malvasia bianca

I’m a bit confused by the parts involving Pontius Pilate. Some of that is simple ignorance: I understand that the Jewish priests don’t like Jesus, but I don’t understand why the Roman governor should care. And the part with the crowd clamoring for Pilate to free Barabbas doesn’t ring true to me. (E.g. the crowd shouting “His blood be on us, and on our children” from Matthew 27:25: in what circumstances would a crowd shout that?) Those issues aside, I’ll see Pilate’s lack of desire to kill Jesus as a sign that (as in Matthew 21-23) the real war here is between Jesus and the priest elite, not between him and traditional government forces.

We see a return of the humanity from Matthew 26 in Jesus’s crying “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (from Matthew 27:46), and for that matter, a crueler version of humanity in the mocking comments in Matthew 27:40-43. (Which do ring true to me, unlike the bit from Matthew 27:25 quoted above.)

At the end of Matthew 27, Jesus dies and is buried; and, in Matthew 28, he’s resurrected. I find that chapter very odd: there’s an amazing lack of detail, no power in the phrasing, and so much uncertainty that it’s acknowledged in the text in Matthew 28:15 and Matthew 28:17 with only a passing attempt at a rejoinder. A sad ending…

A fascinating chapter, because of the humanity that pervades it. The chief priests are the bad guys, but while I don’t defend their actions, I can see where they’re coming from: Jesus was really laying into them a few chapters ago. And Jesus knows what’s coming, so he doesn’t turn away the “very precious ointment” in Matthew 26:6-12; and the organization of the chapter then suggests that Judas gets fed up with Jesus because of that, and goes and talks to the high priests.

That passover must have been one of the most depressing meals ever (and I’m sure the creepy cannibalism bits didn’t help). And then, in their last night together, Jesus is lonely and unsure, asking the disciples to stay with him, but they fall asleep while he repeatedly asks “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt” (from Matthew 26:39/42/44).

Then there’s Peter: Jesus says Peter will deny him, Peter says never, but Peter does, leading to the end of the chapter Matthew 26:74-75: “Then began he to curse and to swear, saying, I know not the man. And immediately the cock crew. And Peter remembered the word of Jesus, which said unto him, Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. And he went out, and wept bitterly.” And I can’t read Peter as being a bad person here: he’s one of many scared, fallible people in this chapter, and he remains the foundation of Jesus’s church.

And even in the middle of being seized by the priests’s men, Jesus gives us one last lesson in compassion and non-violence: when one of Jesus’s followers attacks one of the priest’s followers with a sword, Jesus says “Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword” (from Matthew 26:52). Or at least that’s how I choose to interpret it: the context presents it more as a fulfilling of prophecy, and Jesus having faith that, ultimately, he has the upper hand. Still, that’s the lesson that I’d prefer to take from it.

Matthew 24 is one long, misguided prophecy of Jesus’s return: you have to believe, don’t be led astray by rumors or false prophets or doubts, and while we don’t know exactly when God is going to come and take away the just, nonetheless “Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled” (Matthew 24:34). Well, no, it didn’t work out that way, and I’m a bit afraid of anybody who still holds to what’s in this chapter.

Matthew 25 also talks about the kingdom of heaven, but in a more discursive fashion. I rather like the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30), with its notion that you shouldn’t squander what is given to you and its explicit acceptance of loaning money with interest. (Matthew 25:27, “Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury.”)

Note, however, that in that parable, we’re talking about people to whom something has been given: the chapter ends with a paean to the virtues of kindness and charity to those who are in need, in Matthew 25:34-46. In fact, I’ll just quote Matthew 25:34-40 here:

Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

Amen.

Matthew 21 starts with the bit about the ass and the colt, and then moves on to casting the moneychangers out of the temple (“My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves”, from Matthew 21:13), and Jesus’s withering a fig tree (Matthew 21:18-22). The former of which I rather enjoyed, but the latter is quite harsh: that poor fig tree! What happened to turning the other cheek?

