MATHETΩN

I have seen a certain bulletin plastered on churches by Mathetai so often that I think I must quote at least part of it:

… His [Jesus's] most commonly-repeated command was:

Follow me.

Follow him to where? To his Kingdom of life, through death. Here is a list of questions that ask, Am I following Jesus?

“Have you left your home, your family, and your income?”

“Are you proclaiming, or teaching about, the Kingdom? Are you healing? Are you everywhere doing good?”

“Have you been, or are you soon to be, houseless or arrested?”

“Are you soon to be killed?”

(Once, attached to some Youth Camp caravan, I saw the list limited to the last two questions — but added to them, I think, toothlessness and jailtime — concluded with something flippant such as: “If not, you aren’t doing it right.”)

… Only let me not give up my life irrationally, only let me not give up my life faintheartedly, or from some casual pretext. For again, God does not so desire; for he has need of a good universe and of good men to go to and fro upon earth. …

What then? Must I explain these things to the multitude? When the children come up to us and say ‘Happy Saturnalia!’ do we say to them, ‘No, all this is not good’? Not at all; but we cheer too. And so you, therefore, when you are unable to make a man change his belief, realize that he is a child and cheer with him or hold your peace.

All these things a man ought to remember, and then, when he is summoned to meet some difficulty, he ought to know that the time has come to show whether he has learned. Wrestling students act displeased with the youths of light weight: ‘He cannot lift me,’ says one — ‘bring me a sturdy young man.’ But when the crisis comes, sometimes they weep and say, ‘I wanted to keep practicing!’ Why, what did you practice for! Now, I like to think that someone among you reading this is in travail within his soul, saying, ‘Alas that such a difficulty does not come to me now as came to such-and-such good man! Alas that now I must be sitting in a corner!’ You ought all to be thus minded.

If one should take away from a good tragic actor his paraphernalia, is he lost or does he abide? And so it is in actual life. God may say, ‘Take the governership’: I take it and show how a man educated in the good comports himself. ‘Lay aside the robe of state and put rags on’: What then? Has it not been given to me to mount the stage now as a witness summoned by God?

What kind of witness do you bear for God? ‘But, O Lord, I am in sore straits and in misfortune; no one regards me, no one gives me anything, all blame me and speak ill of me.’ Is this the witness that you are going to bear, and disgrace the summons so important?

Or what if the priest declares, ‘He is impious’ — what has happened? ‘I have been pronounced impious.’ Nothing else? ‘No nothing.’ And if he had made a declaration: ‘When it is day, then it is dark,’ or: ‘The circumference of a circle is not equidistant from its center’ — would the educated man pay attention? So why when he passes judgment on what is holy and unholy, just and unjust?

How great is the injustice committed by us if we do so! Leave to others quibbles, grumbling about the good. For what is lacking now is a man to bear witness to these arguments by his acts. This is the character I would have you assume, so that we may no longer use old examples of good men in the schools but may have some examples from our own time!

“Well of course I don’t talk about business this way on the job. Wisdom has no place there.

“It’s like Epictetus says: When a kid says ‘Merry Christmas’ we say ‘Merry Christmas’; we don’t stop her to tell her what a rotten lot of greed it all is or to give the lie to Santa. But there are folks it’s proper to discuss wisdom with and I was hoping you are some of those folks.”

I have thought of what may be a simple way to demonstrate what I have maintained for years, that Christians of all people do not have a sense, or are prevented from having a sense, of right and wrong, of good and bad. My wife found on a Christian young persons’ forum a thread titled something like “Is to Be Rich a Sin?” I won’t talk about the immorality inherent in the question: its dishonesty — “Can I get away with this?” — or its cowardice — “What punishment must I fear?” Instead, I will offer this trivial thought-exercise:

If I had posted a thread in this forum titled “Is to Be Rich a Good?”, Christians would reply — at least imply — “Do you mean is to be rich biblical?” I would say no. “Then do you mean to ask if to be rich is not a sin?” Again I would say no. “But what is good or bad is a matter of sin.” There could be no further discourse unless my demand that good be judged as good were ignored.

