As a boy I learned mythology
from the classic little book Mythology
by Edith Hamilton. On the cover was Perseus, the Son of God, standing there
virtually naked and exquisitely beautiful, holding out in front of him the
severed head of Medusa. But somehow I never read the whole story.
Perseus, as the offspring of
the Father God Zeus, is himself “the Son of God.” So he represents the pinnacle
of humanity linked to the Divine – as the Greco-Roman world understood the
Divine. So his story tells us a lot about what that society believed about
life.
Medusa was a beautiful young
woman. She was blessed with the loveliest raven hair and onyx eyes. So she was
admired by many. But she had eyes only for the god-man Perseus and loved him
with all her heart. Unfortunately for young Medusa, the goddess Athena also had
her sites set on the handsome Perseus, which made the goddess jealous of her
human rival. So she cursed Medusa. She turned her lovely hair into snakes. And
she cursed Medusa’s enticing eyes so that anyone who looked into them would be
turned to stone.
When Perseus discovered what
had happened, he drew his sword and lopped off his lover Medusa’s head.
Thereafter, he would carry her head into battle (as shown on the cover the
Edith Hamilton book) and so won many a war by turning the enemy soldiers into
stone.
When the Emperor Justinian
had the Basilica Cistern built under Constantinople to provide water for the
city, it was supported by many majestic pillars. At the base of each of two
pillars in the Northwest corner, there is a head of Medusa –one upside down,
one sideways. No one knows what that it means, but it probably is not a sign of
respect.
I am unable to get the “love”
story of Perseus and Medusa out of my mind. I keep associating it with a word
used by the Apostle Paul. As I said in LIVE FROM ANATOLIA: PART XI, Paul taught
a spirituality of love. It meant loving each other so much that we forgot
ourselves and transcended the snare of ego. He called loving behavior “the
fruits of the spirit.” He called unloving behavior “the works of the flesh.”
One such work of the flesh was porne,
which we translate as “fornication” and assume it means any sort of
unauthorized or inappropriate sex – but porne
actually means to use another person for your own ends, to gratify your ego
agenda – that could be sexual (especially as the Greco-Roman world thought of
sexuality) but it was not essentially sexual – it was essentially predatory
manipulation and exploitation in any form. I keep thinking of Perseus
decapitating the once-lovely Medusa and using her severed head to win battles. It was a pretty good way to express the moral
and spiritual perspective of Greco-Roman society (see Sarah Ruden, Paul Among The People) including the
gender dynamics of Perseus’ use of Medusa before and after her curse.
Against, this view of God,
which means to say against this notion of the whence and the whither of life,
this sense of what constitutes truth, goodness, and beauty, against this basic
value of Greco-Roman paganism, another narrative, a counter-narrative was
posited:
The Son of God did not
decapitate anyone. Instead, he healed, forgave, and reconciled. Finally, he
“gave himself” to death on the cross to save the people he loved – though they
did not yet love him in return – from the consequences of their own
wrong-headed perversity.
Paul eventually came to love
Jesus back; and so, in that love, he gave up his whole self-serving life
agenda, saying that all he had achieved (and it was much) he now looked upon as
“excrement” (that’s what his Greek word actually means – not the milder word in
our English Bibles) compared to “the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus
my Lord.” Philippians 3: 8 He saw that surrender of his old life-for-self as a
kind of crucifixion and said,
I have been
crucified with Christ and yet I live –
No,
it is no longer I that live but rather Christ
who
lives in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh
I
live by trusting in the Son of God who loved me and gave
himself
for me. – Galatians 2: 20
God
(in Jesus) demonstrates his love for us in that while we were
yet sinners, Christ died for us. – Romans 5: 8
Paul
told quite a different narrative, proposed quite a different moral world than
the moral world into which he introduced this love story. It was quite a
different God revealing himself in quite a different Son. When we ask what’s it
all about, the picture of Perseus holding the severed head of his one-time
lover as a weapon is not the answer. Jesus on the cross forgiving the people
who put him there is the answer.
So
if the Christian love ethic/ spirituality challenged 1st Century
Roman Empire social norms, what might it say to 21st Century
Americans? What might it say about the treatment of labor, children, the
elderly, the immigrants, the poor, the disabled, the anyway othered? The thing
about a good story is that it asks hard questions and the gospel is more than
anything a very good story.
1 comment:
Thank you for your enlightening words.
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