The Spiral Path

Posted in Divine Love, Gospel of Mark, Jerusalem Temple, Jesus' family of origin, Jesus' teachings, John the Baptist, Kingdom teachings, Realspiritik, religion and mental Illness, Son of Man, status addiction and tagged ethical mysticism, Kingdom teachings | Leave a Comment

09 Sep 2012

RS31: Jesus and the Book of Job

A: We’ve been talking a lot about your teachings on life and death, healing and miracles. Tell me why John the Baptist tried to kill you.* It seems a strange thing for a religious prophet to do.

J: John didn’t act on his own. It would be fair to say that my brother James and my former friend Peter used John. As we’ve discussed, John was suffering from major mental illness — schizophrenia combined with narcissism. If you played on his paranoia and his narcissism, you could get him to do your dirty work for you. This is what James and Peter did. They used John to try to get rid of me.

A: You describe Peter as your former friend.

“One of the ideas that sets the poem of Job apart from the Book of Job the Patient and from other ancient Near East poems about righteous sufferers is the book’s detailed pronouncement by the Lord that people who behave badly as Job’s friends need to apologize to both Job and to the Lord and to be retrained by an expert in the field, Job himself (chap 29).” (From commentary on the book of Job by Mayer Gruber in The Jewish Study Bible, TANAKH Translation, ed. Michael Fishbane (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 1505.) Photo credit JAT 2015, Lake Minnewanka, Alberta.

J: There’s a reason the Gospel of Mark portrays Peter in such an unflattering light in the final chapters of his book (Mark 14). Mark 14 should be subtitled, “The Truth About Peter That Peter Doesn’t Want You to Know.”

A: Peter comes across as a coward and a liar and a collaborator, a man who sits with the high priest’s guards and warms himself by their fire.

J: Yes. “Warming himself at the fire” is an ancient idiom for “saving himself by selling out to the enemy.”

A: Peter doesn’t seem like the kind of man you or any sane leader would entrust with the job of carrying on your teachings.

J: Peter was a fickle, vain, posturing man — a lot like Wormtongue in Tolkien’s The Two Towers — and he only gained a position of authority in the Kingston movement after I died and he could spread his lies about his “humility” and his “chosenness.”

People wonder why Mark shows me rebuking Peter with a remark about Satan. But it’s not a supernatural claim about Peter. It’s a psychological claim.

A: Mark 8: 31-33 says, “Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things'” (NRSV translation).

J (nodding): Mark is telling his audience that Peter, who later claimed to be a faithful and devoted apostle, was, in fact, “the adversary” — like the adversary named Satan who tried to ruin Job’s life with his incessant legalistic wrangling, his incessant lack of faith in the mystery of love, his incessant rejection of God’s right to choose how he (they) will intervene in the world.

Later Christians have read the reference to Satan as a supernatural claim for the Devil. But in the book of Job, Satan isn’t the Devil. He’s the wily Materialist who sits on God’s council of heavenly advisers and insists that the man named Job is devoted to God only because he has many blessings — healthy sons and daughters, great herds of livestock, and many servants. Take away those blessings, says ha-Satan (the Accuser), and Job will curse God instead of loving him. It’s simple Cause and Effect.

“Have you not read this scripture: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes’?” (Mark 12: 10-11). Photo credit Image*After.

But this isn’t what happens. Job tries and tries to understand the Law of Cause and Effect and invoke it for his own benefit, but his efforts fail. God — not the man named Job, and not the Materialist philosopher ha-Satan — gets the final say. In the end he chooses to restore Job’s blessings, but only because he chooses to, not because he’s been forced to by clever and lawyerly invocations of Law.

I had a lot of respect for the Book of Job. I didn’t understand it at all when I began my journey of faith. I understood it completely by the time I died. God doesn’t promise anyone an easy or pain-free journey. Faith has no foundation at all if it’s built on the premise that you’ll escape all pain by following the Law. Faith requires humbleness. Faith requires respect for all life in Creation, including behemoths and leviathans and — God forbid! — daughters who are named and given land alongside their brothers upon their father’s death.

Some commentators think God is pummelling Job at the end with reminders about God’s power. They think God requires Job’s submission to this power. But the speeches by God at the end of the Book of Job aren’t about power. They’re about humbleness. Humbleness as God and God’s angels understand it, not as religious leaders have taught it.

A: Humbleness as an intense awareness of who you are and who somebody else is. Knowing your strengths, and being proud to use your strengths in service to others, but also knowing your limits. Knowing who you’re not as much as knowing who you are.

J: Yes. This point is drilled home in Chapter 40 (verses 1 to 8):

And the Lord said to Job:

“Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty?

Anyone who argues with God must respond.”

Then Job answered the Lord:

“See, I am of small account; what shall I answer you?

I lay my hand on my mouth.

I have spoken once, and I will not answer;

twice, but will proceed no further.”

Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind:

“Gird up your loins like a man;

I will question you, and you declare to me.

Will you even put me in the wrong?

Will you condemn me that you may be justified?” [emphasis added]

A: “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge,” God says to Job in 38:2. The rejection of “words without knowledge” is very strong in your original teachings. Also the refusal to blame God for the mistakes made by narcissistic human beings.

J: A human being who believes he/she can control the Law of Cause and Effect is not a person of humbleness or faith. Job had to go through a lot of suffering to get this point through his thick head. But eventually he got it. Just as I eventually got it.

A: So I’m thinkin’ Peter never got it.

J: Bottom line, you can’t be in relationship with God if you think you are God, if you think you’re so wonderful and special that the very laws of Creation will bow down to your wishes.

It. Ain’t. Gonna. Happen.

A: Would it be too much of a stretch to say the Book of Job is an anti-narcissism diatribe?

J: No, it’s not too much of a stretch. Job’s four interlocutors — Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, Zophar the Naamathite, and Elihu son of Barachel — are brilliantly drawn “portraits” or “archetypes” for brain patterns that would be described today in psychiatric terms as DSM-IV disorders. Just because ancient writers and teachers didn’t have a DSM-IV doesn’t mean they couldn’t see these patterns of behaviour through careful observation.

A: I see a Ph.D. dissertation for somebody in that remark.

J: The important thing to bear in mind is that a person like Peter, who was narcissistic and convinced of his “right to be right,” will always, of necessity, be a coward. He has to be a coward, because only a coward won’t admit his own mistakes. The refusal to admit one’s own mistakes (especially to oneself) is a hallmark of narcissism.

