smith_c@ncsatl.uucp (Spawn of a Jewish Carpenter) (10/30/89)
I'd like to apologize for the length of this file; I compiled this
file from many different postings on rec.arts.startrek. I hope you
find it interesting and I'm looking forward to your comments.
Also, I'm still trying to get in touch with the Moderator. I hope it's okay to
post this. Heh. I hope he doesn't take a hickory switch to me....
[uux ncsatl!administer-punishment -type hickory -repetitions 10 smith_c
--clh]
I would like to see a ST:TNG episode which dealt seriously with the question
of Christian beliefs as they pertain to the otherworlders. Let's take a
ficticious conversation among the crew of the new enterprise.
RIKER: No, Worf, you wouldn't understand Jesus Christ at all. He wasn't
a warrior; he preached love, peace, and the brotherhood of Man.
He refused to fight.
WORF: I believe I understand your Jesus Christ better than you, Commander.
He was a warrior; did he not say, "I came not to bring peace, but
a sword? To set mother against daughter, father against son, etc.?
I understand him quite well. He was a warrior who was perfectly
obedient to his commander, his God, who commanded him to walk into
the jaws of death. This Yahweh God's reasons for giving the command
are unclear to me, but your Yeshua, or Jesus, clearly understood the
command and obeyed it to the letter, to the point of personal
humiliation, excrutiating pain, and death.
PICARD: "For God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten son, that
whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting
life."
WESLEY: Pardon me, Commander, but I'm confused about one thing: God loved
the world, our world, the Earth. Did Jesus die for the sins of
humans only or the sins of all beings throughout the galaxy and
the universe?
PICARD: I believe there's a lesson to be learned from the life, death,
and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth that anyone, of whatever
species, can benefit from.
WESLEY: But theologically, sir....
PICARD: The world, in this case, refers to the known world. At that time,
the known world encompassed a very small area of the earth. The
miracle of Christianity is its appeal to all peoples of all
cultures all over the Earth, and indeed beyond the Earth. There
are many nonhuman Christians.
WORF: You messianists believe that one of your purposes is to spread
your religion to other peoples, even those not of your own
race? That is strange.
RIKER: The common translation for Messianist is Christian; it's the more
common term.
WORF: Christian, then. If I were given an order, I would obey it, even
unto death. Christianity is a religion Klingons can understand
very well.
RIKER: There's more to Christianity than obedience to God, Worf. Jesus,
who is the only person ever to have been perfectly obedient to God,
gave us something more, something we didn't deserve: Grace. It
means that we are commanded to perfectly obey God but we can be
forgiven for falling short of the glory of God.
WORF: That is strange. Failure to obey should result in immediate
punishment. Your God does not punish you for violating his laws?
Well, this is getting a little in-depth. The point of the above excursion
was to present the question of whether Jesus Christ, the same yesterday,
today, and forever, lived, died, and rose again for human beings or all
beings through the universe. I'd like to see some of your responses to
this question.
***
I've received numerous responses to my earlier postings. To the negative
responses, I make this reply: Nikos Kazantzakis (sp?), in response to the
news that he had been excommunicated by the Greek Orthodox Church for
writing the novel, "The Last Temptation of Christ," laughed and said he
was absolutely delighted, to wit: "Great! That means they read the book!"
Heh heh heh. Ahem.
In reply to the positive responses, here's more:
WORF: If your biographies of Jesus do not explicitly say so, how do you
know he died for nonhumans?
PICARD: Well....Many of Christianity's beliefs are implied. I can only say
this: The first person Paul, or was it Philip, ever baptized was
a eunuch. Such persons were considered impure at best, and not
even human at worst. By this I suppose it can be implied that
anyone can embrace Christ simply by asking to be baptized.
RIKER: Of course, there's more than one type of baptism. If I recall my
required comparitive theology courses, which the Academy requires
along with learning about all the different cultures within the
Federation, all the peoples with whom we must deal and live with --
as I recall, the early Church recognized three different kinds of
baptism -- baptism by water and the spirit, of course, was first.