At any rate, these leave you with the ideas that: 1) you shouldn’t mess with Jesus, and 2) those in the temple aren’t exempt from his wrath, indeed rather the opposite. Which leads directly to the next bit, with Jesus confronting the “chief priests and the elders of the people” (from Matthew 21:23). This lasts for a full two and a half chapters, containing: a couple of arguments about bible interpretation; a couple of parables all on the theme of “chief priests bad (directly going against the will of God), followers of Jesus good”; the “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s” (from Matthew 22:21) bit that makes it clear that Jesus is focusing right then on arguing with the priests rather than with the state; and Matthew 23. In that chapter he really lets loose against the priests, with seven verses starting with “woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!”, five verses where he calls them blind, one “Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers”, and other fine examples of invective.

Ouch. But great stuff: it’s one thing when Jesus is telling me that it’s way or the highway, but I’m perfectly fine with him telling off other similarly judgmental types. Especially when it’s an argument between the old and the new, though I do feel a bit sorry for the priests here, with their fear that they’re on the wrong side of history.

I wasn’t aware of the parable that takes up the first half of chapter 20, but now I’m fascinated by it. It presents a group of laborers who worked for different amounts of time, but all got paid the same; the longer-working laborers complained, but got the following response, from Matthew 20:13-15:

Friend, I do thee no wrong: didst not thou agree with me for a penny? Take that thine is, and go thy way: I will give unto this last, even as unto thee. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good?

Emotionally, I’m on the side of the longer-working laborers here: but why? If they would have felt adequately paid in the absence of the other laborers, then why are they bothered by how the other laborers are treated?

The key here is, of course, the comparison. If the other laborers hadn’t worked at all, and it had been pure charity, I imagine that the laborers who had worked wouldn’t have felt bad. And then there’s another potential scenario that Jesus doesn’t give us: what if both sets of workers had worked the same amount, but they’d gotten radically different pay rates, the lower of which would, in other circumstances, be acceptable? The same argument seems to apply that the lower-paid set of workers shouldn’t feel bad; I bet they would, though, and they’d feel like the person in charge is unfairly playing favorites.

I dunno. I’m still mostly on the side of the longer-working laborers, and, if I were in their shoes, I wouldn’t set my alarm clock early the next day. But “Is thine eye evil, because I am good?” is a very good question.

The rest of the chapter doesn’t strike me as strongly. I do, however, like the call to servant leadership in Matthew 20:26-28, in particular “And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant” (Matthew 20:27).

The endgame may be approaching, but we take another break from that here and return to our moralizing. Which starts off in a rather charming fashion, extolling the virtues of children! (A much more pleasant idea than staining them with original sin…) I wish the strongest statements weren’t in support only of “these little ones which believe in me” (from Matthew 18:6), but we’ve seen rather worse in that regard. And I like the parable of the sheep, too, “if a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth into the mountains, and seeketh that which is gone astray?” (from Matthew 18:12).

In between those bits, we have “Wherefore if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire.” (Matthew 18:8, with a similar bit about eyes in Matthew 18:9.) Which is a tough message, but yeah, doing the right thing sometimes requires tough choices. And the good thing here is that you’re cutting off your own hand or foot: cutting off somebody else’s to (in your view) help them is a different matter entirely.

The chapter ends with preaching forgiveness: “Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven” (Matthew 18:21-22), followed by the parable of the king and his servants in Matthew 18:23-35. Which is great stuff, though I am a bit bemused by Matthew 18:34, “And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto him”: I understand where the king is coming from there, but tormenting somebody (Lattimore translates the word as “torturers” rather than “tormentors”) isn’t going to pay the bills, either. Still, it’s an expression of the Tit for Tat strategy, and I’m happy with that; quite a chapter, all in all.

Matthew 19 is more of a mixed bag. I take my marriage very seriously, but that doesn’t mean that I support the strong anti-divorce pronouncements here. (E.g. “What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder”, from Matthew 19:6.) If I felt that Jesus appreciated sexuality or sexual equality more, then my reaction would be somewhat less negative, but still: marriages are more complicated than that. And the bit about eunuchs in Matthew 19:12 just seems odd.

