THAT REBEL JESUS

My Jesus is the image taken from the Shroud of Turin. He is a dark-skinned, bearded Jew with a magnificent schnoz. He is not that northern European guy we all grew up with. The haloed, angelic, light-skinned, goldilocks with his blue eyes rolled toward heaven. In fact, I imagine him to be more like Chez Guevara, that other rebel of my youth. Dark skinned, bearded, and touting the beret of a revolutionary. Only he was both a man of the people and a man of God.

Jesus was most likely considered a revolutionary amongst the people of his time. They were, after all, busy scratching each other’s eyes out, stoning each other, and abusing the poor and the wretched, and he was the guy who turned the world upside down. You can see through his teachings that he was not a fan of the 1%. He spoke up for the poor and believed that religion could be the great equalizer. He turned the tables on behalf of the over-taxed and berated the swindling tax collectors. No wonder they crucified him. He was a darned socialist! There’s nothing that a nationalistic oligarchy hates more than someone who points out that perhaps the wealthy ought to pay their fair share and that they do indeed owe a debt to society.

Pay close attention here, because the spin has geared up already, with Trump vilifying the word “socialist” to rile up his ignorant base who most likely have confused the word socialism with communism, fascism and, well why not throw Nazi Germany in there to counteract all the bad press Trump himself has gotten in that department.  There will be grand attempts to manipulate the narrative in the Democratic party, pushing it to the far left in the minds of those who have no memory for history. In fact, the so-called leftist policies recently brought to the table are pretty moderate and loaded with common sense, not much different from the policies of most civilized countries, or various well-supported bills proposed in the United States for the last seventy-five years. Health care for all, child care subsidies for working families, care for the elderly, veterans, the planet. Oh horrors!

There will be much talk about money and national debt. I guess it’s O.K. to push us into trillions of dollars of debt while wasting billions on a wall for a Trumped up and fabricated emergency, not to mention tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% of the corporate industrial complex. I guess it’s O.K to pander to a class of greedy individuals, who not unlike the tax collectors in the time of Jesus, think it’s fine to tax the poor and what’s left of the middle class. Meanwhile, they faun over their Emperor, Trump and continue to take away your jobs. And talk about “The Emperor who had no clothes”, I don’t understand how anyone can’t see through that thin veneer of pseudo Christianity and patriotism. He looks stark naked to me and it’s not a pretty sight. What I see is an entitled, draft-dodging, narcissistic, and fragile ego-maniac who cares little for God or country.

Back to the topic of how socialism will be demonized by Trump and his ultra-right conservative ilk, consider this – remember when he made that horrible comment about “Shit hole countries”? Talk about showing his true colors.  Another veil from his seven deadly sins was removed, and it was pretty transparent to begin with.  In Trump world, the United States should only be letting in immigrants from countries such as Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland, rather than the “shit hole” countries from Africa, Central America and the Middle East.  So, let’s get this straight. The “good guys” are all northern European and white. But wait a minute…they are also from social democratic countries which have agreed to higher taxes in order to ensure that all citizens get a complete education, healthcare, care for their elderly and poor. Hmm. And what kind of governments do those “shit hole” countries have?  Well not much different than the kind of government Trump is pushing us toward. Authoritarian, totalitarian, nationalistic dictatorships where the people have few if any rights to a free press, protesting, kneeling and standing up for justice.  As a matter of fact, the United States, according to The Telegraph article, Mapped: The World’s most and least free countries, democracy has taken a nose-dive throughout the world since 2017, and “The United States retreated from its traditional role as both a champion and an exemplar of democracy amid an accelerating decline in American political rights and civil liberties.”

I ask you here, to ponder over what’s really at stake if the current far-right leaning trends continue. The United States has already tumbled over the edge in the eyes of the rest of the world. We are no longer the exemplar for democracy and freedom, because we have a president who despises its basic tenets.  Like Putin and other despots, Trump would rather do away with the press, and the checks and balances we once believed would protect us from autocratic, authoritarian, thugs like him. But here’s where the Christian principles of forgiveness and turning the other cheek get a little muddy. I don’t think rebel Jesus would be a bystander in these times any more than he ignored the tax collectors. Although he might point out the truth in a kinder, less vitriolic fashion than my acid-filled epistles, I believe he would have stood up and said something. Perhaps he is speaking through all the female politicians who have stepped up to the plate to put an end to this madness which has taken over our government, and much of the world.

