The Sacrament
by Jason GodeskyIt’s Good Friday. Like every Good Friday for the past five years, I made my pilgrimage and partook of one of the few religious traditions I have left to me: going to Burger King and getting a Whopper.
As a Catholic, I never ate meat on Good Friday. In fact, my family had fish every Friday and Wednesday. Several Lents, I even went so far as to fast all 40 days (in the Ramadan fashion, only eating when the sun went down). Now, I mark Good Friday every year by eating a Whopper, but it isn’t simply for childish blasphemy–there is a genuine religious belief to it.
As a pantheist, I believe that everything in the universe is part of a single organism, the same way the cells of your body are part of a single organism. Here’s where my belief turns mystical, because I also believe that it is possible for any given individual in this vast Pantheos to realign her consciousness, her self, her soul, such that any distinction between oneself and G-d becomes meaningless. In short, that by attaining some sort of “gnosis,” one can become G-d.
Like the ancient Gnostics, I believe that Jesus was such an individual. I don’t believe in the Virgin Birth, and whether or not the Resurrection ever happened doesn’t interest me, but to me, the gospels (canonical and non-canonical) tell an amazing story, about an amazing man, slowly discovering who he really is. Who we all really are.
I believe that for one moment, hanging from a cross after a brutal execution, a Jewish peasant, a Cynic sage from Nazareth, became G-d right before he died. Sacrificing himself so that, in one moment of perfect clarity born from pain, humanity could touch the face of G-d.
I watched The Passion again this week; I actually do like the movie, despite the authorial intent. I cried three times the first time I saw it. Not because Jesus suffered for my sins–I don’t see what his execution has to do with my sins, and I would never worship a G-d so cruel and unforgiving that he would kill his own son so brutally rather than simply forgive us. By my reading, the point of the exercise comes as the hammer falls on the first nail, and we’re swept back to the Last Supper, and Jesus telling his disciples; “I give you this command: Love one another. Love one another as I have loved you. For greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”
And then, John’s face, like my face, as realization creeps across it. It’s one thing to ponder the concept; it’s another to have it etched in blood before you. My brother said the violence was gratuitous. I disagree. We can’t back away from it in the slightest; we can’t look away, we can’t flinch. We must stare at it in all its horror–because that’s the point. That’s what each of us must be ready to do for one another. That’s the example set, the seal of suffering and blood that takes mere words and raises them to the level of faith.
For me, Jesus is an example. He blazes the trail to unity with the universe, by showing us the full, terrible extent of what “love” entails. His death is the most ancient archetype in human thought; the god who lays down his life for others. We are all living that archetype, though. That was the first philosophical or religious idea documented in the long history of human thought. The cannibal god, the ouroboros constantly eating its own tail. Life sustains itelf only by consuming the dead; only death can allow for birth. If the universe is a single being, that being is a cannibal, constantly sustaining itself by constantly consuming itself. An ouroboros.
The most primal expression of that is the eating of meat. Everything we eat is alive, but animals are alive in a way we can more easily recognize. The word “animal” comes the Latin word animus–”soul”–because they have a spirit that moves them. When we eat meat, a living soul lays down its life, that we may live; sacrificing itself for the sustenance of others. Every animal makes this sacrifice eventually. We may try to put it off by poisoning our bodies with embalming and sealing ourselves in lead coffins, to leave our bodies inviolate–to be the impenetrable penetrator, the Taker who never gives back, to steal the noble sacrifices of our brothers and sisters in the Kingdom Animalia without ever giving of ourselves–but even this will not stop the inevitable cycle. G-d will reclaim what is his, no matter how much we fight it. Eventually, that coffin will fall apart, the poisons will seep away, and our flesh will become food to insects and bacteria.
Nothing is ever wasted.
It was the pursuit of meat that formed our species. The added protein gave us larger cranial capacities. As scavengers, the need to cover large distances, but the lack of need for speed, made walking a primary focus of our physiology. The need to find kill sites over tall grasses made us bipedal. The need to get meat from a fresh kill and escape before vultures, hyenas, or other more powerful scavengers arrived inspired the first stone tools. As we became hunters, we evolved the ability to weave stories, in order to track. We developed language to coordinate our hunts. Everything that defines us as a species arose from the pursuit of meat. It is the most visceral connection to the endless cycle of G-d, and the most defining human activity.