Then we return to the themes that we saw in Matthew 18:8-9, this time taking the spin of selling your wealth to help the poor. Which is hard, but necessary: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God” (from Matthew 19:24). I’m not entirely comfortable with this, but maybe that’s just because it’s something that I don’t practice nearly as much as I should.

The tone deepens here. We start with themes we’ve seen before, with others who are engaging him but don’t want to believe. His response is to look around: “O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?” (from Matthew 16:3). But note the more wistful note, with the mention of sunsets and troubled sunrises in Matthew 16:2-3.

After which he gathers together those closest to him, and the endgame begins: “And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16), “And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18), and the reason why that Petrus is necessary is that Jesus “must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day” (from Matthew 16:21).

Peter protests: “Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee” (from Matthew 16:22), but Jesus is uncompromising: “But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.” (Matthew 16:23.) I love that exchange, for the humanity that it shows combined with the principles that are behind it: earlier, I’ve been critical of such an uncompromising point of view, but here the consequences for Jesus himself are as severe as can be, so who am I to judge? He acknowledges that others might want to follow but will suffer in doing so (e.g. Matthew 16:24, “Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me”), and ultimately leads to this question: “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matthew 16:26) A very good question indeed, no matter what is important to you, what you see as your soul.

And then there’s the last verse in Matthew 16: “Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.” (Matthew 16:28) The problem with specific prophecies is that they are falsifiable…

Matthew 17 reinforces this core group of disciples, with their mountaintop retreat (complete with fancy outside guest appearances), and finishes sketching the tale of what’s to come: “The Son of man shall be betrayed into the hands of men: And they shall kill him, and the third day he shall be raised again” (from Matthew 17:22-23). Along with a couple of other side bits: again, a call to the power of faith (“If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.”, from Matthew 17:20, which I find strangely seductive), and a bit on taxes that the chapter ends with. I’m still not sure what to do with these tax sections: we’re seeing an expression of a lot of hostility in the air towards taxes, but both here and in Matthew 9 (where Jesus sat down with the tax collectors), Jesus seems willing to go along with them.

We start off with a defense against narrow rules: in Matthew 15:2, the scribes and Pharisees ask “Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? for they wash not their hands when they eat bread.” And Jesus’s answer is Matthew 15:11, “Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man.” (Along with an accusation of hypocrisy in Matthew 15:3-9, for good measure.) Which is nice to hear: in Matthew 5:19, we were told that we shouldn’t “break one of these least commandments”, so I’m glad that Jesus has mellowed a bit. Though, having said that, I can’t say I understand exactly what I’m allowed to do and what I’m not allowed.

Then, in Matthew 15:22, we have the appearance of the “woman of Canaan”. I find this whole bit rather interesting: his first answer to her request for healing, from Matthew 15:24, is that “I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel”. Part of me really doesn’t like this at all: here’s somebody in need, and you turn her away because she’s not from your tribe? I am assuming, however, that Jesus can’t actually heal everybody in the world, or even everybody who comes to him, so some rationing of care is necessary; in that context, I can understand prioritizing those in need who are close to you.

I guess, to me, the upshot is: let’s find a way to fix that constraint. And others like it: in Matthew 15:32-38, we have a repeat of the loaves and the fishes. Here too I assume he’s operating under a similar constraint, in that seven loaves and a few fishes will feed four thousand people, but not the world. So let’s find a way to feed everybody instead.

And, indeed, Christian churches do try to feed those in need, and Christian hospitals try to cure those who ail. But they’re not going it alone: without the advances that science has brought, or indeed the flourishing of the overall economy that free markets have brought, there would be a lot less food and healing to go around. Still, they are trying, which puts them quite a bit ahead of smug bloggers pontificating from the comforts of their own home…

I was going to end there, but while doing the final proofreading, I took a break and browsed my RSS feeds, and ran into today’s (as I’m writing this) xkcd:

Which, if I ended there, could be interpreted a needlessly antagonistic spin. So, let me repeat: it’s awesome that Jesus cured the sick and healed the hungry. He was doing the best he could with the tools he had, and his best was far better than anything I’m managing today. But let us take from that the lesson that we should be compassionate to those in need, and use whatever tools we can find to that end, including (especially including!) tools that minimize the need for that compassion by reducing the number of those in need in the first place!

