The Birth, Life and Death of Jesus –His Challenge to Patriarchy

Teresa Barro

 

The patriarchal system has been presented by the Christian Churches as God`s express wish and subsequent imposition. The life and sayings of Jesus Christ have been interpreted in accordance with a patriarchal ideology. Yet, the life of Jesus and everything he seems to have said or done can be interpreted as a continuous fight, from beginning to end, against patriarchy, and as a demonstration of how to dispense with it in the interest of developing human potential.

The Christian churches could - or should - have endeavoured to imitate as much as possible the way in which Jesus lived. If they did not consider him a worthwhile model to follow, what was the point of their existence? However, these churches, over time, became increasingly linked to the patriarchal system that dominates human society. The churches promoted patriarchy and ascribed a divine origin for it. The patriarchal system in turn, instrumentalized the Christian churches in order to impose its values and become a template for societal norms. Jesus´s life did not fit into the patriarchal system and that is why the interpretations offered by the churches to explain it are so full of absurdities and resistant to intelligent analysis. They have to be accepted based only on ¨faith¨ and on the word of the ecclesiastical authorities. The Roman Catholic church´s interpretations are particularly perverse in that they still persist in presenting Jesus as someone who came to this world to suffer and to be killed for us. By emphasizing his death, they have obscured his life to the point that none of the main lessons that could be learned from it can be followed or even understood.

 

One wonders why Jesus did not write some of his teachings for posterity. After all, he was, by all accounts, a learned man who must have been aware of the ease with which oral tradition becomes distorted, especially when its transmission is effected in an evangelical and proselytizing spirit, to attract as many followers as possible. Some distortion is bound to occurr in such circumstances, even more so if the story is written after the event, as in this case, when the narrators may not be fully aware of the way in which the words said or the facts related might fit a contemporary context, or when they may be far too preoccupied with the effects of those words and teachings on a changed society to care too much about accuracy. A society changed not only by the passage of time but also, to a considerable extent, by those same teachings and by the events surrounding the figure of Jesus. In any case, he seems to have often complained of not being understood, not even by his closer friends and disciples, so, did he expect to be better understood by those who undertook to write his story? Would it not have made more sense, given the potential for future misunderstandings, to ask someone from his entourage to keep a written record, if he himself did not want to write, or perhaps to dictate some of his basic teachings?

 

Yet, he did not do it. Could it be then that the essence of his message did not lend itself to description in words? Perhaps the important thing was his approach to life, rather than the actual life he lived, in many ways necessarily marked by the circunstances surrounding any moment in time. Could it be that his most important message was embedded in the general principles of his style of living? Perhaps his life was meant to be read in search of insights and revelations on human nature that could not be given form in a non-poetical way. At that stage of history, he may have wished, above all else, to contribute to human evolution by planting the seeds of a higher spirituality, to raise the level of human existence.

 

Jesus´s life was undoubtedly a puzzle to his contemporaries and remains enigmatic today, despite the many efforts made during the course of history to offer explanations for what he did and what he said. The enigma does not arise from the actual life he led, simple enough on the whole. It arises from what we could call his drive, his intention and his style. His life was neither ruled by action nor dedicated to contemplation. He does not fit our image either of the ascetic nor of the mystic. Neither an extrovert nor an introvert, if at times his way of thinking seems more ¨Eastern¨, at other times he is very much a prototype of a man of the Western world, showing originality and individualism. He was not like any priest of any religion, nor was he like a monk or a guru. He differs from any known model of spirituality. Yet, there are striking similarities between his life and that of some of the great artists and creators. And this fact might point to a most important message as to the essence of humanity: the desire and capacity to create.

Quite a few amongst those believing Jesus to be the son of God thought that he was meant to be the new Adam, a ¨man¨ such as all women and men would have been, had the initial blueprint for humanity been realized. The belief in Mary´s sinlessness that some Christians have, that is, her being born free from original sin, would lend weight to that idea. Thus Jesus, although he was a man, would be untainted by the ¨original sin¨ and his nature would be that of the original ¨human¨, before the Fall and the expulsion from Paradise.

