Let's Celebrate Martyrdom! (Part II)

Well, well, well, looks like that whole Islam-martyrdom union may not be as ideologically unique as we westerners like to think. Now, I am and will always be first in line, theologically speaking, to embrace the heretical. Want to draw a cartoon of Muhammad choosing between virgins trapped behind a deli glass? (Halal, of course) Go there. Want to call Mother Teresa a stupid fraud? Oh, do so, and send me a transcript, audio copy and any extant glowers unable to be cast your way! Put your ass cheeks in the Buddha's footprints, tell a Hindu that Rama and Hanuman were more than just friends, call a Shinto torii nothing more than a proxy for a vagina. Let a neighboring conservative Jewish buddy know that pigs are clean these days (maybe mention how delicious cheesburgers are at the same time), suggest to a Sikh that the music of the Guru Granth Sahib ain't got shit on Clapton in Cream. All I ask for a burgeoning blasphemer is that you get your basic facts straight.
So, to return to the Gospel of Judas: hooray! More scholarly work that will be denounced by the Roman Catholic church as irredeemable and unfit for canonical inclusion. Elaine Pagels has already passionately argued that the Gospel of Thomas inspired John's reactionary screed; today on NPR she asserted that the Judas Gospel is seminal to our understanding of early Christianity. You'd think that good scholarly work like hers would send divine undulations through the bloated corpus of the Catholic church, but the church continues to marginalize and treat recovered texts as one might an underfoot wart. Not that Gnosticism doesn't have its unsightly hairy moles - the idea that this world is essentially detritus is certainly among its kookier claims (and there are many, often contradictory). What Pagels argued and what I think resonates is that contemporary Christianity need not be the monolithic, fun-deprived hymn-along we all know (and some, inexplicably, love). Assimilating extra texts and parrying doctrine with anthropology is essential to vigorous spiritual debate and, if my understanding of this Judas Gospel is correct, we could have a hum-dinger of an argument on our hands!
The upshot: Judas and Jesus were just two Godfellas looking to get made. The former turns in his friend - at his friend's request! - while the latter gets to ascend to heaven having died for the holiest of causes. Let's address Judas first. Dear Betrayer: You've got a friend with a bounty on his head, the value of which will fund your nascent church for years. For your part, you may become a social pariah but will attain antihero status rivaled by few in history. You will figure prominently in one of the finest poetic works ever written. Hell, your name will essentially be retired in perpetuity. (Put another way: what do you think the odds are Tom Arnold's parents ever considered naming him "Benedict?") You've got one life - fame or infamy doesn't matter much so long as people keep talking about you.
As for you, Jesus...J, what gives? I go ahead and rant about how bombers are like illustrated men, performing their violent political art to disrupt strained social fabric and what do you do but decide you want to be a martyr too! Sure, you were a peaceable sort and you went quietly, but if this new Gospel is a fair depiction (as fair as any other, right?) you basically wanted to die so others would take up your banner. That, sir, is wasteful. Is wastes a life of good teaching and it wastes what I can faithfully call your real divinity - the ability to lead men to do what a repressive state will not: prejudice no individual against another.
As Easter nears (look for me to spout off about that, too) I think it's only fair to remember that everything that is old is new again. Now, go, paint your pagan eggs and buy your chocolate fertility rabbits and, for gods' sake (all of them), screw on Easter!