Jesus is much more than a moralist

Dec 28, 2008

EDITOR—On December 24,<br>Kajabago-ka-Rusoke wrote an article entitled, “Religion should be subjected to logic”. He sums up Jesus’ teaching in the Golden Rule: “Love your neighbour as you love yourself”.

EDITOR—On December 24,
Kajabago-ka-Rusoke wrote an article entitled, “Religion should be subjected to logic”. He sums up Jesus’ teaching in the Golden Rule: “Love your neighbour as you love yourself”.

Kajabago suggests that Jesus only used the term ‘God’ to cover up his social ideology. By the stroke of a pen Kajabago has shorn Jesus of his religious background, his faith in God and interpreted him according to the rationalism of the Enlightenment.

I say Enlightenment because Kajabago is not the first intellectual to reduce Jesus to a moral teacher. The approach was the precursor of liberal theology, which equated Western civilisation with the Gospel, a hope that was torn to pieces by the First and Second World Wars.

Obviously, Kajabago sees positive elements in Christianity, but he would rid it of mythical and theological elements and leave only the moral teaching. So, he suggests that ‘religion should be subjected to logic in all academic institutions’. In an earlier article entitled “Should religion be taught in Uganda’s schools?”, he wrote along similar lines. Only then he had reduced religion to being a function of economics.

Accordingly, words like God, angels, religion, divinity, Gehena, and the Holy Spirit reflect economics. We have here a rehearsal of the Marxist theory of economic determinism. Then, he argued that if religion is to be taught in schools, it should be taught as logic or science and not as belief.

He left out the question of how to teach subjects such as literature, poetry, and music, or values. Approaches that respect the autonomy of science and religion argue that there are different ways of describing the world. Although they can be of service to each other, it is wrong to reduce one to the other. To illustrate, Kajabago urges logic in the interpretation of Jesus’ death.

According to logic, it is a contradiction to find Judas Iscariot guilty of betraying Jesus to his captors and at the same time claim that Jesus’ death was to atone for our sins and serve a divine purpose. This logic flounders when we examine other biblical stories.

One is that of Joseph whose brothers sold him to Egyptians and the other is Pharaoh whose heart God hardens so he does not let the people of Israel go. In the Joseph story we are told that whereas Joseph’s brothers meant evil, this was part of God’s plan to save Abraham’s descendants from famine in the future. In the Pharaoh narrative the hardening is used to demonstrate God’s supreme power.

The Bible’s use of the word ‘purpose’ (so God’s purpose) does not equate to proximate ‘causes’. In the two examples, it means something that transcends human actions and intentions. God has the capacity to transform human acts of evil and destruction into ways of salvation.

That is the meaning of Jesus’ story as it is of Joseph. Explanation of all human activity in terms of economics or morality rules out an ultimate ground beyond economics or morals. We may disagree with Jesus’ teaching and worldview. We would also be justified in finding out what this teaching was.

But to reduce this teaching to moral principles is reductionist. Jesus’ ministry stands or falls to the extent that we bring his relation to God and to the world into the picture. It is tempting to reduce Jesus to one who teaches us to be good. He on the other hand speaks of the power of God that transforms lives.

Rev Amos Kasibante
University of Leicester, UK

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