Category Archives: The Upside-Down Bible

Mary Magdalene and the Kingdom of God

Posted on by symonhill

Mary Magdalene is undoubtedly much better than most films about Jesus and his disciples. Then again, that isn’t really saying much.

I enjoyed the film and – after the rather slow and confusing first twenty minutes or so – I found it pretty engaging. The acting was very good and I found Joaquin Phoenix far more believeable as Jesus than most actors who’ve taken on the role. Rooney Mara gives a powerful performance as Mary Magdalene. Peter, Judas and Jesus’ mother Mary are all portrayed convincingly.

As my friend remarked as we left the cinema, it was perhaps more of a film about Jesus than a film about Mary Magdalene. However, it was a film about Jesus as seen through the eyes of Mary Magdalene, and this is pretty exceptional. It has long been accepted by biblical scholars that women may have been very central in the group of Jesus’ disciples, but this realisation has been slow to make its way into churches and popular culture.

In showing Mary Magdalene’s closeness to Jesus, however, the film in some ways did not go as far as modern biblical scholarship – because it showed her as the only woman who was part of the community following Jesus.

I very much appreciated the fact that the filmmakers did not feel the need to show us every scene from the life of Jesus as mentioned in the gospels, or even all of the best known ones. In this film, Mary Magdalene is knocked unconscious by the Roman soldiers arresting Jesus. Because the story is told through her eyes, we see nothing more of Jesus until Mary awakes and finds out that he is already on his way to be crucified.

The scene in which Jesus protests against the markets in the Jerusalem Temple is particuarly well done. In fact, I don’t think I’ve seen the incident portrayed so well in a film or play. A priest at the Temple is shown justifying the operation of the markets in much the same tone in which the representatives of the establishment today offer reasonable-sounding defences of other forms of economic exploitation. As soon as Jesus begins his direct action, three or four Temple officials leap on him to drag him away. It is a sight familiar to many people who have taken direct action, or observed other people taking it.

That said, I disagreed with the film’s portrayal of Jesus’ protest as an apparently spontaneous one-man action. The gospels give the impression of an organised protest. This is especially true of Mark’s Gospel, which shows Jesus visiting the Temple the day before but deciding the time is not right to act (Mark 11,11). Mark writes that when Jesus took action the next day, he “would not allow anyone to carry anything through the Temple”, implying that a large number of disciples must have been involved in order to blockade the doors (Mark 11,16).

The main disappointment for me, however, was the theological message that the film was clearly giving, and which was made explicit towards the end. The film’s writers have fallen for the old idea – often heard in schools and churches but discredited elsewhere – that Jesus’ disciples wanted him to lead a violent revolution against Roman rule but that he instead brought a message of personal transformation. I won’t give away the details of the ending, but it leaves us with a pretty clear idea that this is the idea we’re intended to take away.

It is not believable for a number of reasons. For one thing, it’s scarcely credible that a large number of people followed someone while all completely misunderstanding him. But the main problem with this idea is that it implies there are only two options: violent rebellion against Rome, or individual change. This ignores all the other possibilities, such as nonviolent resistance to the Roman Empire, or a wider political challenge to all systems of domination in both personal and political forms.

The Kingdom of God has to be political. A kingdom, by definition, is a political entity. If you belong to a kingdom, you are expected to be loyal to it. Yes, the Kingdom of God involves personal transformation. But it is not possible to live morally within an immoral system; the Gospel calls for both personal and social change.

If we are loyal to the Kingdom of God, we cannot be loyal to the rulers, empires and states of this world. That frightened the Roman Empire enough to crucify Jesus, and it should frighten those who hold power today.

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My latest book is The Upside-Down Bible: What Jesus really said about money, sex and violence, published by Darton, Longman and Todd. It costs £9.99 in paperback or ebook.

The Rowes case: The Christian Gospel does not uphold binary gender

Posted on by symonhill

I was protesting against the London arms fair when I heard the news story about the Rowes famiy on the Isle of Wight. They have withdrawn their child from school, supposedly because he was “confused” by the school allowing children to make choices about what to wear.

It seems that the school permitted another pupil to choose weather to wear “boys’ clothes” or “girls’ clothes”. The Rowes parents insist that this was contrary to their Christian faith. They are now taking legal action against the school for allowing their pupils to choose what to wear and “confusing” their own child.

I too was confused when I was a small child. I was confused about why boys and girls wore different clothes, and why I couldn’t wear the same clothes as girls. I was confused about why girls and boys were expected to play with different toys. I was confused about why my family lived in a small cottage in the grounds of a large house in which my mother worked as a housekeeper, and why the family that she worked for had a much larger and better house than ours.

