Jesus: a new vision

by Marcus J. Borg

  The final major focus of conventional wisdom was religion. If one were wise, one would be religious. Like the other themes of conventional wisdom, religion provided a culturally conferred source of identity and security. One’s descent made one a child of Abraham, and thus heir to the promises of God; and one’s religious behavior numbered one among the righteous or sinful children of Abraham. Within the framework of conventional wisdom, religion easily became a means of seeking both security and an honorable identity.

  Yet some of the most shocking words in the gospels were directed at religious beliefs and practices. Jesus’ predecessor, John the Baptist, had preached, “Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We are children of Abraham.’ ”36 For Jesus, as for the Baptist, the sacred identity conferred by conventional wisdom meant nothing.37

  Nor was religious practice as a basis of security exempted from his critique. Especially instructive is the Parable of the Tax Collector and the Pharisee.38 The Pharisee’s prayer of thanksgiving referred to his religious behavior: “I thank thee, God, that I am not like other men; I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I get.” It is important to note that the Pharisee was not a hypocrite in the usual sense of the word; we have no reason to think that he said one thing and did another. Instead, he was a model of what a faithful Jew should have been according to the most rigorous standards of the day. His defect was neither hypocrisy nor immodesty; rather, his fault was that he rested his security in his own genuine religious accomplishment, which had become the center of his life. Strikingly, Jesus indicted trusting in one’s own “success” at doing the will of God.39 Significantly, the Pharisee’s opposite in the parable, the outcast, rested his security solely in God, laying no claim to righteousness: “God, be merciful to me a sinner.”

  Jesus’ perception of the broad way is also disclosed by the cast of characters in his parables. They realistically portray how human beings commonly act. Indeed, it is upon the skillful portrayal of typical human behavior that the power of a parable depends—the hearers recognize themselves. The characters cover the gamut of first-century Palestinian life: laborers and elder sons and officials concerned to receive what they think they rightfully have coming to them; people preoccupied with business and family so that they refuse an invitation to a banquet; a servant fearful and anxious to preserve what he had; tenant farmers determined to seize a vineyard from its owner; rich people centered in their wealth, unmindful of death and suffering; priests and lay people alike preoccupied with their own religiosity and purity. As snapshots of typical human behavior, the parables disclose much about Jesus’ diagnosis of the human condition: we often are preoccupied with our concerns, anxious about our well-being, limited in our vision, grasping in our attempts to make ourselves secure.

  Jesus’ analysis of the way humans typically are was also conveyed by images of blindness. Having eyes, people do not see.40 He spoke of the conventional sages of his day as “blind” and asked, “Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into a pit?”41 Something within us which likes to judge and compare keeps us from seeing clearly: “How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when you cannot see the log that is in your own eye?”42 He spoke of the importance of a “sound eye,” without which one lives in darkness: “The eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is not sound, your whole body will be full of darkness.”43

  Preoccupation with the world of conventional wisdom created anxiety. Anxiety as part of the broad way is implicit in much of Jesus’ teaching: he saw people as anxious to receive what they believed they deserved, anxious about holding on to what they had, anxious about social approval. It became explicit in Jesus’ famous words about “the lilies of the field” and “the birds of the air.”44 Five times in that passage, in which Jesus invited his hearers to see reality as marked by a cosmic generosity, he asked, “Why are you anxious?” Anxiety about food, clothing, length of life, and “tomorrow” (the specific categories mentioned in the passage) was, in his view, typical.

  Thus the world of concerns created by conventional wisdom—the broad way—was dominated by the quest for security. To use a word which Jesus did not use himself, Jesus saw people as profoundly “selfish”—concerned above all about the self’s well-being and security, and seeking that through the means offered by culture.45 The primary allegiances cultivated by conventional wisdom are ultimately pursued for the sake of the self in order that it might find a secure “home” in them.46 Moreover, anxiety, self-concern and blindness go together. Anxious about securing their own well-being, whether through family, possessions, honor, or religion, people experience a narrowing of vision, become insensitive to others and blind to the glory of God all around us. God is not absent; rather, we do not see.47

  Yet the broad way is very common, now as then. It need not be obviously sinful, at least not in the popular sense of the term; rather, it can seem very respectable, often legitimated by religion and even perceived as religious. Indeed, the path of conventional wisdom seems “obviously right,” the wisdom of the elders, “what everybody knows,” the dominant consciousness of both religious and secular cultures. But Jesus taught another way.

  THE NARROW WAY OF TRANSFORMATION

  Just as Jesus used a multiplicity of images in his diagnosis of the human condition, so he also used many different images to speak of the cure, that is, the path of transformation. Underlying this diversity is a common conceptual understanding which comes to expression most clearly in the first three images we shall treat: a new heart, centering in God, and the way of death. The images intertwine with each other, even as each works separately as well. Each expresses what the “cure” involves, even as it adds nuances of meaning that may not be captured by the other images.

