Jesus the Lunatic: the Trilemma Pt.2(b).

The three days spent as an involuntary guest of the New South Wales Health Department, courtesy of Section 31 of the Mental Health Act, cannot be described as the happiest time of my life, but the memory of the second afternoon shall always make me smile.

I’d tried to kill myself. I’d come to sincerely believe there was no place in the world for anyone as worthless, incompetent, and perverted as me. My family, my parishioners, and the men leading my diocese (whom I’d diligently trained myself to respect) seemed as though they’d be better off without me. Dare I say it, but their actions in the years since have proved they probably really did think something along these lines, but from behind the bars of a locked ward the idea didn’t seem anywhere nearly as funny as it does now. Then again, in those days I didn’t realize Jesus was also a lunatic, and it was long before I’d met the wonderful people and dogs who’ve shown me life is more than a set of propositions defining the boundaries of hell and heaven.

It had been a cold afternoon, and I might have been running a fever, and no matter what medicine they gave me I couldn’t stop crying. Into the grey sorrow of my observation ward strolled a disheveled patient: he wore combat trousers, a stained purple singlet with a butterfly across the chest, and impenetrable bleached dreadlocks hung like jungle vines down to his thighs.

“Hi” he said. “You’re new here”. I didn’t know what to reply, so he continued anyway.

“I’m a professional golfer, but I take time off the circuit to stay here because they think I’m schizophrenic. But really I just come here because the food’s so great, and it’s great to have a break from the pressures of competition. Besides, I know everyone in this place. I’ve got great connections.”

This last sentence was said as he came around to my side patting my shoulder. I know about as much about golf as I do of speaking Swahili, but if ever someone didn’t look like a professional golfer, it was him. And yet the confidence with he spoke, and sheer warmth of his friendliness was overwhelming. For a moment the clouds of my tears began lifting.

I couldn’t say much in response, but he didn’t mind: “Don’t worry if you don’t feel like talking. What you need is a good round of golf. The fresh air, the green grass, and the sunshine; there’s nothing finer when you’re feeling down. Come on.”

He helped me to my feet, and began leading me into the corridor. I was too dazed to protest, and he asked “Do you play golf? What’s your handicap?”

Never having played the game, I mumbled something about not having a clue. This only made him even more cheerful: “Fantastic, it’ll be an honour to teach you. Let’s go”

We went to the nurses’ station, where having scrounged a tape measure and assessed my dimensions, he calculated my ideal club sizes. I wsa then encouraged to try several different imaginary sets, taken down from an imaginary shelf which only he could see. Eventually the right clubs were found: “They’re a bit pricey, but don’t worry. My sponsor takes care of all that, and it’s important to start out with good equipment from the beginning.”

I can’t recall if any of the nurses tried to intervene during this process; the enthusiasm with which this new friend was introducing me to something he loved was so infectious that I only remember the magic joy of his world, which began filling mine like the warm sunshine of morning. There was a long apology regarding why I couldn’t be fitted for a new pair of golf shoes (footwear other than the regulation patient’s slippers was forbidden on the ward), but, as he explained, the greenkeepers took this into account when preparing the course.

Carrying my new imaginary golf bag, filled with imaginary clubs personally selected for me by an international professional, I was brought me back into the ward. This was the tricky bit, he explained.

“They keep the course here camouflaged, so that doctors in the other parts of the hospital don’t get jealous of our facilities. Until you get the hang of it, it’s probably best if you just close your eyes and let me describe what’s going on. That’ll also help you concentrate on developing a good clean swing.”

And so for the next few hours we played 18 holes, travelling through the ward, out into the grimy concrete exercise yard (surrounded by high fences topped with barbed wire – my friend lost a ball through that fence, and penalized himself the requisite number of strokes as a consequence), and back inside again through the empty rooms and storage areas. Each stroke I made, whether drive or putt, was carefully described and analyzed: after a while I began to get a feel for keeping my back straight, or angling my body slightly to account for the prevailing cross-winds. He was a brilliant instructor; a natural teacher who made every mistake an opportunity to learn something new, and every success a cause for spontaneous celebration. His joy when I scored a hole-in-one on the 15th was overwhelming, and when I repeated this feat on the 17th we were both jumping with excitement.