Baptism by desire meant that you weren't damned just because you
didn't know about Christ; your desire was for God and hence you
were saved. And the last, I think they called baptism by blood.
WORF: Ah! I'd like to hear more about this.
RIKER: I believe baptism by blood meant that, even if you weren't baptized
by water and the spirit, if your blood was spilled for your beliefs,
if you died fighting for Christ, then you were baptized in your own
blood.
WORF: A warrior's death. I may look more closely into this Christianity.
It has previously only been a hobby with me.
DATA: Inquiry. You believe God, whomever or whatever you conceive him to
be, created all peoples. I, however, was not created by God, but
by Man [or whatever race designed him; pardon my lack of knowledge
here]. God created human beings in his own image, or spiritual
image might be the better translation; I do not have a tape of the
original Hebrew, so I'm not sure. However, this seems to refer to
living beings. As I am a machine, none of your beliefs, Christian
or otherwise, would appear to apply to me.
RIKER: I wouldn't say that, Data. Your desire to be human is strong.
Your curiosity, your desire to know -- this makes you more human
than any of us. Didn't Tasha tell you that? It says that God
breathed into Adam the breath of life. John the Baptist said that
God can make these stones turn into children of Abraham. Surely
God can do the same for you.
PICARD: God made people, of all races, in his spiritual image. If you have
the presence of mind to ask the question, God will answer you. Who
are we to say whom God chooses to make his children?
DATA: How will God answer me? How will I know if he even exists?
PICARD: Faith. It's....a difficult concept, Data.
DATA: It does not sound logical.
RIKER: Neither is being human.
***
By the words of the Lord his works come into being
and all creation obeys his will.....
....Pride of the heights, a clear vault of the sky --
such is the beauty of the heavens, a glorious sight.
The sun, as he emerges, proclaims at his rising,
"How wonderful a thing, the work of the Most High!"
At his zenith, he parches the ground, who can withstand his blaze?
We have to blow the furnace to produce any heat,
the sun burns the mountains three times as much;
breathing out blasts of fire, flashing his rays, he dazzles the eyes.
Great is the Lord who created him and whose word speeds him on his course.
And then the moon, ever punctual to mark the times, an everlasting sign:
It is the moon that signals the feasts,
a luminary that wanes after being full.
The month derives its name from hers,
she waxes wonderfully in her phases,
banner of the hosts on high,
shining in the vault of heaven.
The glory of the stars makes the beauty of the sky,
a brilliant adornment of the Lord on High.
At the words of the Holy One they stand as he decrees,
and never grow slack at their watch.
-- Ecclesiasticus 43
*sigh* No one who has ever seen the Enterprise leaving the orbit of the
Earth, seeing the Sun rise behind it, can remain unmoved by this passage
from the Bible.
At any rate, many people have complained, why single out Christianity,
of all the religions on Earth? What about other religions? Well, you
asked for it....
PICARD: Religion is a touchy subject at best.
WORF: One thing puzzles me, Commander, about your beliefs. You will,
of course, forgive me if I ask a question which offends you?
PICARD: Of course, Worf.
RIKER: That's what Christianity is all about.
WORF: Very well, then. In the first place, if you are saved by this
baptism by desire of yours, without knowing your Christ,
then....why believe?
PICARD: All faiths boil down to that question. For any faith, I'd
say the reason you should believe is....because it's true.
WORF: Believe it's true because the faith itself says it's true?
DATA: That is a circular argument, sir.
PICARD: Like Creation itself, Data.
WORF: Very well, then. My second question. Why humans? Why the
Earth?
PICARD: I'm not sure I understand your question.
WORF: You think Jesus is the only answer?
PICARD: I can only respond by saying this: I don't have all the
answers.
RIKER: If he's your answer, more power to you.
CRUSHER: Yet Christians believe that Jesus is the only Son of God.
"I am the Way and the Door; there is no way to the Father
except through Me."
