COOL CHRISTIAN LOOKING

GOOD….

Some Christians think a lot of Greek thinking went into the productionof the gospels. Early in its history the Church virtually abandoned any Jewish input and concentrated on portraying Jesus as the mighty eternal Word,or as the supreme dying and rising god of the ancient Greek mystery religions.

But let me tell you, this Jesus was far from being stuck in a purely Greekmold. The New Testament Jesus betrays his Jewish roots at every turn. True Hebrew he was Jesus was close to nature. He loved animals and spoke of beloved birds falling. He made a big deal of a farmer sowing seeds. Spoke of lilies attired more gloriously than King Solomon.Still, despite his appreciation of nature and animals he just could not rise above that old Jewish hatred of pigs. I could soften this and say Jesus had a somewhat negative view of porkers. But, truth is Jesus had nothing good to say about porkers. He could easily disassociate himself from ancient dictates of the law (You have heard it said by the guys of old that.... but I say......). But concerning pigs Jesus, for a change, went along with the status quo. Yep, he kissed right up with the lepers but wrote off pigs. Literally - one day packed up a whole herd of them with demons and sent them charging down the hill and over the edge to perish lemming-like in the sea.

What had the pigs done to deserve this fate? Nada. Sure, pork was not the safest meat to eat in the ancient world without refrigeration and our modern cooking savvy. But that was the fault of the diseases that picked on the already downtrodden pigs. To declare the pig unclean on this basis was the old religious game of blaming the victim. And set up a black image of pigs that has endured 2 millenia, until the advent of comic books and PorkyPig. And the story of the 3 Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf, too, has projected a more humane image of these intelligent and tasty creatures. Thank God!But, Jesus continues to stick it to the poor piggies, making them the Judas of the animal world, by equating spiritually dead folk and those unreceptive to the gospel with pigs. "...don't throw your pearls to pigs, or they'll trample them underfoot and turn and tear you to shreds." Matthew 7: 6

In the ancient Near East pigs were symbols for whatever is socially andreligiously impure. For some of Jesus contemporaries in Judea, gentileswere also impure and, ergo, were called pigs. So, there's a lot of symbolism and imagery in the Bible. Some of it is good. And some bad - like pigs standing for humans who resist God or fail to practice the finer points of good hygiene. Actually, this article, among other things, shows how effectively our culture, especially its religious ideas mold our thinking. No doubt about it pigs are onthe down side. If Jesus said pigs are bad then pigs are bad. And the poor pigs like that excellent character, Andre Agassi, know image is everything.So, let's all now on stop picking on pigs. Just ask Homer Simpson - he knows they are really good. It's time we got all pigs out of the mud where they were herded by humans in the first place. Yeah, get them off the ground, up where they belong.

As for Jesus ' opinion of pigs, its a clear indication not to take everything in the Bible as literal truth. Think of Jesus saying "don't throw your pearls before pigs" with a big fat wink of the eye. Why, because Jesus knows what is the source of most evil in this world. The most dangerous animal in thewoods, the Antarctic, the Sahara desert, or on the seas is ... you know who. And, finally, just remember when that young degenerate rascal inheritance-wasting prodigal Son finally wised up and decided to go home it was in the company of pigs - who made it plain to him after all the beer guzzling guys and wild women had led him on a merry downward spiral for years - yes , made it plain that homeward he should go to his loving, forgiving father. Yes, next to the father the pigs are the real heroes of that story. Jesus could not come right out and say it -- had to leave off offending his fellow Jews, once in a while. But secretly, like me, he adored pigs.
 
 

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