Cristians believe that Jesus was the son of God, who chose to become human by being born of a woman. They also believe that the woman chosen to bear that child was a virgin. Many believe that she continued to be a virgin all her life because she had chosen virginity as a way of being, in the manner of the mythical virgin-goddesses. The many attempts within the Christian churches to deprive her of her virginity after the birth of Jesus prove how deeply the idea of everlasting virginity in a woman goes against the very grain of patriarchal society and causes scandal among those who believe that women were made for men.

Mary´s virginity was seen through the lens of a mentality in which women embodied the temptation of the flesh. A direct consequence of that mentality was that, far from being a model for women, Mary was perceived as one more figure of rebuke to ordinary women and as one more sign of contempt for their condition. Mary the Virgin was presented as a ¨pure¨ and decent woman, in contrast to the impure ones, of whom God, naturally, would not want his son to be born. What the Christian churches ended up achieving with this perverse interpretation was not only to detract from virginity its real meaning, but also to demean it, contrary to all appearances. Behind the show of appreciation of Mary´s virginity lies an impudent distortion of the reading of the text.

The image of Mary as virgin and mother fits beautifully into the mythical wisdom of all ages. Nowadays we have a negative image of what virginity is and represents. We think more in terms of what it lacks than of what it offers. In a society which pushes women towards the only ¨respectable¨ career open to them, wifehood or its more modern equivalents and motherhood, virginity and celibacy is seen, in women, as either a period of temporary restraint while waiting for the future bliss of marriage, or as the undesirable state to be suffered by women not attractive enough to get a man. A woman only becomes whole when she is ¨taken¨ by a man. In the best of cases, virginity is a ¨sacrifice¨ on a par with religious vows of poverty or obedience. In any case, in our minds virginity is associated with passivity. Yet virginity, as it appears in most mythologies and, most clearly, in the Greek and Roman religion, is an active condition, passionately loved by those goddesses who chose it because it allowed them to be gloriously feminine and independent, without having to waste time and energy in tasks which do not hold any interest for them. These virgin goddesses led the richest lives of all, respected and admired by everybody for their rectitude and moral standing. There can be no doubt that amongst the Greek and Roman gods and goddesses, it is two virgins, Athene and Artemis, who have the edge over all the others. Pallas Athene, the Goddess of Wisdom and War, represents femininity as Teacher and as Fighter for Justice (not exactly the values usually associated to womanhood), whereas Artemis, the fiercely independent huntress, is the tomboyish Virgin-Mother, the Moon governing all growing things, as well as Imagination and Mystery. Both goddesses stand for spiritual motherhood. When Artemis, as a child, asks from her father Zeus to be given ¨virginity for ever¨, she is asking to be given such powers over human and divine affairs as none of the non-virgin gods or goddesses will ever wield. These radiant feminine figures stand above the conmonplace occurrences which the other gods and goddesses get embroiled in from time to time and are also less prone to make mistakes, thus gaining, through their integrity, fortitude and wisdom, a status that the others only sporadically attain.

The figure of Mary matches perfectly this tradition of powerful femininity, but it was relentlessly diluted to make it fit the kind of patriarchal society where there can be no room for that kind of virgin and that kind of mother. This was easily done by emphasizing Mary´s situation as a housewife and mother and conveniently forgetting that, although she was both, she was still a Virgin like her mythical counterparts; consequently, it would be perfectly logical to imagine that she assumed those roles in a different way from the norm. But the temptation to turn her into an ordinary woman comfortably inserted in the patriarchal mould proved too strong to be resisted.

