A guest blog post by author Brian McLaren has me thinking.  (Thanks to Scott for the link.)  McLaren has a brief list of some theological claims he’s exploring in his latest book.  (He at least leans toward universalism.)

What’s got me thinking is this:

E. The Sadducees were the conservatives who held to the older view that there was no hell or no afterlife. The Pharisees were, in a sense, the liberals who accepted the idea of hell. Many believe that the idea of hell came into Judaism from Persian religion – and that the name Pharisee may be from Farsi, or Persian.

F. Jesus does not follow either the Sadducees (who reject any idea of afterlife), nor does he follow the teaching of the Pharisees and their view of hell. Rather, he charts a bold new path and uses the language of hell ("owned" by the Pharisees) to draw attention to his own message – centered in the kingdom of God, and the character of God. [Emphasis mine.]

The move to interpret Jesus’ words metaphorically is an easy one for us religious liberals, but McLaren’s claim is different.   If I read him correctly, he is claiming that Jesus’ use of "hell language" was merely a pragmatic rhetorical choice.  Jesus, implies McLaren, used hell language not because he believed in it but because it was already in the water. 

If we follow McLaren on this, then Jesus’ use of the language of "eternal punishment" in Matthew 25, for instance, is little different than the "woe unto the Pharisees" passages just two chapters earlier—except that in Matthew 25 he can now be read as intentionaly using the Pharisees’ own hell language against them.

One of the problems of Christianity is that its adherents have persistently reified (that is, "thing-ified") its rhetoric to the point that one must take out a mortgage to buy an entire worldview to be able to preceive its "good news."  Heaven, hell, sin, grace, salvation, atonement, God, Christ, Holy Spirit, Trinity, Satan, Fall, law, church, sacrament—you must understand, and assent to, most (if not all) of these symbols in order to be able to accept any of them.  Sure, there are different interpretations of these symbols, and minority Christian groups will do without one or two here or there. 

Still, an entire symbolic universe must be swallowed whole just to receive the message of grace that Christians themselves would admit Jesus meant to give to everyone freely. 

What’s wrong with this?  And what does it have to do with McLaren?

The Jesus I read in the Gospels doesn’t give a shit about your symbolic universe—unless it’s contributing to the harm of others, especially the poor.  And, if I read McLaren right, when it does contribute to harm, Jesus will use your symbolic universe against you to publicly shame you for it.  Dammit, I like this Jesus.  A veritable Trickster!

Notice how this Jesus quickly escapes the bounds of First Century Judaism, the Roman Empire, and all the Christianities that have followed since.  They cannot capture this Jesus, who weaves and bobs, turning their worldviews against them in a rhetorical aikido.

I expect Christians would object to this Jesus.  After all, if you allow this reading, most all of their symbolic universe quickly crumbles to nothing.  Not only is that verbal game not necessary for this Jesus to accomplish his mission, but absolutely all of it is fodder for a public shaming of its speakers, by none other than Jesus himself.  We could even argue that this Jesus opposes the reification of religious symbols precisely because reified religious symbols hurt people and prevent the realization of the Kingdom of God—another religious symbol, one which Jesus took great care to keep from reification even during his ministry.

What then is this Jesus’ point?  I don’t feel it’s right to expect me in this post to lay that out.  After all, it’s right there in the book.  He did say, "Let those who have ears, hear."  That seems to make it your problem.  But if this post’s reading of Jesus is on target, any reading of Jesus that requires the use of those traditional symbols is full of shit.

I’ll mention one specific objection to my line of thinking: "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s." Here the objection would be that the traditional religious language is God’s and is to be rendered unto God.  But two millennia of Christian history show—assuming Jesus meant it when he said "by their fruits you will know them"—that the symbol game belongs to Caesar. 

And if you think that only discounts Christian history yet leaves the language itself immune, I have a crack squad of philosophers (including Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Foucault and Rorty) who’d argue your whole worldview belongs to Caesar.  You can agree or disagree with them if you like, but don’t fall back on that religious language to argue your way out of it. 

Some have argued with the philosophers in their own language. The "radical orthodox" will claim incommensurability for themselves (a move otherwise known as solipsism’s group hug).  I don’t think anyone really wants to go down that way.  The post-liberals will argue that Christianity is a "classic" with its own, learned language game.  But that’s precisely the problem, according to this Jesus. 

Either Jesus’ good news is free or it is not.  If I have to take out a mortgage to buy your symbolic universe before I can get the good news, someone somewhere is lying about it being free, and my hunch is that it ain’t Jesus.