TROI: Jesus is not God's only revelation. The Bible, for example, is
full of revelations from God in many different forms. As a
counselor, it's my business to understand people's religious
beliefs, since their beliefs often form an instrinsic part of
their character; it defines who they are, even for people who
deny the existence of a Creator/God.
RIKER: But God only revealed himself to the people of Israel,
according to their beliefs.
TROI: Not so, Commander! There are cases in the Bible when Yahweh
God speaks to nonbelievers. Once, I believe, he spoke to a
prophet of Baal, a foreign god; the prophet of what the
Israelites believed was a false god felt compelled to prophesy
the truth of Yahweh; I think he said, "I must speak what Yahweh
God commands me to speak." I seem to recall the king, an enemy
of the Israelites, was somewhat less than pleased by the
revelation. At any rate, the Bible never implies that it
contains the only revelations from God. In fact, in the New
Testament, the authors speak of the fulfillment of certain
prophecies which are nowhere to be found in the Old Testament.
CRUSHER: As a physician, it's also important for me to know about
people's religious beliefs; those who believe they are being
healed by God often recover faster than those who do not
have such strong beliefs. Whether it's God or their own
minds, their brains sending out signals to encourage the
production of endorphins....whatever. Religious beliefs
play a significant role the recovery of my patients.
At any rate, what the Bible does say, at least in one
person's interpretation, is that there are many prophecies
of the coming Messiah, not all of which can be found in the
Hebrew Scriptures. Remember the wise men from the East, the
Orient? Probably students/masters of foreign religions,
mystery religions of the Orient. The point, I think, is
that the prophecies of the prophets of Israel, as well as
the prophecies of other religions, all pointed to the
Messiah of God, born in a cave in Bethlehem, the City of
Bread.
RIKER: I thought it was the City of David.
CRUSHER: I was translating. Beth=house; lehem=bread; House of Bread.
Jesus, far from being the only revelation of God, represents
the fullness of God. And yes, Worf, according to Christian
belief, Christ died for your sins, too.
WORF: Then all of your old religions, and mine, are false?
PICARD: (Swirling his glass) Religion is a touchy subject at best.
TROI: (Coming to the rescue) Not in least, Worf. The one true God
has many names. In the Exodus, for example, don't
misunderstand the story. It is not a story of conflict between
the people of Israel and the people of Egypt; nor between Moses
and the Pharoah. Rather, it is a story of conflict between the
God of Israel and the gods of Egypt.
In those days, there was a belief that a god had power only in
his own land. Carry the gods of Egypt (they were statues;
idols) into Canaan, for example, and they were impotent; by the
same token, carry the gods of Canaan to Egypt, and the gods of
Canaan were impotent, powerless.
CRUSHER: Yes, the power of a god was intimately connected to the
land. Now the god, Yahweh, the god of Israel, was a god of
the desert. As the story goes, when he heard the cries of
distress of his people, he left the desert and entered into
the land of Egypt, a land that some people would argue was
not his own. Hence, he *should* have been powerless; but he
wasn't. This is the power of the story. The mark of a true
god was his ability to deliver his people.
TROI: True. The Egyptian gods could perform various magical tricks
through their priests, just as Moses and Aaron did for their
god. The difference came when....
PICARD: ....When he smote the Egyptians. At the last, he slew every
firstborn son of everyone in Egypt; the blood of the lamb
over the doors of the Israelites exempted them from the wrath
of the Angel of Death.
WORF: Your god sounds like a Klingon. Are you sure you're not
confusing this story with Klingon mythology?
TROI: No, Worf. The point of the story is that the Egyptians prayed
to their gods to deliver them from the wrath of the Hebrew god.
But they couldn't; they were powerless before Yahweh. This is
the beginning, the earliest human concept of a universal god.
Yahweh God had power in every land because he made every land;
he made the universe. All other gods were powerless before him
and hence were proven to be false gods.
