Jesus and Work

Judging from the Gospels, Jesus was a devotee of laziness, and I mean that with no disrespect. In fact, while his laziness is rarely discussed, and is not noticed by anyone in the New Testament, Jesus’s striking freedom from work may well exert an unconscious power over the common man, who will, undoubtedly, view it as a divine quality.

Of course, despite having no record of doing any “honest work,” as the people call it, Jesus was in support of working on the Sabbath, the one day when people were not supposed to work. How’s that for counter-culture contrarianism?

The same anti-work ethic is evident when Martha, the sister of Mary, complained that her sister should be at home doing her chores instead of hanging out with Jesus. Jesus, of course, told her that Mary had “chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:42). But Jesus was wrong, for Jesus would be taken away from Mary.

So how did Jesus support himself during those three years of preaching? He knew tax collectors; he had friends in high places; when he needed a dining hall for his last supper, he simply told his disciples to speak to a certain person who would provide it.

Jesus didn’t even bear his own cross, as Simon, the one named Peter, helped him in that rare moment of honest work.

Jesus said, “The poor will inherit the Earth,” yet he did not stipulate that they would have to work for their inheritance. While this may be a great relief to Christians, the political function of this wild inheritance promise was likely to pacify the poor and to prevent their uprising against the rich land owners, slave owners and so on and so forth.

While Jesus did little or no work himself, he was not against using work as symbols of Christian devotion. When he spoke to the people, he even compared the struggle to enter Heaven to the field laborer’s work for a penny. If that image isn’t provocative enough, to provoke more questions he insisted that both the laborers who worked an inhumane 11 hour-day and those who worked for just 1 hour would get the same reward, a penny. There’s a good warning against making any effort for Heaven.

While the above mischievous reading of the one-penny parable may be entirely valid, it was not the one that pleased those who commissioned the Gospels, namely the clergy, who would have interpreted this same parable as clear proof of the Catholic Church’s right to administer a certain sacrament to people on their death bed, a sacrament which cleansed the soul of a lifetime of sin and, consequently, sent the 1-hour or death-bed Christian to the same reward as the 11-hour or lifetime Christian.

Without a trace of irony, the commissioned authors of the Bible achieve the same effect that one finds with literary irony: one level of Gospel meaning exists to preserve the political structure that benefits the powerful, the other level exists for the amusement of nut crackers and laughing owls.

Rumplestiltskin

Popular readings of “Rumplestiltskin” testify to the barbarism we still live in, as least, they testify to the lack of sophistication among readers. I am sorry, but Rumplestiltskin is not the villain of this story and he likely never entertained the idea of boiling and eating the newborn prince. He is the only one who says anything remote humane: “I value living things more than all the treasures of the world.” Contrast this with to the greedy king and the woman who traded her unborn child for a chance to become queen… Indeed, she valued being the queen more than life itself. If she had valued life, she could have escaped with Rumplestiltskin three times over, as he entered and left the tower at will.

Rumplestiltskin is the only humane being in the story. Three times he saves the ungrateful and foolish woman from her death, and each time did not ask his name or thank him. Ingrate!

Why did Rumplestiltskin ask the woman to pay for his first favor with her necklace if he does not care for all the treasures of the world? If he can make gold quite easily?

Why did Rumplestiltskin ask the woman to pay for his second favor with her ring? Does the ring symbolize a wedding ring, marriage, something which most dwarves would have never have achieved in the Middle Ages when most people travelled little and knew only villagers and farmers?

Rumplestiltskin requested for the firstborn child in return for his third gift because he valued life more than anything, and, as a man unlikely to ever marry, he sought to have a friend or child by some other means. His was a desperate but wholly forgivable request. His love of life is evident as he sings with pleasure about the child he expected to receive.

What horrors did Rumplestiltskin commit to be perceived as the villain? In the end, he committed suicide: he loved life too much to let it be utterly ruined by loneliness.

The greater villains are the father who risked his daughter’s life with his lie; the king, who thrice threatened to kill the woman and married her only for her gold; the woman, who traded her child’s life for her own, who never thanked her savior and who married the man who threatened her life and cared for nothing but his filthy gold.

Let’s be serious about our Obamas and all men and women in positions of power: they are not the stuff of fairytales. They are murderers and devourers of men. Rumplestiltskin did not grab his foot and tear himself in half; this is merely an allusion to the truth that he was captured by the King’s men and torn in half by horses, or by machine, a fate common enough in medieval Europe.

“Rumplestiltskin” is anything but a conventional work of folklore. It is a folk tale that challenges the most popular conventions of late European and Asian folklore. Moreover, as a tale that asks us to consider the social status of the dwarf and of all visible minorities, and ask us to reflect on the consequences of our dreams…

The following interpretations also work in German and/or Dutch, both of which the Grimm brothers were likely familiar:

RUMPLE: a possible variant of wrinkle – as in skin, or Rumple—-skin. A wrinkle is also a fold, or double. Rumplestiltskin tears himself in two, down the middle, along the spine. Stilt: A stick to walk, to make a short person taller – or perhaps a reference to stylus, the medieval writing instrument—though this word-meaning first appeared in 1807, just as the Grimm brothers collected their tales. Skin: Vellum? Parchment? Material used for writing medieval manuscripts. CONCLUSION: “Rumplestiltskin” is not oral literature, or certainly not a fairy tale.

Dickens’s Twist

Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist – a remarkable novel; it bristles with irony – like a porcupine. Its subject is the heart of injustice insofar as injustice is commonly conceived: poverty, class differences and income inequality. Its solution to this injustice? Is it that the wealthy should be nicer to the poor? Share more? Have pity on them?

I would prefer a book that recommended nobility in moderate poverty and laziness—assuming that book writing counts as a noble laziness.

On the surface, or, as a work with emotional appeal, pity is at the heart of Oliver Twist. The hero is a figure of exaggerated, pre-Lapsarian innocence; he is an unfortunate orphan, a victim of fate, a victim of society and so on and so forth. Who dares deny Oliver pity?

Perhaps, Charles Dickens himself? Given the relentless irony with which every page bristles, I think Charles viewed Oliver as a parody of himself—as an autobiographical joke.

Much irony is needed to make too much injustice palatable. Too much pity makes men insipid and life tasteless. Irony is the necessary antidote and invigorator.

Why not dispense with pity entirely and free mind and literature for unrestricted humor? Why feed the world the lie of good and evil characters candied over with feelings of pity and moral outrage? Why? Though Dickens was no simpleton, he did, however, depend on his writing for income. (Dickens the pick-pocket.)

To teach children to read Oliver Twist without teaching them to bristle with irony—does a great disservice to education. One cannot squeeze Oliver Twist into a handful of lessons. Oliver Twist, like all great art, can only be learned over years.

Thus spoke Dewey Dink.

The Nobel Peace Prize and My Underwear

Regarding the Nobel Peace Prize Committee: I award them my underwear for being the world’s greatest pack of egoists. To speak more politely: I know only one ego bigger than God’s, and that is the ego of the man who gave God a prize. And again: can anything be more juvenile, even adolescent, than the awarding of prizes? I send apologetic kisses to the good children I have slandered.