You know you are on the right track when you piss off all those people who revel in darkness. Once again, women who dare to speak out, such as Alexandrea Ocasio Cortez or Senator Warren, are the brunt of racist and sexist jokes and criticism. My rebel Jesus was vilified by the same kind of people who make misogynist comments about female politicians, and let’s not forget the overt and covert racism the Obama’s had to cope with. My rebel Jesus reminded people that it was not wealth that got you through the gates of heaven, but your comportment and compassion (Not that I support the theology of poverty which has been used to keep poor, black and brown people down since Christ was a Cowboy). My rebel Jesus would have led the revolution of the people, only without the guns, violence and war. And yet, he would still turn that dark-skinned cheek, knowing he would be doomed in the end by the betrayal of those who loved him. When push comes to shove, we all run for the hills, tails between the legs when it comes down to saving our own skin.  Just look at the NFL players who knelt for justice. How many white players stood by them and stuck with it? I’m just saying.

When it comes down to the divided tribal issues of our time, I always go back to that old bumper sticker you used to see on cars: What would Jesus do?  I grew up thinking that his teachings and principles were pretty much the norm and set the moral compass of our individual lives. Feed the poor, welcome the stranger, turn the other cheek, do unto others as thou wouldst have done unto you, etc. Who would have thought that the ideas we learned and accepted as our magnetic north pointing us toward goodness, kindness, and a piece of the American Pie, would be turned upside down by the spin of right-wing politicians who can only be described as something evil. Now I’m not one to believe in the devil and all that crap, but I certainly get the allegory of the antichrist, when he’s sitting in the Whitehouse, conjuring up mischief tweet by tweet.

Of course, there was always a Bible-thumping underground of hooded night-riders, government officials and hypocrites who talked the talk on Sunday morning but didn’t walk the walk the rest of the week. And God knows there was a lot of hank-panky among clergy who couldn’t walk a straight line if their life depended on it. But for the most part, growing up in the fifties and sixties, we children had a strong sense of what was right and wrong in the world and our parents held us to it whether they went to church or not.  The Ten Commandments loomed heavy above us, especially if you had the b’Jesus scared out of you by the nuns. And some of us developed a moral compass despite our parents and ourselves.

But let’s get back to my rebel Jesus, whom I fell in love with during the heady social and spiritual awakening of the 60’s and 70’s. It was then that Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar ushered us into the Age of Aquarius. Every street corner had its own barefoot Jesus Freak preacher barking out the Beatitudes, and the Sermon on the mount had wended its way into popular folk songs. It seemed like my rebel Jesus was alive and thriving in the popular culture and it didn’t seem to matter if you were Christian or Jewish or had joined up with some religious commune cult. We all agreed that Jesus was the Man. Even the Hindu Gurus, the Dali Lama, and the Sufis agreed that the teachings of Jesus were on par with if not a step above all the prophets known to man.

When did we become so disillusioned with our Godspell God?  Was it the fatigue of race riots, the assassinations of our Camelot heroes, and Viet Nam? Or was it simply a paradigm that shifted all too quickly and sifted the wheat from the shaft. Some of us fell through the cracks of the 80’s and had to fight our way back to the main stream. By the time I got there, my rebel Jesus had disappeared. A different kind of “Christian” had emerged and he was a guy in a blue suit with a blue tie and a little American flag pinned to his lapel. And he was mad as hell. So were his Tammy Baker minions who marched on the Capitol, mascara running into the gutters, egging on the bombing of abortion clinics.

I don’t mean to be so harsh and judgmental toward the white evangelic crowd. What would my rebel Jesus do? He would turn the other cheek and forgive. He would eat, love and pray. But I am a road weary warrior who has spent much of my life reveling in the marginal sin of righteous indignation, and it’s really hard to give it up to love. There’s the rational knife edge that is oh-so-difficult to straddle when it comes to the dire circumstance of our dystopian polity. Although my rebel Jesus reminds me that it all comes down love and compassion, even for those we perceive as our enemies, my own inner daemons want me to stand up and fight those darned prevailing inequities, just as my heroes of the past had done. Is it possible that the rebel Jesus in us all can stand up to the hate, bigotry, and, I might add, the environmental injustice which has eluded so many of our brothers and sisters, and still remember to be loving and compassionate toward those who don’t see it? One thing that saves my sorry ass from going over to the dark side is my sense of humor and the fact that I sincerely love all kinds of people – even if I think they are wrong.

So, what would Jesus do in these divided times? By now, you can probably guess what I think. I’m pretty sure my rebel Jesus would Stand up, sit in, march, protest and KNEEL for justice. And, as he reminds me, he would remember to love the enemy. Even Trump needs a little love and compassion. He is, after all, a very sad and lonely man.