Jefferson and Jesus Unplugged

A week of technical bugs and glitches has sapped me of the little creativity I possess. I’ve been bedeviled and it’s not over.

In this muted state / man, I just can’t celebrate / only objurgate…so here goes:

Today, in pockets across the continent, people will be honouring the memory of Thomas Jefferson by celebrating his birthday.

The gentleman of Independence was a hemisphere shaper and a gardener. He was, in the strict sense, a dialectician.

As you may recall, he even has his own version of the bible (The Jefferson Bible) which was, for over two hundred years, given to new members of congress.

His bible consists of the four Gospels–sans miracles–strung together into a single narrative. In essence, it’s the life and morals of Jesus of Nazareth without any reference to angels, prophecy, genealogy, deity, or anything that smells supernatural.

It is the Testament stripped of it’s "artificial vestments," revealing the "pure principles" of Christianity.

Jefferson was sincere in his rewriting. He was after a kind of Christian system, an ultimate system to eclipse any and every Platonic or Kantian system. He says, "Of all the systems of morality, ancient or modern, which have come under my observation, none appear to me so pure as that of Jesus."

But even with all his cutting and pasting, his private hyper "Jesus Seminar," he couldn’t stick with the extraction’s essence.

In a well-worn quote that serves every autocrat from time immemorial, that continues to serve every President and Prime Minister, regardless of democratic intensity, that is, that serves every Bushite, and Harperite valiantly holding onto the principle of (sacrificial) redemptive violence, Jefferson says, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."

Now what would the essential Jesus, "Jesus Unplugged," say to this?

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