So, to commemorate the highest holy day in my year–the anniversary of Jesus’ sacrifice, the day man touched the face of G-d–I go to Burger King, and amidst great prayer and thanksgiving to G-d, the cow, and a promise to one day give of myself in return, I eat a Whopper.
Oh, why a Whopper? Well that one’s easy: if you’re going to blaspheme, really blaspheme!
Jason, that’s very interesting. I’ve seen the ouroboros mentioned before as one of the primal myths - in Erich Neumann’s The Origins and History of Consciousness.
I’m not sure if you’re familiar with The Gospel of Thomas - there are some Christians and theologians who believe it to be a truer version of the original gospel than the gospels found in the Bible’s New Testament (there are also theories about another text - ‘Q’, not available - that some suppose to be an earlier source for the other gospels), because they were probably slightly embellished by the original Church Fathers. The analysis regarding Q, Gospel of Thomas and the other gospels is fairly complex and I don’t claim to be an authority, but an interesting aspect of TGOT is that it foregoes the crucifixion altoghether.
Comment by marts — 27 March 2005 @ 5:02 PM
You’re gross. You eat meat, you yucky thing.
And FUCK TGOT, it’s all (ALL RELIGIONS) a bunch of HOO HAH anyway, you xian freaks.
Comment by Anonymous — 29 March 2005 @ 3:32 AM
Anonymous, religion is a universal of human culture. It’s hard-wired into our brains. Hoo-hah or not, it’s an undeniable part of what it means to be human. For example, your rejection of religious belief requires as much faith as a Christian’s embrace of it. Hindus make a claim about the number of gods–there are many. So do Christians–there’s only one. So do atheists–there are none. All require faith, because all make a claim without evidence. Only the agnostic is truly pure.
Marts, I’m very familiar with Thomas; it’s by far my favorite gospel. Which isn’t to say Thomas doesn’t have problems of its own. Thomas is a sayings gospel: it’s just a collection of Jesus’ teachings. Q has been reconstructed from the shared material in Matthew and Luke that isn’t in Mark, and it also appears to be a sayings gospel. Naturally, these gospels don’t have anything about the trial, execution or resurrection of Jesus, since they’re simply collections of sayings. Even more interestingly, the oldest versions of Mark contain nothing of the resurrection, either….
The resurrection figures prominently in Paul’s vision of Christianity–if the resurrection did not happen, then our faith is in vain (quoting loosely from memory). Yet the presence of sayings gospels, and its absence from Secret Mark, would seem to belie its centrality. Could it be that the resurrection was only so important to Paul’s churches (which eventually prevailed), and that the rest of the Jesus Movement focused less on how he died, and more on what he said? The contradictions between Jesus’ and Paul’s teachings strike me as massive and unreconcilable; it would not surprise me at all if Paul focused people on Jesus’ death, so they would forget everything he’d said.
That aside, the historicity of Thomas is not iron-clad, either. It’s relatively late, but probably more historical because of its nature: short, pithy, Aramaic proverbs, rather than the long, winding Greek-philosophy-style speeches of John. Also, Thomas was written by a community of ascetics, and like the canonical gospels, that community was not above putting their own agenda in the Son of G-d’s mouth. The important part is simply understanding what each community’s unique agenda was; then, you can correct for its biases and outright concoctions.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 29 March 2005 @ 9:30 AM
You’re going to symbolize your deep connection to nature by eating petro-meat from a fast food chain? Count me out.
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 29 March 2005 @ 10:46 AM
Giuli,
I have relatives that can hunt, but for the present, I’m not one of them. I don’t know how to take down, dress, and prepare a deer. If I did, I would. But I don’t.
That means my meat-eating is relegated to what I can purchase–all of which is the product of petroleum-based industrial agriculture, or, “petroculture.” Even confining myself to USDA-certified, organically grown vegetables–probably as far as you can get from petroculture while still having grocery stores involved–is participating in agriculture, the ultimate root of the problem. In fact, because petroculture has such higher yields, a Kantian acceptance of organic foods as a categorical imperative would create even greater resource depletion than our current predicament. So the moral imperative is not nearly as cut-and-dry as your simple insult would have us believe.