A: It takes guts to be honest about your own mistakes. That’s one thing I learned the hard way.

J: Me, too, in my time.

A: Yet it’s deeply healing to be honest about one’s own mistakes.

J: It is. This is part of the reason for the great success of the Twelve Step method — you have to let go of your denial and be honest about the harmful choices you’ve made in the past.

A: But if another person tries to confront the denial, they can put themselves in harm’s way. You’ve talked in the past about your brother’s narcissistic rage reaction. I’ve been on the receiving end of similar rage reactions — most recently from one of the owners of the business where I work — and these rage reactions . . . they sure aren’t pretty. They’re violent in a way that’s hard to describe.

J: We talked a few days ago about the way in which a status addict tries to acquire status points by stealing part of another person’s inner self-image (Father of Lights and Mother of Breath — Again). Narcissists are always status addicts, so this “stealing mechanism” is an important part of their psychological profile. Narcissists are always trying to build themselves up by tearing other people down. It gives them a sense of power. Unfortunately, if you dare challenge the myth of their “rightful” power, they’ll go berserk. Literally berserk. Blood lust comes over them. A temporary form of insanity. If swords (or guns) are handy, they’ll use them. If iron swords aren’t handy, they’ll use whatever they can find to try to annihilate you, to rob you of your entire being so you’ll disappear into a cloud of nothingness. They’ll try with all their might to reach into your core self and rip out your heart so they can eat it and claim your power.

A: Yuck. Gross. It’s like that gross heart-eating scene from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. But, you know, come to think of it, it’s exactly what my boss tried to do to me in January. She did her best to annihilate me. Didn’t work, though, because I forgave her for her brutal attack. I’m still there, and I’m still looking her in the eye.

She hates that. She hates it when I look her in the eye.

J: She knows at a deep narcissistic level that she has no power over you. This frightens her. It undermines the lies she tells herself. Your very presence reminds her she isn’t the nice person she claims to be. So she hates you. She has to hate you and she has to blame everything on you and the co-workers who stood up for you because otherwise she’d have to look at herself in the mirror and admit her own mistakes. She’s not going to do that. Not while she’s arranged her whole world to protect herself from the truth about her own motives. She thinks she’s safer this way, but she’s not. She thinks if she can “get rid of” the people who witnessed her narcissistic rage reaction in January (by forcing them to quit), all will be right with the world, and she can return to her merry little narcissistic belief that she’s the most wonderful boss there could ever be.

Her guardian angels have other ideas. For more details, please refer to the Book of Job, which could also be titled, “You’re Not Going to Want to Hear This, but God Has an Opinion on Your Narcissism.”

* Please see the February 6, 2011 Jesus Redux post John the Baptist and Jesus and the May 15, 2011 post John, Paul, and James: The Lunatic, the Liar, and the Lord.

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Posted in Bible, Cause & Effect, faith, Favourite Posts, Gospel of Mark, historical Jesus, humbleness, Jesus' family of origin, John the Baptist, Law (Nomos), Mark vs Paul, Materialism, narcissism, occult themes, Realspiritik, religion and mental Illness, Son of Man and tagged ethical mysticism, Kingdom teachings | Leave a Comment

05 Sep 2012

RS29: Father of Lights and Mother of Breath – Again

Irises (c) JAT 2013

A: I just love Biblical Archaeology Review. Yesterday I came home from work and checked out the latest newsletter they’d e-mailed. I get a newsletter from them every few days, and sometimes I don’t read them. But this one caught my eye, and I clicked on the link (http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/bible-interpretation/misogyny-in-the-bible/). There I found a wonderful article by Biblical Studies professor April DeConick. The full article, called “Biblical Views: How the Mother God Got Spayed,” appears in the latest issue of Biblical Archaeology Review (Sept./Oct. 2012). I just love everything about this article. It’s so honest. She dares to ask if we’re “trying to apologize for the misogny in the Bible because of our religious belief in the sacred nature of the Bible.” Thank you for saying this out loud, Dr. DeConick!

I’d like to quote one paragraph from her article:

To begin with, humans — whether ancient or modern — think within gender categories. And whether we admit it or not, gender never has been neutral. Power is always involved. In the ancient world, the female body was believed to be subhuman, imperfect — a deficient body because it lacked the male genitalia. The male body was the perfect body. So the male body dominated the scene, including the Bible, Christian theology and Christian ecclesiology. In other words, the Bible came into being within a cultural matrix where the female body by definition was substandard and dehumanized. This dehumanization of the female body affected virtually every storyline of the Bible.

She then goes on to explain how this misogynist view of the female body affected the way ancient Jews and early Christians perceived God:

This misogynist view of the female body affected the way in which the ancient people created their theologies and engaged in worship. This is not to say that all ancient Jews and early Christians perceived God only as a male Father God. Indeed, worship of the Mother God in conjunction with the Father God can be demonstrated to have occurred within ancient Israel. Both the Bible and archaeology confirm this. So it isn’t that the Mother God was absent from their worship. Rather she was consciously eradicated from worship by the religious authorities.

Then DeConick dares to say that in early Christianity, “[w]e have records that demonstrate that the Holy Spirit was perceived by the first Christians to be not only female, but also Jesus’ Mother.”

Yup. I just love it when good scholarship backs up everything you’ve been telling me for the past few years.*

J: I worked very hard to distance my teachings from the religious orthodoxy of my day. As we’ve discussed many times, I didn’t view God as a male-only figure. I also didn’t view God as a “genderless divine essence,” as biblical scholar Ben Witherington so quaintly puts it (a thesis that’s challenged by Dr. DeConick in her article). For Paul, Spirit/God/Christ was a genderless divine essence, just as for Plato, God was a genderless divine essence. But this was never my teaching. So for those Christians who want to retreat into the cowardly territory of God as “cloud of knowing” or “ground of being” instead of God as two loving people, they need to be honest about their beliefs. They’re modern day Platonists, not followers of the teachings of Jesus.

A: The Gospel of Mark speaks so eloquently about your lack of misogyny. The stories about the hemorrhaging woman and the daughter of Jairus (Mark 5) break my heart. The hemorrhaging woman seems to me like a symbol of the terrible abuse suffered by any woman whose symptoms make her “unclean” and “impure” according to religious law. Can you imagine being treated as a pariah for years and years simply because you’re a woman and you’re medically ill? How cruel is that.

