Churches Celebrate Holy Week Worldwide

By Jon Huer

Korea Times Columnist

This is Holy Week. On schedule at Christian churches, both Catholic and Protestant, in Korea and in the United States and all over the world, are various events commemorating the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus.

The Sanhedrin high priests used the mob psychology of the Israelites and manipulated them to condemn a man who had demanded a total change to the new ways of life. Jesus was harshly critical of the old ways as hypocritical and corrupt, and physically drove the money-changing minions from the temple, their symbol of law and order. Both for the hierarchy and for the common man, Jesus had become a threat and a nuisance and it behooved both to eliminate this man.

What the world is celebrating today is a rather strange phenomenon. The man who wanted a radical change remains just as opposed to this world of awful sins as then; this world in which we celebrate Him remains just as evil as then, except its evil is perhaps many times stronger, broader and deeper today than then.

What we have today in defense of our existing hierarchy and living habits, now called "lifestyles," is something unimaginable in Jesus' days. We have philosophers, psychologists, marketing experts, professional PR men, advertisers, professors, lawyers, and a whole slew of experts, the best and brightest of the generation, whose expertise is manipulating our minds and moods and defending our way of life.

If there were another ``Jesus" among us today, who would say things the way the original Jesus said, threatening the very same political and economic establishment and, more importantly, our established lifestyles, what would we, the mob-crowd, do?

Would we condemn Him just the same and destroy Him today as then?

Such questions have been raised many times and the answer has generally been: Yes, we would kill Him again. Northrop Frye, of McGill University, in his book, The Great Code, for example, is one of those who is absolutely certain about what we would do.

Indeed, we would. But why? For the same reason that the Jews of 2000 ago did.

To put it in the simplest terms possible, the "Christian" messages of Jesus and the economic-political messages of our modern democracy are two completely different, I would say, diametrically opposed types of messages. For one to prosper, the other must be suppressed or destroyed. We cannot have Jesus among us with His teachings and maintain our present democratic ways at the same time.

First, what does our "democracy," both in Korea and in the United States, say? It says, do whatever you want to do with your dollars and with your votes.

Democracy fails when the members, with dollars and votes in hand, think of themselves as larger than their collective whole, be it a community, nation or humanity. Because this frame of mind creates extreme selfishness, they become subject to manipulation by someone with enough resources and techniques to appeal to this selfishness to take their dollars and votes, as well as their minds.

In contrast, the new Jesus would have nothing to do with appealing to the democratic masses in their selfish pursuits. The messages of today's Jesus could be summed up in a few simple words: Love one another, especially those who are not pretty, not rich, not popular, not healthy, and not successful in rank or power. This is nothing short of overturning what we have built as our way of life and success, for our posterity and ourselves. It goes against everything we know of as our pursuit of happiness and prosperity.

Immediately, most of us would peg Him as anti-American, if we are Americans, and anti-"Korean Dream" if we are Korean, because all of those things are what we generally value and strive to achieve.

Being ugly, poor, unpopular, sick, feeble or old, and unsuccessful in rank and power, is not something we wish upon ourselves or the next generation in general, even if it is for the good of all.

Anyone in Korea or in America who advocates these things as being good is obviously out of his mind. Many church leaders and moralists say such things every Sunday, but we do not take them seriously, in essence because they themselves are not very serious about their messages.

This new-version Jesus would attack, physically if possible, those modern day "money changers," or our bankers, whenever near them. Bankers are the advance guard of our market society, and by extension an attack on them is to be construed as an attack on our free market system, and that is not something the established order will accept, even in this age of economic uncertainty. He is likely to be branded as a communist. The media will discredit Him as dangerous.

For good measure, the present day Jesus would tell us how terrible our entertainment obsession is. He would be quite critical of our culture being addicted to TV, the Internet, and electronic games, among other things, as any worried moralist would.

In our right mind, even among those of us who cannot live without them, we know they are not very good ways to spend our time. They basically threaten our relationships, destroy our sense of community and interfere with our own and our children's intellectual development.

We acknowledge all this while we are clear-minded, which is not often, but we don't want someone to tell us not to do it, as our "freedom of choice" is at stake. A teacher of morality who would advocate these things would obviously be cornered into a very unpopular, even hated, position.

Now, suppose we, the democrats and believers in democratic principles of self-determination who are used to those wonderful things of entertainment and pleasure, are asked to judge this man called Jesus. Without doubt, we would condemn Him to a fate of oblivion in whatever way our contemporary method would allow us. Perhaps to permanent silence, isolation, ridicule or whatever is our modern equivalent of crucifixion.

Democracy works satisfactorily only when it is made up of autonomous citizens who are "free" to think for themselves and recognize something larger than their own little selves. All theories of democracy have presumed this autonomy of each citizen, free from ― and equal to ― each other.

Well, as addicted and committed to non-stop entertainment and pleasurable things that we are, as if we are entitled to them by right, we certainly are not those free-thinking citizens, neither in the United States nor Korea. With the around-the-clock mechanisms of mass persuasion in advertisement and psychology at work, for all of our dollars, votes and souls, our condemnation of a man called Jesus would almost be a foregone conclusion.

This train of thought in Easter Week is not very encouraging, not necessarily for the new Jesus ― who will certainly be crucified ― but for us.

The writer can be reached jonhuer@hotmail.com.