As I grew up, I came to understand the reasons for these things, while never accepting they were right. I am still confused all the time. Being confused is part of being a child – or an open-minded adult.

It came as no suprise to me to learn that the Rowes parents are backed by the Christian Legal Centre, a far-right gang of homophobes who pursue legal cases to back up their absurd claim that Christians are being “marginalised” or “discriminated against” in the UK. While they’re most often attacking gay and bisexual people, their other targets have included trans people, Muslims and Jews.

With this case, the Christian Legal Centre have sunk to a new low (some might be surprised that such a thing is possible, but they keep proving that it is). This time, they are not objecting to something being banned, but something being allowed. They are not opposing the treatment of their own child, but to the choices of another child.

They are launching a legal challenge over a school uniform policy that they considers offers children too much choice. As if this isn’t bizarre enough, they are citing Christianity as their reason for doing so.

The Christian Legal Centre (and Christian Concern, which is their political campaigning wing) are not representative of evangelicals, let alone Christians generally. Many other Christians, however, tend to ignore them rather than challenging them, which unfortunately gives them space to represent themselves in the media as the voice of Chrsitianity.

Occasionally, they have brought cases that make at least some sort of sense (such as opposing restrictive uniform policies that rule out religious symbols). This time, they’re objecting to a uniform policy that offers too much freedom.

Thankfully, they have very little chance of winning this ridiculous legal challenge. They will, however, manage to secure considerable media coverage to promote their prejudices. As a result, Christianity will probably be associated with bigotry and coercion in even more people’s minds by the time they have finished.

They will also promote the impression that the Bible upholds narrow attitudes to gender and sexuality. I am baffled as to how so many people who have read the New Testament can conclude that it promotes “family values” and binary gender. It is not just that gender fluidity is compatible with the Gospel. Rather, it seems to me that that narrow atttiudes to gender are utterly contrary to the Gospel.

Different groups of Christians can always hurl quotes from the Bible at each other. But I am not backing my argument with a few isolated lines from the Bible. I suggest that most of the New Testament consistently attacks narrow, biological, socially constructed attitudes to families, gender and sexuality. Rejection of such things is one of the New Testament’s prominent themes.

Jesus and his followers left their families to form a community that travelled around together; such behaviour was surprising at least. According to the gospels, Jesus allowed women to make physical contact with him in a society that found it shocking (but he is never shown initiating the contact). He redefined family, saying that whoever does God’s will was his brother, sister and mother. He urged his supporters to “call no-one father on earth” (in a context in which a father was a figure of authority). He opposed the practice that allowed men to divorce their wives on a whim, throwing them into disgrace and poverty. He made clear that men were responsible for the sexual sins they committed “in their hearts” and couldn’t blame women for tempting them.

Such radical attitudes continued in the early Christan community, with the older parts of the New Testament making clear that women were given a central place in the community. In his letter to the Galatians, the apostle Paul attacked those who would replace the freedom of the gsopel with a series of rules, insisting (among other things) that distincitons between Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and female, were ended in the Christian community.

True, the later parts of the New Testament show a more conventional attitude to gender, family and hierarchy. For example, the letters to Ephesians and Timothy tell women to obey their husbands (these letters are attributed to Paul but most biblical scholars take the view that he did not write them). This reflects Christianity losing its progressiive attitudes as time went on, contrary to the shocking radicalism of Jesus and Paul.

The Gospel is about liberaton, not legalism. To preach legalism, as Paul told the Galatians, is to preach “another gospel”.

Since last week, over 100 people have been arrested while taking nonviolent direct action against the evil of the DSEI arms fair in London. Many of them are Chrsitians, some arrested during acts of worship. The Christian Legal Centre present themselves as anti-establishment (as far-right groups often do) but they do nothing to challenge the injustices of capitalism and militarism. The gospel is about challenging legalism, exploitation and oppressive attitudes – not upholding them.

The Christmas story is a political story

Posted on by symonhill

The New Testament opens with a story of conflict. It is a political conflict.

By any standard, King Herod was a vicious ruler. Yet in Matthew’s Gospel, he is frightened. He feels threatened – not by another ruler, not by an army, not by his masters in Rome. He is frightened of a baby.