J: It seems hard to believe the Roman Catholic church and the strict Calvinist traditions can be so willfully blind about my teachings on women. They can reinterpret the healing stories from the Gospel of Mark until they’re blue in the face, but they can’t erase the obvious truth that I believed women are equal to men in the eyes of God and are not unworthy or impure simply because they’re women.

A: I love the way DeConick picks up on Tertullian’s role in destroying the self-image of Christian women for centuries to come. Tertullian was a very nasty fellow — a status addict of the worst kind.

J: To despise a woman because she’s a woman is a clear indication of status addiction. To despise the idea of God as two people — God the Mother and God the Father — is another clear indication of status addiction.

A: How so?

J: Status addiction is a form of theft. It’s an intentional theft of someone else’s sense of worthiness and self esteem. In the Christ Zone model we’ve been looking at, there can be no true balance or wholeness or self-actualization unless all four major needs are met: physiological needs, safety needs, love & belonging needs, and self-esteem needs. So important are these four major needs to human health and happiness and peace that psychiatry should reformulate its DSM bible to show disorders of physiological needs, disorders of safety needs, disorders of love & belonging needs, and disorders of self-esteem needs, instead of its current categorization system.

A status addict is someone whose brain is not functioning in balanced, holistic ways. For various reasons a status addict can’t generate an inner sense of self. They can’t generate a portrait of themselves, if you will, a portrait of themselves as a child of God. Often this is due to damage in the parietal and parieto-temporal regions of the brain.

Because they can’t “see” themselves — because they can’t “plant” themselves in the firm ground of relationships and boundaries and heart-to-heart bridges among all life in Creation — they can’t rely on emotions such as trust and Divine Love and forgiveness to help them cope.

A: Why not? Why can’t they rely on trust and Divine Love and forgiveness?

J: Because these coping mechanisms are all founded in the core principle of relationship — relationship between two or more people. If you choose not to “do relationships” you also can’t “do love and trust.” Positive, mature relationships draw on all the same parts of the brain as love and trust do.

A: Such as oxytocin and vasopressin and prolactin levels in the bloodstream and brain. Also serotonin. To name a few.

J: Yes. One of serotonin’s jobs is to act as a mediator between the Darwinian Circuitry of the brain and the Soul Circuitry of the brain. The role of serotonin in sustaining mood is beginning to be understood by medical science. But it’s not the only factor in mood disorders. A major complicating factor for many individuals — one that hasn’t been recognized by researchers — is status addiction. Status addiction drives a person at a physiological level to seek a brief glimpse of himself by stealing somebody’s self-image.

It goes like this:

The status addict sees a woman who has confidence, self respect, and dignity. It’s as if she’s painted a portrait of herself inside her heart and knows who she is. Also who she’s not. The status addict doesn’t know who he is and doesn’t know who he’s not. But he’s jealous. He’s jealous and angry at the woman who has something he does not. So he endeavours to take it. He endeavours to steal her portrait, or a piece of her portrait, and claim it for himself. He takes it any way he can — usually through threats and physical or emotional abuse. But the most vicious predator will try to rob the spiritual part of her self portrait, the part that tells her who she is in relationship with God. He’ll try to rip out her entire sense of worthiness and self-esteem as a child of God. Then he’ll take that piece of her portrait and pin it up on his own “inner wall.” He’ll look at it and gloat. He’ll enjoy her suffering. The stolen portrait becomes a hazy sort of mirror where he can finally see himself. And for a brief moment, he’ll see himself as someone powerful and clever and potent.

Sixty seconds later his brain will let go of the high. The image will vanish. The sense of inner emptiness will return. So he’ll have to go out and steal somebody else’s spiritual portrait. This is how he copes with his own inability to love and trust and be in relationship with anyone, including God.

A: Religious law as schadenfreude.

J: Yes. It’s a very poor substitute for reality, but many individuals rely on it.

To steal the reality of another person, to steal their wholeness, to try to steal their very existence, is a concentrated form of hatred. It’s not purity of thought or transcendence that drives a person to say there is no personhood in God. It’s not wisdom. It’s not faith. It’s just hatred. Plain old fashioned hatred. Hatred born of a status addict’s rage at the void he feels within himself.

To try to rip out God’s own self image, God’s own need for love & belonging, God’s own need for self-esteem (or, as we’ve called it here, God’s humbleness) is cruel and unconscionable. I mean, where do people think we get our needs in the first place? Do they think angels have a hard-wired need for love & belonging and self-esteem (humbleness) but God the Mother and God the Father don’t? Do they really think God the Mother and God the Father have no feelings?

Every child born on Planet Earth tells the truth about God and God’s angels again and again and again. Even the chromosomes of a child tell the truth.

God the Mother is real.

There’s no point fighting this truth any longer.

* Please see “Third Step: Invite Our Mother to the Table” and “Father of Lights, Mother of Breath

Posted in Bible, Christ Zone, Gospel of Mark, historical Jesus, Mother and Father God, Mother God, Plato, psychopathy, Realspiritik, religion and mental Illness, sense of time & timing, status addiction and tagged religion + mental illness, science & faith | Leave a Comment

01 Sep 2012

RS27: The Way, the Truth, and the Life

New Brunswick (c) Jamie MacDonald 2012

A: Tell me about the healing miracles that took place around you.

J: A lot of people over the centuries have tried to figure out the healing miracles reported in the Gospels. Not many have noticed that the claims made by Mark are very different from the claims made by the other gospel writers. To understand the healing miracles that took place during my ministry, the only reliable source is Mark’s gospel. My friend Lazarus — the beloved disciple — was also a reliable source. But his collection of essays and parables and sayings — the collection that’s been tentatively reconstructed by scholars and labelled the “Q source” — no longer exists in its original format. So for anyone who wants to understand what I actually taught about healing and illness, they’d need to look more closely at what Mark says.

A: I did an analysis of the healing stories in Mark, Matthew, and Luke for a New Testament course.* My professor got very huffy with me because I launched into a very un-scholarly attack on Luke’s motives in the middle of the paper. But I don’t regret pointing out the truth about Luke’s desire to paint you as a “Divine Patron of Healing.” Luke had an agenda, and his agenda had nothing to do with teaching regular people how to be in relationship with God.