PICARD: The gods of Egypt could not deliver their people. Yahweh
delivered his people. It's a continuing theme in the Old
Testament; how the people of Israel did evil in the sight of
the Lord, were punished by God, repented, and then God
delivered them from the hand of oppression. Finally, the
Messiah came and delivered the people of Israel, and all
people who embrace Christ, from the oppression of sin and
evil.
WORF: We call the Creator/God K'Lah. K'Lah means "to be."
TROI: Fascinating. Yahweh also means "to be."
WORF: When we Klingons pray, we believe our God answers our prayers
only if we submit ourselves to him.
RIKER: How do you submit yourselves?
WORF: We....In Klingon society, to throw down your weapon, to
surrender, is the ultimate humiliation. We are warriors; we
die fighting. Yet, before we pray, we....we cast down our
weapons before our God. It is not....quite the same, yet it
is. It is humiliating, yet....it is not. To surrender to
one's God.....It is difficult to explain.
RIKER: I think I understand, Worf.
PICARD: I think I understand Klingons a little better, Worf. It's
quite an insight.
WORF: (murmering into his glass) To surrender....but only to God....
(Straightens; tightens his lips, breathes in deeply) Only the
strong die young! (Downs his drink in one gulp)
CRUSHER: In medieval pictures, Jesus is often portrayed in the stable
with an Ox and and Ass nearby. Many don't realize the
significance of the symbolism: These animals represent the
gods of old breathing on the Messiah, the Christ of God,
passing on all that they were, all that ever was, on the
newborn king, God's perfect revelation.
RIKER: But not the *last* revelation.
PICARD: I certainly hope not.
CRUSHER: Jesus only represents the fullness of God.
RIKER: Only?!?
TROI: It is not to denigrate other revelations to say that Christ
represents the fullness of God.
RIKER: In that case, the Buddha, Muhammed, Lao Tze, Kahless of
Klingon, even Surak of Vulcan....these were all prophets of
God. Each brought to his world words that his people needed
survive; this isn't incompatible with the belief that Christ
is the fullness of God.
CRUSHER: I seem to recall an ancient Earth author, umm, C.S. Lewis, I
think his name was, basically treating ancient earth
mythologies as being vague prophetic distortions of the
Coming Messiah and the One True God.
TROI: And the Word is still spreading. Even now.
WORF: I thought prophets were fortune tellers.
TROI: They often predicted the future, but that was minor function.
The job description of a prophet was simply this: Reveal the
word of God. They were often anything but fortune tellers.
WORF: None of you has answered my original question: Do you not
think you are being incredibly arrogant to presume that God's
perfect revelation would occur on Earth, among a small,
insignificant collection of desert tribes, who were, after all,
occupied by a much more powerful warrior kingdom -- the Romans?
PICARD: (softly, into his glass) We merged. That's why it's called
the Roman Catholic Church.
WORF: Nonetheless: What is so special about humans? the Israelites?
PICARD: (Thoughtfully) The Israelites were a bloodthirsty lot;
fierce, nomadic, desert warriors. In the Bible, it says they
used to dedicate cities to Yahweh, their god: That means
they'd destroy a city right down to its foundations, kill all
the livestock, destroy all the possessions of the city, gold,
silver, anything of value; they'd kill every man, woman, and
child, even babes in their mothers arms. Then they'd burn
the city to the ground in a holocaust, a whole-burnt offering
to God; and the desert would swallow it up and a whole
community was wiped off the face of the Earth. Humans are
bloodthirsty creatures; covenants between God and Man are
considered invalid unless they are sealed in blood. The
Christ covenant was sealed in the blood of the Cross. Think
of the Crusades, all the revolutionary wars, the War of
Roses, the first World War, the second World War, and, of
course, World War III, the Eugenics Wars.
Why humanity, Worf? Not because we're superior, I can assure
you of that. Hm. I think it's because we're the worst.
Yes, I think that's it. I think God chose humanity, and the
Israelites in particular, to reveal himself in Christ
because, of all the worlds in all of God's creation, we.....
....we were the most in *need* of redemption.