What should naturally follow from the belief in a sinless Mary and in a virgin Mary is, first of all, that God chose his son to be born from a woman, not from a male. Males as procreators are left out of this story. Secondly, assuming that Jesus was born from a woman untouched by the original sin, that is, a woman like the one created initially by God before the Fall, it follows that for such a woman any feeling of submissiveness towards men must have been incomprehensible. This places Mary outside the realm of domination and submission prophesied by God when Adam and Eve were ejected from the Garden of Eden. Which means that Jesus, although born in a patriarchal society dominated by males, was born to a non-patriarchal family, a family which, under the guise of functioning like any Jewish family of that time, was radically different from all the others.

Jesus´s family must have been as families were meant to be at the beginning of Creation. It makes perfect sense if he was to be the new Adam. He had a mother who could not know what dependance on a male means and who had neither the inclination nor the desire for married life and the begetting of children. And it was precisely because of this that Jesus was able to have a real mother and also, probably, a very good father in the figure of Joseph, despite the fact that Joseph´s fatherhood was only spiritual and not physical.

The absence of original sin in Mary and her virginity were required so that the son of God could have a truly human mother and not the kind of bogus mother created by the patriarchal society, where she is made into an unimportant part which interlocks with the cogs of such a society. If Jesus was to be born and raised in the bosom of a true family, this was the only way out of the pseudo family of patriarchy, where the family is an end in itself and where children are born as possessions of their parents. When Jesus reminds his mother that he has more important tasks to do than to stay near her, it is not meant as a marking of distance between the all-important male affairs and those of women, but as a rebuttal of the kind of family which uses its children for its own ends. Filial obedience and ordinary ¨respect¨ are absent in Jesus´s relationship with his mother. This fact was often pointed out, but without seeking to offer an interpretation for such shocking behaviour by normal standards, preferring to see in it a veiled contempt for the ¨silliness¨ of all women.

That Mary and Joseph were tempted from time to time to behave as ordinary parents was to be expected, seeing that society did not offer any other model or standard. Jesus sharply reminds them, whenever that happens, that it is parents who should be geared to the needs of their children, and not the opposite. Undoubtedly, there is no correspondence whatsoever between the detached and independent attitude of Jesus towards his parents and our idea of what constitutes the exemplary Christian family, based on the submission of the wife and children to the father. Jesus´s family life as a son points towards an entirely different direction, but the implicit lessons in this matter were never accepted.

 

The birth of Jesus in a manger was repeatedly presented by the Christian Churches as a very important demonstration of his will to be born ¨humble¨ and poor, as one of the dispossessed of the earth. Although most scholars would today reject this idea, mainly on historical grounds, this belief holds fast and is extraordinarily popular, especially among Roman Catholics.

All the information at our disposal seems to point to the family into which Jesus was born as having a good social standing and being neither rich nor poor - middle class, we would probably call it today. He and his disciples and friends, none of whom appear to have been either servants or common labourers, were in all probability men and women of substance. That some of the recruits for the task he had in mind, Simon and Andrew first, and then the sons of Zebedee, were ¨fishermen¨, does not mean that they were salaried workers paid by the owners of the boats, which is the image conjured up nowadays. They were probably both workers and owners. Neither Jesus nor his friends were low-born nor ¨poor¨, unless we wish to qualify as such anyone who works at all, because what seems to be true is that all of them worked and made a living from it for most of their lives. Jesus did not choose to be a wealthy man with no need to work, nor did he choose to be a pauper. He chose a life of work as opposed to a life of leisure because work is necessary for all creation.

In the way Jesus was born there is much to learn, but the lesson is not one of poverty. Had it not been for the journey which Mary and Joseph were forced to undertake to register under the Roman census, Jesus´s birth would have been greeted with the usual celebrations accorded to a male child in a strongly patriarchal society. Jesus chose, instead, to be born very much like a refugee or an exile, in the most precarious conditions and surrounded only, according to tradition, by people of simple heart or, like the Three Magicians, of great wisdom. Once again he found a way out of the patriarchal society into which he came into existence.

