
The Real Miracle Of Bartimaeus
activism, autonomy, awareness, Challenge, Change, Character of God, citizenship, civics, Compassion, critical judgment, Enlightenment, Ethics, faith, faithfulness, God, Gospel of Mark, Gratitude, Hope, Human Condition, Judaism, Judean Peasant, Kierkegaard, kindness, Kingdom of God, Letting go, Outside your comfort zone, peace and justice, Religion, separation of Church and State, Skeptic, Theology, Uncategorized
Even if you reject the “metaphysics” of Christianity – the Incarnation, the miracles, the bodily Resurrection, etc. -- you still have to deal with Christianity as an ethical system, and by that measure there are Gospel texts that, perhaps because of their very simplicity, challenge the current conservative ethic of “I’ve got mine, Jack, so screw you”. One such text is the story of Jesus’ encounter with the blind beggar, Bartimaeus, on the road leaving Jericho. But matters are not that straightforward. For it is easy enough, in fact, borderline-trivial, to understand the story as a critique of contemporary conservative Republican attitudes toward any form of material assistance to the indigent. What is usually overlooked is that the story contains a very recessed and implicit critique ...