J: Luke was a disciple of Paul. Young, brilliant, devoted to the cause of the Seekers of the Rock. He was very young — still in his mid-teens — when Paul died. As he grew older, he earned more responsibility in the “great cause” of spreading the agenda of “The One True Religion.” When my great-nephew wrote his anti-Pauline book — the Gospel of Mark — Luke got the job of undermining Mark’s message. The last thing the Seekers wanted was another resurgence of interest in what I actually taught (as opposed to what they said I taught).

A: Well, you were a difficult fellow. And according to them, you were seriously broken. So from their point of view they were helping you!

J (chuckling): With friends like that, who needs enemies?

A: You said recently (“The Messiah Who Misbehaved”) that Paul looked at the miracles of your ministry and decided you really had been the prophesied Jewish Messiah. But not in a good way, because you hadn’t followed the proper script, the proper path that was expected of you. So what did you do instead? What did you do that got everybody’s knickers in a knot?

J: Well, that’s the thing. What I did was so simple it’s been missed by most Christians all this time. What I did was get off my ass, stop feeling sorry for myself, stop wasting time on useless religious rituals and prayers, and go out and help people.

A: Come on. That’s way too simple.

J: The complete story is that I went out and helped other people in a holistic way, using all my heart, all my mind, all my talent, and all my strength to forge a bridge of healing with others. In other words, I helped people soul-to-soul. I helped people recognize the “rainbow bridge” within themselves, the pathway to “the kingdom of the heavens.” People were so shocked at this idea that sometimes they burst into tears. This one idea was — is — so powerful to the process of healing that I could see dramatic changes in their physical and mental state overnight. People need to know in their gut that God actually believes in them.

A: You’ve mentioned the rainbow bridge within, and this makes me think of the sign of the rainbow in God’s covenant with Noah (Genesis 9:8-17).

J: This covenant between God and all Creation as it exists on Planet Earth — a covenant of trust and healing with humanity plus every living creature and the earth itself — is the only covenant that appears in the Bible that I actually endorse. And the enduring sign of this covenant is the rainbow. So naturally, when I spoke of people entering “the kingdom of the heavens,” I had the sign of the rainbow in mind. In my day, the rainbow was seen by all cultures as the pathway that connected Heaven and Earth, the pathway travelled by divine messengers. In the Greek world, the messenger who travelled the rainbow bridge was Iris. In the Egyptian world, the messenger was Hermes Trismegistus. In the Jewish world, the messenger was Abraham.

The main point here is that almost everybody, regardless of religious tradition, believed that God or Spirit or Source or Oneness or whatever label you used for the Divine, was somewhere far away, somewhere not of this Earth, somewhere not of this place or this time. Sometimes the distance between Heaven and Earth could be closed, said the priests. But this “closing of the gap” was believed to be rare, an event reserved for extraordinary events and times such as the birth and death of a great king. It was unthinkable that God would enter the world, quietly and humbly, to heal the scabrous skin of a “leper.” God just didn’t do that sort of thing, said the great theologians of my time.

A: How did you see the connection between Heaven and Earth?

J: For me, God was not “up there.” Neither was God “in here,” in the way the Gnostic tradition speaks of “the spark within.” God the Mother and the God the Father were — are — the world around me. The world outside all other beings. Neither pantheism nor panentheism, but something different. Creation as family. It’s the closest analogy there is. Creation as family, with God the Mother and God the Father as parents who create a vast home for us, a home of “earth and air and water and fire,” parents who then step back from us, their angelic children, to allow us to understand and know ourselves as unique beings, unique consciousnesses within the family of Creation. We are not them. And they are not us. But together we live and work together as a family. They need us and we need them. It’s as simple as that.

This what your inner soul believes about who you really are.

A: So for you the world around you was not a tainted and corrupt lower sphere, a vile place to be controlled and transcended, but a strange sort of family home. A place with many rooms to be explored and understood. A place where God speaks in many languages and many voices.

J (nodding): Yes! A place where we experience the trajectory of true healing in ways that are difficult to express in words alone.

A: Including the mysterious role of forgiveness.

J: It felt to me, during my time as Jesus, that building a relationship with God and God’s angels is very much like building a bridge. Building a bridge between your heart and another person’s heart, even if the other person is a person-of-soul who has no physical 3D body! You are you, and she is she, so you can’t be that other person. But you can build a bridge to that other person. You can build a bridge of words and choices and actions and memories, a bridge of courage and devotion and gratitude and trust, and the bridge is a great source of strength, a way to “close the gap” between Heaven and Earth so you never feel alone. The bridge “feels” like the rainbow that lights your heart when you look into the sky after a passing storm. Maybe it sounds like a mushy Hallmark card, but I don’t care. This is what it feels like to know God’s presence in your life. It feels like this ephemeral thing of great beauty that alights upon your heart and soul in those times when you most need to feel the quiet touch of God’s hand upon your shoulder. What travels along this rainbow bridge is not a messenger but Divine Love itself. If you could see Creation with the eyes of an angel, you would see networks — highways — of rainbow light, bridges that connect the heart of each soul to the hearts of all other souls.

A: Like an angel Internet.

J: Actually, that’s exactly what it is — a world wide web of pure Divine Love that’s been built one small bridge at a time.

This is what I meant when I talked about the Way, the Truth, and the Life. It’s not what Paul meant when he talked about the Way, and it’s not what John meant. But, for me, the covenant with Noah was the only scriptural proof-text that made any sense. The Way means helping God in the great and mysterious and multiple tasks of healing.

First step: help heal the physical body — the physical bodies of humans and other creatures and the planet itself — as Noah once helped God heal the bodies of all creatures on Planet Earth (metaphorically speaking, of course, since the biblical account of Noah and the Great Flood was not an actual historical event ).

Second step: start to build the rainbow bridges of the heart so you can hear what God is actually saying to you!