Tallying the card at the end of the game showed we ended in a tie – a result he considered truly astounding given it was my first game. Unlike me, he hadn’t managed any hole-in-ones, but experience of the course, coupled with years on the pro-circuit, had kept him consistently just under par, balancing us out. We weren’t allowed personal possessions in the ward, but from beneath his blankets he produced a half-consumed bottle of Spumante (“We need to remember this occasion with a toast in the finest French champagne”). How he had managed to have a personal alcohol cache I shall never know, but neither shall wine ever taste finer than that warm, flat, sickly-sweet sip from a paper cup surreptitiously removed from the water-cooler waste basket.

It was then time for the evening meal, and soon after I fell asleep, exhausted. The next morning I was woken early, and transferred to a different hospital. I’ve never played golf since, nor do I expect I shall. Some experiences can never be repeated, and are best left to stand alone.

I’ve never seen my friend again either, although I have tried to track him down and would dearly love to be able to help him in return – if such a thing be possible. It doesn’t matter so much though; I know we’ll meet someday. When we do I won’t be in the least bit surprised to learn he wasn’t a human at all, but actually an angel. Or more likely both.



At this point I can hear the evangelical lurkers (don’t worry guys, I know you’re there ;-) thinking “But you haven’t said a thing about Jesus, or even mentioned the Scriptures.” They’re quite right, of course. I haven’t, at least not in the propositional sense they’ve been taught to believe is the only authentic means of communicating Christianity. In my defence, however, I’d like to point out that neither did C.S. Lewis and Josh McDowell when they insisted Jesus can be either a lunatic, or Lord, but not both. In fact, that these two could have suggested this makes me wonder if they’d ever heard any of the absurd things Jesus said. Weird stuff like “love your enemies” or “in my father’s house are many mansions”. Statements no sane person could imagine making.

Nowadays I think of Christianity as a kind of madness: that this whole messy business of incarnation and blood is a terrible folly we embrace lest we never again know what it is to be of sound mind and peaceful heart. We believe and we love, and therefore we shun that which the darkness calls sane. We are lunatics, and therein fnd our reason restored.

Jesus the Lunatic: the Trilemma Pt.2(a).

This clip won't make sense, but why I've posted it just might once you read Jesus the Lunatic Pt2. I'll try and have it up in a day or so.

Till then watch this: it's a pretty accurate depiction of how my life became for a while...



It's by an Australian team called "The Avalanches". I don't know much more about them, but if I ever need someone to produce my autobiography as a musical they'll be who I call.

Sorry.

European settlement of Australia didn’t really begin until 1788, and was founded upon a lie; the legal fiction of terra nullius (a Latin term meaning “nobody’s land”) - even though there were as many as 750,000 people already living here - maybe more. Their communities, beliefs, and cultures varied greatly, and there were approximately 700 different languages spoken. Yet no matter what they believed, or however they talked, they were all people. Like you and I they hoped, wept, and dreamed of making love in the warm afternoon sunshine. They had children, and dogs, and enjoyed chasing sticks together.


This picture was probably taken sometime during the 1920s. It’s a fountain erected in Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens in 1897 to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, a sixty year period which witnessed the Aboriginal nations’ decimation by a combination of disease, loss of land (causing starvation), and outright murder. An estimated 90% of the indigenous population died during this time, and it was widely held, even among those sympathetic to the Aboriginals’ plight, that Australia’s indigenous peoples would soon become extinct.

The fountain is still standing, and last weekend we strolled around it just like the people in this picture. In the base are bronze panels of Aboriginals, who are depicted as demurely (and oh-so obediently) underpinning the civilization above. There’s no record of who the models were; I doubt that their names were considered worth recording by the socialites who commissioned the fountain. These survivors of a century-long attempt at genocide were nothing more than the vestiges of a superseded race, about to vanish into history forever.

But they didn't, and I’ve grown haunted by their faces.
Especially this man:



Rest in peace, mighty warrior. Your people have survived, and your land still sings the story of your blood. Pray for us, the descendants of those who brought your people death, that we might be cleansed from our sin. Forgive us, for we are sorry.

Jesus the Liar: the Trilemma Pt.1.

The real reason I’ve taken so long to get this post up has nothing to do with contentious title: it’s just that I couldn’t find an appropriate picture, and I’m not confident in my ability to convey what I mean with words alone.

You see, by “liar” I don’t mean someone who says what they know to be untrue – like the stereotypical used-car salesman, or politician. Jesus wasn’t a con artist, so please don’t start frothing at the mouth in a delusion that I’m trying to claim he was.

