Jesus Christ, Our Great Spell-breaker

The world hates clowns. Jesters, comedians, fools. Just look at what the world says about Jesus.

“His mother was a menstruating woman and a hairdresser who committed adultery with a Roman soldier named Panthera.”

“Jesus was a magician who learned his tricks in Egypt and used them to deceive his followers and lead them astray. When he was called out on his trickery, he set up a brick and worshipped it.”

“Jesus didn’t die on the cross; he tricked Simon of Cyrene into carrying it for him. It was Simon who died, not Jesus.”

“Jesus was a grandiose, narcissistic masochist who resented his mother for raising him fatherless. Mary knew the truth of her adultery, which is why she said nothing when Jesus handed her over to John from the cross, as if to say, ‘You gave me a fake father; here is your fake son.’”

I don’t know about you, but I’m sure he deserved it.

I mean, think about it.

What kind of a fool goes around challenging the prestige and authority of the scholars and lawyers to tell people how far apart they should sit and when they can eat?

What kind of a fool insists that restrictions on workdays were intended to help workers, not become rules for making them destroy their own businesses?

What kind of fool insists on healing a woman who has been bleeding for years rather than refusing to touch her and declaring her unclean?

What kind of a fool refuses to get caught by gotcha questions posed to him by teachers relying on their own authority to set rules for other people rather than the texts they claim to teach?

What kind of a fool insists that all human beings are neighbors to each other, not just those with elite status thanks to their training and/or birth?

What kind of a fool stands up against the justice of the mob in favor of a woman who has been caught in her own sin? 

What kind of a fool claims to have been sent to save his own people, only to be persuaded to throw crumbs of wisdom to the dogs? 

What kind of fool expects his own family and neighbors to recognize the truth when they hear it, rather than declaring him mad and running him out of town?

Clearly, a fool who expects to get himself crucified.

Christians in the modern West are used to having Christ mocked as a fool. The mockery is relentless. 

In academia, if you profess faith in Jesus as in truth the Son of the Most High, not just a deluded nut job who taught a few nice things, you are considered at best a second-class intellect, at worst an anti-Semite. (Do you not believe me? Try explaining why there is no such thing as “Judeo-Christianity,” unless, that is, you accept that Jesus is the Christ prophesied in the Old Testament and that those who do not see him as the Christ are wrong.)

In public life, it is forbidden to claim that Christianity is universally true, never mind compassionate, even as you are shamed for not being willing to play the role of the Good Samaritan (a.k.a. “care”).

Hollywood is more or less Satanically incapable of portraying Jesus as anything other than a figure of fun (see above, “Buddy Christ”), unless by some miracle, Mel Gibson is directing the movie. (Franco Zeffirelli also did a good job, but that was for television back in the day.)

We are allowed to laugh at Jesus, but not to praise Him. Just look at the way Charlie Hebdo portrays Him—and his Mother.

You know what got Jesus upset? People making money off of charging the poor for the privilege of praying to God. In a word: usury.

Jesus upset the bankers—literally. He overturned their “banks.”

Jesus also upset the academics, a.k.a. the scholars and teachers of his day (Hebrew: rabbis), by showing them up as authorities on the tradition they were supposed to teach when he was just some rube from the countryside (a.k.a. “of Nazareth”).

Jesus particularly upset those who believed they were worthy of honor because they lived by certain rules. He excoriated them as hypocrites and liars for thinking that God cared more about their public displays of piety (a.k.a. “virtue signaling”) than about their ability to recognize themselves as sinners.

No wonder they wanted him dead.

And then, to make things even worse, he turned around and forgave them.

I gave my Telegram chat a sermon the other day, after yet another deluge of comments about who’s to blame for the current degradation of our culture (a.k.a. Christendom).

It was in all caps because I was yelling. I started with an introduction because there are members of my chat who seem not to know who I am. 

Good morning! Welcome to my Telegram channel. My chat is the Dragon Common Room. I am Rachel Fulton Brown, a professor of medieval history at the University of Chicago. I am 55 years old. I am a Christian. And if you are a purveyor of lies, I am your worst nightmare.

Last night in my chat, there was a discussion of the Jewish question that made some members of my chat uncomfortable. This is to be expected: there is no question that is harder to talk about in modern Western culture. The question is so taboo that even to raise it in most contexts is to risk your reputation, your career, and even your ability to speak.

As a Christian and a historian of Christianity, I am committed to the search for truth. I have spent the past thirty-five years studying the interpretation of the scriptures and the development of devotion to Christ and his Mother. What I have learned is this: Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life, just as it says in the Gospels, and no one can be saved except through Him, including the Jews.

Since the Enlightenment, Christians have become more and more unwilling to preach this truth. Thanks to the corruption of the Church, Christians have allowed themselves to be seduced by the very temptation Jesus died to save them from: the temptation to think they can save themselves by magical thinking and ritual. Christians have abandoned their faith in Christ in favor of alchemy (a.k.a. science) and have set up a golden calf just as the Israelites did in the desert.

Christians now fall down and worship this calf, offering bloody sacrifice in the form of their children for the sake of “careers.” Just like the Aztecs and the Mayans, they pretend that spattering the blood of young men over the steps of the pyramids will bring prosperity to their cities. Just like the Pharisees, they pretend that usury is permissible if practiced under certain conditions. Just like the Pharisees, they pride themselves on their piety while binding others to oppressive rituals of cleanliness of word and deed. Just like the Pharisees, they believe their belonging to a particular race or nation will save them. 

There is no salvation except through Christ—because only Christ can break the spells. It is not compassionate to claim that “all faiths” teach the “same truths.” It is not compassionate to abandon any people to magical thinking. It is not compassionate to claim that some people do not need Christ thanks to their blood (a.k.a. DNA). 

If you are a Christian, you are commanded by Our Lord Jesus Christ to love your neighbor as yourself—not to abandon your neighbor to magical thinking based on [ritual or] race. Christians, stop throwing gold at the feet of the golden calf in the desert. Christians, stop sacrificing your children to Moloch and your daughters and sons to Ba’al. Do as Our Lord Jesus Christ commanded and go forth and baptize all the nations in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Baptize all the nations—including the nation that has defined itself by rejection of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

For in Christ, there is neither male nor female, slave nor free, Gentile or Jew. And to say otherwise is to serve Satan, not Christ. 

 

Jesus let nobody off the hook—not the Pharisees who bound the children of Israel with “heavy and insupportable burdens,” not those who would cry out, “Lord, Lord!” without doing the will of his Father in heaven. Magic—rituals, prophecies, and miracles—would not save them, only living according to the word of God.

Those who would call themselves “Christians” must take up their own cross—and bear witness to the truth.

And the truth is that living according to magical rituals in the hope of keeping yourself pure will not save you, nor will sacrificing the blood of other people’s daughters and sons save your nation. 

“Nobody comes to the Father but through me,” because only through Christ are we freed not only from the tyranny of the world, but also from the tyranny of our own sins.

These are your options: totalitarianism, race war, chaos, or Christ. 

Which will you choose when the Lion comes?

Image credits: “Piss Christ” by Andres Serrano (1987); Crucifixion scene from Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979); Owen Benjamin and the Lions of Christianity from Unauthorized.tv (2020).