_________________________________________________

*Excerpt from a 2009 paper entitled, “RADICAL MESSIAH: AN EXAMINATION OF HOW THE HEALING MIRACLE STORIES ARE USED IN MARK, MATTHEW, AND LUKE”

. . . The basic shape of Mark’s argument is presented in his opening verses (Mark 1:1 – 2:12). These verses offer five different healing miracle stories in quick succession after a brief introduction that starts in the countryside (not the Temple) with John the Baptist (not with a priest). These five narrative healing stories (plus eight more individual healings and assorted crowd scenes in Mark) have distinct features that make unique claims for the Jewish Messiah: (1) Jesus heals the most disadvantaged and scorned of people – the mentally ill (demoniacs), women, lepers, and paralytics (and in later chapters, Gentiles), most of whom are likely extremely poor (cf. the Beatitudes in Luke 6:20-23) – using only authority, forgiveness, word, and touch, but not prayer. (2) He heals them in synagogue, household, and outdoor settings, far removed from any sanctioned Temple, whether Jewish or Gentile. (3) All but one healing in Mark – the healing of the Syro-Phoenician girl (Mark 7: 24-30) – require that Jesus be physically present beside (or at least in visual proximity to) the person who is being healed, thus emphasizing the importance of personal relationship and compassionate presence as part of the miraculous healing process. (4) He heals on the Sabbath, regardless of what Torah and priestly custom say. (5) He rejects the purity codes of “uncleanness” as they pertain to illness, and does not equate “cleanness” with healing. (6) He does not follow the traditional medical treatments recommended in either Greek medical texts or Jewish mishnah (Cotter, Appendices A & B), and he does not use either magical amulets or Jewish religious rituals (eg. sacrificial offerings), all of which suggest he is getting divine assistance in a novel form that bypasses all previously known ways of God’s acting in the world to relieve suffering, and that obviates the need for the Jerusalem Temple. (7) He does not ask for monetary payment, and he usually does not ask for an “honour payment” of public recognition; both of these values subvert the honour/shame paradigm. (8) He does not heal everyone who comes to him in the beginning, only “many” of the people who gather in the crowd scene of 1:32-34 (although by 6:53-56, he is healing everyone). (9) Jesus does not himself bring anyone back from the dead. (In the story about Jairus’s daughter, in Mark 5:21-24, 35-43, Jesus says the girl is not dead, but sleeping; and in the Passion sequence, the young man at the tomb says that “Jesus has been raised,” not “Jesus has raised himself”). (10) All of the diseases that Jesus heals are attributable, in modern terms, to disorders of the endocrine system and central nervous system, and none involve sudden regeneration of lost limbs (which would be a truly non-Newtonian event!) (11) Jesus has no patience for “supernatural appurtenances” or the praise and honour that accompany them, yet is able to heal his patients instantly – no waiting period is required, no cleansing period is required, no special invocation of biblical memory is required, no special anything is required, except for one thing: faith on the petitioner’s part (plus, it goes without saying, divine intervention on God’s part).

Mark’s claims pose problems for the growing Christian community. In Mark’s gospel, Jesus is clearly chosen by God to carry out a mission of (1) healing and (2) teaching, but he’s not very sellable. He’s not very divine. Further, he is a Jewish Messiah who is in the Torah’s face, who is blatantly cherry-picking which laws of Torah to keep (eg. Exod. 20:12-16; Deut. 6:4-5; Lev. 19:18), and which ones to reject (eg. Exod. 31:12-17; Lev. 13:9-17; 15:25-30). (This tendency of Mark does not go down well with Matthew, who is intent on showing that Jesus fulfilled Jewish prophecy and preached the proper understanding of Torah.) In addition, Mark does not try to link the way Jesus healed people to the way in which Hebrew prophets such as Elisha healed people. Elisha, by way of contrast to Jesus, never personally meets with his illustrious patient, the Syrian general Namaan, but instead sends messengers to tell Namaan that he can be cleansed of his skin disease if he ritually bathes seven times in the Jordan River (2 Kings 5:1-14). A short while after this, Elisha punishes his greedy servant by giving him Namaan’s leprosy (as if leprosy is wrapped up in a neat little box that is within Elisha’s power to give!). Mark’s Jesus, one intuits, would not have taken kindly to a healer who claimed to have the power to purposely afflict a man and all his descendants with leprosy (2 Kings 25-27); nor would Mark’s Jesus have appreciated the way in which Elisha commissions his servant to take the staff of the man of God (a staff presumably imbued with divine healing powers) to try to heal the Shunammite woman’s dead (or possibly comatose) son. Elisha’s commission fails, and only when the boy’s mother insists does he physically visit the boy to say prayers, and so bring him back to life. According to Wendy Cotter, the Shunammite woman is not Jewish (52); however, the passage in 2 Kings shows she has faith in the god of Elisha.

At this point, it’s hard not to think of Mark’s tale of the Syro-Phoenician woman and her gravely ill daughter (Mark 7:24-30), which is the only occasion in Mark when Jesus performs a distance healing, that is, a healing on a person he hasn’t seen or touched. This is a confusing passage. We have some of the same elements as in the raising of the Shunammite woman’s son: a Gentile mother requests a healing from a man of God; the healer’s initial response is somewhat dismissive; the mother persists; the healer relents, and the child is healed. If Mark were trying to draw a connection between Elisha and Jesus, he would have shown Jesus following the mother to her home and healing the girl with prayers. Yet Mark, it seems, would rather show Jesus doing a distance healing than a prayer healing. Remarkably, Mark places the power of faith and compassionate presence ahead of the power of prayer when it comes to healing (a point further reinforced by Mark’s reiteration in 6:1-6 of one of his major premises, where he implies that Jesus has no power to heal those in his hometown because most lack faith (cf. Mt 13:58))! In Mark, prayer is important when it comes to Jesus’ personal relationship with God (eg. 1:35; 6:46;14:32), but Mark doesn’t show Jesus speaking prayers when “healing action” is taking place. Rather, Mark shows Jesus using authority (commanding demons to come out) (1:23-27; 5:1-20; 9:14-29); giving forgiveness (2:1-12); speaking words that build on or interact with the petitioner’s own faith (1:40-45; 2:1-12; 3:1-6; 5:24-34; 5:35-43; 10:46-52); touching or laying on hands (1:29-31; 6:54-56; 7:31-37; 8:22-26); and using a combination of two or more of these (eg. 5:35-43; 9:14-29). Interestingly, when the disciples ask Jesus in Chapter 9:28 why they could not cast out the “demon” of the epileptic boy (9:14-29), Jesus says to them, “This kind can come out only through prayer [and fasting].” But does Jesus mean prayer in the midst of an exorcism (similar to a televangelist’s faith healing), or does he mean prayer of the sort he conducts in private, a practice of spiritual discipline (as we would understand that term) which gradually enhances one’s ability to hear and understand God? It is not clear from the text.