Next, we come to a chapter full of parables. Which I was expecting to like, because I’m quite fond of stories these days; but these parables, not so much. Instead, they’re just different variants of “here are the good guys, here are the bad guys”, and while I find that less distasteful in parable form than in other forms, it’s not my favorite topic, and it’s rather repetitive even within this chapter alone.

Still, there’s something pleasantly meta about running across the parable of the sower (Matthew 13:3-9) when I myself am listening but, I have to assume, “seeing see not; and hearing [I] hear not, neither do [I] understand” (from Matthew 13:13). Also, at the end of this chapter, we see yet another take on family and group, this time leading to “A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and in his own house” (from Matthew 13:57), putting a rather poignant spin on his words on the subject in previous chapters.

Matthew 14 starts out with the beheading of John the Baptist; only a handful of verses (Matthew 14:1-12), but such is the power of the Bible that they’ve been expanded into at least one opera, and countless other works. And then some good old fashioned miracles: the loaves and the fishes (Matthew 14:15-21), and walking on water (Matthew 14:24-33). Both of which I enjoy, though I don’t think I have anything to say about them in terms of the focus of this exercise.

And, with that, we’re halfway through the 28 chapters of this book. It wouldn’t surprise me if I have less to say about the second half of the book than the first half: my guess is that we’ll be shifting into a mode with more narrative and fewer moral pronouncements. I could be wrong, though (it’s been a while since I’ve read the Bible!), and it will doubtless also be the case that the narrative itself leads to some interesting moral questions. (Indeed, perhaps when mentioning John the Baptist’s beheading, I should have delved more into Herod’s feelings in Matthew 14:9 that “And the king was sorry: nevertheless for the oath’s sake, and them which sat with him at meat, he commanded it to be given her.”) My thanks to those of you who are still with me; for those of you who are getting tired, my apologies, and rest assured that I certainly don’t expect to spend nearly as much time on the other three books.

I don’t have much to say about Professor Layton and the Unwound Future. It’s a Professor Layton game, and while that’s a good thing, it’s also a known quantity at this point.

We learn a bit about Layton’s past here; he turns out not to be particularly socially adept or comfortable around women, as one might expect in retrospect from his harping on being a gentleman. Also, my initial reading was that he and Luke shelter / infantilize Flora to an unpleasant degree in this game, and that the developers chose a lousy voice actor for Flora. But, actually, given how young the voice actor sounds, maybe Flora is supposed to be a lot younger than Luke, in which case both of those make more sense? I don’t remember from the earlier games what her age is supposed to be.

We start with a discussion of what is permissible on the sabbath and what isn’t. Which, if I’m in a good mood, I’m happy to take as a caution against uncritically using rigid laws to prevent you from doing good; e.g. Matthew 12:11, “And he said unto them, What man shall there be among you, that shall have one sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the sabbath day, will he not lay hold on it, and lift it out?” Of course, it’s not quite that simple: part of his justification is that priests are allowed to do more on the sabbath than other people and, as he says in Matthew 12:8, “For the Son of man is Lord even of the sabbath day.” So there is a bit of special pleading here, but it’s pretty sensible special pleading, and in general I like how the chapter starts.

I’m not so thrilled with how the chapter continues and ends: a repeat of the “you’re with me or against” me philosophy that I ranted about yesterday, complete with a recasting of family ties. But it’s gentler this time, and actually there’s a lot of good in the recasting of family ties that the chapter ends with: he’s not rejecting existing family ties, he’s instead broadening the notion of family, and I wholeheartedly support that.

And, in the middle, we have a rather interesting line, from Matthew 12:25: “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand”. Which I quite like: people working together are ever so much more powerful than people working against each other, or even than people who are randomly working in related but not particularly well-aligned directions. Now, that statement alone doesn’t mean that you should take draconian measures to force people in line; but that doesn’t limit the statement’s utility as a diagnostic, or even say that parting ways isn’t sometimes a quite reasonable response to a serious difference in views and desires.