Very soon after his birth we find again the same message of detachment and separation, this time with much learning attached to it. Jesus, having been born outside his own place, has to spend most of his childhood and perhaps adolescence in a foreign country. Once more he is living in precarious conditions, without the support of a well-known family name. Once more he is a refugee, an exile, a foreigner, someone who does not belong. A stranger who has to learn to live amongst people of a different race and with a different language and religion. Having to start from scratch, which means a life fraught with inmense difficulties and great discomfort, but also a life providing many opportunities for learning, especially about differences and about not taking things for granted.

 

According to tradition, Jesus and Joseph were carpenters, a profession we automatically associate these days with the working class. But surely what they must have been was furniture makers, artists, master craftmen, who were capable of making a good living from it anywhere. There is no doubt that the social and economical status of any work or profession changes from year to year and from country to country. We would be blind to historical realities if we assumed that being a carpenter in Jesus´s time and society was comparable to its connotations in our time. But, again, the automatic mental association in modern society of that kind of work with humble origins and ¨poverty¨ proved too useful to be rejected by his Church. Jesus could undoubtedly have chosen to make a living from intellectual work and from his outstanding wisdom, or he could just as easily have set up as a widely sought out teacher, healer or guru and made a very good living that way. Maybe he just did not want to live ¨from the altar¨ and maybe he wanted to teach the virtue of work and, very especially, of manual craftmanship.

The false idea of poverty surrounding Jesus is unfortunate in that it deprives his figure of some of its most interesting messages, such as the value of freedom and self-sufficiency, or the practice of good administration and honest and simple living. All the evidence points to the religious leaders of that society as having been rather remote and distant. In all probability, learned young men were not supposed to toil in such a way as Jesus seems to have done. Even the Gospel writers were, it seems, aware to some extent of the fact that Jesus´s occupation did not match too well the expectations of many of those who would be prepared to follow a king, or a chief, or a famous rabbi. But, the son of the carpenter? What kind of leader can that be?

That such a leader was someone who worked for his living, although he was not a ¨worker¨ in the modern sense of the word, was probably considered then, as now, a rather shocking fact. Certainly his church did not seek to imitate him in that, least of all the Roman Catholic authorities. Many of his followers would have very much preferred that he led a life of higher standing, either more splendid or at least more distant, away from common people. They would have liked to see him surrounded, if not by pomp, at least by the usual conventions and ¨respect¨ accorded to priestly figures. In all probability on more than one occasion he must have come across ¨sensible¨ advice and warnings to be more careful with regard to appearances, to the effect that it is easier to attract followers when one has the attire and wordliness appropriate to the rich and powerful. Posterity would also have been happier to be able to cast him among the elite. As that was not possible, making him into a humble man had its uses. It was very useful to hold him up as a model of saintly poverty, so that those in want could have a powerful reason to resign themselves to being poor for ever.

Most surprising in the teachings of Jesus is the clear precedence he gives to the development or use of passion in humankind, as opposed to banality or indifference. So unexpected is this side of his teaching, so ill-fitting with the image of Christianity as a religions of martyrs and masochists, that it was and is largely ignored. Yet, this is probably one of Jesus´s most essential messages to humanity. Passion introduces the true fighting spirit in man and woman and it also activates tragedy. Jesus clearly endorsed tragedy as a more human manifestation and a better way of life than comedy or farce. He proclaimed this endorsement in words and in deeds.

Surely the unequivocal preference for passion that we find in Jesus´s words must follow from his knowledge of it as an essential requirement in human beings, if they are to develop properly and become creators. He urges his disciples and followers to be passionate, knowing very well that few things can be more irritating to those who are half-hearted about everything than to have people who choose to use their hearts and minds to the full.

Why this insistence in the use of passion? Perhaps because it is closely linked to the capacity to create, so much so that without it creation is not possible. Passion can err, of course, but it can also help to hit the truth in a way that nothing else can.

