So Was Marx Right?

It is Holy Week.

A very traditional high holy time where we focus on one or two ideas which force us to equate Jesus with God and, perhaps, limit our understanding to a black and white reality.

To wit, Jesus died for our sins. Or. Jesus rose again to conquer death.

Somewhere along the way, we added layers of dimension which broaden the script somewhat: Death, Suffering, Rebirth. Although psycho-emotionally deeper they still maintain the black and white naivete of people who believe they are bad and believe some external force can save them.

It is this jarring juxtaposition to our understanding of mental and emotional health that really forces me to dig deep in order to do justice to the festival while failing to accept the premise.

Have any of you ever read the poem Bio: Black Baptist/Bastard by George Elliot Clarke?

It is from a book of poems exploring racial identity within Black Canadian - and specifically, Nova Scotian culture... But I am fascinated by the imagery of church that it evokes and essentially blames for the predicament of self-hatred... I present it here in its entirety for your perusal:

 History fell upon us like the lash.

(I am not rash.) Black Baptists wept out prayers—

Passion—to hector tar into nectar,

To harvest undeniable honey,

But our scorched eyes were stooped by white faces,

We sank, stupefied by white capital,

Eating grained self-hatred in our churches,

Gulping Welch's grape juice, bile, and venom,

While chalked Jesus carped at us like a cop,

His sneered face crapping, "God damn your black ass."

Slavery was dead, wasn't it? But blood

Crusted on our rusty-tasting sermons,

A taint of blood for saint-plush lips. We could

Not look at the Adantic and not cry,

"Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?" We knew

The terror of evacuated faith.

The stars had fallen cold where they were stalled—

For no one had believed—loved—for aeons.

The air swerves cold with such calamity.

I chronicle a cold, pockmarked epoch,

Map a county where trains gnaw their way home,

Blackened mummies pitch, gutted by gypsum,

Frail Baptists fall, their crotches worm-eaten,

Debris escalates when black ice sleets in.

I come from Windsor Plains, wine-stained poet,

Choosing not to imbibe William Williams'

Rain in the galvanized pail by the well.

Well, as a child, I spread blackstrap on bread

Between bitter dollops of the Bible.

I had to. I was guilty. I had spied

My sun-skinned mother's glaring skin. (I eyed,

Self-condemned, her shimmering, mixed-race breasts.)

Enough snow has fallen without license.

A Putsch arrests my heart. My life's naked.

Listen closely. I am trying to cry.

That's my condemned blood on the page.

Now - I do not mean to appropriate this poem - it is clearly about Black identity and the way self-hatred is ingrained... But what I do want to point out is that the poet himself feels the church, specifically his black Baptist church with a chalk white Jesus has been complicit in this understanding of self as less than.

Is it not at least worth a second of our consideration that this experience is also part of what has driven the masses from our halls? What if we viewed Easter through this lens?

It was Augustine, not Jesus, who claimed we were so evil that only the sacrifice of the blood of a God would save us. He made that up echoing Jewish traditions of sacrifice and scapegoat he probably never really understood in order to appease his own self-hatred for his lust, adultery, and an illegitimate child. (okay, I am being simplistic and harsh - but it is true)

Years later Marx would famously quip that the church was the opiate of the people - that we used it to feel better about our sorry state knowing we would be rewarded in heaven. What Marx also believed but we do not remember is that the church was complicit in the creation of the said sorry state. 

When we declare people sinful - and then offer a way of salvation - are we not just using the system to perpetuate elitism and classism? 

Perhaps. 

But these are the things we don't preach from the pulpit. These are the things that we don't ponder out loud.

It makes one wonder if we are not the enemy to all that Jesus was trying to accomplish. We are a part of the powers of imperialism - whether capitalistic or monarchist - that enslave the children of God through self-hatred.

Why are we not asking if this is not at least a part of why people are falling away - they no longer see "Good News" in what we say because they are capable of seeing the historic and cultural significance in a way they were not before the information age.

So - back to Holy Week. It is not death as atonement followed by universal salvation through defeat of death and rebirth - that is a cultural layer added by the imperialistic church.

For Jesus I think it was political rebellion followed by execution, leading to a new movement.

Jesus wanted us to stop being led by status, by riches, by grasping - and instead to be led by love and compassion. And he was willing to die for his beleif that if we accomplished this, it would be heaven on earth.

I think if presented this way - more people could get behind Easter.