The Christianity I Never Knew
August 2008

By Sassy
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Once again in the midst of travels, I found myself forced to sit and wait. Time to get some reading done. I pulled out my copy of Constantine's Sword by James Carroll, a 700 page book with enough heft to hurt someone. It feels nice to hold it, the wealth of pages hiding endless treasures of knowledge. I hadn't been this excited about simply holding a book since I read the Count Of Monte Cristo at the age of 14. I love large books like this, though they are a project rather than an easy read. I get to live with them for a while, the book becomes a friend that I can hang out with when I'm bored, starting an internal conversation between myself and the author. When at last finished I'm left saddened that the journey is over. It then enters my bookshelf, where it will never leave.

I opened up the chapter "My Rabbi" and read it for the third time.

In this portion of James Carroll's work, I am introduced to a Christianity that is alien to me. The novel takes on the daunting task of exploring relations between the Christian Church and the Jewish faith over two thousand years. In this early part of the novel, the church's "religious contempt" for the Jews is carefully explained. Contempt for homosexuality, sexuality and abortion I knew well. But... Jews? This concept struck me as completely foreign, and somewhat stunning. I am not shocked to learn that there are intolerant, ignorant and murderous people in religion. However, the institutionalized nature of this ancient hate was something I'd managed to be completely ignorant to.

Until reading this work, I had never heard of the ancient Jewish sin of deicide. In 12 years of religious classes and church, the concept never entered my world. However, as a dear Jewish friend kindly pointed out, I was born in the 1980's. Well after the Pope and other church leaders began work meant to absolve the Church's sins during the Shoah (Holocaust).

The Shoah itself was addressed in great detail during our teachings. Yet, not once was the effect of Christian teachings on the attempted extermination of Jews ever examined. Neither in World Religions, nor in 20th Century War, had our teachers ever discussed the Churches complete silence - continuing the tradition I suppose. Carroll points out that some feel the Church was incapable of stopping Hitler's dream of the Final Solution - which is likely true. This does not excuse or explain their silence. In 1949 the Pope announces the excommunication of all communists worldwide, while Hitler died a Roman Catholic. Even as 1,200 Jews were rounded up and held just outside the Vatican in preparation for Aushwitz, the Pope sat quietly in his grandeur.

In my innocent young eyes, the crucifixion of Jesus had been the act of mankind, not the work of Jews. That was merely coincidental. The Passion was a microcosm playing out the results of people giving into fear and thirst for power, killing that which is sacred in our world. This played out on the world stage again and again, in a timeless horrific drama.

"To say that the Jews were not in some way the enemy, it seemed to me at the time, undermined the Catholic reading of the New Testament, its composition, divine inspiration, and, as I had recently learned to call it, 'indefectibility'... Either the Jews are guilty or the Gospels falsify history - which is it?" pg 40

Never once, did I consider hatred of Jews to be an integral part of my identity as a Christian. How badly I had interpreted the faith in which I was raised. Granted, my take on things was certainly kinder, but to see the intended message was quite different from my internal picture was alarming. My family had taught me to honour Judaism, as it was the faith of their saviour. Unlike them, I was incapable of computing that God would damn a soul to eternal hell fire for not believing in Jesus Christ and receiving baptism. I had accepted that Christians suffered from a case of religious superiority, which certainly wasn't their domain alone. I suppose at the core of my being, I was a terrible Catholic, even at the height of my devotion.

Perhaps my true saving grace, is my complete disinterest in heaven. I never sought a ticket into the pearly gates. My faith was about awakening my being, connecting to creation, and tapping into this unnamable "thing" that I sensed in everything about me. I wanted to be connected, not saved. As far as I could tell, there was nothing I needed saving from, I was perfectly fine. The older I got, the more disassociated from my faith I felt. One day, I walked into mass and felt absolutely nothing. I was a stranger - Christianity had left my heart to curl up and die in some dark corner.

The search for something new began - not to fill a void, but to learn the language I heard sung all about me. During this time, I look back at a visit I had once made to a Synagog in my early teens. There I was with three of my friends, in our Catholic school uniforms, bolding walking into their sacred space, asking for a tour. The distinct sense of exasperation we felt from the Rabbi seared itself in my memory. Begrudgingly, he met our request. I didn't understand it then, but with the help of Carroll, that mist of confusion has been lifted.

Carroll attempts to come to terms with this apparent contradiction using the Christian cliche "Hate the Sin, Not the Sinner." However, I could never identify a single sinner in the entire story. The angry mod brings him to the Romans, and cries out for crucifixion, the Romans nail him to the cross, and an entire population stands by, letting it happen. Does Christ himself not say that none can stop his death, as it is the will of God? Where in this, does one justify naming an entire religious group as sinners? Since I was a little girl, my basic understaning was God put on a show to humanity, so that they might be shown and thus grasp our human weaknesses. It was about fear, intollerance and power.

I can understand the contorted view insisting the continued existence of the Jewish people is in itself dissent - after all, they are still waiting for their Messiah, even though Christianity claims he has come and gone. Perhaps my view of Judaism as more than simply a religious faith prevented this horrible seed from planting roots. I had always considered it a way of life, a culture. They were a people choosing to preserve traditions that dated back thousands of years, surviving despite repeated attempts at their destruction. There is great strength and pride in this. I have known some non-religious observant Jews, and never considered this contradictory. It is a community that not only includes the living, but all those who have come and gone before us.