Several other virtues are closely connected to the capacity and willingness to feel and use passion in order to create, such as the ever-present wish to learn, a longing for perfection added to that which in a minor key is called dedication and in a major key becomes consecration to the elected task. Together these virtues allow for the achievement of mastery.

Passion is also linked to a kind of obedience that, paradoxically, has nothing to do with the traditional understanding of obedience as compliance and passive submission or yielding to the authority of men and their institutions. Jesus was in many ways disobedient, insubordinate and wayward. His was a disobedience taken to the bitter end, and he had to pay for it with humiliation and death. As part of his ¨live¨ teaching he publicly contravened some of the laws of his religion, so as to show their hollowness. He refused to submit to the religious authorities and he passionately fought against the submission of his faith to the letter and not the spirit. Judged by the laws of the patriarchal society, Jesus was a stubborn dissenter, possibly a heretic and, in any case, an agent provocateur, awkward and daring. Were he to repeat his performance in our times, the result of his words and actions would be in all probability startingly similar to what happened two thousand years ago. He would be as unwelcome today in any country as he was in the country where he was born. He would be treated in very much the same way, people would grumble darkly and mutter about him, this would be followed by slander and he would be condemned by the religious authorities to suffer humiliation, torture and death - although his execution would be entrusted to one of the organizations specialized in killing and getting rid of people. They would be so alarmed by him that at first they would try to quieten him with pledges and promises, then by the offering of money and a good social position and, having failed to win his acquiescence, they would engineer his disappearance or extinction, in order to secure the well-being of the faithful.

The Christian churches chose, on the whole, to follow diplomacy and subservience instead of letting themselves be guided, like their leader, by passion for the truth and by obedience to the laws of justice. Whenever they decided to be uncompromising and radical, theirs were the extremes of severity, harshness and fanaticism and not those born of passion.

Passion, as exemplified in Jesus´s life and explicitly taught by him, has nothing in common with the religious zeal of those who seek to impose their ideas and beliefs by force or coercion. Those Christian churches so intent on instiling the virtue of obedience in their faithful, were the first to disobey Jesus, who was never a fanatic and even less a bigoted crusader in the name of God. His teaching shows plainly that it is of the utmost importance to love and follow the truth, but it also shows that not even the truth should be forced upon others. Truth can only flourish and be productive on a basis of freedom and not of bondage and authoritarianism. Whoever wishes to see the truth will have to seek it above all within himself or herself. Whoever desires to follow the truth will have to be ready to sacrifice all the material and psychological comforts that can bring blindness to reality. Such is the message given by Jesus to the young man who asks him what he must do in order to reach perfection and then goes away after listening to Jesus´s words of advice. He was a little dismayed at the idea of having to leave everything behind to follow the truth. The young man would have liked to reach the truth, but within the limits imposed by a life of comfort.

If, according to Jesus, it is almost impossible to be very rich and to attain perfection, this is because money is power, and power not only tends to corrupt but blinds one to the truth. Jesus shows contempt for pretence and pageantry, for the false image which offers lies and not truths, for a system of values based on outward appearances. But his lesson in indifference and contempt does not refer to bodily or physical things, as was often said. He did not bow before the luxury and opulence bought with money and social standing because he saw those riches as meagre and meaningless compared to the riches and well-being brought by the power of spirit in humanity. But he never talks about hunting the rich, or persecuting immorality or arming his followers to rise against those who persecute him. Although there is often irony in his words, he is never aggresive against those who think differently from him nor does he teach his disciples to be belligerent while spreading his words. The way to disseminate truth is, clearly, to teach those who want to be taught. Embarking on crusades in the name of truth was out of the question.

