With What Measure Ye Mete, It Shall Be Measured to You AgaIn

Jerry Falwell is dead.

Yeshua ben Yosef said:

Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye. Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you. Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: 8For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent?...

The answer to Yeshua's question is: Jerry Falwell's father would. If Jerry asked his father for bread, he would be given a stone; if Jerry asked his father for fish, he would be given a serpent.

Here's Jonathan Schwarz:

A Tiny Revolution: Jerry Falwell, Explained: Have you ever wondered how Jerry "Gays and Feminists Caused 9/11" Falwell became such a vicious, bloodthirsty lunatic? Via the New Yorker, this section from Falwell's 1987 autobiography, Strength for the Journey, goes a long way toward explaining it:

There were times that Dad's pranks bordered on cruelty. One of his oil-company workers, a one-legged man he nicknamed "Crip" Smith, complained about everything. Dad and Crip's co-workers got tired of the old man's bellyaching and decided to take revenge. One morning Crip called in sick and Dad volunteered to send by lunch to his grateful but suspicious employee. Dad and his chums caught Crip's old black tomcat, killed it, skinned it, and cooked it in the kitchen of one of Dad's little restaurants. They called it squirrel meat and delivered it to Crip on a linen-covered tray. When Crip returned to work the next morning, Dad and his co-conspirators asked him how he liked his meal. They knew he would complain even about a free home-cooked lunch, and when Crip called it "the toughest squirrel meat" he had ever eaten, they were glad to tell him why.

I can't decide what's most insane about this. Is it:

1. that Falwell grew up with a father this batshit crazy; or
2. that Falwell seems to have little recognition of how batshit crazy his father was? And shows no signs of wondering how growing up in a family like that warped his own view of the world?

Falwell's childhood must have been a complete hell--and it is no surprise that Falwell made God in his own father's image. Given the hand that he was dealt, I cannot judge Jerry Falwell.

The Republican politicians who built Falwell up--who sought his endorsement and magnified his influence--them will I judge.

Comments

[CMike]

I don't know. Seems like this would have been better suited for posting next week.

[rea]

From later in the smae chapter, Yeshua ben Yosef talks about Falwell and his ilk:

22Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?

23And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.

[Kate G.]

I don't see why this would have been better posted "next week." Is there some kind of sell by date for nil nisi bonum?

But what I really wanted to post was that Brad has written the only eulogy that could make me pause and rethink my utter detestation of Jerry Falwell and everything he stood for--not what he claimed to stand for but what he actually stood for. A few years ago my daughters and I were talking about Bush and the existence, or non existence, of god, heaven, hell, and karma. WE came to the conclusion that we didn't want, or expect, Bush to come to his senses in this life and we didn't want him to be punished in some finite afterlife--what we wanted was for him to continue to be born and reborn until he came to an understanding of the evil that he had caused and had paid off his karmic debt. Brad's post reminds me of that karmic moment. I'll think of what a disturbed, sorrowful, bitter and sick man Falwell was and hope that as the wheel turns he pays his debt and achieves enlightenment.

Kate G.

[d-slam]

My first thought upon hearing this news was a diabolical hope that Mr. Falwell is experiencing the most unpleasant surprise imaginable right now (even though I'm an atheist and don't think that he's experiencing a thing) ....but Ditto what Kate G said... Brad's eulogy is the only thing I've seen that causes me to rethink that a little.

[Robin]

In re " Given the hand that he was dealt, I cannot judge Jerry Falwell."

I realize this may be poor reasoning to infer free will, reflection, etc., but I've known people from seriously f*#%@d up family backgrounds that were saints. So, maybe we can judge Falwell.

In any case, his general lack of empathy for so many who were abused by a bigoted society evokes in me also the aesthetic equivalent of moral revulsion.

[kharris]

If Falwell's father explains Falwell's behavior, then so it is with all of us. Politicians who gave power to a man full of bad ideas are no more or less responsible for what they have done that Falwell is responsible for what he did.

So we hate the sin, not the sinner.

[beckya57]

This is why people like me devote their careers to treating the aftereffects of child abuse. Child abuse and its cousin, spouse abuse, are both a cause and an effect of many social problems. Many victims re-enact their abuse in their adult lives; many others identify with the abuser and become abusers themselves. It's a huge problem, and still doesn't get the attention it deserves.

[Thomas]

there's more than one way to skin a cat!

god bless Fallwell!

[Old Ari]

I remember, that the only way to tell a skinned and headless rabbit, from a skinned and headless cat was the number of ribs.

[andres]

Robin: the people who turn out to be saints in spite of having a #$%^#ed up family background made a conscious decision to repudiate their family legacy. Such a decision is one of the most agonizing moments in a person's life (there are not many Charles Darnays in this world, to use Dickens' example, or Svetlana Alliluyevas, to use a real world example), so it is not surprising that it doesn't occur very often. This does not excuse Falwell, but does make it easier to understand why, in the face of his failure to repudiate much of his background, his work turned out to be a perverted version of the teachings of Joshua ben Josef.