WORF: Even over Klingons?
PICARD: Even over Klingons.
WORF: You humans certainly think highly of yourselves.
PICARD: Hm.
***
Star Trek is an entertaining show. Roddenberry puts these issues on
the air for people to think about; I wouldn't be surprised if he were
delighted to learn that people are talking about the issues he raises.
In "The Savage Curtain" Spock says, "When I beheld you [Surak], I
displayed emotion. I beg forgiveness." This shows that Vulcans have
a concept of sin and redemption, as Surak responds, "The cause was more
than sufficient." Surak refuses to fight but he willing walks into
the enemy camp in an attempt to make peace. Kirk admires this even if
he disagrees, although not fundamentally, with Surak's philosophy of
nonviolence. Kirk says, "He's a brave man." Spock replies, "Men of
peace usually are."
The original episode called for the appearance of the Image of Jesus
Christ; however, the producers felt this was too controversial and
instead invented an ancient Vulcan philosopher, Surak. The
similarities between Surak being tied to a stake and tortured to death
and Christ being nailed to a stake in the form of a cross and tortured
to death can't be missed. The remark Kirk made about Lincoln's death,
"It was terrible....to have to watch him die again" was originally
aimed at Christ, but was eventually reassigned to Lincoln.
At any rate, Spock shows deference to Surak even as he tells him, "The
Captain knows I have fought at his side before and will do so again."
Let's look at this in another context.
JESUS CHRIST: (to Kirk) I will not fight. I will attempt to make
peace. Thou shalt not commit murder.
KIRK: That's just it, Jesus. Down through the centuries, especially
in the Old Testament, self-defense has always been a valid
reason for killing.
SPOCK: In ancient Hebrew, there are two words: One means to kill, as
an animal or an enemy on the battle field. The other word
means to commit murder. Hebrew and English both make the same
logical distinction between these terms. In the Ten
Commandments, the injunction is not against killing, but
rather against murder.
LINCOLN: In my time, I was President during the four bloodiest years
of my country's history. I gave orders which sent thousands
of men to their deaths at the hands of their brothers.
JESUS CHRIST: You will love your neighbor as you love yourself. Love
your enemies. Do good to those who hate you, bless
those who curse you, pray for those who persecute you.
LINCOLN: Even if it means the destruction of our beliefs? What if it
meant the wiping out of all belief in you? Would you still
offer no resistance?
JESUS CHRIST: If no one in the universe believed I am the Son of God,
I would be saddened, but I would still be the Son of
God. Christians offered no resistance for centuries
and only grew stronger. Speak your mind and allow the
sin to fall upon their heads. And pray for them.
KIRK: (quietly) I must fight. For myself, for the safety of my
crew. I will not lie down; I will not go quietly. I believe
in what you say: Peace is the right way. But this is the
wrong time. If we don't fight, we'll die. And it won't just
be my own death that's on my conscience.
JESUS CHRIST: I died so no one else would have to die. Ever again.
If you really believed that, you wouldn't fight.
KIRK: My desire to live in this world is too strong. I'm
sorry....(copying Spock here)....Image of Jesus. I can't tell
you what to do. If you want to go and try to make peace, go.
I can't stop you. But I've got weapons to make and strategies
to plan.
JESUS CHRIST: The folly of human nature. Peace be with you, my
brothers. (Leaves to try to make peace with Col.
Green and Company)
--
Standard Disclaimer: These are my soul opinions, heartfelt and
passionately expressed. They do not reflect the opinions of
National Computer Systems, whatever *they* might be....
|
Sincerely, * * * | "Mankind has no
* * IDIC IN|RI need for gods
SPAWN OF A * ***___*_____ ------------- anymore. We find
JEWISH * *** * / Two symbols of | the One quite
CARPENTER * ***\ * / universal | sufficient."
* \* / brotherhood |
* * * \ / | -- Captain Kirk
gatech!ncsatl!smith_c \/ | WHO MOURNS FOR ADONIS?