The Bible Unveiled

by M. M. Mangasarian

The weeds injure the wheat during the time that the crop is growing, and not after it is ready to be harvested. What is gained by burning up the tares when they can no longer hurt the wheat and after they have done all the harm they could to the grain by stealing sun and moisture from them? Besides, there is just as much danger of gathering up the wheat with the tares at harvest time as there is of rooting up the wheat with the tares while they are growing together. Why postpone the purging process? Why let a child, for example, grow up to be a criminal to be hanged, if there is a way of saving him from evil associations earlier in life? What farmer or educator will follow the advice of Jesus, to let the bad and the good alone until judgment day?

Suppose, instead of such an unprofitable story, with its impracticable lesson, and its suggestion of laissez faire, the preacher had read the page from Ralph Waldo Emerson, which contains a grander passage than is to be found in the whole bible, "My freedom is part of my faith"; or suppose he had read to his audience the page from Thomas Paine in which occurs that thrilling and musical pæan, "Where liberty is not, there is my country"—and why? Not to wait until some distant day, but to bring about and share with them now, and here, the blessings of liberty; or suppose the preacher had greeted his hearers with the words of Goethe, "In the whole, the good, the true, the beautiful, resolve to live." Would he not have read to them from a better bible?

But the gem in the Sermon on the Mount is supposed to be the, "But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also." * This advice is supplemented with the "Love your enemies," which is claimed to be the noblest utterance in all religious literature. The philosophy underlying these commandments is the same which we found in the parable of the "Wheat and the Tares." Even as the tares are to be allowed to have their way in a wheat field, evil is not to be resisted in the world of men, but let alone. It is not the business of man, according to Jesus, to effect reforms; he must leave it all to God. In his own time, and in his own way, God will fill the hungry and punish the rich; he will burn the tares and save the wheat; and he will reward the good and destroy the evil.

* Matthew v, 39.

This Asiatic fatalism is quite consistent with the belief in an all-wise and powerful being at the head of affairs. If God were not almighty, we might assist him in his work; or if he were not all-wise, we might enlighten him on some things, but being almighty, and all-wise, he does not wish any meddling on our part. Besides, if we resist evil, or weed the tares, or fight poverty and misery, we might think that it is our efforts which have made the world better. But that is taboo. Really, Jesus is quite right; there is no room for human effort where an infinite being is doing things. The plea that God wants us to help him, because if we neglect to do our part, neither will he do his, is nonsensical. An attitude of passivity is alone becoming to a believer. To bestir oneself about the tares, or the evil in the world, is to show that one has lost faith in the Lord of the harvest. "Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord," is the word of inspiration.

And could anything be more pessimistic than "Resist not evil?" If not the evil, what then shall man resist? Nothing? But he will fall into decay unless he resists the forces that menace his well being. And why was man made a moral agent or created in the "divine" image if he is to let the powers of darkness have their way, instead of girding himself for battle against them? But the decline of man is desired because that is the only way the world may come to an end, and God and his heaven ushered in. Such is the philosophy of Jesus.

If God does not wish us to "resist evil," pray what is the devil's pleasure? We have been told that the devil always wants us to do the things which God has forbidden. Does he, then, want us to resist evil? Not to resist the agencies of evil, is not to resist the devil, if there is such a being; and not to resist the devil is to surrender to him, which is just what he would want us to do.

The Sermon on the Mount, if complied with, would lead the world to an impasse. We must not resist the Holy Spirit, according to Jesus, and, according to the same teacher, we must not resist evil either. But unless the Holy Spirit and evil are the same, how can we be as hospitable or as passive toward the one as toward the other? We must stand still and let God work in us his purposes, says the bible, and, according to the same book, we are to be equally passive to the operations of the Evil One. Is such advice intelligible? Could anything be more confusing and bewildering to the moral sense than so contradictory a commandment? If the gospel writers had put in Jesus' mouth the words, "I am the darkness of the world," they would not have been very far wrong.

Why resist not evil? If evil is evil, and if we have power to resist it, why may we not do so? What is morality but the exercise of the power of resistance against evil? The idea that by resisting evil we become evil ourselves, as Tolstoi maintains, is as much a conundrum as the text itself. Did not Jesus resist the devil in the wilderness? Did he not drive the evil spirits out of his patients? Did he not denounce the scribes and Pharisees who would not accept his Messiaship? And did he not scourge the money-changers out of the temple court, and overturn their tables by sheer physical force? Why did he resist evil himself? And did such resistance degrade him?

In all probability, the reason we are warned against resisting evil is that evil is one of the agencies God works by, and, therefore, to resist it is to rebel against God. But not to resist evil is to do evil. "If any man," says Jesus, in this famous sermon, "will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also." * But there need be no law courts, even, to go to, if we will only notify the robbers in advance that they may have all they can lay their hands on. Why not strip ourselves for the benefit of the oppressor and thereby save him also from the trouble of suing us for anything? Is the above advice given for the benefit of the honest man or the robber? Surely the latter will not object to being given more than he sought to steal. And why should an honest man labor to possess anything, since he must permit the thief and the brigand to enjoy all the fruits of his own economy and thrift? By what process of ratiocination does Jesus arrive at the conclusion that the man of fraud and violence should not only not be denied any demand he may make upon us, but that he should have more, nay all we have earned and saved. Is not this nihilism?