The Boogey-man God

A couple summers ago, while visiting some friends, grandparents, parents, and children were all present. After a long day of children running around and playing, grandpa was getting a little tuckered out. It was now late and dark outside. One of the grandchildren was all wound up and wanted to go outside again to play. He wasn't in listening mode. Grandpa said no, grandchild (while disobediently opening the door) said, "why not?" Grandpa, tired as he was, said off the cuff: "the boogey-man will get ya." The grandchild, surprisingly (and to his parents great credit) said, "who is the boogey-man?" He had never heard of this man. This could have really backfired on grandpa, seeing that grandchild has an insatiable love of dance... "BOOGEY-man? I must meet this fellow!" Just then the grandchild's mom entered the room before grandpa could respond. She stated, "there is no boogey-man, go sit down." True story.

Did you know that virtually every culture on earth has a boogey-man? They all have some unseen menace waiting to punish children who disobey their elders. Look it up on Wikipedia, it's fascinating. Every culture has this menace, even children who are lucky enough never to have been subjected to this menace, still have some acquaintance with the concept.

Now, grandpa meant nothing by this statement, he had no intention to cause harm to his grandchild, it was just a quick and easy way to avoid explanation and procure obedience from the grandchild. The boogey-man is the blueprint for the God of common religion. A long, long time ago, higher levels of society wanted to control lower levels of society. They had no good explanation to offer these lower class citizens as to why they should behave the way the higher class citizens told them to behave. So what did they do? They said: "Because if you don't do it this way God will punish you." Now the higher class had no proof that this was the case, but they appealed to the lower classes' (accurate) intuition that there is more to life than meets the eye. The lower class was compelled to believe the higher class through the higher classes' clever use of sacred clothing, titles, gold covered relics, fancy words, ominous buildings, elaborate ceremonies, etc. The lower classes became convinced that what the higher class said about God was true. In this way, God and the Boogey-man, became one.

Nowadays, religion does not have the grip on society that it once did, but the grip it still holds on many is based on the model set down in ancient times. "God" is still the boogey-man of common religion: The unseen punisher of those who disobey the religious status quo.

Jesus came to dispel this hypothetical, boogey-man God. He said, "God is good, all the time", "don't judge, instead love your enemies... if you act this way, you will be imitating God."

Lane change.

Jesus spoke Aramaic. The words of Jesus that we have recorded for us in the New Testament, have been written down in Greek, and these were written down at least one generation after Jesus lifetime. They have to be translated into English before we can read them. Translation is no word-for-word endeavor. It can be tricky. There can be shades of meaning hard to draw out. There can be words/phrases that can be understood two or three or more ways and the translator has to decide which one of those ways he/she will translate them. So, Jesus spoke Aramaic, Aramaic speakers shared stories about Jesus for 20 years or so, then people began writing down these teachings/stories in Greek, and now we translate them into English. So what we have in English is a translation of a translation, this is an important point.

Truth be told, there is a lot more "interpretation" involved in "translation" then most people realize. Words can have a large scope of meaning, how does a translator choose which meaning is the right one in a particular circumstance without bias towards his own personal beliefs?

Because a boogey-man God has long been established as the right view of God, translators will naturally gravitate towards a boogey-man interpretation if there is one to be had. Common religion likes to see a Jesus who validates a boogey-man. The problem is that this makes Jesus into a teacher of contradiction. In one place Jesus dispels the boogey-man, in another place he validates him. This is discrediting as a whole to the teachings of Jesus. Most of Christendom doesn't read the Bible regularly, and for good reason. The way it is translated into English Bibles often doesn't make sense. It's not necessarily that what was originally written down in Greek was so contradictory, but that through translation into English translators felt compelled to insert the boogey-man into obscure passages wherever possible.

Here is an example, A typical translation:

Luk 12:4-5 “I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do. (5) But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him!

Pretty straight forward depiction of Jesus preaching a boogey-man type God there. There are other possible meanings to this text, but translators who believe in the boogey-man have a hard time seeing these other possible meanings with the text. Here is an example,

My revision of the same passage:

Luk 12:4-5 I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and, inherent to this, have nothing more that they can do. (5) But I will warn you of what to fear: fear the drive inherent to such killing, that which stands ever ready to drive one into burning anguish. Yes, I tell you, fear this!

Self-importance/self-righteousness is behind every act of killing. In your mind, in that moment, you must be superior to the one you are killing in order to justify your actions to yourself. In the teaching of Jesus, no one person is superior to another. No one is good. If a person really understands this, they cannot kill another person. If you are willing to judge, you are willing to kill, it’s just a matter of the right circumstance arising.

Jesus is recorded as saying: "You have heard is said, 'you shall not murder, and everyone who murders will be liable to judgement' but I tell you, everyone who is angry with his brother is liable to judgement."

Why is this? Because to be angry with you brother is to judge him. Anger is the cause of murder, if you can be angry with your brother, you can kill him. It is only a matter of an extreme enough circumstance and you WILL murder. If you let anger have a place in you, if you justify it, it is only God's grace that prevents you from getting into a circumstance in which you would be ready and willing to murder. If anger can be right, than murder too can be right. If anger can be justified, murder can be justified. If anger is never justified (as Jesus claims), murder is never justified.

We have all had run-ins with bitter people, you know the people that just cannot acknowledge any good thing in life. You mention how nice the weather is today, and they say "It's about time! It's been raining all week!". You say, "Nice new car!" and they say, "You should see my monthly payments!" etc. Everything cheery you might say, they will put a negative spin on. What do you imagine it feels like to live inside a mind like that? Is it not anguish? torment? are they not imprisoned within this bitterness and slow-burning perpetual anger? Haven't we all been there at some point?

I think this clip from the movie "Mary Magdalene" makes this point well:

Luk 12:4-5 I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and inherently, have nothing more that they can do. (5) But I will warn you of what to fear: fear the drive inherent to such killing, that which stands ever ready to drive one into burning anguish. Yes, I tell you, fear this!

We need no boogey-man. We ourselves put ourselves behind bars with our anger and bitterness. We feed the fires of anguish and torment within us with our judgements and self-justifications. We maintain a perpetual Hell on earth by "doing unto others as they have done unto us." As Gandhi said, "An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind."

Jesus is not promoting fear of a boogey-man God, he is telling us to look deep inside of ourselves, see our anger and judgements that make a hell on earth. We ought to fear such deep and dark sentiments that arise in us on a regular basis. These deep rooted sentiments are the roots of our own suffering and the suffering we inflict upon each other alike. Why fear a murderer? What good will that do? Why not rather fear that we ourselves water and cultivate those very same seeds of anger and murder within? Fearing those seeds and working to uproot them can do much good. It can, bit by bit, deeply root heaven in our hearts. From there, heaven can begin to creep out onto the earth.