QUESTION: Three times, a Jew was at the centre: Moses, Jesus, Marx. George Steiner tells us, “Nothing is crueller than the blackmail of perfection. We come to hate, to fear most those who demand of us a self-transcendence, a surpassing of our natural and common limits of being. Our hate and fear are the most intense precisely because we know the absolute rightness, the ultimate desirability of the demand. In failing to respond adequately, we fail ourselves. And it is of deep-lying self-hatred that hatred springs.”
Is it true, according to you, to hold the thesis that at three times Jews defined humanity? Are we seeing a challenge to this humanity today in a different form of fanaticism? – PAUL M.P.

ANSWER: Jacob Parappally MSFS

Humans are created with a capacity for transcendence. They can go beyond themselves using their freedom properly. Both the capacity for self-transcendence and freedom are gifted by God according to the divine revelation which the Christians believe in. Take away both these gifts, then humans are no more humans but robots; a plaything for destiny according to the belief of some religions. George Steiner is right in saying that at three periods of history three Jews were at the centre, namely, Moses, Jesus, and Karl Marx. They influenced humanity in a way that nobody else in the history of humankind has done before them and after them. But among the three only Jesus, according to me, challenged people to transcend themselves by using their freedom. Only he had to pay for it with his own life. Moses brought the oppressed people from social, political, and economic slavery while Marx expounded both reason for these oppressions and the way to liberate themselves from these forms of exploitation.
Real transcendence transcends all boundaries. Its source is God and its end is God. Existence itself was a limitation for the Greeks who considered finiteness itself was a limitation. All embodied beings are limited by space and time. The transcendence they demanded was the union between the absolute and relative, finite and infinite, matter and spirit and all other binaries or dichotomies through logos which they believed united these dichotomies. According to the Christian belief all humans are created with a nature that can transcend itself and unfold itself to the maximum possible with the assistance of God and by the right use of its freedom. The capacity for transcendence is an essential dimension of their nature. The gift of their freedom is intrinsically related to their freedom.However, many remain satisfied with their minimum selves without taking any effort to become what they are called to become, namely, fully developed human beings. The refusal to grow by responding positively to the challenges of the context is sin. Both Moses and Jesus confronted people of their times and challenged them to transcend themselves by realizing their true vocation to become unfolded humans. When Moses gave the laws to his people, it was intended that by following the laws they would be on the royal road to perfection through their right relationship with God and other humans. But they failed to take the spirit of the laws but followed them literally. Thus, they became slaves of the laws they received. But Jesus liberated the people of his times who were willing to listen to him, from the love of law which enslaved them to the law of love which sets humans free to follow the road to self-transcendence.
Karl Max understood that the systems and structures of oppression and injustice were created by a few rich and powerful supported by religion. He believed that the enslavement of a majority by a miniscule minority could be overcome if the ownership of everything were to be held in common. The ideal was to create a socio-political and economic system on the principle ‘from each according to his abilities and to each according to his needs.’ A State that governs with such a political ideology and an economic system that follows this principle would be an ideal State according to him.This would be possible only by a revolution that could overthrow the power of the rich and the power of religion. The bloody revolutions that followed brought in a totalitarian political system of power in which state-ownership of everything was established by force. Obviously, it was a transition from one form of slavery to another. . Personal freedom has no place in such a system. However, by force, almost half of the world-population could be brought under this political and economic system. Thus, Karl Max of Jewish origin too stands along with Moses and Jesus for changing the course of the history of the world, not by promoting personal freedom for self-transcendence but by causing the introduction of a new system of political governance that systematically destroyed personal freedom and any expression of self -transcendence.
Perversion of Self-transcendence
Humans cannot live as humans without expressing their self-transcendence in some way or other. They are driven by their innate capacity for transcendence and in their daily life there are many occasions to express their self-transcendence. For this reason, St Augustine says in his Confessions, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” The ‘restlessness’ of humans is to actualize the transcendence to the extent it reaches its Ultimate goal, namely, the union with God or the Absolute for whichthey were created.
