For whoever looks away

If Jesus had not died, we would not have had Christianity today. The world would not have been shaped by Jesus’ words as it is now. We wouldn’t have said “do not throw your pearls to pigs”. We wouldn’t have talked about the speck of sawdust in our brother’s eye (and even less about the plank in our own eye). Art – what would art have been like without Christian influences and images? What would poetry have been without the Bible? (Right now I wonder how poetry functions in Islam – whether it is OK to write Quran-based poems.)

If Jesus hadn’t lived, taught and died, we would still have had Judaism like we now know it. Or maybe it would have been more extreme. In Jesus’ days, it already had turned pretty extreme. The Pharisees had invented about a thousand extra laws that had to be kept most punctually. Jesus’ behaviour and words were quite upsetting to them. He turned their money tables, called them vipers’ brood.

If Jesus hadn’t condemned the Jews’ hypocrisy and taught that God wants “mercy, not sacrifice,” his followers wouldn’t have spread his revolutionary words all over the earth. We’d be stuck with a stale version of Judaism that no longer made sense to the world – we’d only have an isolated religious warring nation to look at, as a rare breed.

Instead, we are now stuck with Christianity – a religion that is very much not isolated; a bunch of wildly enthusiastic (sometimes less so) followers of this man Jesus Christ. They say they want to live like he did and obey his words. They claim they are free and truly alive through his death. Many foolish mistakes and cruelties have been committed in the name of Christianity, yet those can’t kill it off.

Fortunately not. We need Christianity. For the buildings. For the paintings. For the poems. For the proverbs. For the Easter Eggs.

And for the reckless ones. For those helping North Koreans over the border. For those sailing and saving on Mercy Ships. For those seeing lonely people. For all those who sacrifice. For all those people who have learned to look at the cross first, and then at themselves.

You may want to read this: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/sep/12/religion.uk/print.