jewish, the Rabbis handing him over are Jewish, and it looks like Pilate's being dragged into the middle of a civil war within a religion.  In standard bureaucratic fashion, Pilot tries passing the buck, twice, once by kicking it up the chain of command, and again by offering up Barabbas, another troublemaker, as part of his annual clemency.



However, something that wasn't covered in The Passion, and maybe not in your bible, unless you have some kick ass footnotes: Barabbas was a “murderer” because he was a rebel against the Roman Empire. It became a matter of “So, you're threatening me with a riot? Fine, how about I make you choose between a certified political nuisance, or this moron you want me to put down?”



Barabbas was only a threat to Rome.  He wasn't a rebel against the elders, and he didn't attack one of their sons. 



Barabbas wins, fatality.



So, any time I hear someone, at some time, mention “the Jews killed Jesus,” I want to tell them “Jews didn't kill Jesus, politics did!”

Who killed Jesus?

Everybody.



Theologically (you know theology had to come in somewhere), Jesus died for the sins of all people.



Think about it from a religious point of view. Humans screw up, offend laws of man, nature, and God—which have been the same thing for most of human experience. The magnitude of the offense is dictated by the magnitude of the offended.....



Right now, you're wondering what I'm talking about, aren't you?



Example: If you take a shot at some random idiot on the street, you may get a few years for assault with a deadly weapon. If you shoot at the President of the United States, you will probably disappear into the darkest hole they can find for you.



In this case, the offended is God … yeah, what gift can a human provide that can atone for offending against an all-power, enternal Being?

Previous generations used scapegoats. Literal scapegoats. They would write down sins, strap it to the goat's neck, and send it out into the desert, carrying the sins with it.  However, the goat doesn't really measure up.  It is a finite sacrifice trying to pay down an Infinite debt.  Sort of like trying to pay just the interest on a loan without ever paying the primary.  So, the answer is ....



So, you sacrifice something on par with God … but there's only one thing on par with God, and that's ... God.



Enter Jesus, "Son of God."  No, he's not direct offspring, and we're not going into Zeus here. And I had considered doing a post on the trinity, but I ran out of Lent....  For simplicity's sake, imagine the Trinity, defined as "Son, Father, Holy Spirit," and then think of steam, liquid, and ice -- they're all water, aren't they?  Well, Father, Son and Spirit are all God.  Long story.  See the Trinity and Augustine if you're really interested.



That is why, in the Catholic creed, you get the line that Jesus “died for us men and for our salvation.” Not Christians, not Catholics, men, period … and before someone gets pissed-off, it's men as in mankind, and not the pro-wrestler.



And as far as the historical elements of Jesus, the whole thing is well documented.  There is actually more, and better historical documentation for the existence of Jesus of Nazareth, historical figure, than for the warrior Hannibal ...  of Carthage, not "The Cannibal".  (Hannibal is best known for trying to march on the Roman Empire with war elephants.)  All evidence of Hannibal's existence comes from sources a hundred years after the fact.  Jesus has the historians Josephus and Tacitus -- one is a Jewish Roman citizen, the other is a Roman soldier, so you don't get more neutral as far as outside observers go.  And both historians swrote their histories within a generation of Jesus' crucifixion  They noted that Jesus existed, and that there was a potential for an uprising, and that Jesus was put down.



Sad thing is, that's still more primary document evidence than Hannibal has.



Now, as I mentioned above, The Passion came out, so did claims of anti-Semitism.  The anti-Semitism in Christian groups comes from some very strange places, mostly through stupidity.  As Professor Bieber himself has noted to me, Popes tried to protect Jews from Catholics everytime the Catholic populace did something stupid.  Every hundred years or so, it looks like a Pope issues a new Papal message on Jews within Christian theology. 



The message can usually be summed up as

"Salvation comes from the Jews, for we are merely an extension of the covenant that God made with Abraham.  God made a covenant with the Jews, and God does not reneg on His deals.  In short: leave the Jews alone, you frigging morons!"

Yes, I always thought of any Pope who issued that particular statement did so while leaping up and down, screaming, and pulling his hair out.

Anyway, I'm going to conclude with three quotes.



Maimonides: “Jesus of Nazareth interpreted the Torah and its precepts in such a fashion as to lead to their total annulment. The sages, of blessed memory, having become aware of his plans before his reputation spread among our people, meted out fitting punishment to him.”  This actually makes me wonder what inter-office memos he recieved on the matter ....



"Spiritually, we are all Semites." Pius XI



Vox Day: “My philosophy is that if a guy comes back from the dead, no harm no foul applies.”