Josh's Confessions
Andrew Furlong
Have you ever felt misunderstood? I guess you have. I'm sure you
know what it's like to feel deeply embarrassed too. These are
experiences that I know well. You see my friends and I lived in a world
of fantasies and dreams. Belief in such a fantasy world led my friends
to misunderstand me, indeed to misrepresent me. I've found it all highly
embarrassing.
Don't misinterpret me when I speak about living life in a fantasy world.
My friends and I lived in the real world too. I suppose you could say
that the two worlds overlapped. I'll take you step by step through our
different fantasies; they were all connected to each other.
In order to explain the first fantasy, I'll need to give you some
background. My friends and I were born a long time ago. It was the era
of empires. I'm sure you've seen some of the films of that period in
history. The Roman Empire ruled over us. Before that it had been the
Greeks who dominated the region. We belonged to a small nation, and our
history contained the stories of one conquest after another. We
cherished a memory of freedom and independence from a period long before
my friends and I were born. That memory fuelled our dreams for the
future.
From time immemorial every small nation, and in many cases each tribe,
believed that it lived under the protection of its own God. People
imagined then that the world was full of supernatural powers. They
argued with each other about which tribe or nation had the most powerful
God as their protector. They tended to think that winning a battle was
an indication of the strength of their God, because he was believed to
have fought alongside them. I now see that it was just a flight of
imagination to think of a world of Gods and of each one having his or
her favourite tribe. That's what I call the first fantasy. Strictly
speaking, as you'll see in a moment, I didn't fall for this first
fantasy. Number two is where I come in. There'll be five fantasies in
all. So hold your breath. It's astonishing.
We must have had people who were good at military strategies and that
kind of thing, even though we didn't win many wars. We also had our
great thinkers. Over the centuries, they reasoned that it didn't really
make sense to think that the world was populated with as many Gods as
there were tribes or nations. They concluded that it was more credible
to believe that there was only one Superpower who was the Creator of all
life.
Our thinkers made the catastrophic mistake of believing that this
Superpower had the same attitude and feelings towards our nation as our
old tribal God, who they believed had loved us faithfully. They couldn't
give up the old idea of being a chosen people, even though it didn't
make sense any longer, for a creator God wouldn't have had favourites.
Our old tribal God and the creator God became identified together in
their minds. They just ceased, if you like, to believe in the existence
of everyone else's tribal Gods. That we were the favoured people of this
one creator God is what I refer to as the second fantasy that we
believed in. It had some serious consequences.
Understandably, our thinkers couldn't accept that this great Superpower
would be content to see us continuing to be a down-trodden people,
generation after generation. For after all, didn't he care about us more
than about anyone else, weren't we his treasured possession? You've
guessed it. We created another fantasy, the third one! What was it? Let
me tell you. People began to think that one day he would do something
miraculous to restore our fortunes and to give us peace and
independence. He personally would intervene in the affairs of the world.
He would defeat whatever ruling power controlled and exploited us. It
was a wonderful fantasy to believe in.
As well as our thinkers, we had our visionaries. I can tell you that
they had some amazing dreams. One of them lived about two centuries
before I was born. He imagined a scene in heaven in which plans were
being made for a supernatural intervention to take place here in this
world. The ruling empires would be annihilated. He believed that we, as
God's chosen people, would soon live in a new kingdom. Our capital city
would be the centre of the world. In his imagination, this visionary
pictured the dead being woken up, and coming out of their graves (for
that's where he presumed they were). Only those judged worthy of life in
the new kingdom would have a place in it. The rest would be condemned to
a life of endless suffering and torment.
Significantly, he described a figure that, in his dream, appeared in
heaven standing in front of a great, majestic and rather aged-looking
God. Was this figure human or was he in some sense divine? Maybe he was
something like an angel, but maybe not? What was his role to be? In my
lifetime, some of us thought his role would be to oversee the transfer
from human government to divine rule. We accepted that his role would
also include being the judge of the dead and of those alive at the time.
We called this figure the Son of Man.
Some of our other visionaries also entertained similar fantasies. They
thought of another figure who would also be part of a deliverance
strategy and called him a Messiah. That word just means “the Lord's
Anointed One”. Others speculated that a Messiah would have to be a
descendent of King David, probably because there was independence in his
day. The Davidic reign had come to symbolize peace and freedom. If the
Messiah was a descendent of David perhaps he would be born in Bethlehem
- David's home town.
Before I go any further with my story, let me summarise the three
fantasies I've been describing. I want you to be clear about them.
