Paul writes in 1 Corinthians:
“For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:18)
“Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.” (1 Corinthians 1:22-23)
The Life of Pi
If you haven't met it, the Life of Pi is a novel (paid link) by Yann Martel, made into a film (paid link). It tells the story of a teenaged Indian boy named Pi, short for Piscine Molitor (the book and film explain how he came to have that name). His father ran a zoo in Pondicherry; Pi came to be shipwrecked and sea with some of the zoo’s animals.
It's a fabulously well-told tale, and the film is scenic, imaginative and very well done.
Pi was raised a Hindu, but in his childhood he came across a small Christian church with its minister / priest. He was fascinated and ended up deciding he wanted to become a Christian.
Fellow-Christians, don't get too excited. He later decided he also wanted to be a Muslim, and also wanted to retain his Hinduism. There then follows an amusing account of what happened as he tried to hold onto all three at once.
What caught my attention was the description of how the Christian gospel sounded to him when he first met it. It beautifully illustrates 1 Corinthians 1, and stops that chapter of the Bible feeling theoretical and not anything people today would feel.
Excerpt from Chapter 17
So here is an excerpt from chapter 17 of the book. It starts as he reluctantly and cautiously ventures into a church building he saw on a hillside on holiday.
There was a painting. Was this the murti? Something about a human sacrifice. An angry god who had to be appeased with blood. Dazed women staring up in the air and fat babies with tiny wings flying about. A charismatic bird. Which one was the god? To the side of the sanctum was a painted wooden sculpture. The victim again, bruised and bleeding in bold colours. I stared at his knees. They were badly scraped. The pink skin was peeled back and looked like the petals of a flower, revealing kneecaps that were fire-engine red. It was hard to connect this torture scene with the priest in the rectory.
…
And what a story. The first thing that drew me in was disbelief. What?
Humanity sins but it’s God’s Son who pays the price? I tried to imagine Father saying to me, “Piscine, a lion slipped into the llama pen today and killed two llamas. Yesterday another one killed a black buck. Last week two of them ate the camel. The week before it was painted storks and grey herons. And who’s to say for sure who snacked on our golden agouti? The situation has become intolerable. Something must be done. I have decided that the only way the lions can atone for their sins is if I feed you to them.”
“Yes, Father, that would be the right and logical thing to do. Give me a moment to wash up.”
“Hallelujah, my son.” “Hallelujah, Father.”
What a downright weird story. What peculiar psychology.
I asked for another story, one that I might find more satisfying. Surely this religion had more than one story in its bag—religions abound with stories.
But Father Martin made me understand that the stories that came before it— and there were many—were simply prologue to the Christians. Their religion had one Story, and to it they came back again and again, over and over. It was story enough for them.
I was quiet that evening at the hotel.
That a god should put up with adversity, I could understand. The gods of Hinduism face their fair share of thieves, bullies, kidnappers and usurpers.
What is the Ramayana but the account of one long, bad day for Rama? Adversity, yes. Reversals of fortune, yes. Treachery, yes. But humiliation’? Death? I couldn’t imagine Lord Krishna consenting to be stripped naked, whipped, mocked, dragged through the streets and, to top it off, crucified— and at the hands of mere humans, to boot. I’d never heard of a Hindu god dying. Brahman Revealed did not go for death. Devils and monsters did, as did mortals, by the thousands and millions—that’s what they were there for. Matter, too, fell away. But divinity should not be blighted by death. It’s wrong. The world soul cannot die, even in one contained part of it. It was wrong of this Christian God to let His avatar die. That is tantamount to letting a part of Himself die. For if the Son is to die, it cannot be fake. If God on the Cross is God shamming a human tragedy, it turns the Passion of Christ into the Farce of Christ. The death of the Son must be real. Father Martin assured me that it was. But once a dead God, always a dead God, even resurrected.
The Son must have the taste of death forever in His mouth. The Trinity must be tainted by it; there must be a certain stench at the right hand of God the Father. The horror must be real. Why would God wish that upon Himself?
Why not leave death to the mortals? Why make dirty what is beautiful, spoil what is perfect?
Love. That was Father Martin’s answer.