Here, Jesus shows the virtues of delegation; I can certainly get behind that. I can also get behind limiting that delegation to a small group that you know well, and accepting that you don’t have sufficient resources to be able to help everybody.

I’m not so thrilled with the “my way or the highway” (actually, “my way or eternal damnation”) philosophy here, though (e.g. Matthew 10:14, “And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet”): what happened to the preaching of forgiveness that we’d just been seeing? When he says “And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death” in Matthew 10:21, one might think that this is a bad thing, and indeed he does think it’s bad, but not because of the brother against brother bit: as we see in Matthew 10:37, “He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me”, being divided against your family members is all well and dandy if you’re on the good side of that. So, sorry, Jesus, I love my daughter rather more than you, eternal damnation or no! (And Matthew 10:34, “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword”, is an interesting counterpart to Christmas platitudes.)

This vengeful spirit continues in Matthew 11; he may call himself “meek and lowly in heart” (Matthew 11:29) or, in Lattimore’s translation, “gentle and humble at heart”, but that’s not how I would describe “And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell” (from Matthew 11:23).

In fact, the more I think about this, the more these chapters bother me. What Jesus is saying here seems to me, to be blunt, evil. He wants to strip away your abilities to think for yourself: no grey area is allowed, you have to make an explicit choice to be either with him or against him, with the extremely strong carrot and stick of eternal grace and damnation separating those two choices.

This sort of absolutism is hard to pull off. Part of it is because we live in a world where matters are not so simple, and because we don’t actually get to see this alleged afterlife, but maybe that can be overcome with sufficient rhetorical prowess. Even so, though, stripping away people’s various personal loyalties and replacing them with loyalty to a single individual is a hard trick, and no personal loyalty is stronger than that of family; so Jesus goes right for the jugular and attacks that tie, knowing that it’s all simple after that.

The funny thing is that, were matters different, I’d be happy to complain about people for focusing too much on the virtue of family ties: that way lies tribalism, with its own host of evils. But here, those strong family ties are a saving grace against an unrooted vision of morality. (While, conversely, visions of morality can in other circumstances be an equally strong saving grace against uncritically following the actions of those near and dear to you.)

Phew. Not the sort of thing that I want to be writing about on a post that is scheduled to be published on Christmas day. Switching back to a less ranty tone:

There are some interesting bits before that relating Jesus to John the Baptist. In particular, I was struck by Matthew 11:18-19, “For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, He hath a devil. The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. But wisdom is justified of her children.”

Indeed, sometimes you just can’t win: haters gonna hate, as they say. Or maybe not: just because X and Y are opposed for apparently contradictory reasons doesn’t mean that individuals are acting in contradiction: maybe it’s different individuals opposing X and Y, maybe X and Y are worthy of dislike for different reasons, maybe there’s a deeper consonance that X and Y are missing. But, a lot of the time, it’s definitely the case that the dislike comes first and that the justification based on particulars of the manifestation is only a retroactive attempt at rationalization; I know that’s the case for me most of the time when I dislike something.

And now we take a break from the context-free sermonizing, and turn to narrative. Specifically, about Jesus curing people right and left; hard not to like that! And, consistent with what we’ve seen earlier, he doesn’t want word getting around about his actions. (Though, as you might expect, it didn’t really work out that way…)

Part of me feels like I should be bothered by the man of great faith who got a long-distance cure for his household member; but I’m really not. “Let the dead bury their dead” (Matthew 8:22) seems a bit harsh, but only a bit.

Matthew 9 repeats much of the same themes, but there’s some new stuff, too. It starts off by saying that Jesus cures blasphemers, too, confirming my feeling that I shouldn’t be bothered by the man of great faith by the previous chapter. In fact, he turns this into a lesson on forgiveness, which I rather like: “For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk?” (Matthew 9:5)

And then he goes to eat with “publicans and sinners” (Matthew 9:11). Which is a word I had to look up, and Lattimore translates that it as “tax collectors and sinners” instead. At any rate, an interesting pairing, especially in today’s political climate that pairs an absolutist anti-tax line with a refusal to examine the benefits that those taxes are bringing us.