Yet so many things Jesus said contradict the golden truths of our age that it’s impossible for me to not tick the "liar" box. “Blessed are the poor”; “the first shall be last”; “leave tomorrow for tomorrow” – all these (and countless more similar sayings) cut so deeply against the grain of our society’s accepted wisdom that most churches I’ve experienced prefer to ignore them, or else explain them in such away as to suggest they actually mean the diametric opposite.
I’m not comfortable with these exegetical sleights-of-hand. I’d rather just admit that in some kind of absurdist game Jesus contradicted everything society taught me to be true.


Where that leaves giant pencils and mock ballot papers, I’m not sure. This one was sticking out above the footpath, ready to impale anyone not prepared to vote according to the parish mission’s party line. I wanted to ask if it would be ok to tick more than one box, but there wasn’t anyone to talk to. Perhaps it wasn’t really an imitation pencil at all, but a giant missile prepared for remote launching against people trying to complicate things.

The Greatest Preacher. Ever

“Equal but Different” is the name of an organization founded in Sydney to oppose to the ordination of anyone not a heterosexual male, although their website says that all they really want to do is promote “relationships of loving male leadership and intelligent, willing female submission in the family and the church.” No, I haven’t made that quote up. Honestly. Google them if you don’t believe me.

They claim to have “members all around Australia and overseas, including men and women” (are there any other genders silly enough to send in their $15 joining fee?), but the steering committee is entirely female, and they don’t explain how these seven women – two of who have the surname “Jensen” – are able to lead the organisation’s men without contradicting their own charter.

Curiously enough, “Equal but Different” is also the sub-title of a particularly nasty little old book I found in a deceased estate sale. Published in the 1870s, it’s called “Slavery Defended”, and contains essays by a dozen or more post-bellum clergy (not all of whom are Southerners, I must hasten to add) explaining why emancipation and the end of North American slavery was contrary to the Bible’s teaching.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the arguments advanced by the 21st century women invoke the same exegetic and hermeneutic processes as their 19th century male namesakes, and both groups allege the real issue at stake is one of Scriptural authority. Neither group ever seems to consider their opponents may actually be people with a deep and abiding faith of their own; in each case the other side is dismissed as faddish and opportunistic modernists at best, and immoral devil’s spawn at worst.

To be fair, one can be more forgiving of the women on the grounds that many of them are undoubtedly suffering from a kind of long-term Stockholm Syndrome: they’ve been repressed for so long that they’ve come to identify with their oppressors’ ideology. There’s no such excuse for the nasty little 19th century racists; they seem to actually take pride in converting the Gospels into something poisonous. Both of them, however, are big fans of the “slippery slope” argument: one sees the ordination of women as leading to ordination of homosexuals, while the other sees the abolition of slavery as drawing inevitably towards female suffrage and equal pay for equal work, and both are conviced that the bottom of the slope is A Very Bad Place.

In reponse to both groups stands a woman I’ve only recently learned of: Sojurner Truth. Born into slavery around 1797, she endured heartache, suffering and oppression of a degree I can’t even begin to comprehend, and rose to become a preacher of such strength that her words bring the same courage and inspiration today as when first spoken in 1851. And that’s not just because her opponents and ours use the same rhetoric; it’s because a fire as intense and truthful as hers never burns cold.

This is her most famous sermon, called “ Ain’t I A Woman?", as recorded by Frances Gage in “History of Woman Suffrage”, using Sojurner Truth's 19th century African-american patois:

"Wall, chilern, whar dar is so much racket dar must be somethin' out o' kilter. I tink dat 'twixt de niggers of de Souf and de womin at de Norf, all talkin' 'bout rights, de white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all dis here talkin' 'bout?

Dat man ober dar say dat womin needs to be helped into carriages, and lifted ober ditches, and to hab de best place everywhar. Nobody eber helps me into carriages, or ober mud-puddles, or gibs me any best place!" And raising herself to her full height, and her voice to a pitch like rolling thunder, she asked. 'And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! (and she bared her right arm to the shoulder, showing her tremendous muscular power). I have ploughed, and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man--when I could get it--and bear de lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen chilern, and seen 'em mos' all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?

"Den dey talks 'bout dis ting in de head; what dis dey call it?" ("Intellect," whispered some one near.) "Dat's it, honey. What's dat got to do wid womin's rights or nigger's rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yourn holds a quart, wouldn't ye be mean not to let me have my little half-measure full?" And she pointed her significant finger, and sent a keen glance at the minister who had made the argument. The cheering was long and loud.