In the life and teachings of Jesus there is a definite commitment to the safeguarding of human freedom and therefore a firm refusal to act forcibly and to use any other authority than that inherent to the good teacher sought by many. Jesus neither seeks to impose his ideas on others nor does he allow others to impose on him, although it would have been easy to find a good pretext to do both. The very essence of his message is that one should never compromise the truth and tolerate lies in oneself; in other words, that ultimately one should be prepared to die rather than betray oneself and the truth. No wonder such radical tidings were persistently twisted and ignored. Who would want a world full of independent women and men capable of pursuing probity to the end? The very few who could have loved such an idea were opposed by the very many for whom such a standard would have dealt a catastrophic blow to their careers. So, the motive for Jesus´s death was obscured and his followers were fed fanciful versions of the events instead.

Human malice works by way of inverting values and judgments. It shows support for what deserves contempt and mocks that which merits respect. Jesus scorns malevolence, although, were he the meek person he was made out to be, he would love malicious people. He was willing to teach whoever wanted to listen, but he was not prepared to waste time confronting malicious vulgarity. And he advised his disciples to do likewise when he told them not to cast pearls to swine, because not only would they not be appreciated but they would risk harm and destruction. The swine does not include the person who does not know better but acts in good faith. That person would perhaps be unable to duly appreciate the pearls in their value, but he or she would not want to harm them. The swine are the malicious people, those with meanness in their heart, envious of others, who prefer the second-rate and despise quality.

Jesus was a fighter. He was a man of considerable mettle. His message was not bland but spirited. His figure became associated with meekness and resignations mainly because of the incoherent way in which his own Church -- especially the Roman Catholic church, always interested in superimposing submission onto gentleness — transmitted this image. But also because of the automatic link in our minds between the fighting spirit in humans and war and the conquest of territories. The showy plumage of the military warrior is what our common interpretation of history has taught us to associate with real fighting. There are no epic songs for the poet nor for the spiritual leader, yet they are the ones who unfold the path to maturation and progress.

 

When Jesus made his famous remark on the desirability of learning to love our enemies because just loving our friends has no great merit, he was offering advice on how to enlarge the heart so that it does not become dry and unfriendly. If such a recommendation causes uproar and is thought of as outrageously impossible, this is because we tend to understand love as a capricious emotion and not as the end result of sustained high quality in the realm of feeling.

A general fostering of the virtue of generosity is needed if the principle of creativity is to be enhanced in humanity. The wider generosity which results in social justice has to emanate from individual hearts if it is to exist not just on the surface but at the deepest level of society. It would appear that with those words, Jesus wished to underline the importance of keeping our feelings in continuous good health and of aiming for the excellence of the heart, so that it remains open and does not narrow as soon as it is confronted with strain. What happens in the intimacy of the heart reverberates and has a profound effect on each own´s life and the lives of others, yet so accustomed are we to disassociating feelings from behaviour, that to discern the intrinsic relationship between them does not come easily.

There is nowadays a reluctance to concede the existence of Good and Evil in the abstract. In practice, though, there is still a strong tendency to cast some people as good and others as evil. It is deeply ingrained in our minds that some are born good and others not so good and that each of these groups will remain ¨what they are¨ till death comes. Human society still does not find it easy to believe that change can occur, least of all of a radical nature, either in ourselves or in others, for better or for worse. We find it hard to believe in regeneration or in degradation. This might be a result of ideas promoted in the name of religion or it might be due to a subterranean belief in the reincarnation of the souls according to the law of karma. Whatever the underlying reason may be, such a dogmatic division exists in the practice of human society, even if in theory some may not condone it.

It needs to be acknowledged that, as soon as covetousness, spite, venom or ill will invade the heart of a ¨good person¨ and form their nest in it, those feelings will act as a cancerous growth and eat any goodness which could have been there before. More so if they are left to spread without opposing resistance. Such a person will wish for destruction and will become treacherous and duplicitous. Good people cannot expect to remain good if in the recesses of their hearts they start to think and feel as evil people do. On the contrary, they will be even worse than those cast as evil, because their malevolence will be attended by the pride and hypocrisy of the people who consider themselves as belonging to a superior caste, of such a congenital good quality that evil cannot touch them.