Posted in Divine Love, Gospel of Mark, healing miracles, historical Jesus, Mark (Jesus' great nephew), Matthew's and Luke's intent, Realspiritik, relationship with God and tagged brain-soul connection, ethical mysticism | Leave a Comment

11 Feb 2012

TBM20: Definition of Status Addiction

One of the great advantages of walking the Spiral Path in fellowship with God and your guardian angels is that you’re constantly being encouraged to learn new things and meet new people. You’re constantly being encouraged to let go of belief systems that are holding you back in your quest to know your full potential as a child of God.

“Living your full potential” is another way of saying “living your soul purpose.” It’s a positive, hopeful concept, one that Jesus son of Joseph taught his own followers 2,000 years ago. Jesus described the quest to know yourself and live according to your soul purpose as “entering the kingdom of the heavens.” It’s not really God’s kingdom you’re entering (though parts of the Bible describe it as such). It’s your own little kingdom — your own little corner of God’s spiritual kitchen. It’s the truth about yourself you have to understand so you can better help other people.

The Apostle Paul hated and feared Jesus’ teachings about “the Kingdom.” He was determined to snuff out Jesus’ teachings on the nature of the soul because he (Paul) wanted to help preserve the status quo. The status quo protected the rights and privileges of the people at the top of the social pyramid — the priests, the kings, the lawmakers, and the chosen bloodlines of their families.

Things haven’t changed much since then, eh?

The danger in Jesus’ teachings was — and is — the lack of “fuel” for people who are addicted to status. By that I mean people who are physiologically addicted to status. People who are biologically addicted to status. People whose dopamine receptors and orexin receptors (to greatly simplify) respond in imbalanced ways to an ingestion of “status points.” (You can read more about this in the post called “The Corruption of Free Will Through Addiction.”)

Unfortunately, not much useable research has been done on this topic, but I’m hopeful that, in time, researchers in cross-disciplinary studies will come together to discuss the reality of status addiction from all angles: neuroscience combined with psychiatry, education theory, sociology, parenting skills, and Twelve Step programs.

Status addiction, like any other addiction disorder, isn’t a black-or-white psycho/social/medical issue but a spectrum of need. At one end of the spectrum are the people who only occasionally use the substance. Sure, they have cravings, but other factors in their lives help them keep a lid on their using.

At the other end of the spectrum are the full-blown addicts, the ones who can’t get through a few hours let alone a few days without a fix. The behaviour of a full-blown addict makes sense only to the addict himself or herself. To everyone else, the status addict’s behaviour is cruel. Lacking in empathy. Intolerant. Judgmental. Perfectionistic. Demanding. Controlling. Angry. Abusive. And in a constant state of denial.

Sound familiar? Everyone knows a person who’s chosen the path of status addiction. They’re the bullies, tyrants, narcissists, and psychopaths of the world. They’re the ones who thrive at a biological level on the idea that they’re better than other people. Better or smarter or faster or stronger. Nicer. More generous to others or more obedient to God than you. More deserving of praise, reward, health, and wealth than you.

It’s not in a status addict’s best interests to agree in principle with the idea that God doesn’t play favourites. Nor is it in a status addict’s best interests to agree in principle with the idea that human beings are responsible for their own choices, including the choice to be angry, cruel, and abusive.

Being around a status addict makes you feel as if you need a gas mask and protective armour. ((C) Image*After)

It’s important to understand that the Apostle Paul was convinced God plays favourites. Paul’s Letter to the Romans explains in gory detail who will be saved by God and who won’t (or who won’t be saved at first, anyway). For Paul, there’s no question that Christians are better than other people. There’s also no question, when you read Paul’s convoluted thesis about “Sin,” that he himself was trapped by the selfish behaviours of status addiction.

If you find all the places in Romans where Paul talks about cosmic “Sin” and replace the word “Sin” with “status addiction,” you’ll quickly realize that Paul was a man in a state of denial about his own addiction issues. He didn’t want to take responsibility for his own choices, and he was prepared to invent ever more status-soaked theologies to explain why he wasn’t responsible for the way he felt inside his own head.

I want to emphasize an important point, though. Paul knew what he was doing. He wasn’t mentally incompetent in a legal or moral or medical sense. He maintained a grip on many of his mental faculties, including his ability to write cogently and logically; his ability to manipulate and coerce others in subtle, sophisticated ways; and his ability to stay clearly focussed on tasks and goals. He wasn’t dysfunctional in the way that a person with a serious, untreated psychotic disorder is dysfunctional. He knew what he was doing and he wanted to do it so he and his followers could acquire more status points.

Paul, in fact, was so shrewd in his observations about human nature that he understood what tyrants such as Pol Pot have failed to understand. Paul understood that if you want to build a stable social structure to support the status needs of those at the top of the pyramid, you have to put an effective leash on the status-seeking behaviours of everyone, even the people at the top. Otherwise, chaos runs rampant as countless individuals seek a “hit” of status at the expense of their neighbours.

Paul’s leash is humility. And it’s as effective a scam today as it was 2,000 years ago, judging by this quote from Rick Warren’s book The Purpose-Driven Life (Rick Warren, The Purpose-Driven Life (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002)):

“Cultivating community takes humility. Self-importance, smugness, and stubborn pride destroy fellowship faster than anything else. Pride builds walls between people; humility builds bridges. Humility is the oil that smoothes and soothes relationships. That’s why the Bible says, ‘Clothe yourselves with humility toward one another.’ The proper dress for fellowship is a humble attitude.

The rest of that verse says, ‘. . . because, God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble.’ This is the other reason we need to be humble: Pride blocks God’s grace in our lives, which we must have in order to grow, change, heal, and help others. We receive God’s grace by humbly admitting that we need it. The Bible says anytime we are prideful, we are living in opposition to God! That is a foolish and dangerous way to live (page 148).”

Humility and humbleness. Are they the same thing? I argue they’re not the same. Humility is what Paul and others have taught as a leash on the selfishness of status addiction. Humbleness, on the other hand, is what Jesus taught as a tonic for the wounds caused by status addiction.

Warren says, “Humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less. Humility is thinking more of others. Humble people are so focused on serving others, they don’t think of themselves (page 148).”

Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!

(I loved the TV show Lost in Space when I was a kid.)