Only some people come to the awareness of the purpose of their human existence and work hard to reach it. A large majority of people cannot recognize, accept and pursue the path of true transcendence and they go after mirages taking them for reality. Amassing of wealth without any limit gives thrill to some people because along with it, they get various types of power to dominate and control people. It will boost their false ego giving them an illusory sense of transcendence. It gives them a sense of identity which obviously is false but according to them thesefalse identities are the only real ones.
A perversion of transcendence by individuals takes enormous proportions when they are translated into systems and structures. The force behind capitalist economic system is a perverted version of transcendence. It thrives on greed. Greed is the typical expression of perverted transcendence. To satisfy one’s greed for money, power, positions and pleasure humans are prepared to go to any extent even at the cost of lives of others. They numb their conscience, abuse their freedom and destroy everyone and everything that stand on the way of achieving what they intend to achieve. They have no problem in using people as means and manipulating systems and structures to serve their purposes. They may appear as saviours to those in dire need and use their hapless situation for achieving their goals. The tragedy is that the world does recognize them as heroes and, in turn, confirm them in justifying to themselves the means they have taken are right and good. A perverted transcendence has many victims and the worst among them are those who succumb to it not by ignorance but because of their attraction to the pleasure of power that accrue from it.
A Threat to Perfection
Behind all pursuits of power is a lack of understanding of one’s real self. That is also the reason for their opposition to anyone or any truth that challenges them to come out of their false selves and pursue the path of truth and justice. In the path of truth, they would discover their true identity. And they would be encouraged by their own conscience to do justice to themselves and to others. But consciously they would avoid such an adventure because it would demand from them a radical conversion and a change of pursuits which hitherto gave them a false security. Any threat to their false security must be eliminated to hold on to their false self and security. Thus, they try to crucify any one whom they perceive as a threat to their false security.
It is a universal principle that untruth cannot stand against truth. However, if one tries to hide one’s true self, it will be recognized sometime during one’s own life time or after they have gone away from this world. It cannot be buried under hubris and pretentions for all times. It is the nature of humans to be true to self. The force of this nature constantly challenges the individual to be true to himself or herself.One can ignore it. Confronted by the truth about oneself, one begins to hate one’s own self. At the same time one is afraid of leaving the untrue self to embrace the true self which would demand a negation of all pretensions and the power and comforts which one could achieve. It needs tremendous courage and the grace of God. A large majority would not take such a radical step. They continue to live in self-hatred and hatred of others especially those who remain as a threat to them through their life of truth and justice. When such hatred finds justification by an absolutely false and fundamentalist interpretation of one’s religion, bigotry gets painted as sacred. When hatred is sacralised and fanaticism becomes the true form of religion, humanness is sacrificed on the altar of hatred and violence. All over the world, what we find today, is the growing intolerance and fanaticism that divide people. The evolution of religious consciousness that liberates humans from their animal instincts to become more human and humane gives way to fanaticism. Behind the promotion of religious and ideological fanaticism and fundamentalism lies the craving for power that begets and sustains false self-identities.
Challenge to Humans Today
Certainly, Moses, Jesus and Marx influenced the history of humanity to a lesser or greater degree. Their influence was that it changed the course of history. They contributed in their own way to the evolution and transformation of human consciousness. However, each one of them differ in the means they proposed for the human unfolding as humans. When Moses proposed many laws to be followed to live in right relationship with God and other humans, Jesus proposed only one law of love which has two sides like a coin, namely, the love of God and the love of other humans. Marx proposed the laws for an egalitarian society which is to be created by the state using force and denying human freedom. Obviously, human unfolding does not take place where there is no true freedom. Both the Mosaic laws followed by a miniscule minority of people of the world and Marxian ideology followed by almost one/ third of world population can enslave people. Only the law of self-emptying love taught by Jesus can set humans free to become truly humans. Every human being is challenged to transcend the boundary of her/his own self, family, culture and nation to build communion among all people of good will.