Jesus the man broke rules

If one looks at the proliferation of books about the historical Jesus of Nazareth, one might observe an apparently widespread need for rediscovering the person and humanity of Jesus, especially by contemporary secular thinkers.

The exploration of Christ’s humanity is not something new; it goes back as far as the gospel, especially Luke’s. Though there’s very little that is new to these contemporary books, common in them is the need to explore the human traits of Jesus, without the Christ-part of religion.

This has always been a starting point for faith in Jesus; for no one can truly have an encounter with the Jesus of Nazareth without engaging with his life, death and resurrection.

How can one not be attracted by the human traits of Jesus? His evident sincerity, intelligence, short temper against hypocrisy, a well developed sense of ironic, self-effacement, lack of worldly ambition, fidelity to the authentic self, and so on.

The contemporary studies seem to be to be taken up, not by Jesus’ piety or worldly detachment for divine precepts, but the “irritability and impatience” of his character.

I accept Jesus was no Buddha, and definitely did not preach resignation in the face of evil. He frequently got annoyed at the unjust rulers, the oppression of the poor, the hypocrisy of empty piety, the daftness of his followers: “Do you have eyes but fail to see?”

When we concentrate on Jesus’ humanity we are at first surprised by how brash and mostly indifferent to conventional ideas of goodness his teachings seem. His style of talking blended the epigram with enigma.

Indeed there is a wild gaiety about Jesus’ moral teachings; an informal, new way that didn’t really connect with the ramblings of the traditional prophets. The familiarity with God, whom he called “Abba”, meaning Father or even Dad. The disregard for material prosperity. And the disdain for fussing about place, home and ritual.

He ate and drank with prostitutes, highwaymen, tax-collectors, and he repeatedly violated his era’s etiquettes, especially those governing eating. He dined with people of a different social rank (shocking most Romans), and with sinners and people of different tribal allegiance (shocking most Jews). He forcefully proclaimed: “What goes into a man’s mouth does not make him unclean, but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him unclean”, thereby shocking Jews and (later) Muslims. Unlike the ascetic John the Baptist, he came dining and drinking, but was neither hedonistic nor epicurean.

But to paint Jesus as the angry revolutionary, as most of these books do, in the vein of Gandhi-Malcolm-Martin kind of charismatic leader is missing the point. Jesus liked defiant, enigmatic paradoxes and pregnant parables that, by design, never quite closed in on themselves, or condemned the culprit. (God never closes a door to anyone.)

Take the story about a vineyard whose ungrateful husbandmen keep killing the king’s messengers, and eventually his son, sent to them as an example. The traditional Christian explanation is that Jesus is referring to this world, and foretelling his own death. But to contemporary secular writers this as an anti-establishment, even an anti-clerical story.

For some reason they link it to Sadducees and Pharisees who were always trying to catch Jesus out in a declaration of anti-Roman sentiment. We know that in the end they made the charge stick and Jesus was crucified by the Roman rulers on the instigation of the Jewish clergy.

What has been clear since time immemorial is that Jesus’ death and resurrection testified to his claim of being the Son of God. It is not without reason St Paul hinges the Christian faith on this incident: If Christ be not risen then we are deluded.

What Christian scholars have realised, and secular ones still need to learn, is that the character of Jesus will always seem contradictory when not looked at through the focus point of his divinity.