Jesus as philospher

Most parents see Sunday School as an important part of a child's development, and they are probably right. I tried to keep my first mention of Jesus to Helena Iara out of the religious frame, though, not so much for any ideological reason as because she and I talk mostly about philosophy.  But given that Jesus was a pretty good philosopher, it makes sense to bring him up from time to time.

Children's pastors love to use the different parables about children in their sermons: "Suffer the little children to come unto me," for instance, or the story of the teenage Jesus and the rabbis in the temple.  As we walked through the streets of Santa Fe (no hammocks here, but I have found that walking is also conducive to philosophizing...), I told her another one of those stories, from the book of Matthew:

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, "Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?" He called a little child and had him stand among them. And he said: "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

From the beginning, the question is pretty stupid: after all, Jesus has spent his entire career talking about justice and equality, that the first is the last and the last first, and then the disciples want to know who's the best?  So a lot of people see the parable as a kind of lesson to the disciples: little kids aren't worried about prestige, so don't worry where you are going to sit at the big dinner party in the sky.

Now, we shouldn't get confused by later Christian doctrine, here: Jesus wasn't talking about some kind of heaven after death.  The Kingdom of Heaven -- like the Kingdom of God in the book of Mark -- is a metaphor for utopia, the world as it might be if people loved and were just to each other.  Jews in the first century AD didn't have an idea of the afterlife: some believed in the resurrection of the dead (as it appears that Jesus and Paul did), but the idea of a spiritual afterlife, Heaven and Hell, comes from the Greeks and Romans, hundreds of years later.

I didn't take that tack with Helena, though.  Just that morning, she had been furious at her mother because Rita had put a shirt on her; she hates to get dressed after her morning bath.  Screams, tears, anger... and two seconds later, the joy and love that she normally shows.  There was no rancor, no holding a grudge.  She had hated putting on the shirt, but afterward, she was as happy as ever with her mommy.

Might it be for this reason, I asked Helena, that Jesus said that one had to become like a little child to enter the Kingdom of Heaven?  If there is a center to Jesus's philosophy, it is forgiveness: turn the other cheek, walk the extra mile, the whole Sermon on the Mount.  Jesus wasn't just making his critique on the idea that "An eye for an eye and the whole world will be blind," as Gandhi put it, but on how miserable and unjust we become when we hold a grudge.  We "have our pride", we "don't get mad, we get even" (or we do get mad), and we become both miserable and mean.  It's interesting that Jesus talks about humility in the parable: overcoming the pride that wants to hold a grudge is essential.


Jesus wanted this kind of humble forgiveness to form the basis of human community: in a world of brutal dictatorships, vile profit seekers, and petty vengeance, a world like ours (or his!), I'm not sure it would work.  It does make a baby happy, though!