Contrary to common opinion, the wisdom of turning the other cheek did not originate with Christianity. The Chistian churches used it to instil docility in their faithful and seldom tried to find an explanation that made sense and did not confuse the feelings. Jesus merely chose to abide by a long-standing spiritual tradition which recommends that vengeance be left to the gods. Even thinking in terms of success, the gods will be more adept at vengeance than us. There are several commonsensical reasons for not seeking retaliation. One is that rage and pique do not make for fairness in judgement. There is also an underlying justice in human affairs, in that the harm done by an enemy is often balanced by the kindness of a friend.

To supplement this rather pragmatic reasoning, Christians are meant to add their belief in human dignity and in the respect due to any human being even if he or she is an enemy or if her or his actions are or appear to be wrong. There are at least two reasons to adopt this attitude instead of seeking to apply the law of retaliation. Both are emphasized in the teaching of Jesus. One is that only God can read a person´s heart and reach a fair judgement. Another is that, up to the last moment in life, anybody can change for better or worse: a good person can become evil and an evil person can become a saint. Christianity is very much about degradation and regeneration in this life. This radical rejection of the caste system wan never really accepted, not even by the followers of Jesus, who on the whole very much preferred the law of brutal retribution to the law of mercy. In the name of justice, mercy was often ignored, without taking into consideration that mercy and justice must go together and that one cannot exist without the other. Which is why the fight for truth, goodness and rectitude should never be pursued through the crudity of war, but through the refinement of feeling. To think that one can do evil in the name of good, even if the evil is meant to be only temporary, should be considered most un-Cristian.

Whereas it has been possible to establish contact with beauty and truth mainly through Art and Science, goodness was left uncultivated, inordinately attached to the emotions and almost completely detached from the intellect. Goodness in people, when it exists, tends to lack the quality of excellence. Yet, a mediocre heart is very much like a mediocre mind in that what it produces is of little value. Jesus offers enlightment on the workings of the heart when he explicitly recommends his disciples to be as shrewd and sagacious and, above all, as enthusiastic and committed as wicked people are. He complains about the common lack of dedication to goodness which results in making it appear rather uninspiring and insignificant and which does not allow it to be creative. The talent for evil in people rarely finds its counterpart in a similar talent for goodness. Whereas evil is passionately pursued, goodness is very seldom desired with passion. Thus, goodness does not reach the same strength for creation as evil has for destruction, and so the latter usually wins. Once again, Jesus repels tenuous and lukewarm feelings and urges passion. Had he wished for meekness and slavery in humans, he would not have advocated the use of intelligence in order to reach mastery in the realm of feelings.

The ideal, according to Jesus, is to become as wise as the serpent (the serpent being symbolic of knowledge attained through study and training) while keeping the simple and unaffected heart of the dove. Without the artlessnes and lack of pretence of the dove, the sagacity of the serpent will become venomous, whereas without the knowledge of the serpent, the dove will end up inept and incompetent. This principle of applying the heart and mind is one that, according to Jesus, humans are meant to apply to all spheres of life.

 

Jesus was neither a misogyinist nor a sexist, but he was made to appear so by those who were both. No scholar would now deny that the role of women during the life of Jesus and at the beginning of Christianity was a very unusual one. There seems to be general agreement on the fact that those women involved in teaching were on the same footing as the men. But this radical change in human affairs was not allowed to survive for long and, after two thousand years of Christianity, we are very much where we were before the coming of Christ.

The main argument against the ordination of women as priests is based on the personal nature of Jesus himself and on what he did in life. Jesus was male. This is a fact. A god who wanted to become human had to incarnate either as male or as female. But, for the task he seems to have had in mind, which involved the teaching and spreading of the truth in difficult and dangerous conditions, being a woman would have made it impossible. As a man, Jesus was not given much time in which to accomplish what he wanted to do. His teaching was very soon brought to an end. As a woman, it could not even have started.