If you try to always think of others, and never think of your own needs, you’ll become one messed-up puppy.

I tried this whole dissolve-yourself-in-service-to-others gig for three whole years in the “middle phase” of my spiritual journey, and guess what happened? I ended up being an enabler for status-addicts.

There’s nothing a status-addict loves more than having an obedient, admiring, selfless acolyte to kick around. (Well, having a whole group of acolytes would probably be better than having just one doormat to wipe his/her feet on, but even one servant is better than none.)

Humility is not the oil that smoothes and soothes relationships. Forgiveness is the oil that smoothes and soothes relationships. Forgiveness and tough love are closely linked to each other because both require you to dredge up your own soul-given courage. Knowing yourself and trusting yourself also require great courage.

Being a doormat and an enabler of status addicts may be the easy way out, but it’s not the divine way out.

Did you know that Paul almost never discusses forgiveness in his known letters? Yeah, that’s because if you tell people they have the power within themselves to forgive themselves and each other, they may discover on their own that we’re all equally amazing children of God and nobody — but nobody — is “chosen.”

Couldn’t have that, now, could we?

______

P.S. After I posted the body of this article, I was prompted by my guardian angels to look closely at the index of Rick Warren’s book. His book is divided into a preface plus 40 chapters (one chapter for each day of the “journey”). There are many footnotes. Most of the footnotes give scriptural references to support Warren’s argument, and a few refer to recent Christian publications he admires.

Of the 787 footnotes in this book, only 7 refer to the biblical Gospel of Mark (with one footnote listing 2 different verses in Mark). (There’s a ninth footnote reference to Mark, but this is for Mark 16:15, which is generally believed to be a later addition to the gospel).

The Gospel of Mark is a troublesome book for evangelical and conservative Christians because this is the story of a physician-scholar who gives up his status and breaks a lot of religious rules in order to help the poor, the disenfranchised, and the sick. It can also be called the Gospel of Forgiveness, ’cause that’s what Jesus does throughout.

As I said, it’s a troublesome book. (You can read more about the dispute between Mark and Paul at “Choosing Between Paul and Jesus,” “The Case for Mark Versus Paul,” and “Mark’s Themes of Understanding and Strength.”

+43

Posted in forgiveness, Gospel of Mark, humbleness, humility, Kingdom teachings, Paul vs Jesus, psychopathy, status addiction, The Blonde Mystic and tagged Jesus vs Paul, religion + mental illness | Leave a Comment

03 Dec 2011

RS16: Angels in Blue Jeans

(c) Jamie MacDonald. Used with permission of the artist.

A: Some people who are reading this discussion might say it’s unfair of us to suddenly throw brain science onto the same page alongside spirituality, to insist your teachings 2,000 years ago were built around ideas that have only been proven by science in the past few decades. How would you respond to that?

J: Well, the thing about science is that scientific research always lags behind the human mind, the human imagination. Research only evolves because somebody somewhere has had a great idea and wants to push the idea out of the 4D realm of consciousness and into the 3D world of physical reality. So it doesn’t phase me at all to hear people grumbling about the brain science. The honest truth is that I was a pioneer in the deep interconnection between science and faith. Sure, my ideas were rough around the edges, as early theories usually are. But that was the focus of my ministry.

A: I can hear the scornful scoffing from here — the outrage from pious Christians.

J: Well, I wasn’t a Pauline Christian. Never have been, never will be. Nor was I a devout Jew. So pious Christians and pious Jews can be as angry as they like. It won’t change the fact that I tried to found a radically new religious movement based on the most loving values I could find, regardless of where I found them. I was equally happy to gather insights from folk medicine as from Greek philosophy. In fact, I found more truths about God in the medicine chests of Galilean peasants than I ever found in Plato or Aristotle. Philosophers who live their lives inside their heads instead of their hearts have rarely contributed anything of value to the betterment of human lives. If I had a time machine (which I don’t, of course) I’d go back in time and invite Plato to spend a month in the copper mines and then ask him if he’d like to revise his bloody Republic.

A: Just a month?

J: He probably wouldn’t have lasted more than a month. The mines were brutal places.

A: There’s nothing like walking a mile in a slave’s shoes to understand how unjust slavery is.

J: Yes. I never became a slave — not in legal terms — but I went from a life of great privilege to a life of great hardship, and it altered all my ideas of, well, of everything. I wouldn’t have been able to see the truth about the Divine Heart if a lot of very powerful people hadn’t kicked the crap out of me.

A: Tell me more about that.

J: I’d been raised on a lot of insufferable ideas about how “important” I was and how “special” I was. I got it with my morning olives, you could say. “Yeshua, remember who you are. Yeshua, behave according to your station. Yeshua, don’t talk to those . . . those . . . filthy peasants. Yeshua, remember who you are!”

A: So who were you?

J: I was a descendant of the High Priest Onias III. One of many descendants, I should add. He had a lot of fertile children. John the Baptist was also a descendant of his. So technically speaking, John and I were cousins, though so distantly related that it only mattered to fanatical devotees of genealogy.

A: Was anyone keeping track of these things by the time you were born? Did anyone care that your great-great-whatever-grandfather had been High Priest of the Jerusalem Temple?

J: Oh yes. It was a big deal. It carried a lot a cachet. It was like saying today, “I’m a descendant of Queen Victoria.” The children of Queen Victoria married into many of the royal houses of Europe, and her descendants are spread all over the place. My family — on my mother’s side — was kind of like that. Our bloodline was considered “sacred.”

A: Even though your father was Greek.

J: Even then. He was talented and ambitious and indispensable as far as the Romans were concerned. He had a real talent for math. He could do complex calculations in his head, and he had a wonderful eye for architectural design. His name isn’t remembered in the annals of Roman architectural history, but he built some pretty memorable streetscapes in the newly conquered lands of Syria and Palestine.

A: He added to the status and prestige of Augustus.

J: Yes. His acceptance among the Romans made him a good match for my mother as far as my Jewish grandfather was concerned. Strong political connections. But, strange as it may seem, my parents’ marriage was a love match. They loved each other deeply. After my father died, when I was about four and my oldest brother, James, was sixteen, my mother lived as a widow in mourning for the rest of her very long life.

A: She was a widow during the small window of time when Roman marriage laws gave a measure of independence to widows who had at least three living children.

