The Motive Of Privilege And Snobbery In The Rejection Of The Jewish Tradition, Both As Judaism And Christianity

Continuing on with the three ways Hans Kung listed as to "how far love goes particularly in ordinary life" as taught by Jesus:

b. Love means service;  humility, having the courage to serve,is the way to true greatness.  This is the meaning of the parable of the wedding feast;  abasement follows self-exaltation - the embarrassment of demotion - and exaltation follows self-abasement - the honor of promotion.

It is typical of Jesus to demand self-denying service, regardless of rank.  It is significant that the same saying of Jesus on service is recorded in a variety of forms (at the dispute among the disciples, at the Last Supper, at the feet-washing):  the highest should be the servant (waiter at table) of all.  Hence, among Jesus' disciples, there can be no offices as established merely by law and power and corresponding to the office of those who hold power in the state;  nor can tere be an office established simply on the basis of knowledge or worth, corresponding to the office of the scribes. 

Jesus' requirement of service is not to be understood as a law forbidding any super- or subordination among his followers.  It is however a decisive appeal for service even on the part of superiors toward subordinates, that is, for reciprocal services on the part of all. 

It has been one of the most useful means of understanding of the modernist hostility to Christianity to consider that modernism is a product of an educated elite, either those born to wealth and, so, power or those who hoped to gain it through education and credentialing, that such people are generally not very open to sharing their resources and power, held by them as privileges of rank and legalized hoarding with those without wealth, talent or luck, even when those people need what is so hoarded to live a decent life or even a miserable one.  I think that, certainly more than the spotty history of official, organized churches, political-legal establishments doing terrible things accounts for the hostility towards Christianity as the teachings of Jesus.   There is some hostility that arises out of the animosity of some Jews in academia and the writing professions due to their traditional rejection of the messianic theory of the identity of Jesus.  But in my experience believing, observant Jews are generally far less hostile to Christianity than those who have, as well, rejected the religion of Judaism.  I think that rejection of the radical egalitarianism of the Mosaic law, of which the interpretation of it by Jesus is the most radical of all interpretations of it, among such secularized Jews is exactly the same manifestation as the rejection of Christianity by the secular descendants of professed Christians under modernism, due to similar rejections of the egalitarianism of both forms of Mosaic economic, social and personal justice.   It is no accident that the Christianity so mocked and rejected accounts for, by far, the largest percentage of the human population who take the Jewish Law seriously.   I think it is also no accident that the professed Christian rejection of Moses, documented so brilliantly and analyzed so well by Marilynne Robinson in her great essay The Fate of Ideas: Moses, is done under the corroding effects of modernist academic culture. 

In fact, she wrote it so well that instead of continuing with this today,  I am going to recommend you follow that link and read it, instead.  I would, as well, recommend the wonderfully insightful treatment of Christianity and particularly Paul by the great Jewish scholar Susanna Heschel.    I will continue with this tomorrow, if I am able.