We need more one-armed preachers

We need more preachers who do not say “on the other hand.” Our people face what they must either do or not do. “On the other hand” advice leaves God’s people in the middle of the road, and we know what happens in the middle of the road.

This is why some people hate religion

The demonstrable reality is that more good has been done in the name of religion than any other source of the good. But there are times when what some people can do in the name of religion is stunningly cruel. And it makes for a lot of press.

Such is the case of Uriel da Costa. It was his discipline by the Jewish synagogue in Amsterdam in the 1640’s that was perhaps the beginning of Baruch Spinoza’s rebellion. He was a relative of Spinoza. He grew up as a Roman Catholic in Portugal but found himself concluding that the ancestral Jewish faith of his family was truer and far more preferable.  He and his mother went from being being conversos-Jews converted to Christianity, to being marranos-Christians who practiced Judaism secretly. This was during the years of the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal, and de Costa became convinced that it was safer to move to Holland where there was freedom of religion.

But in his new home and with closer study he began to find fault with Jewish practices and teaching and became openly vocal about his findings. The synagogue responded with the expected criticism and admonishments. Over the ensuing decades, da Costa was excommunicated, then reinstated, and then excommunicated again, finding refuge at some point in the Jewish community of Hamburg from which he eventually was expelled as well. By the 1640’s the synagogue wanted a solution to this embarassing episode.

They reached a settlement with da Costa, who himself was increasingly feeling the toll of the controversy. Though he had not changed his ideas at all, he made clear that the continued humiliation and sheer physical exhaustion left him no other choice. He was to come to the synagogue and recant his heresy. Then he would be punished physiclly, after which he could regain his status in the synagogue.

Here is how Antonio Damasio in his book Looking for Spinoza describes the event:

The punishment day was thoroughly publicized and eagerly anticipated, great theater and great circus rolled into one. The synagogue was packed with men, women and children sitting and standing with hardly any space to move, all waiting for the unusual entertainment to begin. The air was thick with excited breath and the silence was broken only by the grating of shoes against the sand grains that covered the wood floors.

At the appropriate moment da Costa was asked to climb to the cnetral stage and invited to read a statement prepared by the leaders of the congregation. Using their words, he confessed his numerous transgressions, the nonobservance fo the Sabbath, the nonobservance of the Law, the attempt to prevent others from joining the Jeiwsh faith, all of which warratned a thousand deaths, but were to be forgiven because he promised, in reparation, not to engage every again in such odious inequities and perversities.

Once the reading was over, he was asked to step down from the stage and a rabbif whsipered in hi sear that he should no move to a certian cormer of the synagogue. He did. At the corner, the chamach asked him to undress down to the waist, take off his shoes, and tie a red handerchief faround his head. He was htne made to lean against a column and his hands were tied to it with a rope. Now the silence was sepulchral. The hazan approached, leather whip in hand, and began to apply thirty-nine slashings to da Costa’s bare back. As the punishment proceeded, perhaps to pace the slashings, the congregation began to sing a psalm. Da Costa counted the slashings and credited his torturers with a scrupulous observance of the Law, which specified that the number of strokes should never exceed forty.

The punishment over, da Costa was allowed to sit on the floor and put his clothes back on. Then a rabbi announced his reinstatement for all to hear. The excommunication was lifted and the door to the synagogue was now as opne to da Costa as the door to heaven would be one day.

But the ritual was not complete yet. Da Costa was now asked to come to the main door and lie down on the floor across the threshold. The chamach helped him to the ground and held his head in his hands with solicitude and gentleness. Then, one by one, men, women and children left the temple, and each person had to step over him on the way out. No one actually stepped on him, he assures us in his memoir, just over.

Now the synagogue was empty. The chamach and a few others congratulated him warmly on a punishment well taken, and on the arrival of a new day in his life. They helped him up, and dusted the sand that dropped from so many shoes onto his tattered clothes.

It is not clear how many days this accomodation lasted. Da Costa was taken home and proceeded to finish his memoir. The last ten pages deal with this episode and his impotent rebellion agains it. After finishing the manuscript, da Costa shot himself.  The first bullet missed its target, but the second bullet killed him.

Baruch Spinoza nevered mentioned this event in his correspondence or writings. But a witness to it all, he was. And soon he would face his excommunication, too. But he would not give the religious community the delight of a confession. He would, however, recede into a life without broad association and with some social isolation.

Episodes such as these should make us all pause. By the definition of any serious monotheistic religion, to refuse the authority of that religion is to be outside of salvation. And it is also true that any of these religions should not harbor those who teach those within it that it is not a true religion. This would be absurd. But it gets murky from there, because the church should rightly discern the godly way of disassociation under the tutelage of Christ and those who disagree with it should in as best a way as possible seek to disassociate in such a manner that the church is not being forced to accept that which is contrary to its nature, which many try to do.

But the awful moments such as those that happened to da Costa leave a scar that any sensitive soul will find hard to endure without a revulsion that sours the stomach forever.

Pessimisms

There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart’s desire. The other is to get it.  George Bernard Shaw

Today’s Quote 6/18/09

“Whoever battles with monsters had better see that it does not turn him into a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil,

A word of caution to us Pastors who “create worship experiences”

From William Gurnall (1617-1679)

“The Christian’s armor which he wears must be of divine institution and appointment. The soldier comes into the field with no arms but what his general commands. It is not left to every one’s fancy to bring what weapons he please; this will breed confusion. The Christian soldier is bound up to God’s order; though the army be on earth, yet the council of war sits in heaven; this duty ye shall do; these means ye shall use. And those who do more, or use other, than God commands, though with some seeming success against sin, shall surely be called to account for this boldness….

God is very precise in this point; he will say to such as invent ways to worship him of their own, coin means to mortify corruption, obtain comfort in their own mint: ‘Who hath required this at your hands?’….

And what is the gospel of all this — for surely God hath an eye in that to our marching to heaven, and our fighting with these cursed spirits and lusts that stand in our way — but that we should fight lawfully, using those means which we have from his mouth in his Word?” (pp. 50-51, William Gurnall, The Christian in Complete Armor)