To this excellent reason, which cannot be refuted on historical grounds, it could be added that, if God knew the fate which awaited him as a human being, he could not have wished for a woman to be exposed to the most humiliating aspects of such torture as was inflicted. Physical torture in infinitely more humiliating for a woman than for a man; also, it usually includes rape.

The Roman Catholic church maintains that priests should practice celibacy because Jesus himself was celibate. The true reason for such a practice was not, of course, a passionate desire to imitate him in everything, but the wish to set up a superior caste of men who would not belittle themselves by consorting with women, accompanied by the fear that women might even manage to change things for the better.

It is not possible to know whether Jesus meant to practice celibacy for ever. He was young when he was killed and there is no reason to assume that he would not have married in time. Those who believe in his second coming should perhaps be prepared to admit the possibility of his being married then. The Revelation of John, otherwise known as the Apocalypsis, describes the wedding of the Lamb. As usual, the Roman Catholic church hastened to suggest herself as the bride, but such an interpretation is too absurd to be taken seriously. Is the idea of a married Jesus really so unseemly? Only in that it would undermine many of the lessons expounded by his Church.

The principal argument of the Christian churches against the ordination of women as priests and consequently as Bishops, or as Popes in the Roman Catholic church, is based on the fact that the twelve Apostles were men. But the Apostles were not meant to be ordinary priests. They were chosen from amongst all the the other disciples to be what we would today call missionaries, that is, men who undertook the dangerous task of spreading the teachings of Jesus in alien territories and unknown countries. Clearly, it would have been impossible for women at that time to undertake such a mission. Not only would they not have been allowed to, but also, the danger of sexual assault and rape would always have been present and Jesus could not have tolerated that. Instead of the usual interpretation which presents him as not wanting women in the teaching and administering of his church, the facts should be read the other way round: that, as much as he would have liked to send women as organizers of his Church to faraway places, he could not do so because it was not possible in a strongly patriarchal society. In any case, at a time when there are already as many women missionaries as men, if not more, the argument based on the maleness of the first missionaries of the Church is anachronistic.

 

Near the cross where Jesus hung stood his mother, with her sister, Mary wife of Clophas, and Mary of Magdala. Jesus saw his mother, with the disciple whom he loved standing beside her. He said to her, ¨Mother, there is your son¨; and to the disciple, ¨there is your mother¨; and from that moment, the disciple took her into his home. (John, 19, 25-27)

Jesus´s relationship with his mother may have been rather detached by patriarchal standards of filial piety, but still it is highly implausible that he would have chosen the very last moments of his life, just before expiring on the cross, to make provision for her. Yet, this condescending and ludicrous rendering of the story was the one offered by the Church. Once more, the role of Mary was manipulated and obscured to make her appear as a poor and humble woman in need of male protection to survive. There is no reason to suppose that Mary was homeless or suffering from economic hardship. Surely, seeing that other women were present, some of whom were from her own family, Jesus would have asked them to take care of Mary, if that was what he had in mind?

It is inconceivable that the son of God devoted his last words to making domestic arrangements for his mother, especially so because death did not exactly take him by surprise. He had come to the world with a mission and, as was to be expected, this is what his final words refer to. Those words were a last confirmation of his will to leave Mary –who had accompanied him quite often as one of his teachers—as leader and Mother of the newly founded Church. Mother and son --this particular ¨son¨ being symbolic of all followers of Christ—were reminded that they should work together in the organizing of his Church. Had a man been named instead of a woman, it would have been presented as irrefutable proof of the will of God to have him as leader of that Church.

What was born as a matriarchy -- always keeping in mind that Mary was not the usual ¨mother¨ of patriarchy—was short lived. The teachings of Paul, more in agreement with the patriarchal mentality, increasingly acquired ascendancy over the instructions left by Jesus. The idea of motherhood was somehow retained, but with the Church itself as the mother and, in the case of the Roman Catholic church, with a father in perfect accord with the standards of patriarchy.

 

May 2011