faces
From my early childhood, I remember a coffee table book that my parents owned. It was called "The Faces of Jesus," and it contained images of Jesus as interpreted through the art of myriad cultures and time periods. Jesus as many different ethnicities and ages; Jesus as infant, Jesus as old man, Jesus as corpse, Jesus resurrected. In wood and metal, paint and ink, gilt and glass, ceramic and bone. I loved all of the wonderful textures and colors and shapes. I had no concept of which was the "right" Jesus, the correct one. I didn't have to choose the proper and acceptable Jesus; I loved all of them.
I was told in Sunday school that Jesus loved little children. I saw drawings of him holding children, smiling and talking to them. He was strong and gentle, kind and smart. And yet, he didn't use these attributes to gain unfair advantage over others. I was puzzled. How could you be strong, and not use your strength to hurt others? How could you be gentle, and not use your gentleness to trick people into letting their guard down? How could you be smart, and not use your intelligence to humiliate and oppress?
Because in my small, young world, my father's strength and gentleness, kindness and intelligence were weapons used against his family. I had to guard against them. If I even left a crack, a smile, an openness behind my eyes, it was all over. I would have to pay for trusting. If I gave away my heart, all I got back was ashes. If I offered an outstretched hand, it got slammed in a door. If I spoke a kind word, I got a fat lip. See my beautiful necklace of bruises? These plum and amethyst jewels, set in skin fading to green and yellow, these are my prizes. They are hidden so no one can see them, but they are precious, they are hard won these trophies. They mean my father loves me, that he cares enough to notice me. I collect them, wrapped with care, here beneath my clothes. And when they disappear, past their expiration date, I have to go dig for more, mined from his anger.
I remember what Christ became to me, His perceived faces, the abusive, judgmental, all or nothing faces that drove me away from Christianity in my teens. There's a song by the band Nine Inch Nails that really encapsulated the impression of Jesus I had in high school. Jesus, God, Father, blind and indifferent to my pain, the impression that I had been fooled and lied to, that the joke was on me; "Terrible Lie"...
"Hey god, I really don't know what you mean.
Seems like salvation comes only in our dreams.
I feel my hatred grow all the more extreme.
Hey god, can this world really be as sad as it seems..."
How could all of the adults in my life be such complete and utter fools? What was the Church but a place for sociopaths to nest and move unhindered, the flock tended by wolves who ate the sick and the weak and the gullible? Sweet incense, smoke and mirrors. Hymns to lull and seduce. Sunday school and Vacation Bible Camp to reprogram and brainwash. But not me, suckers. Couldn't all the bleating sheep see what was behind the curtain? I had been cheated and lied to, and I was so angry I could spit, spit in all their saved, self-righteous, arrogant faces.
But it's not in me to be angry for years and years; outrage isn't fuel efficient. I come to a conclusion, give it its due, and then move past it. The Terrible Lie of the Church changed for me into a more aloof, distant understanding of God... why should I expend energy praying to an empty dream? Here was a new Jesus who didn't have the energy to lie, as He was so disinterested and detached from the world. Dragged along through history by word of mouth, a projection of people's desperate hopes and even more desperate fears. Powerless, mummified, a dry and desiccated God buried beneath the shifting sands, lost, lost, His angels blowing in the wind like dead moths, tumbleweeds, husks...
In college, I clearly remember reading the following excerpt by Walter Benjamin in the forward of the poet Carolyn Forche's collection "The Angel of History":
"This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward."
A God of good intentions? Maybe. But still no horn to blow, no cavalry to call, no spine, no guts. Trapped behind a mirror, He can pound all He wants but we can't hear Him, can't see Him. When we scream into the wind, into the night, lost and wandering on the moor, why is there only deafening silence? Why do the crickets continue their periodic songs, the lightning bugs blink endless ellipses, the night birds sleep undisturbed? Down the path, between the olive trees, in the bruise-colored shadows of Gethsemane, God is either dead or indifferent. Up the path to Golgotha, between the rocks and dust, God either exists or does not.
What good is this Dry God, this figure bound and static between perfect covers? What good are the words, unchanged for millennia, black links in an endless chain binding us to paper? They can throw the book at me, hide behind verses that they grip like prison bars, flay me with phrases that they strip like birch bark, peel like skin from the pages, but convince me to believe?
How can our lives, all life, be the embodiment of change, adaptation, cycles, seasons, biorhythms, ebb and flow, birth and death, and yet we're asked to believe that this Word is immutable, infallible, unchanging, frozen. If every book ever written was burned, every psalm ever sung silenced, every verse on every tongue vanished, would God cease to exist?
I will not believe in a God so leashed, even for our love. I will not believe in a God so confined, even for our comfort. I will not believe in a spitty-wet thumbsucking God, even for our benefit.
I will not believe in the proper and acceptable God. Neither heavenfire nor hellfire, bookworm nor brimstone, fisherman nor fearmonger, megaphone nor megachurch.
I will not believe in a God who hikes up Her skirts and runs at the first sign of science, nor is frightened by doubt or dialogue. God needs no defense, no war with method and measure, no puppet, no scapegoat, no scarecrow to protect the harvest.
All of the Faces are and are not Jesus. Awful and awesome, terrible and terrific; the truth isn't any easier to winnow or swallow than the lie. Serendipity or premeditation? Metaphor or formula? Chance or choice? Mystery or mistake? Living fruit or dried fruit roll-up?
I choose to see Jesus as many different people, ethnicities and ages; Jesus as son and mother, fruit and father, tree and seed, root and resurrected. In wood and metal, ivory and ink, ceramic and glass, flesh and bone. I love all of His wonderful textures and colors and shapes. I have no concept of who is the "right" Jesus, the correct one. I don't have to choose the proper and acceptable Jesus; I love all of them.