I like to frequent religious chat rooms, debate being somewhat of a hobby. Actually, I consider it integral to my intellectual and spiritual development. How can I be sure that my beliefs are accurate and true, if I do not meet challenges to them? In doing so I have learned a great deal. Jewish chat rooms tend to be one of my favorites: they are rarely gridlocked in righteous and/or vulgar arguments. In those discussions, it has been simply and kindly stated, that Jesus did not meet the "criteria" of the Messiah they were promised. Fair enough. In fact, perfectly logical. I can't find anything worthy of anger or resentment in that.

Carroll explains the cross rising to becoming the symbol of Christian faith was in itself a powerful tool in building suspicion and disdain toward the entire Jewish faith, bringing their role in the story to the forefront. I had always felt it was a poor symbol of that faith. It was never before the cross that I prayed - its grotesque tableau of a tortured man was void of God. Had Jesus himself not, in his last moments upon that torture device, looked into the heavens and cried out "God why have you forsaken me?" Proof enough for me that this was no act of God, but of humankind. In my moments of need, I had knelt before the images and statues of Mother and Son. The undying and all forgiving love a mother has for her child, its inexpressible power, its unqualified endurance - this was the nature of this thing I call God. Are parents not themselves creators? This act of creating life and loving, while accepting the free will of the individual, brings people closer to God. The focus should be life, not the undoing of life.

I would never accept Christ's death as the will of God, or the moment that opened salvation to mankind. Yet, in the Christian faith, this bizarre concept is inescapable, and apparently applies to us all. I had once lost a friend, who was what I call "more-then-sibling", suddenly and without explanation. Was it an accident? A murder? A suicide? These are questions that will haunt every heart that loved him. I was incapable of crying at first, feeling strangely bewildered, unable to really grasp that he was gone. Dead was just this abstract concept that hovered over my head.

The day of the viewing arrived. Standing over his coffin, staring at his battered face, and touching the bruised and cut hands that no longer felt like human flesh - I understood. It was over. No more laughter until 4am. No more intimate secrets being shared. No more intoxicated debauchery. He was forever dead. It was then that I cried for the first time, uncontrollably.

Friends, his relatives, people I'd never met rushed over to me. "God's will," I heard voices say between my sobs. None of this consoled me. One girl said, "Don't cry, he's at peace. I see it when I look at him. Don't you?" I glanced down again at the cut marble flesh, and saw only emptiness. No, there was no peace there. This was no act of God. This was a horrifying moment devoid of any positive or creative force. In the last pages of the the "My Rabbi" chapter, I found the first words to comfort me in over three years:

"For some reason, nothing so infuriates me as the incapacity of seemingly intelligent people to get it through their heads that God doesn't go around this world with his finger on triggers, his fist on knives, his hands on steering wheels. Deaths that are untimely and slow and pain-ridden raise unanswerable questions... Never do we know enough to say that a death was the will of God... My own consolation lies in knowing that it was not the will of God that Alex die; that when the waves closed over the sinking car, God's heart was the first to break." pg 57

It is in this spirit that Jews reject the term "Holocaust" which translates as "Burnt Offering". The Christian idea that they were sacrificed to God, according to divine will, is atrocious to them, as it should be to any thinking human.

'Shoah, a Hebrew word meaning 'catastrophe'.... Shoah, in its biblical usage, points to the absence of God's creative hovering, the opposite of which is rendered as 'ruach'. Ruach is the breath of God, which in Genesis drew order out of chaos. Shoah is its undoing." pg11

With 30 odd years of life, Christians focus all their hope on the last three days of Christ's life - his torture and his murder. As Carroll explains it, this ideological structure allowed Christianity to succeed by virtue of its complete failure. So it would be for every Christian in the future, who died or suffered in the name of their beliefs, or in general. It allows followers to continue believing even when faced with the moments without God. It places God at their side, even as He fails to reach out and save his flock from slaughter. How do you kill off a religion, which teaches its followers they are redeemed in their suffering? Brilliant survival strategy.

Then Carroll says something else that struck me as alien, though not unheard of:

"Loyalty to the pope was the way we measured our religious faith." pg 43

How different Carroll's world was from mine. The pope played absolutely no role in our teachings, our churches, our families. We acknowledged that he was there, but to us it was more a tradition - much like the monarchy of England. His power was in the history he represented and nothing else. I knew of those who believed in the infallible nature of the Pope, but these were old women who sat in the front pews grasping rosaries to their chests, not the common Christian.

There was only one time we ever addressed the Pope's words. In 11th grade drama class, our teacher told us to sit and listen intently. Pope John Paul II had made a declaration and it was the duty of every teacher to share it with us. In essence, the Pope was addressing the modern idea that all religions are created equal. Not so, according to the Holly See. Only through Jesus can our souls find eternal redemption, though we must respect and honour our fellow man despite their beliefs.

"A long time ago, these Papal declarations were called 'Bulla Sheets', which gave birth to the term 'Bull Shit'." Our teacher crumpled up the page, and he tossed it in the trash can. "Let us never speak of this again. I'm not allowed to say what I actually think, but you get the idea."

Thank goodness for lay people teaching in religious schools. I imagine that a Priest or Nun leading the class would have been a very different experience. At least the Christianity I knew, managed to have some semblance of sanity.