Death Be Not Proud

It's often occurred to me that religion is mislabeled poison. It parades as a cure, but is, in fact, a gruesomely destructive element in a culture. Most of the time we don't notice, because within a particular society everyone is partaking of the same concoction and enjoying the same sense of euphoria. It's when folks within a culture start breaking into coteries with different tastes in poisons that the chaos ignites--or when we stick our noses univited into someone else's Kool Aid binge.

But I hadn't thought much about how time and tide move us along past the sticking points that could make things even worse. That is, until I had a chance to see an exhibit of Rembrandt paintings at the Getty Center in L.A. this weekend. Grim insight into what's going on within the world of Islam may be a curious connection to make with the Dutch master's marvelous series of late religious portraits, but nonetheless, that's what popped up for me after looking at a roomful of saints, apostles, and sorrowful virgins created by arguably the greatest portrait painter since the Renaissance.

The exhibit, which ended yesterday, collected sixteen of Rembrandt's paintings from late in his life, when he suffered poverty and personal loss. The paintings, though apparently not consciously a suite or series, are consistent in subject, size, tone, and palette. They are, without variation, dark, somber, brooding, and focused on death. The painting of St. Bartholomew above is pretty typical: a deeply contemplative figure placed before us because of his commitment to his beliefs, symbolized both in the pose and facial expression, but also, just for good measure, in his obvious display of the tool of his own martyrdom--in this case a large knife.

The paintings, which thoroughly blur the distinction between religious iconography and portraiture, are brilliant, moving work, but when I finished with the whole show, it struck me that Christianity has historically been absorbed with death and martyrdom as central to its sway over followers of the faith. In Rembrandt's day--some 350 years ago--Christianity made its most forceful pitch to the faithful by reminding them of inevitable death and the glory of self-sacrifice.

Since the Reformation, of course, the message has eased off the gloom and eventually moved toward more of a "praise the lord" and "born again" campaign that sells better to an upwardly mobile middle class demographic. Modern day Christians not only don't see any conflict between piety and plutocracy, but can't conceive that God should ask more of us than self-realization. Good Christians network and thrive to model for the world the benefits of divine grace.

But when you stare into the faces of those early Christian martyrs, you see faces that express a brooding sorrow for mankind and a need to live up to the logical demands of religious commitment. And then you realize that this is the religious mode that ticks us off so much when we encounter it today in our dealings with Muslim zealots. We are revolted that someone who follows a major religion of the world-- a religion that seems to promote tenets of peace and brotherhood--should have sects and ideologues who also praise and practice martyrdom and ultimate commitment to a deity.

The problem is not a conflict between Christianity and Islam--they are as consanguineous as cousins raised in different towns--but rather the tendency of a branch of modern Muslim thinkers to revere the past and detest what has become of their society in the course of time. But then, is that any different from the new breed of Christian fundamentalists who long for a return to an America of 150 years ago or so? What's the difference between an imam with his knickers in a twist over women who won't keep their faces hidden in public and a pastor who goes to a school board meeting to take a stand against teaching evolution?

Religion itself is an excuse to close your mind, indulge your prejudices, and act out your hostilities. Christ's sacrifice and the nobility of Christian martyrdom has a certain poetic and transcendent beauty because it's enshrined in a distant, sepia-toned past, while suicide bombers and paradise-bound jihadists turn our stomachs because they live in today's headlines and spread their message on the Internet. Beyond that, God is God, Allah is Allah, and Death is Death.