Take, for example, health care. Yes, it would be great if we could have the son of God wandering around healing us whenever we get sick. But even two millennia ago that didn’t come close to scaling to meet the actual need, and these days our shortage of healing deities is even more sorely lacking. Fortunately, our health care has improved enormously over the intervening millennia, though (pace The Rational Optimist) I won’t credit government with much of the improvement there. But I will credit government with some of the improvement, and we need a health care system of last resort, one that will look after those who aren’t financially able to pay for their own care; hence, taxes.

Anyways, continuing on: not sure how I feel about the whole bit about Jesus eating instead of fasting, justified with “Can the children of the bridechamber mourn, as long as the bridegroom is with them?” (Matthew 9:15): I’m all for moderation in appropriate contexts, but I don’t think that’s what’s going on here. Still, I certainly won’t blame Jesus for wanting to have some food in his stomach, though, especially given what’s going to happen to him.

I also can’t say that I understand the “No man putteth a piece of new cloth unto an old garment” bit that follows next (Matthew 9:16)—I get the feeling that I should be learning something there, but it doesn’t quite fit into the narrative flow to me. Or maybe I should read those verses as an affront against the virtues of refactoring, or as a caution that it can be taken too far?

A third chapter of moralization, and one of my favorites. It starts off in top form, enough so that I’ll quote all of Matthew 7:1-5 to you:

Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.

Words to try to live by, indeed. (And to remind us how badly we fail…) And we have expressions of faith in the goodness of humanity: “Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent?” (Matthew 7:9-10) And of caution: “Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.” (Matthew 7:13-14) And a reminder to judge by deeds, not words: “Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.” (Matthew 7:20)

Amen to all of that.

Another chapter of moralizing, and again I have mixed feelings. I like the message about not doing good deeds for the purpose of being seen: but, to me, the message of “And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward” (Matthew 6:5) is weakened by the next verse, “But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.” (Matthew 6:6) Or, in other words, “you’re a hypocrite if you do good stuff to be seen by other people, unless the other people is the one person who can sentence you to eternal hellfire!”

I am probably sounding like a broken record on that regard, though; from now on, I should probably accept that yes, there are a lot of external motivators in here which range from nudges to naked threats. And I don’t have to like that, but it also won’t do me any good to spend time on that at the expense of seeing other bits that I could profit from more.

Like, for example, Matthew 6:24, “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” Though the following verses I’m not so sure about: “Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?” (Matthew 6:25-26.) That seems to me to be at tension with the “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God” bit that we saw earlier in Matthew 4:7; and, if I’m remembering a Radiolab episode properly, I think that actually birds do gather seeds for winter storage, and some have such fast metabolisms that they wouldn’t be able to survive a single night if they couldn’t remember where they left them. Still, I’ll accept the basic point that you shouldn’t be paralyzed by fear of the future: as the chapter ends, “Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” (Matthew 6:34)

(And now, a temporary break from Bible commentary to our traditional fare of video game related navel gazing!)

So: Ben wrote this thing. Which I feel like responding to, and I can’t very well do that on his blog! Therefore:

1. Yes, we absolutely should experiment more with rhetoric. Forget “we”: I should experiment more with rhetoric.
2. Or rather, we should experiment more with form. But, while I would be happy if some of that formal experimentation took the form of rhetorical experimentation (i.e. using that form for persuasive purposes), I am completely unconvinced that improved persuasion should be a key goal for video game writers right now.
3. In fact, stepping away from persuasion might be a better goal. Yes, an excess of concern with objectivity is a serious problem; to that end, embrace the subjective, present views upon the world without worrying about whether anybody is convinced by them, or indeed about whether they contain an argument either explicit or hidden.
4. But: talks about the effects of changes in sniper rifle reload time are fabulous. Embrace details!
5. The work that Kill Screen is doing is an excellent example of breaking out of our formal ruts, but that doesn’t mean that we should fetishize print. I like books more than your average person (in both readings of that sentence), but there’s so much experimentation that can be done within an online format, not to mention the possibilities that the iPad and video games themselves allow.
6. Also, Kill Screen has a long way to go before their contribution matches that of Michael’s blog.
7. Yes, the fact that video games are played on computers has had an effect; I suspect, however, that video game programmers are less influenced by computer science than most other programmers. And video game bloggers less still.
8. C.f. Richard Bartle’s “Do you like beer? Why aren’t you doing a degree in brewing?” Though perhaps that quote goes against my argument; but his talk was awesome!
9. (Incidentally, my relationship with computer science is a strained one.)
10. My candidates for original sin are reviews (as practiced by large traditional sites) and (the various forms of) preview coverage.
11. I should read Prince of Networks.
12. Not a fan of Indie Gaming Bingo.
13. I like the phrase “there is currently no commenting”.

