Years ago, I was at work in downtown Seattle, an information-rich, urban environment in the heart of a civilization saturated with Christian assumptions about the world, but increasingly out of touch with the sources of those assumptions. My co-worker, an extremely bright and well-educated woman, was listening to the radio as she worked. The radio started playing Joan Osborne’s “What If God Was One of Us?”
She looked at me from across the hall and said, “Wouldn’t that be a great idea for a story?”
I said, “What?”
She said, “You know, like “What if God became a human being?”
I was gobsmacked. She was genuinely oblivious to the central narrative of the entire western tradition for the last two millennia. I was tempted to reply, “You could even call it The Greatest Story Ever Told”.
The thing to grasp here is that she was completely sincere. She thought it a great idea for a story. There was no satire or sarcasm in her words. She was intrigued by the idea. It was, as it was 2000 years ago, news to her to discover that this was the central assertion of Christians.
I think of that as I read this story from last summer:
‘Jeopardy’ fans reel as ‘Lord’s Prayer’ question goes unanswered
“Jeopardy” fans found themselves stunned Tuesday night after all three contestants failed to answer a question asking them to complete a line of the Lord’s Prayer, the most widely recited prayer in Christianity.
The puzzle, worth $200, read, “Matthew 6:9 says, ‘Our Father, which art in heaven,’ This ‘be thy name.’”
Contestants Suresh Krishnan, Laura Blyler and Joe Seibert stood in silence, with none of the three attempting to fill in the blank, until host Mayim Bialik revealed the answer: “Hallowed.”
The moment went viral, with viewers on Twitter expressing their shock at the contestants’ inability to answer a seemingly common-knowledge question.
“Tonight’s Jeopardy contestants were just asked to fill in this blank: ‘Our Father who art in heaven, ______ be thy name,’” one user tweeted. “None of them even took a guess. I’m really surprised — I thought that would be an easy one!”
“How can those Jeopardy! nerds not know this answer. Have they never listened to Iron Maiden?” another wrote, referencing the 1982 heavy metal song “Hallowed Be Thy Name.”
Some self-proclaimed conservative Twitter users also appeared to express outrage.
“Not one contestant on Jeopardy last night knew the answer to this…..” wrote one user, whose tweet garnered more than 5,700 likes. “Are you waking up yet?”
Another tweeted that the incident demonstrates “how sad our country is becoming”:
“They asked the question about the lords prayer. Neither of the three contestants got it,” they wrote. “That is very alarming. My gosh the most simplest prayer people need to get back to the Bible.”
A survey of 4,200 adults last year by consumer analytics platform CivicScience found that although a substantial number of young people are tuning into the show, more than 60% of regular “Jeopardy” watchers are older than 35.
And compared to older generations, young adults in the United States — as well as around the globe — have been less likely to subscribe to religion in recent years, according to the Pew Research Center. The number of Christians in the U.S. has also declined sharply over the past decade or so.
Some viewers suggested that they or their friends could have successfully answered the question, even as atheists.
“Dangit. Even my atheist friend knew this,” a user tweeted. “Goodness.”
“I’m an atheist and even I knew the answer to that lord’s prayer question,” wrote another.
My friend Sherry Weddell of the St. Catherine of Siena Institute comments:
Yep. Welcome to full blown Missiondom. No, we are not exaggerating when we say people really, really, really don’t have “Christian heads” anymore and we can presume nothing.
Sherry has, for years, been laboring to point out to Catholics who live in a fantasy that “Christendom” still exists or that our goal as a Church is to recreate Christendom that neither of these things are true–and that the pernicious fruit of such thinking is that it blinds us to the real work to which we are called: namely, bringing people to a living encounter with the Risen Christ in the heart of his Church, not imposition of a legal regime of force and compulsion springing from fear and aimed at inflicting draconian punishments on culture war enemies for violating fragments of a moral code they see no reason to accept.
Ironically, at the very moment this little illustration of how badly our culture is out of touch with the most rudimentary bits of Christian information was playing out on a quiz show, Reactionary Catholics were busy demonstrating how they helped bring our culture to this pass by making clear that they believe their mission iss not to offer themselves in love for their neighbor, but to demand that their non-Christian neigbor knuckle under to them while they themselves hunker down in Fortress Katolicus and spit venom at them, calling them godless, blasphemous and Christ-mocking.
