For any given Christian, there are undoubtedly commands of Jesus that are relatively easy to follow, some that are harder but still doable, and some that are so hard that you don’t realistically expect that you’ll ever achieve total compliance. Which commands fall into which categories will vary with the person, of course, but some possible examples of each might be, respectively:
- not charging interest on loans (easy enough for an individual, anyway, but maybe in the third category for a society)
- not hiding your light under a basket
- loving one another (a endless, bottomless, hopeless, glorious task)
In this play about Jesus’ teachings about love (and in the previous play‘s coverage of his teachings about anger, lust, divorce, and vows) I implicitly propose a fourth category: commands that are impossible to follow not because they’re too hard (though they are in fact usually very hard) but because the Christian in question believes them to be too extreme or distasteful or maybe even wrong. These are commands that he wouldn’t want to follow even if he could, commands that she basically checks off her spiritual to-do list not by trying to obey them, but by ignoring them or explaining them away.
Are there such commands? I think it must be so, though it would be understandably problematic for any Christian to admit or acknowledge such a thing. Let’s just consider some of the commands Jesus issues in this play alone:
If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, offer him the other also.
If anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well.
If anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back.
Give to everyone who begs from you.
Do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.
I think it’s safe to say that no one in this world even comes close to doing all this (except perhaps people in abusive relationships, which really underscores the problematic nature of the commands) but the real question is: why? Is it because they’re simply very hard commandments that no one can totally live up to? (Category #3.) Or could it be that pretty much no one is even trying to obey them?
I originally planned a very different ending for this play, but its flow carried me away from that possible destination, and I was content with the final scene I ended up arriving at. Originally, however, I was going to end the scene in which Joanna, Mary, and Thomas discuss these teachings with Joanna deciding firmly to leave the group, but Mary and Thomas convincing her to sleep on it first. Then, in the planned final scene, she was going to wake up from a dream of a future in which everybody obeyed every commandment, no matter how hard or even unwise it seemed to be. The world she dreams of is, in the words of Andre in the movie “My Dinner With Andre”, “a life…in which each day would become an incredible monumental creative task.” There are no laws, no money, no societal conventions, and every act carries a thunderous weight of Consequence. Anger always leads to murder, lust always leads to sex, and every request for a person’s time or effort or possessions is always complied with.
Joanna isn’t sure if it was a good dream or a nightmare, or if it justified Jesus’ commands or exposed them as flawed, but somehow, it changes her mind about leaving. Lying there in her bedroll looking up into the depths of the infinitely receding sky, she gives herself over – not to following the commands Jesus has given, which she still believes are wrongheaded, and not even really to Him – but to the immensity and mystery of this dark world through which we walk, the blind leading the blind.