An Atheist Explores the Bible Part 201: The Kingdom of God: Where, How, What? (Luke 16-20)

Luke 16-20
The Kingdom of God: Where, How, What?

Welcome to another instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Bible version).

In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the King James Bible, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.

For more detail, see the introductory post http://bit.ly/2F8f9JT

For the online KJV I use, see here http://bit.ly/2m0zVUP

And now:

Luke 16

“No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”

This chapter contains two parables from Jesus, or, rather, one complete parable and what appears to be the first half of another. And they are as typically opaque as I’ve come to expect from late-period Jesus.

In the first, a corrupt steward attempts to make amends by decreasing the debts of those who owe goods to his master, for which he is commended. This makes sense if the debts were too high to begin with, due to the steward’s corruption, but otherwise the meaning is difficult to ascertain. The master (who one assumes represents God) is angry at the steward for “wasting his goods”, and the steward tries to appease the debtors so that they’ll be more willing to put him up if he loses his job.

So… I guess … be nice to people so that they’ll help you in return, and God will be happy? Is that the point? Another hidden jab at the established priesthood?

Because then there’s more about how a person should be faithful to Mammon (i.e. greed for riches) because if you’re faithful to “the least” then you’ll also be faithful to the most (i.e. God?). Except that then at the end, in the quoted verse above, you can’t be faithful to both, and this seems more in keeping with Jesus’ general message of abstaining from material possessions; that you can’t love God and wealth (Mammon) at the same time. At which point I become lost.

In the second story, we get introduced to Lazarus, whom I’d always assumed was an actual person raised from the dead by Jesus (confused, I guess, with Legion, the multiple devils that were cast out by Jesus). But no, Lazarus is a leper (which is obvious now I think about, it’s what his name means!) who is scorned by a rich man. Both die, the rich man ends up burning in hell, looking up at Lazarus who is getting treated kindly. This, I think, is the first example of that kind of cosmology, of a fiery Hell below and a Heaven above. It’s been hinted before, but not laid out like this.

The rich man calls out to Abraham (who is also in heaven) for help, but is refused, so the rich man asks that Lazarus be returned to life so that he can at least warn the rich man’s family what will happen to them if they don’t mend their ways. At the end of this chapter Abraham demurs, saying that they didn’t listen to Moses and the prophets, why would they listen to a dead man?

Luke 17

“And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation”

Oh, okay. So there wasn’t any more to the Lazarus story. So, in fact, Lazarus doesn’t return from the dead because Abraham (not, I notice, God), doesn’t think there’s any point. Not what I was expecting.

So instead we get some more opaque sayings from Jesus, although some are fairly clear, about forgiving your brother for trespassing against you no matter how many times he does it, and also a parable about how being a servant (of God?) is a thankless task, but that you shouldn’t seek thanks (for being good?). Anyway, more general lessons in humility it seems to me. There’s a little interlude where Jesus heals ten lepers and only one (a Samaritan) gives thanks, perhaps again meant to illustrate the previous point.

The rest of the chapter is given over to the question that I’ve asked a few times over the course of this read-through, namely what is the Kingdom of God. When will it be? Ask the Pharisees. You can’t point to it, replies Jesus, “behold, the kingdom of God is within you”. Where is it? they ask (and to my mind that’s the question Jesus answered before). “Wheresoever the body is, thither will the eagles be gathered together” replies Jesus. And these two statements kind of support my sense that He’s talking about an inner enlightenment, not a Magical Sky Disney Land or a Post-Apocalypse winnowing. Despite that, there’s a lot of comparison with Noah and the flood, Lot and Sodom and Gomorrah, and of how every one in two people will be “taken”, the other “left”, which certainly makes it sound like an eschatological event, but equally this could be metaphorical – some will come to the right state of mind, others will not. As cryptic as ever, that Jesus.

Luke 18

“For it is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.”

This chapter includes a couple of parables and a few more incidents in the life of Jesus, with no great interconnecting theme.

The first parable concerns a widow who pleads to a judge (who “feared not God, neither regarded man”) to avenge her on her “adversary”. In the end the judge relents to shut her up. This, apparently, equates to God avenging His “elect”. Hm.

Second parable: a publican and a Pharisee go to pray. The Pharisee loudly proclaims how pious he is, the publican falls on his face and begs forgiveness. I think at this point we can all guess which man is judged to be the better out of those two.

