{"id":2419,"date":"2024-10-18T12:07:19","date_gmt":"2024-10-18T10:07:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fondationfap.ch\/?p=2419"},"modified":"2025-02-17T12:06:21","modified_gmt":"2025-02-17T11:06:21","slug":"there-is-a-crack-in-everything","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fondationfap.ch\/en\/there-is-a-crack-in-everything\/","title":{"rendered":"Biblical Reflection : There is a crack in everything"},"content":{"rendered":"

[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.19.5″ _module_preset=”default” max_height=”200px” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.19.5″ _module_preset=”default” custom_padding=”|||7px||” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.19.5″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.19.5″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ content_en_us=”<\/p>\n

I would like to share with you some of my spiritual journeys in the last few weeks. I would like to mirror two famous passages of the New Testament with the affirmation of this no less famous song by L. Cohen:<\/p>\n

Anthem (1992)<\/strong><\/p>\n

The birds they sang
At the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don’t dwell on what has passed away
Or what is yet to be<\/p>\n

Ah, the wars they will be fought again
The holy dove, she will be caught again
Bought and sold, and bought again
The dove is never free<\/p>\n

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in<\/p>\n

We asked for signs
The signs were sent
The birth betrayed
The marriage spent
Yeah, and the widowhood
Of every government
Signs for all to see<\/p>\n

I can’t run no more
With that lawless crowd
While the killers in high places
Say their prayers out loud
But they’ve summoned, they’ve summoned up
A thundercloud
They’re going to hear from me<\/p>\n

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in<\/p>\n

You can add up the parts
But you won’t have the sum
You can strike up the march
There is no drum
Every heart, every heart
To love will come
But like a refugee<\/p>\n

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in<\/p>\n

That’s how the light gets in
That’s how the light gets in<\/p>\n

******************************<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

I Co. 1. 27-28<\/strong> : but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong,<\/p>\n

God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are,.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Mark 12.13-17<\/strong> : And they sent to him some of the Pharisees and some of the Hero’di-ans, to entrap him in his talk. And they came and said to him, %22Teacher, we know that you are true, and care for no man; for you do not regard the position of men, but truly teach the way of God. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?<\/p>\n

Should we pay them, or should we not?%22 But knowing their hypocrisy, he said to them, %22Why put me to the test? Bring me a coin, and let me look at it.%22 And they brought one. And he said to them, %22Whose likeness and inscription is this?%22 They said to him, %22Caesar’s.%22 Jesus said to them, %22Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.%22 And they were amazed at him.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

****************************<\/p>\n

I was recently struck by the recent research by Prof. Christine Lienemann%911%93<\/span><\/a> of Basel on the \u2018polycentrism\u2019 of Christianity, which expresses the end of European and Western hegemony over the evolution of Christianity and theology. This discovery made me curious. I had the opportunity to come across this analysis and to extend it to our Western vision of the world, of world history, and to discover the wrongs of the way in which we have been educated. And this was thanks to a group trip to Uzbekistan. I was able to visit the most famous stops on the Silk Road: Tashkent, Samarkand, Bukhara, Khiva, the Ferghana Valley…<\/p>\n

%22%22<\/p>\n

It allowed me to discover how the region of Central Asia had been the center of the world for nearly three thousand years, between the 15th century B.C. Western Europe claims to have been the driving force of world history since only the 16th century, and more specifically since the industrial revolution of the 19th century.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a crack in everything\u201d,<\/em> a crack in the way we were explained the world, in the euro-centric worldview that we have been taught. Professor Peter Frankopian, the Oxford historian of civilizations, has perfectly described the scientific blindness in which we have been educated. He describes his own journey in his book on the Silk Roads:<\/p>\n

\u00ab For my 14th birthday, my parents gave me a book by the anthropologist Eric Wolf and he set me ablaze. The history of civilization, as lazy as it is to admit, he wrote, is that which Ancient Greece generated Rome, that Rome generated Christian Europe, Christian Europe the Renaissance, that Renaissance generated the Enlightenment, and these the political democracy and the industrial revolution. Industry, a master of democracy, would in turn have given birth to the United States, which embodies the right to life, freedom and happiness.\u201d I recognized immediately the exact story that had been told to me: the dogma of the political, cultural and moral triumph of the West. But this statement was wrong: there were other ways to look at history – ways that did not involve looking at the past from the point of view of the winners of recent history.\u00bb%912%93<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

In Uzbekistan, I visited cities founded by Alexander the Great, relearned the conquests and the reign of Tamerlane, visited a Jewish community dating back to the period after the Babylonian exile, saw the places of life of Avicenna, philosopher and father of medicine, of the founder of astronomy Al Biruni, or mathematics Al-Gebra, seen the traces of the Nestorian Church, found the stages of the travels of Marco Polo.<\/p>\n