Herod tries to fool a group of astrologers (not three kings) into passing on information about Jesus, but they are warned and outwit him. They proclaim Jesus, not Herod, to be king. In his desperation, Herod inflicts the unimaginable horror of a massacre of children. But Jesus survives. Mary, Joseph and Jesus become refugees in Egypt.

The story has been distinctly odd even before Herod appears. We have a Jewish couple who look set to break up when Mary becomes pregnant. But Joseph is told that Mary is pregnant through the Holy Spirit. Instead of feeling shame or outrage, he trusts her and goes through with the marriage. Social and family norms are overturned. No “traditional family values” here. Jesus had two fathers.

We are presented with contrasting images of kingship. We have the worldly kingship of Herod, rooted in wealth, violence, deceit and political manipulation. Against that, we have the child of an almost-single mother who becomes a refugee. As the child grows up, he mixes with the marginalised, sides with the poor and exemplifies active nonviolence.

Since the fourth century, when the Roman Empire domesticated Christianity, many churches have shown more affinity with the sort of power represented by Herod than with the upside-down kingship of Jesus.

Few elements of Christianity have been domesticated more thoroughly than Christmas. Stories from Matthew and Luke have been welded together, mixed in with Pagan imagery and used as the sentimental background music to a festival of consumerism.

It is sometimes said that we are losing “the real meaning of Christmas”. I’m not sure that people in Victorian times or the Middle Ages were focused on the radical nature of Jesus’ message any more than we are – at least not if they were listening at the pulpits of state-aligned churches.

The nativity stories are among the parts of the gospels that scholars tend to regard as least likely to be factually accurate. I accept that judgement. Nonetheless, I suggest that these stories mean a lot because they are a microcosm of the conflict and choice that is at the heart of the gospel. The nativity story is not merely a romantic myth but an invitation to take sides.

Will we choose the kingdom of God or the powers of this world? The tyrant or the baby? One side has money and armies. The other has love and nonviolence. It’s up to us.

 

The above article is adapted from a piece I wrote for the December 2016 issue of Reform magazine, in which I was one of four people asked to respond to the question, “What does Christmas mean to you?”. Many thanks to Steve Tomkins, editor of Reform, for asking me to write this.

My latest book is The Upside-Down Bible: What Jesus really said about money, sex and violence, published by Darton, Longman and Todd. It costs £9.99 in paperback or ebook.

Cameron wants us to remember Jesus’ birth – but not his life

Posted on by symonhill

David Cameron has just released his Christmas message, calling on us to mark the birth of Jesus and to remember those who are hungry or lonely at Christmas.

I find Cameron’s message hard to stomach. David Cameron speaks of the meaning of Jesus even as his government wages class war on the poor and pursues endless war in the Middle East.

I do not claim to be a better Christian than David Cameron. I fail to live up to Jesus’ teachings all the time. I sometimes struggle to understand Jesus’ meaning. I do not assume that all my conclusions about Jesus are right.

This does not stop me expressing my revulsion when Jesus’ name is invoked to back up a government whose policies are geared to promoting the short-term interests of the rich and powerful.

Let’s have a look at Cameron’s message. It begins with these words:

“If there is one thing people want at Christmas, it’s the security of having their family around them and a home that is safe. But not everyone has that.”

Cameron goes on to talk of those living in refugee camps. Are these are the same refugees who the UK government has been so reluctant to welcome? He then adds, “Throughout the United Kingdom, some will spend the festive period ill, homeless or alone.”

Hunger and loneliness do not happen by chance but are due to inequality, capitalism and an individualist society. More people are hungry, more people are lonely, as a direct result of Cameron and Osborne’s policies. Rough sleeping in the UK has gone up a whopping 55% since Cameron became Prime Minister.

Cameron goes on to pay tribute to nurses, volunteers and others who work to support “vulnerable people” at Christmas.

I am happy to pay tribute to those who support vulnerable people, as well as those working to change the situations that make them vulnerable. More such workers and volunteers are needed as Tory policies increase poverty and remove support from people in need.

The Prime Minister then praises the armed forces, saying “It is because they face danger that we have peace”.

Cameron seems to think that peace is the absence of violence. UK armed forces are sent to fight in wars for commercial and strategic interests in which innocent people are routinely killed. War does not lead to peace any more than promiscuity leads to chastity.

The message talks of those who are “protecting our freedoms”. We are very fortunate to have a great many freedoms in this country. We have them because our ancestors campaigned for them, not because the powerful graciously handed them down.