Next up is the incident that gives me the famous title quote for this chapter, and it’s one we’ve seen before, where a young man asks Jesus what a person must do to “inherit eternal life”. Jesus tells him to keep the commandments, but also to give up all his riches as well, and this leads into a further discussion on Jesus’ theme of giving up worldly goods. There’s not really a charitable slant to this particular discussion, it feels more like the conflict between the worldly and the Godly and back to the Buddhist ideas I’ve pointed out before. Of course, that doesn’t rule away a charitable aspect although, in a way, giving goods to somebody else under this philosophy would actually be doing them a disservice as it would increase their attachment to the world and diminish their relationship to the kingdom of God.

Anyway, Jesus also prophesies that He must go to Jerusalem to meet His destiny, and there’s the “suffer the little children” interlude as well. Which adds another wrinkle to the mystery of the “kingdom of God”. If it’s a state of mind or a kind of discovered wisdom, how can children be expected to understand. So, does childish innocence count as a form of the state of mind, or when Jesus says “Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein” is He talking about baptism as would later become the norm?

Luke 19

“And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up, and saw him, and said unto him, Zacchaeus, make haste, and come down; for to day I must abide at thy house.”

Jesus makes His way to Jerusalem, stopping at the house of Zacchaeus, a rich publican. Of course, there are mutterings about this but Zacchaeus has donated to the poor, and Jesus has made a habit of associating with “unsuitable” people because they are most in need of salvation, and we get reinforcement of that idea again here. I’ll skip the parable for a moment and jump onwards. Jesus is unusually belligerent here (although some episodes have been detailed before); as well as kicking the traders out of the temple, He also tells some Pharisees that ask Him to keep his followers in check that “if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out”, which sounds like a not-so veiled threat to me. He curses the city of Jerusalem, prophesying its fall, and I’d put forcibly commandeering a colt to ride as being somewhat provocative as well. We’ve seen this before, which seems a growing sense of urgency in the days leading up to Jesus’ arrest and execution; I guess if you have that hanging over you it’s perhaps understandable to get a bit more pushy in trying to spread your message.

The parable is thus: a rich man goes off to “receive a kingdom”, whatever that may mean. He leaves ten servants each with a pound (one assumes of silver) to manage his affairs. When he comes back, some of the servants have invested and made a profit, one servant has just held onto the single pound, for which he is punished by having to give the pound to the richest servant. This, according to Jesus, means “That unto every one which hath shall be given; and from him that hath not, even that he hath shall be taken away from him”. Which is a phrase that we’ve seen before in one form or another, but still makes no sense to me. So, what? It’s better to invest than be careful? Which translates to what in spiritual terms? He who has no … belief? Humility? I’m not sure how that works as the poor servant was pretty humble. Does nothing with God’s blessing? I’m … at a bit of a loss.

Not only that, the parable is poorly constructed (by Luke?) – why are there ten servants when we only hear about three? And what is the purpose of the verse that reads “But his citizens hated him, and sent a message after him, saying, We will not have this man to reign over us”. This implies that the citizens sent the message to the lord, but do they mean him by “this man” (in which case why second person?) or do they mean one of the ten servants (in which case it ought to be pointed out which). To cap it all off we get more belligerence from Jesus in the plenary when He says “But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me.”

Luke 20

“And it came to pass, that on one of those days, as he taught the people in the temple, and preached the gospel, the chief priests and the scribes came upon him with the elders,”

In this chapter Jesus installs Himself in the temple and takes questions from the floor (in effect). It covers mainly the various philosophical sparring matches between Jesus and the Pharisees, all of which we’ve seen in, I think, both previous gospels. As before they read a little like sophistry on the part of Jesus as he wrangles His way out of various debates on where His authority comes from (by tricking the Pharisees into answering where John the Baptist got his authority from), how marriage laws work with resurrection (answer: completely different state of being so irrelevant) and who to pay duty to (answer: “render unto Caeser” etc.). Because of this I don’t have a lot more to add to this chapter, except that as with much of Luke some of the verses are expressed in slightly different wording so as to clarify, or sometimes, change the meanings compared to Matthew and Mark.

Case in point here, when Jesus discusses “life” after resurrection, He describes it as “Neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection”. I note that the expression “kingdom of God” isn’t mentioned here; whether this state of being is equivalent is unclear. If it is, I find it a bit disappointing that it does, in fact, mean Magical Sky Disneyland and not something more sophisticated.