  A New Heart

  The first of these images continues the diagnosis even as it also pictures the cure. Jesus spoke frequently of the heart—of good hearts and bad hearts, hardened hearts and pure hearts. To us, the heart is primarily a physical organ and sometimes understood metaphorically as the “home” of feelings. But within ancient Jewish psychology, it had a different meaning. The heart was the self at its deepest center, a level “below” the mind, emotions, and will. It was the ground or source of perception, thought, emotion, and behavior,48 all of which were subject to it.

  This notion of the heart as a deep level of the self and as the fundamental determinant of both being and behavior was central to the teaching of Jesus. He spoke of “the good man who produces good out of the good treasure of his heart and the evil man who produces evil out of the evil treasure of his heart,” and illustrated what he meant by using the metaphor of a tree and its fruits to speak of the self and its behavior: “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit. Figs are not gathered from thorns, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush.”49

  As an observation about nature, the proverb is obviously true: you get figs and grapes from a fig tree and vine, not from a thorn bush or bramble bush. But when this common-sense observation was applied to the heart and its behavior, it became radical. What matters is what kind of heart you have, that is, what kind of tree you are. And you cannot change the kind of tree you are by dealing only with the fruit. That would be like trying to change a thorn bush into a fig tree by hanging figs on it.

  The words not only affirm the centrality of the heart, but also subvert conventional wisdom. The latter tends to overlook this deeper level of the self by focusing on externals, on the fruit. Its concern with conventionally sanctioned belief and behavior, with a set of beliefs to be believed by the mind, and with a code of behavior to be followed, can leave the heart untouched. The mind can believe “correct doctrines” and leave the heart unaffected; a person can follow the practices and observances commanded by conventional wisdom and leave the self at its deepest level untransformed. It is not that what one believes and how one behaves are
irrelevant; but the heart is not necessarily affected. Beliefs and behavior can remain “second-hand religion,” religion passed on by tradition and socialization. The self can continue to be selfish even while it believes and does the proper things; indeed, conventional wisdom with its rewards and punishments subtly but powerfully encourages it to be selfish.

  The tension between correctly following tradition and the importance of the inner self was a central theme in the teaching of Jesus. About some of the practitioners of tradition in his day, Jesus said, “This people honors God with their lips, but their heart is far from God.”50 That is, they said (and to a large extent, did) the right things, but the inner self remained far away. What mattered was what was inside, the heart: “The things which come out of a person [from the heart] are what defile him.”51 “Cleanse the inside,” he said, “and behold everything is clean.”52 Indeed, Jesus consistently radicalized the Torah by applying it to the inner self rather than simply to behavior.53 What was needed was a new heart.

  This emphasis was not new to the Jewish tradition. The author of the fifty-first psalm petitioned God for a clean heart, in words which have been prayed and sung by Jews and Christians for centuries: “Create in me a clean heart, O God.” Jeremiah spoke of a new covenant which would be within, written upon the heart.54 Hence the struggle between Jesus and the wisdom of his time was not a struggle between a new religion (Christianity) and an old religion (Judaism), but a struggle between two ways of being religious that run throughout Judaism and Christianity alike. The conflict was between a way of being religious that depended upon observance of externals (the way of conventional wisdom) and a way of being religious that depended upon inner transformation. Indeed, this conflict is found in all of the major religions.

  Thus, according to Jesus, what was needed was an inner transformation of the self at its deepest level. “Blessed are the pure in heart,” he said, “for they shall see God.”55 The fruit of an anxious heart, concerned about its own well-being, is bitter. What is needed is a new heart, a pure heart, for such a heart produces good fruit. The central quality of a transformed heart is indicated in the next image.

  Centering in the Spirit (God)

  Within ancient Jewish psychology, the character of the heart depended upon its orientation, what it was pointed toward or centered in. Centered in God, in the Spirit, the heart was good and fruitful; but centered “in man,” in “flesh” or the finite, the heart was bad and became “deceitful above all things.”56 Thus what mattered was the orientation of the self at its deepest level, its “center” or fundamental loyalty.

  Jesus continued and radicalized this understanding. He spoke of a radical choice between two contrasting centers which competed for the loyalty of the heart. “No one can serve two masters—you cannot serve God and mammon.”57 Centering in God versus centering in the finite are contrasted in another saying: “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”58 One may treasure the finite, that which “moth and rust consume,” which “thieves break in and steal,” or one may treasure God—center in Spirit above all else.