%22%22<\/p>\n

This route was not only the main trade route for more than 2000 years, but a huge network of exchanges between western China and the Mediterranean that circulated ideas, religions, furs, silk, paper, spices, cotton, fruit, slaves, ethnic groups. This region, from Baghdad to Xinjang, covers not only the homeland of Abraham, Babylon, the Tigris and the Euphrates, but also the Indus, Persia, Afghanistan, the Chinese Wall… In religious terms, it is a cross between Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, Mazdeism, Judaism, Islam and of course Christianity, especially in its many oriental expressions: In the 16th century there were more Christians in Asia than in Europe. He penetrated into Japan.<\/span><\/p>\n

%22%22<\/p>\n

Our knowledge is brief and incomplete. And the light lies in our shortcomings. \u201cThere is a crack in everything<\/em>\u201d. We have been educated and instructed in a system of evolutionary thought like Darwin, which presupposes qualitative progression, of which we are obviously the last expression, and therefore in some way the summit: the more skillful, the more intelligent survives and dominates.<\/p>\n

But looking more closely, we must see that the Christian West has been dominant in Christianity, broadly speaking, from the creation of colonial empires until the turn of the 20th century. Barely 400 years old.<\/span><\/p>\n

A polycentric approach to the history of civilizations is a completely different reading. Without denying in any way the great discoveries made by the Christian West, scientific progress and other masterpieces of Europe between the 16th and 20th centuries, a polycentric approach identifies everything it owes to the rest of the world, in this case to Asia and Central Asia for having arrived there, including and especially all that it took and looted elsewhere to exercise its domination. But also that this empire is now in rapid decline and we Christians have better things to do than try to defend this model at all costs.<\/p>\n

The Silk Road has also been the route of religions and spiritualities. It is not without importance for the evolution of Christianity that the silk road reaches Europe through two Christian cities, Antioch and Constantinople. Christianity spread much more in the early centuries in the East than in the West, especially thanks to the silk roads and the thousands of merchants who traveled it constantly. On camel and horse, it took seven years to travel. Marco Polo made a round trip.<\/p>\n

What does this have to do with our biblical texts??<\/p>\n

Biblical thought and theology originate in this statement: there is a crack in everything! There is a crack in the human being, there is a crack in the world as we see it. They called it sin. Something is wrong. There is no perfection possible with the human, with his thoughts, his actions, his plans, his visions, his constructions. And because it is so, the believer cannot fully trust the human plan. There is an original mistrust in the Christian faith in the will, the power established by the human. Perfection, goodness is only in God alone. Everything that the human can propose as a belief, as a vision, as supreme authority, as a universal concept has a crack, and the Christian faith denounces it and unmasks it. There is a mistrust of any authority that claims to be absolute, any truth or worldview that claims the right to be the best and the most efficient to explain everything.<\/p>\n

And it is in this radical critical view of all truth or supreme power that the truth of God, faith, is found. \u201cThat\u2019s how the light comes in<\/em>\u201d. It is the crack that allows to reveal the penultimate character of any human construction, by the light of its critique that lets God be God, and Caesar Caesar.<\/p>\n

This fundamental and radical reservation of Christianity against the world of princes and powers originates, I believe, in this perception, this conviction of the crack, of the chronic and endemic crack of the human condition and of the finitude of the world. The knowledge and recognition of this crack and the lessons to be learned from it are the essence and light of the revelation that Christians claim.<\/p>\n

We can go further and say that there is a crack in religion. We Christians believe in a God who condemns all religious systems. Not only did Jesus oppose the entire religious hierarchy of his time, whether it was orthodox-academic as the Pharisees or political-conformist as the Saduceans, or terrorist-suicidal as the Zealots, or even mystical-monastic as the Essenes. Even if he has in his speech many elements that are related to these movements, these confessions, he ended up putting them all at odds and being sentenced to death with their complicity.<\/p>\n

We affirm that this man, condemned to death by the authorities, executed as a common brigand and slave, we affirm that God has fully revealed himself in this destiny. Our faith in this crucified God whom we claim to have risen contradicts and is a scandal for all religious standards of the time but still today: no elevation of the soul, no merit, no sacrifice, no diviner, no intermediary to venerate or pay, no spiritual career progression, no peak to reach, no growth rate progression.<\/p>\n

There is a crack in the religious thought of the human. Man does not ascend to heaven like Icarus, he does not become a living God when he has imperial power, or a seat in the White House, he does not predict the future like Elon Musk, he comes down from heaven to find us here on earth. The Christian faith affirms that this is the light of Easter which passes through our unattainable religious and moral illusions.<\/p>\n

We started with L. Cohen, the agnostic Jew and yet excellent theologian. I propose to conclude with another poet, black:Tracy Chapman, equally good theologian, who said with her words the essence of Christian hope in a song in 1995, \u00abHere\u2019s heaven on earth\u00bb.<\/p>\n