This is where we really start seeing moral pronouncements laid down. First, a sequence of “Blessed are the X: for they shall Y” lines, where X is generally something that’s good (or, at least, causes your life to be difficult), and where Y is a reward for that. In general, I support the X’s (sometimes more so in Lattimore’s translation than in King James: in particular, contrasting their versions of Matthew 5:5, I have nothing against meekness, but I actively like gentleness.) I have more mixed feelings about the Y’s: sometimes, it’s a simple “it gets better” vibe (Matthew 5:4, “Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted”), but sometimes there’s a sort of passive aggressiveness with a real edge to it (the aforementioned Matthew 5:5, “Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth”).

Then the gloves start to come off: Matthew 5:16 “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven”, and Matthew 5:18-20, “For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.”

Clearly, God is not messing around: jump when He says jump, or (as we see in Matthew 5:29-30) you’ll be “cast into hell”. And these verses support a narrow moralism that I’m not at all comfortable with: the “break one of these least commandments” bit quoted above, or “whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart” from Matthew 5:28.

Though even here, there are bits that I wholeheartedly get behind: e.g. Matthew 5:23-24, “Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.” In other words, while prayer is all well and good, you should get your actual actions in order first.

I actually rather like the bits against swearing, from Matthew 5:33-37: a sense of letting your actions speak for you. And then we come to the whole “turn the other cheek” bit (Matthew 5:38-48, e.g. 5:39 “But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.”) This is absolutely my favorite part of the moral pronouncements so far, a very strong statement indeed: don’t fight evil with evil, respond instead with compassion. I only wish that God would take Jesus’s advice on that score earlier on in this chapter, instead of threatening everybody with hellfire!

From a philological point of view, I really wonder what’s going on here. The different parts of the chapter seem to me to be in rather different styles and from rather different points of view; maybe I’m just reading my own biases into something that’s not there, but maybe the text is an agglomeration of different points of view.

Repenting your sins is all well and good; I can’t get behind the naked threats in Matthew 3, though. Take Matthew 3:12, “Whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” Even if you accept that the chaff in question really have done evil, how does that justify burning them with unquenchable fire? It reminds me of the “lock them up and throw away the key” philosophy that the United States has followed for the last three decades.

Matthew 4 is more to my taste: I particularly like the bit where the devil says to Jesus that God will look after him if he does something stupid, and Jesus’s response is “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God” (from Matthew 4:7). Even if you believe that you’re the chosen one, that’s no excuse to press your luck, or to abuse that privilege! On its own, I’m not so thrilled with “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve” (from Matthew 4:10), but in the context of having the Devil asking you to worship him and be rewarded with vast riches and power, it’s a pretty good response. And then there’s Jesus’s going around and healing people right and left; it’s certainly hard to find that as anything other than wholly admirable!

The heros of this section: the three wise men, a.k.a. the three Magi. I enjoyed listening to Amahl and the Night Visitors when I was growing up, glad to see them make their appearance here. (The night visitors, that is, not Amahl.)

Though I feel strangely conflicted about the gifts that they’re bringing. They’re giving riches to the son of God, to one whom they call “King of the Jews”: I don’t blame people for sucking up to the rich and powerful, but I don’t consider doing so to be a sign of good, either. The truth is, though, that Jesus and his family weren’t rich and powerful at this point in the story (at least I assume they weren’t, though I’m not sure what on the text I’m basing that on), and soon after the Magi show up, they have to leave town pronto: doubtless being able to sell the gifts was very useful to that end! So sure, let’s give the Magi the benefit of the doubt, and commend them for supporting those in need without worrying about their motivation in doing so.

