The Ruler

Apostolos Papadimitriou

 

 

Christ is the most controversial person in human history. Over the course of the centuries, many suffered martyrdom and sacrificed themselves so as not to deny Him, and many more fought with passion both His teaching and His disciples, and not His followers, as His enemies characterize them.

Christ was not a preacher of an ideology, but a preacher of a way of life. To what is this so different treatment of Him due, a treatment that has no equal? Across the stage of history passed ruthless rulers, who bathed societies in blood, with millions of victims of their ambition and greed. After their death they were forgotten very quickly, and only historians concern themselves with their life and deeds.

Christ remains at the forefront even after the passage of two thousand years, hymned and blasphemed. Indeed, every year on the eve of the feast of Pascha, “deep-thinking researchers” bring to light new “findings” in order to fight the great “myth” of human history, aspiring to close the file “The Jesus Case” in the dustbin of history.

Some in the recent past, Diocletians of the 20th century, proclaimed a savage persecution against the “psychiatrically ill,” who continued to believe in God in the century of science! Some “contributed” to historical knowledge by “proving” that Christ never existed as a historical person! Some others still “contribute” to the restoration of “historical truth”!

In the Western world, which boasts of the rationalism of its thought, the foundation of modernity, one would expect reason to have permeated societies, so that people would regard Christ with condescension. He, at the very least, was the victim of a terrible miscarriage of justice, stood with magnanimity before His accusers, did not seek His acquittal, was publicly humiliated, and underwent a martyr’s death. He therefore has all the prerequisites to draw our sympathy, if not our pity.

Why did the rationally minded react against Him with such terrible passion? The explanation is simple. Jesus Christ confronts us with the question: Which of you convicts Me of sin? What do you have to bring against Me, you new accusers, the timeless Pharisees, Sadducees, and Pilates? To this question the accusers do not respond with arguments, but with the cry, “Away with Him, away with Him, crucify Him!”

And if Pilate then knew little concerning the person of Jesus the accused, those throughout the ages who envied the glory of that responsibility-shirking judge, who washed his hands, have no mitigating excuse for their spiteful attitude. Christ’s teaching has been recorded in the book of the New Testament, which has seen the greatest number of editions in all the languages of the planet and has been interpreted by the Fathers of the Church in a multitude of writings.

Christ is not the unknown one, the poor relation. Christ is present, and His presence is exceedingly disturbing. Disturbing to all those who seek refuge in idealism, so as to be freed from the heavy debt by which those who accept Jesus as Savior are bound. Christ is exceedingly disturbing to people enslaved to the passions, and especially to the ruling ones. First among these is the passion of ambition.

Those possessed by lust for power are immensely disturbed by Christ’s teaching and stance. If He had confined Himself to formulating certain ideas, He would have been tolerated, if not accepted. But He committed an unforgivable “error”! The harmony of His words and deeds was admirable. When the people, having been filled, wanted to crown Him king, He withdrew from their midst. A little before His Passion, He offered His disciples incomparable teaching on the manner of exercising authority:

The ruler must be the servant of his subjects. He was revolutionarily overturning the prevailing view among rulers and ruled alike, that the ruler is self-loving, arrogant, harsh, ready to sacrifice his people and not to sacrifice himself for them! Christ entered Jerusalem riding on a little donkey. And those who awaited Him as their liberator from the yoke of slavery were scandalized. Later, those in the West who distorted His teaching were also scandalized, with the result that they substituted the “if anyone wills” with the pyres of the “holy inquisition” and gave occasion to His later persecutors.

Christ is exceedingly disturbing to those enslaved to the passion of avarice. No social revolutionary denounced wealth, as an acquisition of injustice, as much as Christ and the social Fathers of the Church did. He was accused of being a messianist, that is, a sower of utopia! And yet He was supremely pragmatic (a realist, in Greek). “The poor you always have with you,” He proclaimed.

Others bathed humanity in blood in order to realize the classless society, and having risen to power they kept it class-divided and utterly unfree, after the pattern of those who distorted Christ’s teaching in the Middle Ages. Today the planet groans under the oppressive exploitation of those in power, among whom stand preeminent the descendants of the insatiable Pharisees of Christ’s time and the “God-blessed” greedy rulers of “Christian” societies.

These struggled to cast off the truly dreadful yoke of the authorities of the Middle Ages, of the religious and secular rulers. But in order to construct an alibi, they identified the tyrants with Christ, the Christ of freedom, and convinced the peoples of their pure intentions. Through the propaganda they called science, they transmitted to them a heap of falsehoods. They first shut God away in a nursing home, so that they might rule untroubled over peoples enslaved to a new tyrant.

And Marx also analyzed the new dynasty, forcing open doors that had already been opened centuries earlier by the social Fathers of the Church, under the guilty silence of the “Christians” in the face of glaring social injustice. Because of this, the preachers of materialism triumphed, subsequently proclaiming the death of God! Christ, however much the puritans insist to the contrary, did not center His teaching on a polemic against sensual pleasure, in the broad sense of the term and not in that of the sphere of the sexual instinct.

But He did teach that the ascetic view of life is an indispensable prerequisite for combating the passions and transcending human pettiness. Today the Church is attacked in “Christian” societies with accusations that, by its strict commandments, it deprives its members of joy. And they identify joy, which they have probably never tasted, with the satisfaction of instinct, being enslaved to the utmost by passions, indeed by dishonorable passions, of which, however, they boast!

Christ is once again on trial, and His new crucifixion is imminent, not only by His enemies, but also by those considered His friends. Unfortunately, many believers also take as their model the Pharisee of the parable, Dostoevsky’s “Grand Inquisitor,” or the rich Abraham of the Old Testament, whom they present as the God-blessed ancient capitalist! All these enemies and “friends” are preparing a new crown of thorns, nails, and cross!

Christ is unbearable, because He rose and will come again to judge the living and the dead. The criteria are sufficiently well known. It appears, however, that we have no desire to struggle so as to fulfill them in the supreme trial at the end of history, in the judgment of God the righteous Judge.

 

Greek source: https://353agios.blogspot.com/2021/04/blog-post_46.html