Unsurprisingly, the recently unemployed Bishop Strickland was at this celebration of culture war instead of attending to his flock back in Tyler, Texas. And equally unsurprisingly, the organization putting it on was tellingly called ‘Catholics for Catholics”.
“Catholics for Catholics” is a concise expression of the wasting disease that the MAGA antichrist cult of culture war and self-pity has mainlined into the bloodstream of the US Church. It is is the direct opposite of the Great Commission: a great act of hunkering down, recoiling from our duty to love neighbor, and sociopathically stewing in fearful self-pity while speaking to and of all those outside Fortress Katolicus as enemies and vermin. Jesus did not say, “By this will all men know you are my disciples, that you pity yourselves.”
Such a bunker mentality readily invites this observation:
Back in the day, Christians did not meet ignorance of the Faith as a personal insult. Take, for instance, Priscilla and Aquila and their approach to Apollos. They did not shriek about the decline of the Faith and write angry tweets like “Not one contestant on Jeopardy last night knew the answer to this….. Are you waking up yet?” There was no recourse to dark hints about the Plot Against Christian education. Instead they got to work teaching the Faith:
Now a Jew named Apol′los, a native of Alexandria, came to Ephesus. He was an eloquent man, well versed in the scriptures. He had been instructed in the way of the Lord; and being fervent in spirit, he spoke and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus, though he knew only the baptism of John. He began to speak boldly in the synagogue; but when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him and expounded to him the way of God more accurately. And when he wished to cross to Acha′ia, the brethren encouraged him, and wrote to the disciples to receive him. When he arrived, he greatly helped those who through grace had believed, for he powerfully confuted the Jews in public, showing by the scriptures that the Christ was Jesus. (Acts 18:24-29)
In short, rather than assume Apollos was a “false teacher”, they assumed he meant well, but was not fully informed. They welcomed him and then brought him further up and further into the gospel. Paul did much the same thing with pagans, meeting them on their terms in Athens instead of demanding they meet him on his.
That is the situation the Church is in here in postmodern America and it is why the Reactionary Catholic plan for simply ramming “Christendom” down the throats of people who do not even know the Lord’s Prayer and have never even heard of the Incarnation is a fool’s errand.
And it is why a scheme to impose the bits and piece of a sexual ethic fanatcally endorsed by 13% of Americans on the other 87% is and always has been doomed, particularly since that 13% have no problem at all exempting themselves from bearing even the most trivial crosses while tying up crushing burdens for those they care far more about punishing than loving with the heart of Christ.
Of which more tomorrow.
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21 Responses
Appropriate for today’s feast day of St. Paul’s conversion – the apostle to the Gentiles
Well, to be fair, while the central narrative around Jesus might be about God becoming human, very little is told about him being ordinary, hence the idea of him being “one of us” could come off as a novel one. Its hard to think of someone as “one of us” when they have water walking, matter manipulating, super healing and resurrecting powers.
Its like Superman claiming that he knows what its like to be human, just because he walks amongst humanity while dressed up as Clark Kent.
Antiquity had few problems with the idea that gods could appear on earth in mortal form (outside of the Jewish people). The thing about Jesus was the shocking contrast between his low, peasant status (driven home by the utter scandal of his crucifixion, which marked him out as the lowest vermin of all to both Jew and Gentile) and the shocking claim of his deity.
I guess. However, it still gives off some of those “undercover boss” vibes. Sure, he’s mixing it up with the common folk, so to speak, but you don’t have a comparable level of uncertainty that’s inherent in the human condition. What I’m saying is, that I get your point about the whole point of the narrative regarding Jesus, but there are still some gaps between God’s incarnation and the actual human condition, so your friend’s perspective is not wholly without merit. There is a reason why it didn’t click for her immediately, and for a lot of people as well.
Either way, I know there have been some works of fiction that explore those themes, like “The Last Temptation of Christ” and “The Young Messiah”, so even if you’re not going by the Bible, what your friend might have been referring to has been done to certain extent.
