A Poststructuralist reading of Jude
The first verse of the text reveals the predicament. For though we are told that the intended reader is called, beloved and kept safe for/by Jesus Christ we later learn that at least part, or for some readers, none of this is true. Without needing to read past verse one the binaries set up by these three claims instantly engenders suspicion and call upon the Derridean notion of ‘trace.’ According to Derrida a word cannot exist without calling upon a trace of its opposite, the presence of which constantly undermines and de-stables the authority of the primary concept. Thus by naming the reader as ‘safe,’ which I suggest is the central binary here, anxiety is immediately created around the possibility of being ‘unsafe.’
Indeed, it is quickly announced that, although intended to be a letter celebrating shared salvation it has become necessary to warn the readers of their need to contend for the faith, because in fact their salvation is under threat and they are not at all safe. Not only that but some of the readers; “the intruders among you,” are neither called, nor beloved, but rather are named as perverted and destined for condemnation. These readers are then referred to in a number of startling descriptions: they are compared to the oppressors in Egypt, to fallen angels, and the sexual deviants of Sodom and Gomorrah; likened to irrational animals, Cain, Balaam, and Korah; depicted as blemishes, waterless clouds, trees without fruit, wild waves, wandering stars; and later as worldly, devoid of the spirit and causing divisions; they are called dreamers, defilers of the flesh, rejecters of authority and slanderers. From the following binaries that are created here and throughout the text (Believers/unbelievers, godly/ungodly, mercy/judgement, safe/not safe, slander/truth, chaos/order, useless/useful, dead/alive, uprooted/rooted, uncontrolled/controlled, selfish/selfless, bombastic in speech/silent, worldy/other-worldly, blemished/not blemished) there is situated an ideal: godly believers who are rooted in truth, are selfless and other-worldly will be unblemished, useful and receive life, mercy and safety, yet there is a threat around this that consists of having also to be silent, ordered and controlled.
The shadow side of this ideal is so heinous that it is compared to some of the very worst crimes in biblical tradition; the exploitation of the perpetrators in Sodom and Gomorrah; the injustice of the slavery in Egypt; and the murderous jealousy of Cain. Yet does the text not also begin to unravel its own logic, as Poststructuralism claims every text does? For it calls upon stories that begin to cast doubt on its own credibility.
Firstly “Balaam’s error” can be more readily seen as God’s error. For it is God who agrees to Balaam’s journey only to forget or change his mind and try to kill Balaam, who humbly confesses to “sinning” even though unaware of God’s opposition (Num 22:20-35). It also appears that Korah’s only sin was his opinion that “all the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the Lord is among them,” which sounds remarkably similar to the message of Jesus. Yet for this God swallows him (and numerous others with him) into the earth. When the people complain of this injustice God begins to wipe them out with a plague, only to be assuaged by the atonement of Aaron (Num 16). It is God here who is behaving like the oppressive, destructive and selfish being that the text warns against. There are hints of this in the other stories too: God hardens Pharaoh’s heart so that extreme death and destruction can be wreaked amongst the innocent Egyptian people; the entire cities of Sodom and Gomorrah are destroyed for the sin of a few men; Cain is unreasonably disfavoured because of his offering of fruit.
In fact, is not the narrator, too, guilty of that he seeks to condemn? Is he not “bombastic in speech” as he spouts forth his argument; “flattering people to his own advantage” as he calls beloved those whom he believes perverted; is he not full of “slander” as he calls safe that which is unsafe; does he not wish to cause divisions as he calls on a witch-hunt for intruders?
The text positions all, even God, as harbouring the shadow side, then, just as judgement will be executed on all and everyone be convicted (v15). To be unblemished, thereby, is put under erasure.*
God can make you unblemished (v24) because the God of the text is unblemished, which is to say both blemished and unblemished.
What is the destiny, then, of the reader? What is our safety from and to? For it is not safety from condemnation, which is for all, and it is not safety from falling (v24), for we are all already fallen from our positions, and like the angels, kept in eternal chains in deepest darkness. Yes, we are the dreamers, being carried by the winds, wildly casting up the waves of our sea-shame, we are the lonely stars, distant and isolated, surrounded by black, we are the uprooted tree, twice dead; in spirit and in body, fruitless and cursed. Yes, we see how easily we bend toward exploitation, how quickly we grab to our greed, how we scoff and lie and grumble and indulge. Yes, we see a world that is black with hopelessness, scorched with pain, dying from its blemishes.
We are at once the fruitless tree that Jesus curses and tells “may no one ever eat fruit from you again” (Mark 11:14) and also the tree that, because of the gardener’s mercy, is given one more year (Luke 13:6-9).
Because we are unblemished we require the gardener’s mercy, yet we know, also, that we were cursed when we were not in season.
What the text makes us ‘safe’ from, then, is only the belief that we are unblemished. Safe from this slander we offer to the world one less blemish.
* A word about Erasure: Derrida put a word under Erasure to indicate its unstable condition. He denoted this by putting a cross over the word. I have indicated it by crossing the word through.
Becky Worthley
