A RABBI PRAYS FOR THE SECOND COMING

What incredible chutzpah and poor taste for a Jew – a rabbi, yet – to play arbiter of Christian doctrine and propriety. Nonetheless, here goes:

I am not a professing Christian, but I am a student of the Christian Bible who is particularly engaged by “what Jesus said,” unadulterated by the overlay of Paul and the early Church Fathers. As I read “what Jesus said,” I find myself praying for the Second Coming – if only so that Jesus could straighten out the account with one Reverend Jerry Falwell.

Were Falwell’s attack on Tinky-Winky as lurking homosexual menace an isolated gaffe, we could always say, “Oh well, even the smartest folks have the right to say something stupid every once in a while.” But Falwell’s ministry has stood for a long, consistent stream of tirades against imaginary bogeymen. It has been consistently bereft of appeals for social justice and a championing of the poor, the oppressed, the spat-upon. It has been long on xenophobia and us-versus-them dichotomies, and conspicuously short on Golden Rule and Beatitudes.

Call me naïve, but I can hear Jesus pressing the case to Falwell: “Jerry, your lack of charity and compassion are troubling enough. But, you are one of the few personalities who has the ‘stuff’ to captivate media attention and public interest. And then you piddle it away by shooting at a purple puff-dolly, when you could be using your influence to do such immeasurable good. That, Jerry, is truly intolerable.”

I know, I know. The Fundamentalists would say that at the Second Coming, Jesus would hand me a “go straight to hell” card. But from what I have read, I have to believe that Jesus would put the likes of me – literally or figuratively – on the back burner while he took care of tin-whistle demagogues who would not know “the poor in spirit, the meek, the mourners, the just, the merciful, the clean of heart, the peacemakers, the sufferers of persecution” if they bit them on the nose.

So, come on down from your acropolis, Reverend Falwell. Spend some time in a soup kitchen, a homeless shelter, an AIDS hospice. And then use that imposing public persona of yours to advocate love of neighbor commensurate with love of self. It would do your soul – and our spirits – immeasurable good.