The Unclad Soul

Easter approaches with its egg hunts and colorful dress and the festivities of people celebrating bunnies and cashing in their Easter coupons on online shopping and at the mall. Holy Week is here too with its shadows of darkness, its Last Supper where cowardice and betrayal transcend devotion and trust. The disciples never really understood what Jesus had in mind. Many of them still don’t. I often worry that all of his teachings on kindness and generosity and love remain on the Cross beaten and dead to his followers; all of those wise and difficult truths; all of those calls to deeper living crushed by selfishness and fear, by greed and prejudice and the lust for power. The governor of Indiana and his legislative devotees have passed a brutal law primarily against the LGBT community shallowly disguised as “religious freedom.” Arkansas legislators came up with an even more appalling law with even worse prejudicial intent. Why are these discriminating laws necessary? We ...

The Semana Santa, as they call it in Spain, or Holy Week, begins for Christians all over the world soon. You know the historic story and the familiar scenes of the trial of Jesus and his final journey to the Cross. It is an epic story, a story filled with drama and cruelty and mystery and love. What is it really about? The classic Christian interpretation tells us we are all sinners lost without hope. We were born ruined, the children of the first parents, corrupted by their selfishness, by their ignoring God’s command to stay away from the Tree of Knowledge, and supposedly by their wanting to be like God. As the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve whose sin we inherited and are sure to repeat, according to classic Christian theology, we are all to be punished and sent to hell. So Jesus came to die for our ruined souls. He died in our place so God would not send us to hell. He paid the ransom for us, we are told. His physical death took care of our spiritual debt. He then rose ...

Standing in front of one of the German death camps while filming a documentary for British television several years ago, Polish/British philosopher Jacob Bronowski said: “This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance, it was done by dogma, it was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.” Conformity, everyone believing the same things, doing what you’re told to do no matter if it doesn’t make sense or is immoral or inhuman; believing you alone have all the truth; learning to hate others, to do violence even when you know it isn’t right—these are the trademarks of people who have lost their freedom and their heart; who have become duped into believin...