And I’ll certainly enthusiastically support the Magi’s decision to not head back to Herod: he really was rich and powerful (and willing to kill to support that), so bully for those who work to foil the plans of the powerful who abuse said power. And, similarly, Herod is evil, boo Herod, to say the least.

Then there’s all the linking of various people’s actions with prior prophesies. If I were to take the most gratuitously ungenerous reading imaginable, I would wonder at the use of “that it might be” in Matthew 2:15, “And was there until the death of Herod: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son.” (Lattimore takes a similarly deterministic tone.) Is this all some sort of twisted game that God is setting up? I don’t want to emphasize that too strongly, though: it’s just a choice of words in this one sentence, other similar sentences use different words to link the actions with the prophecies (e.g. Matthew 2:17, “Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying,”).

So, while I do get uncomfortable (to put it mildly) at the idea of some God setting up chains of actions that include the massacre of innocent children, I don’t think it’s fair to read these sentences in such a fashion. But it is, perhaps, not quite so unfair for them to serve us as a caution against excessive fatalism, as a warning against what can come from saying that God is in charge and whatever he wants will happen, so we don’t have to worry about our actions ourselves.

And what about my use of that game metaphor in light of my status as a video game player and developer? Accepting for a moment the hypothesis of a God as powerful as the Christian God, he probably would be so different from us as to be almost incommensurable on moral terms. So maybe we should see this all potentially as one big game, a sort of Sim Universe, with this level of death no more of an issue to the player than are the fate of the units that I move around in a game of Civilization. Given my status as human rather than all-powerful divine being, though, I’d rather not go too far down exploring the morality of that point of view; and even if we were to do so, it would give a certain perspective on the moral issues behind such deterministic fatalism. After all, if the history of human civilization is a game, it’s probably not a game without constraints, so it’s probably very difficult indeed to reach a good outcome without some unfortunate events along the way.

The New Testament opens with a genealogy: 42 generations leading from Abraham to Jesus. To which my initial reaction was a bit of bemused snark: I thought the whole point was that Jesus was the son of God, so why recite that list? But I actually felt a little bad after thinking that, because the text immediately launches into a discussion of Jesus’s parentage, in the context of Joseph’s reaction. Which is a very personal issue, enough to make me feel abashed about the whole idea of blogging about anything having to do with morality: what do you do when your wife is pregnant, and you know it’s not your kid?

His initial reaction is Matthew 1:19: “Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a publick example, was minded to put her away privily.” I wish I knew quite what the ramifications of “put her away” are (which, incidentally, is the same phrase that Lattimore uses, though the rest of that verse reads a bit differently), but I’m willing to accept that Joseph is being a decent guy about a sticky situation. And then he has a dream where an angel tells him what’s really going on, and he’s happy to get with the program.

What I like about this is what it says about the meaning of family. I can only imagine the thoughts that would go through your mind if you learn that your wife is pregnant with somebody else’s kid; and I wouldn’t for a moment blame people for having any of a wide range of reactions to that. But if you end up deciding that the marriage is important, then yes, the child is very much a part of that marriage and will be very much your child, and the facts of the biological parentage have nothing to do with that, any more than they do in, say, a case of adoption. So actually leading off with that family lineage is a pretty awesome statement about what family is, and I was kind of being an asshole by thinking snarky thoughts in response to seeing that lineage. (Score: Bible 1, David 0!)

What I don’t like about this chapter: we don’t see anything about Mary, or indeed about women in general (the family lineage at the start is all men). For this verse, at least, women are just vessels, men are what’s important.

(A side note: when writing the first paragraph, I wasn’t sure whether to write ‘god’ or ‘God’, probably as a reflexive atheist reaction against the whole concept. But I’m going with the latter: among other reasons, in this context I’m happy to treat it as a proper name, and we capitalize those.)