Jesus as Lord, Jesus as servant

Christian Century, March 18, 1998 by Diogenes Allen

Today it is commonly said, especially by those who endorse a postmodernist creed, that all values and meaning are human or cultural projections. This means, in turn, that all social hierarchies are based on domination by the most powerful groups in various societies. This claim is also made about religious institutions and teachings.

At the core of the Christian life is the fact that people have a Lord, someone to whom they belong and to whom they are obedient. How can people be free if they have a master? How can people be free if they have someone to obey?

Jean-Paul Sartre, like so many in our culture who want to be in personal control of their lives, claimed that the two notions--freedom and God--contradict each other. To be human is to be free, to be autonomous. So the very idea of God reduces people to slavery, and is essentially antihuman.

You do not need to endorse Sartre's claim to recognize the resentment we would feel at having a boss, a ruler or anyone else telling us what to do all the time. How would that be human fulfillment? How could that be self-fulfillment? How could that be happiness? The Christian gospel claims that the spiritual life is to be one of fullness of life and blessedness. How can that develop from a relationship with one who has unquestionable authority over us, especially if we think that blessedness includes a significant degree of self-direction?

So the spiritual life has at its center the question, How can we be free, when we are ruled by a master? I want to approach this question by examining Hegel's analysis of the relationship between master and slave and then comparing that relationship to Jesus' treatment of his disciples.

Hegel tells us that in human life there is conflict, with each person seeking to get his or her own way. One resolution of the conflict is the master-slave relation. One person dominates the other completely. From the point of view of one of the people--the master--this is the optimal resolution, for that person's will is obeyed and hence his personhood is fully realized.

But there is an irony in the situation. The master cannot be truly independent or free. To assert his independence, his mastery, he must have something that is not himself. He must have something to pay him deference, something to subordinate. He has status as master only as long as he has a slave. Thus he does not have perfect independence.

The master tries to keep this truth hidden, to suppress it, by making his control more and more arbitrary, so there is no recourse beyond his will as to how he treats the slave. The more arbitrary his control, the stronger the slave's dependence, and hence the greater the master's sense of independence. But clearly this approach is self-defeating; for this consciousness of independence requires the existence of something to subordinate and something that can recognize the master's dominance.

Another feature of the master-slave relation is the master's contempt for the slave. By becoming subservient to him, the slave is debased and so is odious. The slave is debased and odious because he really is a person, just like the master. They are essentially the same. Were the slave not a person, there would be no contempt. Why be contemptuous of a river that yields to a dam? Nor do we hold dogs in contempt because they obey us. To call a person a "dog" shows that we have contempt for such obedience when it is exhibited by a person. So the master's very contempt is an implicit recognition that the slave is a person, and that the relation is an improper one.

The relation is also marked by resentment. The master resents the slave because he needs the slave in order to have the status of master. The slave resents the master because he must obey him. Finally there is envy. The slave wishes that he had power like the master. He envies and secretly admires what the master can do and wants to do it as well. He wants to be a master himself.

It is very clear in the four Gospels that the relation of Jesus to his disciples, though one of dominance and subordination, is very different from the one Hegel describes. Jesus does not gain or hold subordinates by force. He calls disciples--there is an element of choice on their part in becoming subordinate to him. He seeks to confer benefits on them by teaching them. He even performs an act of a servant when he washes their feet. We perceive no resentment or contempt in his treatment of his disciples. Why is this so? What enables Jesus to be a different kind of lord?

Let us approach this by looking at a relation I live with all the time: that of teacher to students. In this relation teachers are in the role of superiors. Within certain limits, we tell our students what to do. What keeps this relation from being that of a Hegelian master with slaves? How can we be the boss and the students not feel or be degraded, or feel resentful? How can we operate on the basis of being boss and not feel contempt for students as underlings?

The relation of superior-subordinate is justified if there are genuine grounds for one to be dominant and the other to be subordinate. If there is some basis for the teacher to command, to lead, and for the student to follow, then there is no violation of personality.