And I like the way Brad pisses on Immaculate Conception by adding "ben Josef". An unconscious impulse? ;-)

[ilsm]

I don't know where in the Old Testament, but there is a Curse that goes to the vein:

"May he be judged".

[george]

Ron Godwin sums it up, without quite meaning to, I'm sure. From the lead story on CNN.com:

Rev. Jerry Falwell dead at 73

The Rev. Jerry Falwell has died, a Liberty University executive said Tuesday. He was 73. Ron Godwin, the executive vice president of Falwell's Liberty University, said Falwell was found unresponsive and taken to Lynchburg General Hospital. Godwin said Falwell had "a history of heart challenges."

[ken]

The world is better off without him.

[bill]

But, if these kinds of explanations can serve as justifications, how do you know that the politicians et. al. didnt have as bad a childhood a Falewell and so, with this chain of thought, being acquited?

[Brad DeLong]

I believe that I believe in a peculiar inversion of Calvinist predestination. Grace is a noble thing that is to be praised and honored, but Grace is unmerited: nobody should be blamed for not having Grace, for their not having Grace is not their fault.

We set up social systems to provide powerful material and sociological incentives for those who have no Grace to act as if they did, and it is right and proper for us to do this. But it is immoral for us to blame or scorn the Graceless, or those for whom our material and sociological incentives prove insufficient. Motes and beams. Motes and beams.

[andres]

No, we set up social systems to provide material and sociological incentives for those who have no Grace to cancel out each others' Graceless actions through the effects of competition and/or balance of power considerations, in effect getting a second-best result compared to the actions of entirely Graceful individuals. Too often, these systems tend to break down, with evil effects.

[jim]

I am reminded of Dean Inge, who once started a sermon: "Christ says, 'Judge not'; _but we must judge_." My youngest went to college in "Jerryland". He poisoned the area around him.

Andrea, above: the immaculate conception is a doctrine about the conception of _Mary_, not Yeshua.

[andres]

I'm not Catholic, so if I'm wrong about Immaculate Conception, I stand corrected by jim and others. Still the conception of Christ's divinity requires that he not be the mere son of Joseph. In that sense, "Yoshua ben Josef" is all the more irreverent.

[Ponzi Q. Globalization]

"We set up social systems to provide powerful material and sociological incentives for those who have no Grace to act as if they did, and it is right and proper for us to do this."

"No, we set up social systems to provide material and sociological incentives for those who have no Grace to cancel out each others' Graceless actions through the effects of competition and/or balance of power considerations, in effect getting a second-best result compared to the actions of entirely Graceful individuals."

Most social systems are not set up at all. They come into being and evolve under an infinity of different influences.

[Kate G.]

Well, but can one be "irreverent" if its not one's faith? I can't blaspheme against someone else's gods either, even if I take their name in vain.

As for the technical question of whether jesus was ever considered, by his followers, to have been actually joseph's son or not the recent books Misquoting Jesus and also Lost Christianities by Bart Ehrman cites various gospel traditions (more or less destroyed or neglected after the council of Nicea) in which Jesus's "sonship" to joseph was acknowledged or even central to the nature of his transition from human to divine. Its an open question. In some christian traditions Jesus was "adopted" as a the son of God, variously, when he was baptized or even at the crucifixion itself. In other's he was begotten as divine. In still others he was never fully human at all. Its a whole thing.

At any rate, I refuse to accept an idiosyncratic modern catholic teaching as definitive among all the competing strands of christian thought on this complex matter. Leave brad alone, his locution is fine.

Kate G.

[bullfighter]

I am very much in favor of forgiving and understanding that we can never know what circumstances shaped someone's life, but don't forget that Hitler and Stalin had abusive fathers, too. Do you apply the same reasoning to them? I suppose you don't go to such extremes. But where do you draw the line? Your limit of forgiveness and understanding may be somewhere between Falwell and H&S, but someone else may stop well before Falwell. There is no objective way to deem one of those positions ethically superior, so I don't think it is justified to claim the high ground based on your willingness to forgive.

[Lesley]

It's typical of children - even those who are extremely abused - to forgive their parents (and blame themselves) rather than face the truth of who their parents are. Parents are Gods in the eyes of children. Jerry Falwell used "border on..." and "prank" because he couldn't admit to himself what his father was: a psychopath.

This is extremely common.

How many times have you heard an (unconscious) adult defend or rationalize punishments and humiliations meted out by his parents. These adults (who've completely lost touch with what they experienced as children) go on to inflict the same damage on their children.

That Falwell turned out to be a wingnut is no surprise.

(Animal cruelty figures in the lives of several prominent fundamentalist Republicans, including George Bush.)

[Robin]

Agreed that "social systems [should] provide powerful material and sociological incentives for those who have no Grace to act as if they did" if they do not already. But surely Falwell was more than Graceless; he was a leaded in the great assault on Grace and on the social system that try to induce Grace-ful behavior. His existence suggested the one we have in place are failing badly.