Since there is no Christian concept of good and bad per se, thus they of all people cannot tell what is good or bad.

What has made me so uneasy the last few years? Today as I walked I was thinking of a lot of frustrations, but they were mostly despair whether the future will be born. On the other hand, what has made me uneasy are unconscious wishes for the past, for the past things I have determinedly abandoned. Perhaps if I try to say some of these wishes aloud, they will be less a poison floating in the air around me and will become obvious desires that I can again determinedly abandon. I feel sure I will only be be able to make a partial list right now.

• I want to be “comfortably wealthy”
• I want to live in the country
• I want my wife to be subservient to me
• I want to be her luxurious provider
• I want to be in an idolized “leadership” position, preferably in a church
• I want to be able to relax in the bosom of institutions such as a corporate employer, a church, a political party, an extended family
• I want lots of pretty clothes
• I want to collect thousands of books and lots of records and some art

There, that’s a partial but shameful-enough list. Now just to say “I renounce the devil and all his works” and mean it enough to find some rest …

“In some countries there is no hunger for bread — but people are suffering from terrible loneliness, terrible despair, terrible hatred; feeling unwanted, helpless, hopeless. They have forgotten how to smile, they have forgotten the human touch; they are forgetting what is human love. The greatest poverty is loneliness.

“And you have great loneliness here in your country. Any nation that kills its own children is the poorest of nations. If there is a lonely person in your home or family, you will be judged. If there is a spouse or an elderly parent who is lonely, you will be judged. If there is someone who lives on your street who is without care and human affection, you will be judged.

“Our calling as Missionaries of Charity is not a special calling. God calls everyone to be holy. Holiness is a simple duty for you and for me.”

– Mother Teresa

Once, and for millennia, people painted human figures on their jars, carved them into their city gates, made pillars and pilasters of them, wove them into tapestries, painted domed heavens full of them, made paintings of them bent over books or dreaming at windows or taking their ease on the banks of rivers. Human figures decorated lampstands and soup tureens and the spines of books.

Now they seem never to be used decoratively, as things pleasing in themselves. Advertising uses them to part us from our money, implying that we should compare ourselves and our lot to the supposedly acquirable condition of well-being these insinuating images represent to us. … We defend ourselves from the appeal they have for us, just as, if they were [vendors or cadgers in the] flesh, we would resist, or take offense at, their earnest gaze and their firm handshake.

It seems to me that, when we lost our aesthetic pleasure in the human presence as a thing to be looked at and contemplated, at the same time we ceased to enjoy human act and gesture, which civilization has always before found to be beautiful even when it was also grievous or terrible, as the epics and the tragedies and the grandest novels testify. Now when we read history, … we assume that nothing is what it appears to be, that it is less and worse … .

“I watched Oprah yesterday –

“Yes, I do watch Oprah!

“– and it was so sad, so sad.

“It was really sad!

“There was this girl? She was like thirty? Ish.

“And she had a really good life, she had a good job, she got what she wants, she went out all the time.

“You know — she wasn’t married.

“And then she got pregnant. And had quadruplets — no — what are they called? She had triplets!

“It was so sad! She was on the stage with these three kids and so strung out.

“Her folks have to help pay the rent.

“It was really sad.

“She should be allowed to give two away — really. It should be automatic.”

My soul exalts the Lord,

and my spirit rejoices in God

my saver,

… his name is Holy,

and his mercy is for generations and generations,

for those who fear him.

He has taken power into his arm,

and scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.

He has pulled down the dynasts from their thrones,

and raised up the humble;

he has filled the hungry with good things,

and sent the rich away empty.

He has reached out his hand …

“Would a Mathetes submit to a dress-code at his job, especially if it required wasteful expense?”

“A Mathetes would not be relying on a job from the Man in the first place.”