Only a fool, said G. K. Chesterton, knows life; for only a fool is taken in by life.
Prudent people stand aloof, to keep their skin intact.
Those who are “prudent” in the world’s eyes become, as Jesus said, like the wheat that ‘remains alone’. Safe, but sterile.
Now, the question is: who decides who is a fool, and who is not?
The wisdom of God, says St. Paul, is foolishness to the Greeks. The Greeks were very wise from the viewpoint of the world. Machiavelli was wise in his own way. Hitler, certainly. His wisdom was embraced by millions. They laid down their lives for it – though it took a few years for it to become evident that Hitler’s “wisdom” was merely murderous folly.
I remember a particular sandwich man. Just in case you don’t know, sandwich man is a walking advertisement, with the first part of an ad pinned to his front, and the second part of the ad pinned to his back.
On this man, the front piece read: I AM A FOOL FOR CHRIST. The one on his back read: WHOSE FOOL ARE YOU? Put together, the ad read: ‘I am a fool for Christ; whose fool are you?’
Not many among us believe it is smart to be fools for Christ. Oh, no! We know better than that. As a very senior bishop told me years ago, being a fool for Christ is not an option for those who manage churches. Churches do not run on heavenly manna. They all need more than a little nudge from Mammon (that is, the God of Money). Only fools for Christ think otherwise.
Everyone knows how Jesus ended up: on the Cross. The Cross is a wonderful thing on which to meditate, annually. But only fools will ‘crucify’ the interests of their church for Christ’s sake. Ending up on the Cross is an option neither for church leaders nor for church members. The church has to survive by hook or crook to preach Jesus. To be able to preach Jesus by words, he has to be betrayed by the deeds of the churches.
Jesus was naïve. Imagine saying that the God of Money, Mammon Himself, should not be served! Such a view may have seemed harmless two thousand years ago. After all, Jesus had no experience of running churches. If not from Mammon, from where will money come to maintain the church? Will it rain from heaven? Jesus should have learned from the High Priests of Judaism. But he didn’t. They ran a thriving market at the Jerusalem temple. They recognised and utilised the link between the market and the sanctuary. They were wiser than many may think. It is their role model that our church leaders follow.
The High Priests knew that, reduced to its essentials, organized religion is a commercial activity. What keeps it going is God in the form of merchandise. The good news for all religions is that God is sellable. Next to the High Priest, Judas knew this best. Judas did a brilliant thing in selling Jesus. Thirty pieces of silver was a decent price for the transaction then. Had he lived a few centuries later, he would have thrived as a Pope par excellence.
How does the Mammon-principle colonize religions? Well, Mammon is the money-power that makes sales possible. To understand this, consider an illustration. You have a hen to sell. It is money that enables you to do it. How will you sell your hen, unless the buyer can pay for it? Pay with what? With money, no? The buyer of your hen is paying the value-equivalent of your hen in cash. What do you do when you sell your hen? You ‘alienate’ the value of the hen from the hen –and from yourself- by equating it with, say, Rs. 100. When the buyer pays you that amount, he becomes the owner of the hen. As soon as you get the money, the link between you and your hen snaps. Your hen is alienated from you. Suppose that the buyer makes away with your hen without paying you the price. You would feel cheated. Why? Well, because you have lost the ‘value’ of your hen. It is not the hen that you lost, but its value. Because you were willing to part with the hen anyway. Money enables you to turn your hen into a commodity for sale. To turn anything into a commodity is to alienate it from you and from itself.
Now ask: would Judas have been able to ‘sell’ Jesus, if money, in the form of thirty pieces of silver, weren’t there to facilitate the deal? Suppose money hadn’t been invented. How could Judas ever have ‘sold’ his Master? To ‘sell’ is to alienate. Wherever money-based transactions happen, alienation is at work.
Now think: are not all your transactions with the church mediated through money? Does any church have any use for your spiritual gifts or ethical merit? How come we refuse to see the link between our money and Judas’ thirty pieces of silver? Are we not corrupting the church by making money as the only medium of relating to the church? Is it any wonder, then, that there is corruption in the church, and that it is increasing in scale with the increase in the money in circulation? Is it so difficult to see its striking manifestations enacted in full public view?
Who doesn’t know that Jesus insisted that godly work should be free from monetary considerations? ‘Freely you have received’, he said, ‘freely give.’ Money was conspicuously absent from his mission. Feeding the 5000 miraculously and for free is ridiculous where money rules the roost.
The book of Revelation illustrates this wealth-driven alienation, with the Church at Laodicea as the example. That church was ‘rich’. The result? ‘Jesus was out’. (Rev. 3:15-20) The formula, then as now, is: ‘Money, in; Jesus, out’. Dietrich Bonhoeffer understood this well. So, he advocated ‘churchless Christianity’. He did so as an ardent disciple of Jesus Christ. He died a martyr for the faith.
Many believers are today anguished by what comes to light of the affairs of churches. May are confused that even commonplace morality is flouted in this regard. This bewilderment has peaked with the elevation of a bishop in a particular denomination, accused of serious sexual offences, in the church hierarchy. I don’t share this anguish for the reason that moral considerations are superfluous when Mammon is in the driver’s seat. The moral standing of a meat-shop owner does not deter us from patronising him because it is the Mammon-principle that dictates this relationship. Why should another establishment, run on the same principle, be treated differently? Morality and Mammon-service are like chalk and cheese.
This confronts us with a clear choice: church or Christ? No one can have both. Two thousand years ago, the Judaic establishment exterminated Jesus for standing in the way of its income. Church managers are a lot wiser. They don’t kill Jesus outright. They resort to a more profitable strategy. They run a hypermarket of Jesus-goods.
Believers, on their part, prefer to live wilfully indifferent to the true nature of what the church has come to be. They are content that a set of services are available to them – baptism, wedding, burial, occasional jobs in church institutions, etc. -. A feel-good-factor is added by invoking the name of Christ. But this is just ‘Christ, without the Cross’. As Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor – a wizened Spanish Cardinal – said, Jesus was a fool for rejecting a dream offer like gaining the nations of the world by momentarily genuflecting before Satan. It is a mistake that the church is too wise to repeat. It doesn’t only genuflect to Satan for a moment. Rather, it makes sure that it is constantly worshipping Mammon (which is simply the material representation of Satan).
So, the stark choice remains: the way of the Christ, or the way of the church?
Which way each of us goes is our individual choice.
Which way do you go?
Which way will you go?
