Sunday’s readings show consciousness of a culture’s laws. It begins with a consciousness of the Ten Commandments, then consciousness of the Levitical priesthood and its judgment of many laws, and finally the consciousness of a scribe who questions Jesus about all law. Jesus violated his culture’s laws. Law is used to control and oppress people. The scribe, a legal scholar, asks Jesus, “Which is the first of all the commandments?” Jesus responds by recounting that love is supposed to be primary for the law, “love God with all your heart …soul …mind …strength … (and) love your neighbor.” The scribe, whose life depends on knowing picayune details of the law, affirms that core consciousness. Jesus then affirms the man saying, “You are not far from the Community of God.” Why is that the manner of Jesus’ affirmation?
While lawmakers may profess their laws are based on love, in practice, laws rarely are. Thus, when Jesus affirms the man for his broadening consciousness, Jesus does not do so in reference to the old consciousness of law. For example, Jesus does not say he is a good son of Moses or a good Levite. Jesus instead affirms him in reference to a new consciousness of the “Community of God.” Jesus, like all peacemakers, is co-creating a whole new consciousness. Peacemakers have to if we are going to co-create a whole new world. Peacemakers are change activists of the most radical kind; freely creating what is new. Average social change activists think in reference to the old and at best attempt reform. The worst think in terms of violently defeating or overthrowing the old; its laws, lawmakers, and oppressive culture. But unless social change activists change the consciousness of rule that founded the old, they will never actually create the new. The consciousness and thus the culture will remain an oppressively unloving one merely with different masters. Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), was a change activist who was jailed by the fascist Mussolini and died as a result. He was an average social change activist from the violent Marxist tradition. He was conscious of the inherent oppression achieved by the fascist master class through violence. Sometimes the master class used overt violence. Gramsci had seen fascists take even small attempts at social change as an assault against them and they would reassert violent class war. If needed, fascists would lie and make up assaults in order to reassert overt violent control. The U.S. is currently undergoing a reassertion of fascist master class violence. Examples include, most recently, a killer of two Black men in Kentucky, a pipe bomber from Florida, and a man who murdered 11 Jewish Americans in Pittsburgh. These are U.S. fascism’s foot soldiers operating from a white nationalist consciousness. Led by their white nationalist Commander in Chief, they are the fascist army at the front lines. From their un-Christ-like consciousness, they are committed to ensuring this culture remains an oppressively unloving one under their control through overt violence. Antonio Gramsci also knew the fascist master class used covert or more subtle yet pervasive means to control consciousness. Gramsci called that control of consciousness, “cultural hegemony.” It means total predominant control in a culture. For example, Intellectual control – master class rights and values communicated in news topics, education mediums, research patterns, and ideas (e.g. security or defense). Cultural hegemony or master class control is evident; in Political control – corporate state and Deep State, government purpose and function, political parties, social groupings; in Financial control- capitalist values, job types, the work process, wages; and in Moral control – values of religious/positional authority, ownership, and command, values of consumerism, consent, and normalcy. Lacking consciousness of this hegemonic control many of us relate, think, choose, worship, work, communicate, decide, act, etc… all in reference to the master class without realizing we are doing so. Without realizing this about ourselves, might we be affirmed as good sons of Moses and the law or good citizens of empire?
A largely cheerleading institutional christianity, specifically white evangelical, includes fascists and fascist colluders. Individuals, here and there, are courageous, but the institution has ensured by its collusion that these individuals remain marginalized. Institutional christianity has been so corrupted by its collusion with cultural hegemony as to be largely irrelevant. It is allowing for the U.S.’s fascist and neo-Nazi conditions to worsen. History has seen this before in the fascism and Nazism of Gramsci’s time. How will we demonstrate a greater consciousness and moral agency to ensure it does not happen in our own time?
Prayer: Spirit, my consciousness is for all humanity.
Question: How is my consciousness in these times helping others with theirs?
November 04, 2018 Gospel Mark 11:28b-34 Thirty First Sunday in Ordinary Time