And what about this Son’s deportment? There is the story of baby Krishna, wrongly accused by his friends of eating a bit of dirt. His foster mother, Yashoda, comes up to him with a wagging finger. “You shouldn’t eat dirt, you naughty boy,” she scolds him. “But I haven’t,” says the unchallenged lord of all and everything, in sport disguised as a frightened human child. “Tut! Tut! Open your mouth,” orders Yashoda. Krishna does as he is told. He opens his mouth. Yashoda gasps. She sees in Krishna’s mouth the whole complete entire timeless universe, all the stars and planets of space and the distance between them, all the lands and seas of the earth and the life in them; she sees all the days of yesterday and all the days of tomorrow; she sees all ideas and all emotions, all pity and all hope, and the three strands of matter; not a pebble, candle, creature, village or galaxy is missing, including herself and every bit of dirt in its truthful place. “My Lord, you can close your mouth,” she says reverently.
There is the story of Vishnu incarnated as Vamana the dwarf. He asks of demon king Bali only as much land as he can cover in three strides. Bali laughs at this runt of a suitor and his puny request. He consents. Immediately Vishnu takes on his full cosmic size. With one stride he covers the earth, with the second the heavens, and with the third he boots Bali into the netherworld.
Love. That was Father Martin’s answer.
Even Rama, that most human of avatars, who had to be reminded of his divinity when he grew long-faced over the struggle to get Sita, his wife, back from Ravana, evil king of Lanka, was no slouch. No spindly cross would have kept him down. When push came to shove, he transcended his limited human frame with strength no man could have and weapons no man could handle.
That is God as God should be. With shine and power and might. Such as can rescue and save and put down evil.
This Son, on the other hand, who goes hungry, who suffers from thirst, who gets tired, who is sad, who is anxious, who is heckled and harassed, who has to put up with followers who don’t get it and opponents who don’t respect Him—what kind of a god is that? It’s a god on too human a scale, that’s what. There are miracles, yes, mostly of a medical nature, a few to satisfy hungry stomachs; at best a storm is tempered, water is briefly walked upon. If that is magic, it is minor magic, on the order of card tricks. Any Hindu god can do a hundred times better. This Son is a god who spent most of His time telling stories, talking. This Son is a god who walked, a pedestrian god—and in a hot place, at that—with a stride like any human stride, the sandal reaching just above the rocks along the way; and when He splurged on transportation, it was a regular donkey. This Son is a god who died in three hours, with moans, gasps and laments. What kind of a god is that? What is there to inspire in this Son?
Love, said Father Martin.
And this Son appears only once, long ago, far away? Among an obscure tribe in a backwater of West Asia on the confines of a long-vanished empire? Is done away with before He has a single grey hair on His head? Leaves not a single descendant, only scattered, partial testimony, His complete works doodles in the dirt? Wait a minute. This is more than Brahman with a serious case of stage fright. This is Brahman selfish. This is Brahman ungenerous and unfair. This is Brahman practically unmanifest. If Brahman is to have only one son, He must be as abundant as Krishna with the milkmaids, no? What could justify such divine stinginess?
Love, repeated Father Martin.
I’ll stick to my Krishna, thank you very much. I find his divinity utterly compelling. You can keep your sweaty, chatty Son to yourself.
That was how I met that troublesome rabbi of long ago: with disbelief and annoyance.
End Note
Clearly, some of what he objects to is predicated on misunderstandings.
The analogy of him being fed to the lions is different from Jesus bearing our sin in many ways, not least that Jesus had to be made like us in every way before he could be our substitute and Pi Patel is not another lion. But that's just the start.
The careful distinctions around the two natures of Christ thrashed out at the Council of Chalcedon prevent the Trinity being permanently tainted by the fact that Jesus died.
Other objections are not misunderstandings at all. In Jesus, we have a God who (according to his human nature) gets tired. Who rescues from sin by dying. But who will nevertheless return in power and might to destroy all evil forever.
The fact this is a mixture of misunderstandings and objections to the truth is, of course, precisely the point. People today, as in ancient Corinth, will find the message of the cross foolish and weak, but not always because they've heard it correctly. In fact, we can go further. If the God who said “let light shine out of darkness” had opened the eyes of their hearts, Jesus’ death would be the wisdom of God and the power of God. When someone hears the gospel of Jesus’ death and resurrection to be something foolish, it is always because they have misunderstood it. It is simply that some misunderstandings are more crass than others.
In any case, Jesus’ death is a foolish and weak message to unbelievers today, just as it was in ancient Corinth. And the fictitious Piscine Molitor Patel articulates much of that brilliantly.
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