First, there was the deluded belief that each tribe or nation had its
own God, who had specially chosen them and who had pledged to faithfully
protect and sustain them. Second, when we moved on from these ideas and
began to believe in one creator God, we made the mistake of thinking
that this creator God had the same feelings and attitudes towards us as
our old tribal God. In fact, the creator God was just our old tribal God
made bigger. We were still his chosen people, favoured above all others.
Third, we believed that this God would someday restore our fortunes in a
new kingdom, in which we would enjoy peace, prosperity and independence.
That really was a fantasy. But at least it had the effect of giving us
hope that someday life might start to get better rather than worse.
I feel embarrassed, as I said at the beginning of my story, having to
admit to you once again that I lived in this fantasy world. I believed
in it, like the rest of my community. It was stupid of me; I realize
that now. I suppose you could say I was just a man of my time. Isn't it
hard to be anything else? Every age has its myths that people live by.
What's more upsetting is that I belonged to a section of our society
made up of individuals like a man called John who influenced me, and
which also included groups such as a community of people who withdrew
from normal society and went to live in caves down near the Dead Sea.
What we all had in common was the conviction that the great dream of a
new prosperous future for our nation was about to be realized at any
moment by this invisible Superpower. He just had to deal with the
Romans. From being a dream on the horizon, we believed that it was now
on the doorstep. Yes, you're right. I had now succumbed to another
fantasy. I was deluded once again. Incredible, isn't it?
Before I explain to you about the fifth fantasy, let me tell you more
about my own life. Josh is obviously short for Joshua which is a direct
translation of my name from Hebrew into English. My more common name
comes via a translation from Hebrew to Greek, and then from Greek to
English. I was born and grew up not far from a large lake which provided
a living for a considerable number of fishermen. We were a big family,
but that was quite normal then. My parents, Joe and Miriam (another
direct translation from Hebrew into English), probably regarded me as a
bit different from their other children, though they certainly did not
think of me as an infant king when I was a baby nor was I born in
Bethlehem for that matter. All those stories about my birth were only
created long after I had died. After some years I gave up my trade and,
among other things, took to talking to people about my beliefs.
Some people found what I had to say convincing. They likewise came to
expect a supernatural intervention, sometime soon, to restore our
nation's fortunes. So, like me, they bought into that fourth castle in
the air. For other people, what I was sharing with them about a miracle
that might happen today or tomorrow was just the crazy belief of a
deluded individual. For them life would go on as before. The Romans
weren't going to go away. Some no doubt credited me with having the
sense not to try to engage in political violence. Such acts of defiance
were quickly quelled. I wasn't interested in trying to bring change in
that way. I had put my trust in supernatural power.
I wasn't such a hell-fire preacher as John, and I was deeply concerned
to present my own vision of what life in this new kingdom, as we thought
of it, would be like. I'd always felt concerned for people who were on
the fringes of society, and by nature I was a compassionate person. I
believed that the new kingdom would have a special place for such
people. I tried to be encouraging to people who felt they were failures.
Was I a good person? Well, yes, I tried to be. Being loving and being
compassionate were important to me. That's not to say I always was good.
I have my worrying memories of moral failure and my own awareness of
remorse.
I accept that sometimes I might have done something or said something
that gave a person a glimmer of what the mystery of God may be like -
that is, if there is a God, for who can tell? I believe there is good in
everyone, so for me all lives raise the question of the nature of this
mystery we rightly or wrongly called "God".
Don't mistake me for a modern day evangelist who travels from country to
country, doubtless in his or her own aircraft. With global travel, a
person can reach millions with his or her message. Indeed they can do it
from a TV studio or from home via the Internet or by writing a book.
Maybe several thousand people in my lifetime actually heard me speak.
More knew of me, but don't forget there were no newspapers. As I've
said, I didn't travel from country to country. I based myself in the
northern region where I had been born. I visited the capital in the
south a few times, walking there with my friends. It was a kind of a
pilgrimage.
On one of these journeys, I arrived with my friends in the capital for
the celebration of one of our national festivals. The city was crowded.
It was a week of deep emotions as we recalled the story of how centuries
ago, and long before King David, our God had liberated us from a time of
slavery. That's, at least, what we believed then. I don't believe
anymore that you can detect the actions of a hidden invisible God in the
way our storytellers claimed.
As usual, some people discussed their ideas about how we now could
become liberated from rule by the Roman authorities. I caused a bit of
trouble in the Temple. I wasn't happy with the way it was regulated. I'd
say it was that action, together with rumours that I might be a
potential resistance leader and that I had a following, which led to a
decision to have me removed from the scene. Well, whatever hopes I'd had
of seeing the new kingdom come in my lifetime were dashed. Though, of
course, as I now realize that kingdom was just a fantasy. The method
they used to get rid of me wasn't pleasant. My friends were naturally
extremely upset. They were frightened that they too might be rounded up.