The odd thing is that the people who had little trouble believing gods could appear as mortals were exactly not the people to whom God appeared as a mortal. Also, the grasp of the Incarnation is ultimately something that the apostles only slowly come to (with a big boost from their experience of the Resurrection). But the New Testament document make clear that there is a slowly deepening grasp of what “Son of God” means. That’s why Nicaea is ultimately necessary to really nail down exactly what is meant by saying Jesus is fully God. Other councils will be needed to nail down what “fully man” means. Revelation, as a priest friend once said, is like falling in love, not like deriving a sum from a math equation. It happens, and *then* you spend the rest of you life asking “What happened?” The Church is *still* asking that question.
Funny, one would that the reverse would be true, that the Church would nail down what “fully man” means before “fully God”, given the relative accessibility and experience with each.
As far as human incarnations go, I personally prefer the one portrayed in “Death: The High Cost of Living” as part of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman mythos. Per the story, “One day in every century, Death takes on mortal flesh, better to comprehend what the lives she takes must feel like, to taste the bitter tang of mortality”. What makes it noteworthy is that its not just a one off, but instead, its part of an ongoing effort to keep in touch with the living.
So what if God was one of us? Not just as a one-time human incarnation that went on to become a renowned and influential founder of a major world religion, but as an ordinary person living an ordinary life, touching and blessing the lives around them in the way ordinary people can? What if Jesus was just one incarnation among many, and that’s just something God does, to be a part of humanity as they keep tabs on humanity?
Just food for thought on what it might mean for a God to be “fully human”, even if its a position that the Church could never entertain.
Indeed, the Vikings believed that Odin himself would sometimes visit people in the guise of a poor vagabond in order to test their adherence to the virtue of hospitality. If such a person turned up at your door, you were supposed to offer them a place at your fire and something to eat.
The miracles helped show that Jesus was the Messiah – that this man is God – but the miracles are not the central narrative around Jesus, and so the central narrative is not that this man is God.
The central narrative is actually that God is man. Although it sounds basically the same, reversing the word order is intended to emphasize a different aspect of who Jesus is. Jesus became so fully human, so much like us, that it was even possible for Him to take upon Himself the consequences of our sins. It is that He became so thoroughly one of us that even He could and willingly did suffer death just like us, and in fact in a much worse form than most of us will face.
But still, your point probably is a common perception, and I think that in turn is Mark’s point: we can’t just assume that others understand our beliefs, much less share them. We have to engage with society in ways that acknowledge the current reality, and witness to truth and goodness of Christianity among people who were never taught or have forgotten why we believe what we do.
At the Catholic school where I work, the children are astoundingly ignorant about Catholicism. Most of our students flunked the archdiocesan test. Last year started with an official “visitation” which the non Catholics (most of the teachers) hated and mocked. They don’t like Catholicism even if the Church provides them with their paychecks. Our principal was almost fired for overseeing the teaching of Pride month, then denied having anything to do with it. Five of them almost lost their jobs. She protects her gay employees tooth and nail, even when they fail in their duties and bully others. I support the rights of the gay community, but nobody seems to care that the Catholicism is largely window dressing for a posh private school.
“Seattle, an information-rich, urban environment in the heart of a civilization saturated with Christian assumptions about the world, but increasingly out of touch with the sources of those assumptions. “
That’s a pretty solid description, and gave me a good chuckle.
Of course, we’re in a different situation than Priscilla and Aquila. They were seeing people really connect with and accept Christianity as a trend. Today we are seeing the opposite trend. That hurts. For many people, it is a challenge to their own faith. Too often I encounter people doubting that the gates of hell won’t prevail based on what they currently see.Most people instinctively become reactive when they’re hurting and the world they thought they knew is being disrupted.
As for the Our Father, I figured I’d poke around some reasonably recent Pew Survey data to get a sense of how likely the scenario was. I know the following is sort of beside your point, but numbers can be interesting regardless:
It appears roughly 64% of Americans identify as Christian, and 41% of Christians attended a religious service in the month prior to the survey. I suppose not all Christians might pray the Our Father routinely at their services, but on the other hand, surely some of those who attend at a frequency less than monthly will catch onto the words of the most common prayers. I’m going to assume those considerations roughly balance each other out, and therefore simplistically assume that approximately the same percentage of Christians know the words of the Our Father as attended services in the month prior to the survey.
