On David Brooks and his attractions – David Brooks in NYT:

‘These days I go to church more than synagogue. But I’ve learned you can’t take the Jew out of the boy. I’m attracted to Jesus the Jew, not the wispy, ethereal, gentle-faced guy with his two fingers in the air whom Christians have invented and put into centuries of European paintings. The Jewish Jesus emerged amid revolution, violence and strife. He walked into the center of all the clashing authority structures and he overturned them all. The Jewish Jesus was a total badass.’

(…)

‘The desire for God appears to be insatiable. Nobody ever said: “I once experienced God’s presence and that was enough for me. I’m good.” Jews calls their study halls “houses of seeking.” The word “Israel” itself means “wrestling with God.” I’m onboard with the early church father Gregory of Nyssa, who argued that heaven itself is endless longing. That’s the heaven I want to be in.’

(…)

‘“Still, I’ve been grateful to live in an enchanted world, to live toward someone I can seek and serve. I’ve been grateful to have to learn and relearn yet another startling truth, that faith is about yearning but it’s not about striving. You can’t earn God’s love with good behavior and lofty thoughts, because he’s already given it to you as the lavish gift that you don’t deserve. “I prayed for wonders instead of happiness, Lord,” Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote, “and you gave them to me.”’

Read the article here.

I’ve seen brothels that were houses of seeking, I have visited prisons that were nothing but endless longing.

Brooks manages to turn love for Jesus into nothing but sloppily suppressed homosexuality. The Jewish Jesus was a badass. Yes. Very much indeed.
And the Obersturmbannführer was a badass too. Not Jewish, but fair enough.

All I can say is, it’s unfortunate for all readers that both the Jewish and the Christian David Brooks are not really a badass. What are they? It remains to be seen.

Reproductions of Kierkegaard without any sense of irony. An unhappy but common marriage of faith and kitsch.

God as a complacent form of escapism? Poor God. The movie was better.