They were bewildered and confused. Some of them were to have some
strange experiences. You see after my death something unexpected
happened. And it's that which I've found so awkward and difficult to
accept.
My friends somehow came to believe that the fourth fantasy we had all
shared in had begun to be realized. They believed we were all justified
in having thought of its fulfillment as imminent. Something miraculous
they believed had just taken place; they became convinced that I was no
longer dead. I was alive in a new and unique way they claimed. The
stories written many years later say that they claimed to have seen me
with their own eyes. That's a strange claim if you think about it. Only
God could have raised me to life again. A claim to have definitely seen
me would suggest that they then had proof that God exists. I'd always
thought it was impossible to prove there is a God. It's a matter of
faith, not of knowledge or certainty, if one believes in God's
existence. I regret to have to tell you that their belief that they had
seen me alive again was another fantasy - the fifth one. However to them
it was a clear sign that the Superpower's intervention to restore our
national fortunes was now underway.
They found it all overwhelming. At times, they were happy and indeed
over-excited, and, at other times, apprehensive. They identified me with
that figure in heaven that I mentioned to you. Incidentally, that
visionary's story is towards the end of the book of Daniel in our Hebrew
scriptures. They told people that they could expect further cosmic
supernatural interventions at any time. They claimed that I would be
coming back to the world to make those crucial decisions as to who would
have a place in the new kingdom and who wouldn't. It was an awesome time
to be living through, they felt. In the meantime, as they explained to
people, I was living in heaven. I think they thought I had become some
sort of heavenly being. I would have great power, they said, when I
returned to them.
They were, in effect, creating a new identity for me. That's a
significant part of what I mean by this fifth fantasy. This eventually
led people to think that, in some mysterious way, I was both a divine
being and a human one. They also found ideas in our Scriptures which
they used to put a variety of mistaken meanings onto my death which in
one way or another depended on having punitive concepts of God in the
first place. It was a case of gross misinterpretation. I ended up in
their minds as the Saviour of the world. I have to admit that I shared
those inadequate outmoded ideas of God myself. I believed in a God of
judgment who would reward some and punish others. If you've never done
so, read the astonishing stories which later converts created about my
birth and about what happened just before and just after I died. Don't
take them as historical reports. They're a special kind of story
expressing the beliefs they formulated about me, and about how my life,
as they wrongly thought, was part of the Superpower's plan. What reason
would God have had to raise me from the dead as my friends claimed had
happened - that's assuming there is a God?
Nobody has ever been so misrepresented and so misunderstood as I have
been. It all began with that old fantasy about Gods having their
favoured people. What nonsense! There are no special people. Now, if you
know the story of what happened subsequently, you will realize that my
friends and the new converts to their cause created considerable
tensions. Animosities started to fester - Jew against Jew. For after
all, most of our fellow Jews thought what my friends and other followers
were saying about me was rubbish. It led eventually to a breakaway
movement being set up, which over time developed into a separate
religion. They made me the key figure in it.
Time and time again, I've regretted that our thinkers didn't see that it
made no sense to believe that we were a chosen and specially favoured
people. I've often wished that visionaries like Daniel hadn't used their
imaginations in the way they did. Then there would have been no fantasy
about that new divinely established kingdom, no vision of that figure in
heaven appearing before God with whom they identified me and no thought
of the dead emerging from their burial places for judgment.
I've had to put up with a whole cult developing around me, as indeed to
some extent my mother has had to do as well. Millions of prayers have
been addressed to me. Hundreds of artists have painted their
representations of me. I appear in stained glass windows with nearly as
many different faces as there are windows. Sculptors have cut me in
stone and in marble, and cast me in bronze. Thousands of scholars have
written about me. Novelists, dramatists, and film directors have
featured me. I'm so tired of being misunderstood and misrepresented.
Worse than that are the tragedies that have occurred as a result of it
all. I know you'll understand what I mean by that. It's almost
impossible to find words to describe my sadness.
Look, I never did come back to meet with my friends after I died. People
who believe that I did and who expect I'll return again to the world are
seriously misled. That's all part of fantasy number five. To be honest
with you they've been hoodwinked. How can I break it gently to people
who see me as their Saviour? I know it will be a massive shock for many
of them. Most of them just believe what they've been taught. How can I
help them see that fantasies one to five bear no relation to reality?
As you can no doubt guess, I know a few so-called founders of other
faiths who also feel pretty misunderstood. My friend Muhammad once
thought he had been divinely chosen and most of his followers still
believe he was. But God does not deliver his will miraculously to his
human representatives. We have ourselves to find the right way to live.
_____________________________________________
Andrew Furlong's website is at myhome.iolfree.ie/~andrewfurlong/
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