  To speak of radically centering in God is central to the tradition in which Jesus stood.59 It is the “radical monotheism” of the Old Testament, crystalized in the Shema which was recited twice daily by faithful Jews in the time of Jesus: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.”60 Indeed, Jesus himself stated that the Shema was the “great commandment.”61 To say that “centering in God” was the essence of the tradition was thus commonplace; but deliberately to contrast “centering in God” to the centers legitimated by conventional wisdom, indeed to conventional wisdom itself, was radical. Yet this is precisely what Jesus did. The central concerns of the conventional wisdom of his day—family, wealth, honor, and religion—were all seen as rival centers. His criticism of them was a call to center in Spirit, and not culture.

  Such centering in God is the opposite of anxiety as well as the antidote to anxiety. It is what Jesus meant by the word “faith.” In the passage where he five times spoke of people being anxious, he spoke of the alternative as “faith.” As the opposite of anxiety, “faith” is not what is commonly meant by “belief.” Obviously, people then and now could believe that God existed and still be anxious.62 Rather, as the opposite of anxiety, faith must mean something more than what the mind believes, namely a radical trust in God, a centering in God by the self at its deepest level. Faith is thus a matter of the heart.63

  But how does the inner transformation pointed to by the need for a new heart occur? How does the self become centered in Spirit and not in itself or culture? It cannot happen simply by an act of will, for the will is under the control of the heart, in bondage to the finite centers which capture our loyalty. It cannot happen by deciding to believe a particular way or by deciding to be “good,” for that would involve trying to change the heart with the mind or will. Rather, this inner transformation and radical recentering involve the path of death.

  The Way of Death

  The central image of the Christian tradition is an image of death: the cross. To be sure, the cross is also an image of life because of its intrinsic connection to resurrection; Good Friday and Easter belong together.64 Undoubtedly, the cross is so central because of the way Jesus’ historical life ended. Yet what it symbolizes—death and resurrection—was also one of the central images for the path of transformation taught by Jesus himself.

  In one of Jesus’ best-known sayings, he spoke explicitly of the path as the way of dying: “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”65 Using the language of a path or way (“come after me,” “follow me”), Jesus starkly identified that path as “taking up the cross.” Before Jesus’ death, “cross” was obviously not yet a Christian symbol but referred to a method of execution used by the Romans.66 It was customary for the person sentenced to be crucified to carry the horizontal beam of the cross to the place of execution. Hence, “taking up one’s cross” meant walking the road to death. The meaning of the saying is clear: to be a follower of Jesus was to embark upon the path of death.67

  The same point was made with other closely related metaphors. Jesus asked his disciples, “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” “Drinking the cup” and baptism were both images for death.68 Similarly, Jesus said, “Whoever seeks to gain his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it.”69

  But what kind of death was this? Clearly it was meant metaphorically and not literally. The “way of death” did not mean physical death, even though some of the early followers of Jesus were martyred. Rather, it was a metaphor for an internal process, as Luke made clear by adding the word “daily” to the saying about taking up one’s cross.70 This internal dying or death has two closely related dimensions of meaning. On the one hand, it is a dying of the self as the center of its own concern. On the other hand, it is a dying to the world as the center of security and identity. These—the self and the world—are the two great rival centers to centering in God, and the path of transformation thus involves a dying to both of them. The “world” to which one must die is the world of conventional wisdom, the world of “culture” with its preoccupying securities; and the self which must die is the self-preoccupied self. Then is born a self which is centered in God, in Spirit and not in culture.

  “Dying” is a striking metaphor for this process. It points to the radicality of the change, of course; this radical recentering brings about a change so sharp that it can be described as dying to an old life and being born into a new life. “Dying” may have a further nuance as well. Because the heart which is centered in culture cannot be changed by the mind or the will (for both are slaves of the heart), a hardened heart must in a sense die in o
rder that a new heart may be created; it cannot change itself. “Dying” is something that happens to the self as opposed to it being something that the self accomplishes. How this dying occurs varies greatly from person to person; for some, it may involve an inrushing of the Spirit, for others a severe life crisis, for others a long, gradual journey. But in any case, the central movement in dying is a handing over, a surrendering, a letting go, and a radical centering in God.

  This transformation brought about through an internal death is at the heart of the early Christian tradition. Paul describes himself as having undergone such a death: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”71 It is found in John’s theology: “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”72 Baptism, the early church’s ritual of initiation, was understood as a death of an old self and a resurrection of a new self.73

  This widespread attestation of the motif in the tradition is to some extent due to the way Jesus’ historical life ended. But it is also a continuation of what Jesus himself taught. In a quite historical sense, Jesus not only taught the way of death as the path of transformation, but his life and death became an incarnation of the way which he taught. Indeed it is this remarkable congruity between the teaching of Jesus and the way his life ended that accounts in part for the power which his figure has had over the centuries. Thus the cross is an extraordinarily rich image, pointing both to the death of Jesus and to the heart of his teaching: the path of transformation is a dying to the self and to the world.74