APRIL 3 ― Today is Friday and it’s known to Christians as Good, and this entire week was Holy. But “holy” not in the Golden Lounge sense where there are first-class dudes and everyone else sits in crammed seats. “Holy” not in the Isma or Ridhuan Tee sense where only “we” know all the answers and everyone else is either ill-informed or ultra-kiasu to disagree with us. Neither is it in the Parliamentary Speaker sense in which “we” have the right to tell the world it has the right to shut up, obey or leave the room.
Instead, in Christian teaching, to be holy means to be set apart to serve; it’s about being called to be a blessing to others as a vocation. Christians are meant to major in compassion and minor in condemnation. Good Friday is about enduring agonising pain for crazy people who will never be good enough.
Let the single mum cut the queue? Sure. Give RM50 for orphans? Sure.
But give the flesh off my back so the most corrupted crony can experience a new kind of life? Insane. Unfortunately, that’s what Good Friday is, well, “about.” One perfect person suffering out of love for other highly imperfect persons who couldn’t give a damn. One loving person giving himself up so there can be a surprising outcome for a world which has given up on surprises (and, whilst I don’t mean to diss the late great Lee Kuan Yew, I’m totally not having him in mind here either).
Judas the Obsessed
Today is Good Friday. It’s the reason why no parent names their son “Judas.” But it wasn’t simply a matter of betrayal, no matter what Lady Gaga says. Judas’ problem, much like ours, was about being obsessed with an idea.
Judas was crazy about the kind of victory he believed the Messiah was supposed to bring; he fully believed that God would “rescue His people” but he refused to accept that the divine plan involved humiliatation, suffering and death.
No, Judas believed that only a violent overthrow of the Roman and the “false” Jewish leaders would restore the Jews to their rightful place assigned by God.
And how best to incite such violence, if not by “provoking” an arrest of someone so loved by the rakyat? What better way to spur the trigger-happy revolutionaries to action than by getting the people’s Messiah -- welcomed with waving palm branches and cries of joy -– handcuffed and roughed up by guards from a despised establishment?
The sad surprise is that Judas, our famous “traitor”, may have never intended to betray anybody. In fact, his agenda was to rejoin the “good guys” once the revolution was won.
This is why he kissed the one he betrayed ― wouldn’t it have been easier to simply point? This is also why, after Judas realised his plan has gone terribly wrong (and that the Messiah had a VERY different understanding of how God saves the world), he threw away his blood-money in disgust and sorrow.
A political Friday?
If you ask me what’s so “good” about this Friday, I’ll say it’s the day that this Jewish guy threw himself on the primed grenades that threatened to blow up the world.
It was the day that someone who said (and acted like) he was God in some strange but exact sense, walked onto the Omaha Beach of life, letting himelf be gunned down (again and again and again) so we wouldn’t have to be.
You know the funny thing? It was actually the religious and political leaders who took this person down. Not sure why they hated him so much. Maybe it was jealousy, fear or just because they didn’t like his face. Or maybe those in power go berserk when another kind of power emerges in the lives of the people they wish to control? Which is why they must disparage and destroy it.
Good Friday is the day a very good and godly man was tortured and killed by selfish political bullies who, by doing so, played perfectly into the hands of a Higher Loving Power. As Narnia author C.S. Lewis said: There is a “deeper magic” at work which the most evil forces in existence cannot deal with if they even knew about it.
The Christian story surrounding the events of Good Friday also stands against any form of political tyranny. It’s an ambiguous stance against the malevolence of people who would use the law against their enemies; on the other, it’s a call to love and forgive these very same personalities.
On one hand, Good Friday teaches us to seek alternatives to the illusory “peace and stability” which powerful regimes offer the rakyat (e.g. “Pax Romana”, Emperor Shih Huang-Ti, American “peace” in Iraq, a certain famous Asean island-state, etc.).
Certainly, Good Friday also interrogates the logic behind the hudud law. It gently questions the priority of deterrence and punishment as a way of dealing with society’s problems. No doubt severed hands and legs may reduce crime and may even be a “just” manner of dealing with “bad people” and bringing about law and order. But, yet, what kind of “order” is this?
And can we detect the similarity between pro-hudud and pro-Lee Kuan Yew arguments? Hudud is, “As long as God’s law is upheld, chopped limbs are fine. If you’re guilty, too bad.” Likewise, devoted fans of Lee Kuan Yew will go, “As long as our wealth and international stature continues, political oppression is fine. If you make trouble, too bad.”
On Good Friday, Christians believe that God took on the full force of the “too bad” argument. On Good Friday, God Himself suffered so even the most hardened criminals get a second chance. A second chance at what? Not simply to “walk free” and commit yet another crime, but to have his life astounded, and thus transformed, by love.
The paradoxical “message” of Good Friday is that ultimately, whilst we’re called to speak out against oppression and injustices, we hardly know what the true problem of humanity is ― and thus we can never be sure of the solution.
At the end, I confess I don’t know anything. The only thing I know is that God loves us more than we know. This is what makes this Friday Good. And on Sunday? Well, things get much Better.
