Reply #92: I am going to try to answer seriously

[dmallind]

It's a question that can be asked of characters ranging from the entirely fictional to the entirely factual after all. As with most non-living characters we only can refer to their reported statements and actions, and on the affect they have in their narrative. I am fairly sure I have read everything available purporting to be a true narrative, both canon and discarded. Obviously I have barely scratched the surface reading books intended as analysis, but have been through a few. I'll try to not let the latter color my opinion, as with this character it's hard to avoid a preconceived bias either way.

As described then in various stories of his life, I find Jesus to be a conflicted hero archetype, torn between sincere fellowship with lesser characters, and contemptuous dismissal. It seems his patience or otherwise is difficult to predict, and not always although often based on the interlocutor's status as follower or would-be antagonist. We certainly see both snappish scorn and benign gentleness in dealings with his most faithful supporting cast, but we also see both great forbearance and withering contempt at various times applied to his enemies. This is not unusual of course in characters far above their counterparts. We see similar behavior in Gandalf for example. It's easily understandable, as we have a crucial dilemma common to those who rarely face an equal, and instead are constrained into helping those who seem infuriatingly helpless without the hero. Condescendingly overcome all their obstacles, but turn them into hapless stooges who neither learn nor grow, or leave them to suffer hardships you could easily remove, but encourage their unpredictable, and potentially malevolent, development? As with Gandalf et al, Jesus vacillates between the two approaches, curing ailments at a touch here, even resurrecting the dead there, but refusing to even criticize an overweening regime that oppresses his friends but could not stand against his powers.

Another contrast is between word and deed, and also to a lesser degree within both. A fine orator who spends much of his time encouraging a humble but potent benevolence in deeply sincere and occasionally even sublime rhetoric, he demonstrates it himself only sporadically, often lashing out at minor provocations with absurd overreactions. He preaches unlimited forgiveness for those who wrong his friends, while causing the death of his childhood bully and cursing a tree that did not have fruit for him, even our of season. He violently flies off the handle at tradesmen who corrupt the decorum he seeks in a specific aspect of his religion, and then offers naught but love and assistance to those who despise the totality of his religion. Again and again we see heartstopping altruism offered to some, and petty vindictiveness to others, in word or deed. While this is often in response to the object's own opinion of Jesus, he seems sometimes in reverse to dismiss the needs of those closest to him while offering his all to those opposed. Jesus, it seems, decides to rise up or put down on an alarmingly mercurial whim. But we must remind ourselves that he acts not only with greater power but greater insight. To continue with the Gandalf parallel, we only find out ourselves why Gollum is saved by the wizard much later on, and realize he was right; we never find out why the giant eagle that brings Frodo and Sam back from Mt. Doom could not have simply taken them there in the first place, saving countless lives and immense hardship. We suspect Gandalf knew, and acted for his own reasons. Why can we not extend Jesus the same grace?

Jesus' own behavior and self-characterization also bears out this conflicted hero status. He effortlessly outwits his greatest enemy, and closest counterpart in power, early on and has no more trouble from that quarter. However his much more limited adversaries, the priesthood and authorities of his own humble people in a minor vassal state, seem to stymie him repeatedly, and manage to keep many of his natural allies ranged against him on their own side. His soaring rhetoric, erratically demonstrated but jaw-dropping powers, and gripping, well-packaged philosophy should by rights have caused a determined and unflagging following across all demographics during his life, at least equal to that after it, but Jesus' dis-ingenuousness works against him here too. He refuses to maintain a consistent definition of his own status and role. He switches from seeking out and inspiring multitudes to a kind of Garbo-esque self-imposed exile. He sometimes is willing to prove his otherworldly power and sometimes not. His teaching style is sometimes clear and magisterial, especially when discussing moral precepts, and sometimes shifting and shapeless, especially, ironically, when discussing christology and soteriology. While he himself grapples with his role in word and deed, most commentators after him see his central focus as bringing a new revelation, a new covenant and a way to achieve eternal blessed life. It is, maddeningly, about these very matters that he is most imprecise and contradictory. Faith? Works? Catholic? Restricted? Kosher? Gentile? Dispensationalist? Supersessionist? Adoptionistic? Modalistic? Trinitarian? We'll never know from the one who by definition most have known best of all. Sometimes though the reader of those writings about Jesus (he left none of his own as far as we know) is left with the unavoidable conclusion that even he didn't know. That it wasn't coyness or a desire to lead people to the answer rather than dictate it that made Jesus so infuriatingly fungible about himself. Maybe we should conclude the conflict runs even to this level - Jesus could not work out what he was and what he should be rather than that he simply would not spell it out. His own death personifies this. Depending on the telling of the story, Jesus is either a tower of strength or a cowering abject sap. He is either demonstrating the crowning glory of a life devoted to being sn example for others or simply a stoic sufferer of a terrible undeserved fate. An even vaguely active reading of the Jesus stories tells us pretty clearly that he thought we should be humble, forgiving, preternaturally charitable, and above all loving. The lifetime's work though of deeply committed and devastatingly intelligent readers, for 2000 years or so, has been unable to tease out one consistent coherent universally credible version of what the man himself thought of the man himself. What else can my paltry intellect conclude then but that here we see the story of a conflicted hero, reflecting not only the multiplicity of accounts, but the multiplicity of character traits, motivations and conclusions we see in Jesus both within an between these accounts?

I've cited Gandalf a few times, but in the final analysis the parallel collapses. Reading about him, admittedly with the advantage of one narrative not the many abut Jesus, we are left not understanding his exact nature, his exact motivation,just as in Jesus. But we are left at least with the reassuring idea that he HAD an exact nature and motivation, and knew it himself. From the inner point of view rather than the purely plot-driven elements, a closer analogy may be the Matrix's Neo. A hero unsure of the extent and purpose of his powers, who strives inconsistently and reacts unpredictably, who seems variously omnipotent and clueless, and who eventually, like Jesus, collapses into a contradictory incoherent mass of limitless potential wasted on a fleeting illusion of self-destructive success that may or may not help the lesser followers who are left as conflicted and as confused as the hero himself - their own natures writ large in archetype.