The Seed of Evil

Noble in a pagan, indeed! And is it commonplace in a Christian? I cannot help but find these and other commentaries bizarre. For it is from Socrates that I have learned the qualities of rationality, coolness of mind, balanced feeling, justice—in short, the qualities of a sane and good-humoured civilisation. By contrast the extraordinary story of Jesus gives witness to the creation of the sinister uncivilisation that has conquered humanity, encompassed the globe, raised to unfeeling heights science and the technique of bureaucratic organisation—that has built airplanes.

The tide of history must have tussled uncertainly with these two men as it decided which of them to cast up on the shore. For observe: both were sentenced to death as a result of unjust accusations (though Socrates with a lighter heart). History is rarely arbitrary about these matters. Further, observe the curious affinity between the valedictions of their biographers—not in content, it is true, but in mood, in tone, in feeling—as if they comprised two strands of a single cord.

Thus Plato has Phedon say: “This, Echecrates, was the exit of our friend, a man who, as it appears to me, was the best man of our time with whom we were acquainted, and besides this the wisest and most just.”

St John concludes: “There were many other things which Jesus did, which if they were to be written down every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written.”

But to my thesis: my contention is that not merely some, but every particle of the common conception of Christ and his role in the world is false. We are told that he entered the world as a moral force to save the world, that all who heed him will be redeemed. That if the world opens its heart to him, mankind will be transformed. If now we find that doors are closed, that some are excluded from the feast, it is because Christ has not yet touched the hearts of all men. To this I counter that, by holding to this creed, the Christians are looking into a reversed mirror image of their religion, the obverse of which is the world as it exists today. Compare: other teachings exhibit an open-ended liberation; in contrast to the smile of Buddha, the systemless jokes of the Zen masters, the story of Christ is one of persecution; of a series of progressively closing traps: the last supper; the betrayal in the garden of Gethsemane; the nailing to the cross; the descent into Hell. Is that not descriptive of the modern world, which progressively encloses the individual?

Again, where other teachers inspire detachment, wisdom, justice and friendship, Christ invoked not abstract qualities but deeds—and so inaugurated the tumultuous industriousness of the modern world. There are other close parallels too numerous to be ignored: the refusal of a petition to authority when in dire distress (“Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me.”—St Mark, Ch. 14, verse 36); the washing of hands; the freeing of the guilty in order that the innocent may be punished (“Away with this man and give us Barabbas”—St Luke, Ch. 23, verse 18).

Has it not come to pass that “to him that hath, more shall be given, while to him that hath little even that which he hath shall be taken away”?

And am I not the seed that, not even falling on stony ground, fails to reach earth at all?

Mankind has absorbed the message of Jesus, absorbed it fully and without omission; the story of the passion has been blended into the world and transformed into vaster fact, like a mustard seed that grows into a monstrous bush. Alone among the cheerful smiling reason of other world teachers Christ never laughed but groaned and wept. Perhaps he wept because he saw the consequences of his mission, much as my mother wept to realise that her actions had condemned me to the life of an air passenger.

Once these correspondences are marshalled the genesis of the present-day world culture becomes all to clear. Only one point remains obscure: what was Christ’s origin? Possibly he was indeed an incarnation of the Creator, sent to scourge mankind. Pursuing the Christian cosmology, I would be more inclined to name him as an agent of Satan, dispatched to corrupt the soul of humanity and destroy for all time the Socratic civilisation which might otherwise have flourished in Western Europe.

These scanty comments must suffice to outline my thesis, for I become too weary to expatiate further. How the world would judge my intellectual offering I cannot know; perhaps it is unscholarly, naive, jejune even, when placed against better-considered world systems. But for me it carries the inner conviction of a truth revealed. Besides—my role in the world drama, minuscule though it may be, gives me one thing in common with Jesus: I also am pinned to a cross, this flying cross which whines ceaselessly to and fro across the face of the globe.