Moreover, McDonald’s sins are not merely nutritional or even ecological. They are also a driving force in the Ethnocide threatening the existence of all cultures but our own. Burger King, while certainly no sainted organization, lacks McDonald’s ability to project such a culturally imperialist force upon the rest of the world. Its competition, however, draws funds away from McDonald’s that would otherwise be put to the ethnocidal cause. Buying a Whopper goes a few dollars towards undercutting our staggering losses of cultural diversity.
In short, the only way any of us can escape rampant hypocrisy is by foraging all our food. Unless we do that, we’re all living in varying shades of hypocrisy and support for hierarchical domination and terror. For one hypocrite to stand up and denounce the hypocrisy of another is, oh, what’s the word?
Comment by Jason Godesky — 29 March 2005 @ 2:20 PM
What’s interesting to me is the significance of TGOT coming to light now (or in the 20th century). Entertain a mystical view for a minute and wonder about the evolution of (incl. human) consciousness, then it may be significant that a Christianity without insitutionalised religion should have become available through a gospel so late - humanity wasn’t ready before. On the other hand Paul’s version may be seen as a lamentable view (if false), but then the question could still be asked: would Christianity have survived so well without his slant?
The agnostic attitude (I agree) is the only viable option. This is based (in my case) on the impossibility of either proving or refuting the tenets that (Christian) theistic religion is based on. It seems to me the most honest position and therefore the one that can be maintained with the most intellectual integrity. Which is not to say one shouldn’t sometimes try to entertain the others …
Comment by marts — 29 March 2005 @ 5:28 PM
Hi, all,
Personally, I see a difference between spirituality (which is what’s “hardwired”, Jason) and religion (which is simply a form of government, social teaching and control). Chrstianity is the latter more than the former (in large part because of Paul’s diversion from what Jesus actually said.)
You’re probably right, marts, that Xianity wouldn’t have survived as it did without such a change… or, maybe, more accurately, it wouldn’t have GROWN. Paul got off on the idea of Jesus’s suffering and instilled it in his followers, reinforcing it with a divide and conquer attitude toward everyone else.
Had he not done that, Xianity would’ve probably remained a minor cult among the many that already existed in that region, a historical footnote with maybe as many followers today as Judaism has. By doing that, though, Paul set the stage for Xians to provoke their own repression under Emperor Julian & others (through their absolute refusal to cooperate with the other legal cults of the time) that, unfortunately for the Pagans, only served to reinforce the Xian sense of “specialness” & dualistic attitudes to the point of delusion in several famous early leaders & “saints.”
Comment by Gus — 29 March 2005 @ 5:53 PM
Actually, I’d say the opposite–that it’s religion that’s hard-wired. Even ardent atheists have their rituals, after all. We need that kind of ritual and mindless, rote reptition to delineate meaning in our lives, I think. Giuli’s ritual is watching the Daily Show every night; for Christians, it’s attending church. If we also attach some spiritual meaning to those rituals, well, that’s hardly peculiar.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 29 March 2005 @ 10:29 PM
I don’t think watching the Daily Show everyday is “spiritual”. It provides a structure to existence. If everyday was completely different from the last everyone would be schizophrenic (life would basically be random). We need structure, change is inherenly difficult and upsetting but can be very exciting (changing jobs, moving, changing careers). Religion is good at providing structure (and a social environment as well, a large part of structure; we don’t change friends every day). Structure is why we don’t eat dessert first (I watched Starman last night, an excellent film, hits on a lot of these topics actually).
Watching my wife sleep is spiritual. It’s a connection with something more tangible than entertainment. Althought I do think a lot of people have a spiritual attachment to television. These are shallow lives, but it is easier to relate to a thing than a person.
I don’t think religion is hardwired. Spirituality is as far as it’s related to relating to people and things (and god with regards to religion). Spirituality is not religion (definition #4 here: http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=spiritual), at least from my perspective.
Comment on your other articles: Great stuff, I didn’t realize I had an interest in anthropology… I’ve been trying to dig into some of Nietzche’s ideas on morals and it’s a lot easier to see how morality isn’t inherent by studying the beginning of a civilization (wish I had more time and a better attention span for this effort). Keep the ideas coming.
Comment by JWT — 5 April 2005 @ 3:13 PM
That’s actually exactly my point; rituals may or may not be spiritual. Lots of people have removed spirituality from their lives–no one removes religion (where religion is the sum of all one’s rituals, whether spiritual or secular, sacred or profane, elaborate or mundane).
Comment by Jason Godesky — 5 April 2005 @ 3:19 PM