Preface to Androcles and the Lion

On the Prospects of Christianity

Sin dudas Bernard Shaw trasgrede todos los límites y arremete como un toro contra todos. Eso sí, total libertad para decir lo que quiera, es lo que auspiciamos. Bernard Shaw opinó sobre la cuestión irlandesa, el anarquismo, los revolucionarios, el matrimonio, así que porque no iba a opinar sobre Cristo y el Cristianismo.

Buscamos la palabra quaint y nos pareció interesante saber sobre la rebelión de los Anabaptistas en Munster.

 

… estoy dispuesto a admitir que después de contemplar el mundo y la naturaleza humana durante casi sesenta años, no veo otra salida a la miseria del mundo que la que habría encontrado la voluntad de Cristo si hubiera emprendido la obra de un estadista práctico moderno…

 

Why not give Christianity a trial?

The question seems a hopeless one after 2000 years of resolute adherence to the old cry of "Not this man, but Barabbas." Yet it is beginning to look as if Barabbas was a failure, in spite of his strong right hand, his victories, his empires, his millions of money, and his moralities and churches and political constitutions. "This man" has not been a failure yet; for nobody has ever been sane enough to try his way. But he has had one quaint triumph. Barabbas has stolen his name and taken his cross as a standard. There is a sort of compliment in that. There is even a sort of loyalty in it, like that of the brigand who breaks every law and yet claims to be a patriotic subject of the king who makes them. We have always had a curious feeling that though we crucified Christ on a stick, he somehow managed to get hold of the right end of it, and that if we were better men we might try his plan. There have been one or two grotesque attempts at it by inadequate people, such as the Kingdom of God in Munster, which was ended by crucifixion so much more atrocious than the one on Calvary that the bishop who took the part of Annas went home and died of horror. But responsible people have never made such attempts. The moneyed, respectable, capable world has been steadily anti-Christian and Barabbasque since the crucifixion; and the specific doctrine of Jesus has not in all that time been put into political or general social practice. I am no more a Christian than Pilate was, or you, gentle reader; and yet, like Pilate, I greatly prefer Jesus to Annas and Caiaphas; and I am ready to admit that after contemplating the world and human nature for nearly sixty years, I see no way out of the world's misery but the way which would have been found by Christ's will if he had undertaken the work of a modern practical statesman. Pray do not at this early point lose patience with me and shut the book. I assure you I am as sceptical and scientific and modern a thinker as you will find anywhere. I grant you I know a great deal more about economics and politics than Jesus did, and can do things he could not do. I am by all Barabbasque standards a person of much better character and standing, and greater practical sense. I have no sympathy with vagabonds and talkers who try to reform society by taking men away from their regular productive work and making vagabonds and talkers of them too; and if I had been Pilate I should have recognized as plainly as he the necessity for suppressing attacks on the existing social order, however corrupt that order might be, by people with no knowledge of government and no power to construct political machinery to carry out their views, acting on the very dangerous delusion that the end of the world was at hand. I make no defence of such Christians as Savonarola and John of Leyden: they were scuttling the ship before they had learned how to build a raft; and it became necessary to throw them overboard to save the crew. I say this to set myself right with respectable society; but I must still insist that if Jesus could have worked out the practical problems of a Communist constitution, an admitted obligation to deal with crime without revenge or punishment, and a full assumption by humanity of divine responsibilities, he would have conferred an incalculable benefit on mankind, because these distinctive demands of his are now turning out to be good sense and sound economics.

Shaw in 1914

I say distinctive, because his common humanity and his subjection to time and space (that is, to the Syrian life of his period) involved his belief in many things, true and false, that in no way distinguish him from other Syrians of that time. But such common beliefs do not constitute specific Christianity any more than wearing a beard, working in a carpenter's shop, or believing that the earth is flat and that the stars could drop on it from heaven like hailstones. Christianity interests practical statesmen now because of the doctrines that distinguished Christ from the Jews and the Barabbasques generally, including ourselves… (Preface to Androcles and the Lion On the Prospects of Christianity, by Bernard Shaw)

 

Traducción

… No soy más cristiano que Pilato, o tú, amable lector; y sin embargo, como Pilato, prefiero mucho más a Jesús que a Anás y Caifás; y estoy dispuesto a admitir que después de contemplar el mundo y la naturaleza humana durante casi sesenta años, no veo otra salida a la miseria del mundo que la que habría encontrado la voluntad de Cristo si hubiera emprendido la obra de un estadista práctico moderno…

… si Jesús hubiera podido resolver los problemas prácticos de una constitución comunista, una obligación admitida de tratar con el crimen sin venganza o castigo, y una plena asunción por parte de la humanidad de las responsabilidades divinas, habría conferido un beneficio incalculable a la humanidad, porque estas demandas distintivas de los suyos ahora están resultando ser de buen sentido y buena economía.

 

Para saber

Kingdom of God in Munster

The Münster rebellion fue un intento de los Anabaptistas radicales de establecer un gobierno comunal en la ciudad alemana de Münster, en 1535.

La ciudad estuvo bajo el gobierno Anabaptista desde 1934 hasta su caída en 1535.

 

Vocabulario

Quaint: attractive because of being unusual and especially old-fashioned:

A quaint old cottage

Quaint: pintoresco.

 

Artículos relacionados

… promovió la eugenesia, la reforma al alfabeto, y se opuso a la religión organizada. Se volvió impopular al denunciar a ambos bandos en la Primera Guerra Mundial… G. B. Shaw

The political necessity for killing him is precisely like that for killing the cobra or the tiger: he is so ferocious or unscrupulous that if his neighbors do not kill him he will kill or ruin his neighbors… About Killing for Political Reasons

En una época en que Gran Bretaña era la mayor potencia económica y política del mundo, Dickens señaló la vida del olvidado dentro de la sociedad… Charles Dickens

 

Comentario

Difícil, ¿no es cierto? Y lo de arriba es solo una pequeña introducción. ¿Los Barrabás dominaron el mundo por 2000 años? ¿Cristo era solo un teórico? Como católico no practicante, lo que me gusta de Cristo, a través de las enseñanzas de la biblia, es el ejemplo de bondad y de amor que brinda a todos. Incluso a Bernard Shaw. Pero mejor lean todo el tratado para poder opinar a conciencia.

 

De la web

Increíble video de George Bernard Shaw, dando una pequeña entrevista en su casa, a los 90 años. Es imperdible

He's 90 George Bernard Shaw (1946), segment from British Pathé

 

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