Referring to peace, the Prime Minister says:

“And that is what we mark today as we celebrate the birth of God’s only son, Jesus Christ – the Prince of Peace. As a Christian country, we must remember what his birth represents: peace, mercy, goodwill and, above all, hope. I believe that we should also reflect on the fact that it is because of these important religious roots and Christian values that Britain has been such a successful home to people of all faiths and none.”

Britain is not, and never has been, a Christian country. Jesus did not call for “Christian countries”. He spoke of the Kingdom of God, in which “the first will be last and the last first”. This is a challenge to all the kingdoms, powers and hierarchies of this world.

Jesus sided with the poor, called on the world to change its ways and was arrested after leading a protest in the Jerusalem Temple. He was executed by the Roman Empire with the collusion of religious leaders.

Most of today’s politicians, had they been around at the time of Jesus, would have labelled him a dangerous extremist. Editorials in the Daily Mail would have demanded his crucifixion.

Jesus said, “To everyone who has will be given more; but anyone who has not will be deprived even of what he has.” Jesus was aware of the inequality and injustice in his own society, but it sounds like an equally good description of the UK government’s current policies.

My prayer at Christmas is that we will follow Jesus’ call to look into our hearts and that we will reflect on how we contribute to both justice and injustice in the world. In the light of this, I pray that we will end our subservience to systems of exploitation and war and follow Jesus’ example of resisting them.

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My new book, The Upside-Down Bible: What Jesus really said about money, sex and violence, has just been published by Darton, Longman and Todd.

Did Jesus believe in saving money?

Posted on by symonhill

David Cameron likes to describe people who work hard and save money as those who ‘do the right thing’. Cameron is a self-professed Christian and I would be fascinated to hear where he finds support for this approach in the teachings of Jesus.Upside-Down Bible

The gospels are pretty negative about saving money.

Take the ‘parable of the rich fool’, which you can find at Luke 12, 13-21. A rich man replaces his barns with bigger ones in order to store ‘all my grain and all my goods’. He then relaxes, knowing he has plenty of possessions on which to rely. God appears and calls him a fool, saying his life will be taken that very night. ‘And the things you have prepared, where will they be?’

Many Christians insist that it was not the man’s wealth that was the problem but his attachment to it. But the question at the end seems to be mocking the efforts he has made to accumulate it. Just afterwards, Jesus urges his disciples not to worry about what they will eat and wear. ‘Consider the ravens,’ he says. ‘They have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them.’

Elsewhere, Jesus urges his listeners not ‘to store up treasure on earth’ but treasure in heaven. He told a wealthy man to give all he had to the poor. Urging people not to boast about their generosity, he encouraged them not to let their left hand know what their right hand was doing. It is difficult to imagine Jesus entering his daily income and expenditure on a spreadsheet.

Jesus was acting in a strong biblical tradition. When the Israelites fled Egypt – where food was stored in barns for the elite – they had to rely on ‘manna’, food sent by God on a daily basis that went rotten if kept until the next day.

I have recently been showing Jesus’ teachings to non-Christians who were new to the Bible (as research for my new book, The Upside-Down Bible). I was not surprised that some of them regarded them as over-the-top. Dunyazade, a Muslim, contrasted Jesus’ ‘extreme’ encouragement to give away everything with the apparently more realistic Muslim requirement to give a percentage of your income away. Carl, a left-wing activist, approved of Jesus’ words on the grounds that they support ‘the ideals of socialism’. Sally, a charity fundraiser, saw Jesus reflecting the reality that it is often some of the poor who give the most to charity.

The gospels imply that at least some of Jesus’ disciples lived in community, sharing a common purse. This may have removed day-to-day fears about having enough to eat while making things very uncertain and precarious in the longer term. This style of living was itself a radical witness to the Kingdom of God, contrasted with the kingdoms and values of this world.

I recently heard a politician suggest that financial advisers should be stationed in food banks, to help their users to manage money. Perhaps he thinks the sharp rise in food banks has been caused by an outbreak of financial mismanagement. True, charities provide a valuable service in advising people on looking after their finances, but this is different to seeing such matters as the cause of the problem. I have always been baffled by the common middle-class belief that the act of entering numbers in columns generates food.

The idea of saving money and looking after it is so venerated in today’s society that any rejection of it seems extreme. Perhaps it’s time for Christians to acknowledge that this is what Jesus’ teachings are: extremist.

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My new book is The Upside-down Bible: What Jesus really said about money, sex and violence, which was published by DLT on 26th November in paperback and eBook, priced £9.99. The above post appeared originally on the DLT Books Blog as part of a series of five posts looking at Jesus’ parables in the light of my research for the book.