"Den dat little man in black dar, he say women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wan't a woman! Whar did your Christ come from?" Rolling thunder couldn't have stilled that crowd, as did those deep, wonderful tones, as she stood there with out-stretched arms and eyes of fire. Raising her voice still louder, she repeated, "Whar did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothin' to do wid Him."

Oh, what a rebuke that was to that little man. Turning again to another objector, she took up the defense of Mother Eve. I can not follow her through it all. It was pointed, and witty, and solemn; eliciting at almost every sentence deafening applause; and she ended by asserting:

"If de fust woman God ever made was strong enough to turn de world upside down all alone, dese women togedder (and she glanced her eye over the platform) ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! And now dey is asking to do it, de men better let 'em." Long-continued cheering greeted this. "'Bleeged to ye for hearin' on me, and now ole Sojourner han't got nothin' more to say."

If anyone’s taking bets on who’s the Archbishop of Canterbury in heaven, I’d like to lay a years’ pay on Sojourner Truth. But then again, she might have already been appointed Pope.

And oldie, but a goodie.

Passing St. Mary's Cathedral (aka "the House of Pell") I noticed a flashing electronic sign announcing there are 262 days until the start of "World Youth Day" and Benny Ratsfinger's big visit.

Which seemed as good a reason as any other to post this clip:



Yes, I know everyone's heard it, and that it's going to be played a thousand times in the next 270 days.
But is there ever really such a thing as too much Tom Lehrer?

The Trilemma: an introduction.

Voting is compulsory for Australian citizens, and on November 24 we’ll all be required to head to the polls and have our say. In an attempt to ride on the back of this event a nearby church has launched an “election themed” parish mission.


These parish Missions have a long tradition with Sydney Evangelicals, and broadly speaking they’re as bad as they sound. The idea is to have a parish-based marketing assault on local residents, resulting in widespread conversion and an ensuing revival spreading to surrounding suburbs. Essentially they are attempts to recreate in minature the 1959 Billy Graham crusade; a watershed event at which many of the current hierarchy were “saved", and the highpoint of a mythical golden age for which they still yearn.

If you’re very lucky not too many people get burned out in the 2-4 week hysteria, and church attendance doesn’t fall too much, although in my experience you had to be very lucky indeed to escape so lightly. More commonly the resulting failure to meet anticipated expectations sends the parish into a decline only ending when the incumbent responsible “moves on” – but I’m a cynic with an endless supply of funny mission anecdotes (it was compulsory for Ordinands to participate in one mission each year) that have a habit of slipping out when friends ply me with cheap red wine.

As far as missions go, this one has appears to have a pretty impressive budget: banners this large don’t come cheap, and since my local Woolworths doesn’t stock giant papier-mâché pencils I’m not too sure how much they cost, but I’ll bet it’s more than the parish gave to AIDS charities in the last 12 months. Certainly the Rev. Diocese McDiocese (or whatever the name of the Rector behind all this is) must be popular with the powers that hold the purse strings, because he was able to buy not just one of the things, but three! As I’ve always said, when it comes to ministry you can never have enough giant imitation pencils.

In parallel with the “Voting is Compulsory" theme the parish is pushing the old Josh McDowell “Trilemma” from “Evidence That Demands A Verdict”. Published in 1979, McDowell argued that Jesus was either a liar, a lunatic, or Lord of all; all other responses being invalid. This is actually a reworking of CS Lewis’ argument in “Mere Christianity” (itself based on a series of BBC broadcasts Lewis made in 1943), although Lewis was less succinct: Jesus, he said, was “either a lunatic – on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell.” Failing these, Lewis continued, Jesus “was and is God.”




The picture on the left doesn’t show it very clearly, but someone's climbed several metres off the ground and made a faint tick next to the “Lunatic” option on this second banner in the church grounds, which is probably a fair indication of the mission's impact on local residents. Still, the whole affair has got me thinking...





There’s no shortage of web sites web pointing out the Trilemma's poor logic, and the inherent falsehood of the premise that no other options exist, but it seems to me the best answer is “All of the above”, which is undoubtedly not what we're supposed to conclude.

So… in-between whatever else crops up here in the next week, I’m going to spend a bit of time blogging about each of the options. It’ll be interesting to see which offends the fundies most: “Jesus the Liar” or “Jesus the Lunatic”? Now that Mad Priest won’t let me feed his troll anymore, I might even be lucky enough to catch one of my own!