Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] The Indifference of Jesus by Bart D. Ehrman Read by John Paul Middlesworth how concerned was Jesus about the social, economic, cultural and political issues that are so vitally important to us and occupy so much of our mental space?
[00:00:17] The answer is surprising.
[00:00:20] First, some background.
[00:00:22] As a Jewish peasant in early 1st century Rural Aramaic speaking Galilee, Jesus would not have known about Greek Stoics or their philosophical views.
[00:00:31] He nonetheless appears to have shared a perspective with them, one that is a bit unexpected.
[00:00:36] Like them, he was completely indifferent to a number of issues most people find deeply relevant and important, including fundamental questions connected with governmental policies and religious practices.
[00:00:47] Stoics insisted that a person's happiness depended on maintaining an internal state of peace and calm, undisturbed by external events and circumstances.
[00:00:57] There are only so many things that a person can control in their life. Those are the things they should focus on. Anyone who worries about things over which they have no control creates unnecessary stress and anxiety.
[00:01:09] So it is best to distance yourself, simply not to be concerned about them. Few people do that, or want to do it, or think they can. But the reality is that however much you try, you cannot prevent someone from saying or doing something mean or hurtful.
[00:01:25] You cannot ensure you will get a promotion or raise, or even that you won't be fired. You cannot prevent your house burning down or your body from being injured. You certainly cannot control the fact that you will age and eventually die.
[00:01:38] What good does it do to worry about these things?
[00:01:41] None at all.
[00:01:43] On the contrary, if you focus on such external things how people treat you, your employment, stability, your possessions, your health, your very life, you are setting yourself up for huge disappointments and creating unnecessary anxiety.
[00:01:57] Instead, you should focus on what is internal. The only things you actually can control are your own reactions to and feelings about externals.
[00:02:07] Someone can be hostile to you, but you don't have to let it get under your skin. You may lose your job, or your house, or your friends, or your health or your life. But that is distressing only if you choose to let it be.
[00:02:21] Seriously, you can remove yourself from being concerned by focusing on what you yourself can control.
[00:02:27] What you know is right and wrong, good and evil, true and false, what you think of yourself, what you value, what you choose to love.
[00:02:37] Obviously, becoming a Stoic was not easy. It took years of thinking and hard mental practice, but it was possible to get there if you wanted to.
[00:02:46] Most people did not want to. They thought that being indifferent to everything around you was a ridiculous way of living.
[00:02:52] But Stoics swore by it. Most things in life in their Greek phrasing were adiaphora, literally indifferent, or things that don't matter, and so your attitude toward them was to be apatheia, that is apathetic. You just shouldn't care.
[00:03:09] That doesn't mean you should not have a job, apply for a promotion, have have a house and other possessions and keep healthy. But if these were the things you spent your mental energies on and ultimately valued, you were sunk when it came to happiness.
[00:03:24] As I said, Jesus did not have this view per se. He would never have heard of the famous philosophers from centuries before, such as Zeno, and obviously would not have known about those who became prominent after his day, such as Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius.
[00:03:39] But he had a similar view and for very different reasons.
[00:03:44] The focus of Roman and Greek moral teaching is encapsulated in the Greek word eudaimonia, often translated as happiness, but not meaning a fleeting emotion, but an internal sense of well being and contentment that your life was good and where it should be and should be going.
[00:04:01] Even though probably most Christians today think this is precisely what Jesus was interested in, your personal well being, it is quite clear from the Gospel reports that it was not.
[00:04:13] Jesus told his followers to sacrifice their happiness for others to take up their cross to follow him, to be willing to give up everything and why?
[00:04:23] For the sake of the coming kingdom of God.
[00:04:26] Jesus was a proponent of deferred gratification. You were far better off sacrificing all that you hold near and dear here.
[00:04:33] Your home, your family, your friends, your livelihood, your status, your possessions, your wealth, your security, your physical well being and your life in order to gain the kingdom that was coming soon.
[00:04:45] This is the ubiquitous teaching of the Gospels. But in case you'd like a few places to look at from the first surviving gospel, see Mark 8, 3, 34, 38, 9, 35, 10, 17, 31, 1041, 45.
[00:05:02] For Jesus, the kingdom of God was not a spiritual existence after death in heaven. It was a real utopian kingdom here on earth where God would rule supreme through his chosen one, the future Messiah. God had originally created a perfect world for humans to enjoy, Genesis 1:3. But humans botched it up and were cast out of Eden.
[00:05:25] But it was God's plan for them to dwell there, and he had not changed his mind. It was going to happen.
[00:05:32] For apocalyptic Jewish teachers like Jesus, the decidedly not paradisal realities of the world were not destined to last forever or indeed for long.
[00:05:43] God was soon to impose his will on his creation, enter into history, destroy all the evil forces both superhuman and human that opposed him, set up a perfect kingdom here on Earth and provide those who followed him with paradise, both those who were alive at the time and those who had died.
[00:06:01] The future break with history was to entail cataclysmic cosmic events and a resurrection of the dead.
[00:06:08] And it was going to happen soon.
[00:06:10] There is nothing in this world or this life that could compare to the coming kingdom. It was worth sacrificing everything for.
[00:06:18] Literally everything. Homes, possessions, spouses, children, parents, sources of revenue, everything.
[00:06:25] See Mark 10:28 31.
[00:06:28] Those who clung to such earthly material things were in danger. If they were not willing to sacrifice everything for the coming kingdom, they might well face destruction on the coming Day of Judgment.
[00:06:40] This was an extreme view of how to live one's life.
[00:06:43] Its perspectives, assumptions, orientation, and religious underpinnings were hugely different from those of the Stoics. But it had a very similar effect.
[00:06:53] It made everything else in life a matter of indifference.
[00:06:57] The world can barely contain the books that have been written. To paraphrase John 21:25 about how Jesus is concerned for your personal happiness and the good of society, the social, political, economic views he wants you to endorse, whether he would be a Republican or a Democrat, and whether he would be a capitalist or a socialist in one way or another. All these books are based on the Bible and none of them got the memo, and all of them have missed the plot.
[00:07:28] Jesus was not concerned about such things.
[00:07:31] That is hard to believe, but I'll try to show it in my next post.