A little disappointingly, that suggests 26% of Americans would know the words of the Our Father.
This suggests there should be roughly a 40% chance of 3 randomly selected Americans not knowing the words of the Our Father.
In our Reformed church, praying the Our Father was basically not allowed. That was what Catholics do. It was as strange as praying Hail Mary. One of the wonderful privileges I received in becoming a Catholic was being allowed to pray the Our Father!
Whoa. Observing American Christianity from outside the US I’ve had to learn never to say “Surely no Protestant would ever do XYZ” because there are so many certified counter-examples of [self-professed] Protestants doing XYZ.
I’d expect this stuff from some obscure denomination named after the former ex-Baptist minister from the Ozarks who founded their sect in 1837, but Reformed? Not the most readable novelists, agreed, but they do generally make an effort at discerning baby from bathwater. So how on earth did this particular crew get from “Jesus told us not to address religious leaders as ‘Father’, so of course we won’t” to “Jesus told us to address God as ‘Our Father’ when praying… but we won’t”?!
To clarify: Reformed/ Presbyterians/ Calvinists are not, on the whole, worried much about whether some practice “looks Catholic” as long as they think it’s consistent with the Bible. They do have a higher threshold for “this is consistent with Scripture, it’s not just ex post facto rationalisation to shoehorn in some tradition of men that you’re too attached to reform” than, eg, Lutherans do, but still, eg, you will see “St XYZ’s Presbyterian Church” where you will never ever see “St XYZ’s Baptist Church”. Likewise Prezzbots are happy to use terms like “sacraments” whereas the lower-church Prots strongly insist on “ordinances”; have some version of “Real Presence” (even though Catholics would think it falls short) and reject “mere symbol”; etc. Most Calvinist clergy even wear some kind of robe when preaching. Etc.
So my point is not whether they are right or wrong, just that whether “that’s something Catholics do” doesn’t seem to be a factor influencing most Reformed, so it’s mildly surprising that JTJ’s former posse took it as decisive.
I like that Pope Francis at least *tried* to update the words of the Our Father. The whole “Lead us not into temptation” really bugs me. Archaic language makes the words seem more of an incantation than a loving conversation.
I was testing a bunch of first graders on the Our Father a couple of years ago and this one little girl very earnestly prayed: “Our Father, who works in heaven…” It made me so happy. I told her that she was brilliant for fixing the prayer up.
If we believe that Jesus was “fully human” we need to not think of Jesus as Superman / Clark Kent.
As lauded as Jesus was during his ministry, as miraculous as his works were, and as insulting as he was toward the Pharisees and ruling classes… he died powerlessly with great suffering… just like a lot of us do. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus as God was powerless on the cross. Now that is vulnerability, desperation, despair. Something many of us humans encounter.
To the OP’s larger point… It would be Good News indeed if people realized that God was one of us, knew what we went through. No inaccessible God is God, but one very relatable and empathetic.
@TJR – actually, wasn’t American Christianity. It was the Reformed church my wife and I helped found here in Pukekohe, New Zealand (they weren’t too thrilled when we eventually became Catholics 🙂 )
(sorry, JTJ didn’t see your reply down the bottom)
NZ? Now that’s interesting.
be interesting to be eavesdropping on that consistory meeting when you and Mrs JTJ informed them… the sound of a dozen buckled hats dropping to the floor in unison… (-:
It was sad, in fact. As I said, we, with two other families, had started the Pukekohe Reformed Church – https://pukekohe.rcnz.org.nz/ – our becoming Catholics was heart-breaking both for them, and, in a way, for us.
I can imagine; won’t scrape that wound for you. But am still genuinely curious as outlined above.
https://www.calledtocommunion.com/2016/08/loss-and-gain/
jj
Unlike the pagan deities, Our Lord Jesus not only became one of us, He suffered, died and rose from the dead. So that we too in our human condition can bear suffering and not be in servile fear about death but look forward to the Day of Resurrection for ourselves and others as shown us by our hope in Christ.