Time Out!
or Jesus’ warning to creedal Christianity
“Get a T.O., baby!” – Dick Vitale
“What if ... ” This is my friend Gaspar Stephens contempontificating: “What if this is what he was saying in effect, Jesus. He’s talking to the scribes of the Pharisees: ‘I'm not saying you’re completely wrong, but the religion you are proposing – are practicing (or trying to) – is completely maladaptive, if not now then soon. If you’re going to live in the world that is coming, you are going to have to loosen up.’
“To put it more modernly, ‘This shit is just not gonna fly,’ Jesus is saying in the parables. And I’m saying that madmen (and madwomen) – nihilists, Trotskyists, Romanians, secular (gasp!) Jews – arguing in cafés (but not around seminar tables) – are closer followers of Jesus than creedal Christians. Creeds are about drawing unnecessary lines inside the field of play. Pushing, shouting, and laughing, ignoring those lines, kicking up the chalk and kicking over the traces, telling lies make for something much closer to what Jesus preached possible. Argument about – having everything up in the air – is closer to freedom. Six hundred and however many statutes and ordinances don’t set you free. And only with freedom comes the possibility of grace.”
“If they have love?” I said.
“You are the softest piece of cheese,” Gaspar said. “But okay. Yes. If they have love. If they are human.”
* * * * *
Two epigrams:
August 2nd. The weather hot.
In southwest Atlanta, Paul Kemp shot,
and another man, Dermone Baker.
In northwest Atlanta, Gary Tucker.
And on King Drive, Stanley Moore.
On Moreland outside a convenience store,
a man without a name shot, dead.
August 2nd. The weather hot;
pollution index red.
In thee no one is shot, except by Cupid's bow,
none laid low.
Gaspar Stephens is our resident faux neurophilosopher. The epigrams are by R. S. Dietrich. Dick Vitale was invited to become resident culture critic but pleaded a prior commitment.
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