©Copyright 2003 by Dr. Strange. All Rights Reserved
This Thanksgiving, I had the opportunity to announce to my fundamentalist relatives that Christianity was in fact a dead religion, or at least dying. Curiously, this didn’t provoke the reaction it would have just a few years ago. Even the most fundie of Christian mentalist have begun to suspect that something is wrong with their religion.
In the post-consumption phase of the festivities, my aunt, in her 80s and as devout a Southern Baptist as ever was, sparked this conversation by asking if anyone had seen the TV special on Jesus and Mary Magdalene being married? Everyone had. Before anyone could stop me, I was off and running. I explained to them that as a rabbi in the first century, he had to have been married, or the Gospels and supporting materials would be full of references to the oddity of his NOT being married… Who was the wedding at Cana for? Who are these women in Bethany, and why does that Mary treat Jesus as if he is her husband? Who but the wife would be at the tomb first thing on the third day?
After I wound down, and I went on at greater length than I did above, my aunt very politely told me that she could never believe that Jesus was married, because then he wouldn’t be the Son of God. He’d be just another man, not God’s son…
And then I realized, her fundamentalism had run into my gnosticism from the opposite direction. She no more believed in any kind of “real” Jesus than did the second century Gnostic cults. For both, it is the myth, ultimately, that matters the most. Christianity, stripped to its core of narrative, is nothing more or less than the last great pagan mystery cult of the ancient world. However, the problem comes in the translation…
The fundamentalists are abstracting narratives from a flawed text, one that had been worked over several times for conflicting, and often political, reasons long before it became the version they prefer. Their literal idolatry of that text, King James’ Own, as my Grandfather called it, has caused them to create a skewed version of the mystery, one that focuses on sin, retribution and strict obedience to God’s Will. In that mythic scheme, the female has all but disappeared.
For Jesus to have a wife would actually raise the whole long dead and buried in the racial and collective unconsciousness idea of the Goddess. It also detracts from the idea of Jesus as sin-eater and sacrifice. And it brings up the issue of sex. Christians have always been nervous about sex, never more so than when they think of Jesus as having had any…
For my aunt, as for most of the Christian fundamentalists, Jesus with a wife and a family wouldn’t be the Christ. That being could no more have a wife than the man in the moon, and for the same reason. They are both fictive archetypal projections. Myths, in other words…
Christianity is a dead religion because it can’t resolve the contradiction between Jesus the man and the myth of the Christ. Take out the pagan elements and you have a very different picture, one that focuses on a heretical Jewish philosopher and wonder-worker with very lofty political pretensions. And my aunt is quite correct: this Jesus is so far from the Son of God that if you explained the concept to him he’d accuse you of blasphemy.
Personally, I think it is high time the fundamentalists just broke down and admitted that they are really pagans, puritan Romans in the grip of a two thousand year old delusion. That would loosen up the mythic structure, explain why Christ’s Mass is actually devoted to Mithra, and so on. The Goddess could even come back, as the newly pagan fundamentalist could now see Mary Magdalene as the Lady to Christ’s Lord. The whole religion could therefore swing from thanotropic to erotropic, and thereby change the whole perspective in the west on things such as ecology, the role of women and the need for an ecstatic technology. Admitting that Christianity is the last great pagan religion just might bring on the thousand years of peace and harmony the Christians have been promising for the last two millennia.
So, let me, your neighborhood astral traffic controller, Dr. Strange, be the first to urge the creation of a new Christian Wicca. Here’s what we need: Just one neo-pagan group with the courage to do a ritual using Jesus and Mary Magdalene as god and goddess. And then invite the local Christians to the event and openly encourage them to embrace their pagan origins. Who knows what might happen?