J: Yes. Few people see the significance of the list of my family’s names that Mark includes in his gospel. Mark 6:3 says, “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters [plural] here with us?” There’s no mention of my father. There’s no mention of a step-father, either. Mark is clearly telling his audience that Mary had full property rights as a widow under Roman marriage law. It means she was wealthy and well connected, because only wealthy people could afford to provide the physiological needs and safety needs required to raise such a large family, and only well connected women could side-step the economic and cultural pressure on them to marry again. It’s right there in Mark. Plain as day.

A: In an era when infant mortality rates were high and most adults didn’t make it to “middle age” as we define middle age, it was important to note your family’s size and health and economic situation. It told readers something about who you were.

J: I grew up in a family that had enough money and enough prestige to guarantee that I had good nutrition and shelter while I was growing up (i.e. provide for my physiological needs); to protect me from being abused by robbers or slave-holding masters or religious masters (i.e. provide for my safety needs); to provide me with a family setting where I felt loved and respected (i.e. meet my needs for love & belonging); and to insist that I receive a strong education in Greek and Jewish philosophy, law, rhetoric, and geometry (i.e. give me the tools to build my self-esteem).

I may have made a lot of mistakes in my youth, but because of my upbringing I had a healthy brain. This gave me a considerable biological advantage compared to many others in the first century culture I lived in. My healthy brain made it possible for me to learn from my mistakes and ask new, harder questions about our relationship with God the Mother and God the Father. My healthy brain made me tougher and smarter than most of my peers.

A: Because you were using all parts of your brain in a balanced way. A holistic way. Not a rigid, fearful way.

J: When human beings stop being afraid of learning from their own mistakes — when they’re willing to be humble — they can do amazing things in the world.

But first — and this is the big stumbling block for status-addicted pious folk — first they have to get over themselves. They have to let go of every shred of religious chosenness and religious purity and religious salvation. They have to be willing to look God right in the eye. That’s what humbleness is. That’s what true faith is.

A: I love the way young children look their parents right in the eye and tell the truth out loud. That’s the way it should be.

J: That’s the way it actually is for angels-in-angel-form.

A: This morning my angel team shared a fascinating dream with me. They were talking about their own observations on the difference between Pauline Christianity and the kind of faith you tried to teach.

In the dream, they compared Pauline Christianity — orthodox Western Christianity — to a store that insists we each buy a fancy, expensive tuxedo. According to the store, you need to have a tuxedo on hand for that one-time-only day when you come face to face with God. You might never wear it during your lifetime as a human being. But, by golly, you better spend the money to buy it NOW so you can lock it in your closet and keep it safe for “That Day” in the future when God comes calling.

Of course, the store gets your money today . . .

You, on the other hand, would look pretty great in a tuxedo, but I know you well, and you’re no tuxedo-in-the-closet kind of guy. You’re a blue jeans kind of guy. Put on your blue jeans and go out into the world TODAY to see where you can help God TODAY. No standing on ceremony. No false humility. Just a guy with a big heart who knows what’s important in life.

Thanks, big guy. Thanks for saying what you needed to say in the way you needed to say it. We need more of this kind of courage in the world.

And thanks to my angel team, too. Couldn’t do it without you.

Food for thought (added March 3, 2015): On February 27, 2015, the National Post offered an article and video about a Canadian man who is a descendant of Queen Victoria. Hermann Leiningen carries a title, but in every other way is a normal Canadian. His story reminds me of Jesus’ story, right down to the excellent manners, quick mind, and good education. Please see “The Canadian who would be king: What it’s like to be the great-great-great grandson of Queen Victoria.”

Posted in brain-soul connection, Christ Zone, Divine Love, Gospel of Mark, Jerusalem Temple, Jesus' family of origin, Jesus' teachings, Paul vs Jesus, Realspiritik, slavery, Whole Brain Thinking and tagged Kingdom teachings | Leave a Comment

02 Aug 2011

JR62: Seventh & Final Step: Remove the Thorn in Jesus’ Flesh (That Would Be Paul)

A: We’ve talked a lot on this site and on the Concinnate Christianity blog about the differences between your teachings and Paul’s teachings. Many readers will say there’s not much evidence in the Bible for the differences you and I claim. What would you say to Progressive Christians who want to “have their Jesus and keep their Paul, too,” who want to make you, Jesus, more credible, without actually giving up any of their cherished Pauline doctrines?

J: They make me look like a dweeb, to be honest. An ineffectual, wimpy, turn-the-other-cheek kind of guy.

A: Which you were not.

J: They say they want to save me from the fundamentalist Christian right and the secular humanist left, yet they’re forcing me to sit down at the Tea Party table with Paul, which is the last place I want to be. I’m a middle of the road social democrat, and I believe with all my heart and soul that a society can’t function in a balanced way unless rights and responsibilities are given equal weight in all spheres of life. Paul was a man who taught about rights, rights, rights and not nearly enough about responsibilities. He and I had very different values.

A: Paul talks about punishments.

J: Yes. Paul talks about divine punishment and divine testing. He talks about his freedom — his right — to speak with divine authority. He talks about the need for self-discipline. He talks about divine rewards. But, you know, when you look carefully at what he’s written, he doesn’t speak to the soul of his listeners. He doesn’t challenge them to see each of their neighbours as a separate person worthy of respect. Instead he does the opposite: he encourages them to see themselves as non-distinct members of a vast “body of Christ.” Paul, instead of insisting that people build solid interpersonal boundaries — the foundation of safety and respect and mutuality between individuals — tells people to dissolve those boundaries. It sounds good on paper, but “Oneness” does not work in reality. If you encourage the dissolution of interpersonal boundaries, you’ll see to your horror that the psychopaths in your midst will jump in and seize that “Oneness” for themselves. They won’t hesitate to use it to their advantage.

A: Because they have no conscience.

J: Humans (as well as angels on the Other Side) are all part of One Family. But this isn’t the same as saying humans are all “One.” As anyone who comes from a big family knows, respect for boundaries is the grease that keeps you from killing each other.

A: It can be tricky to manoeuvre all the boundary issues in a big family.

J: Yes. You need all the brain power you can muster to stay on top of the different needs of different family members.

A: Spoken like a man who came from a big family.

J: When you’re the youngest son in a family with three older brothers and two sisters (one older, one younger), you catch on fast to the idea of watching and learning and listening to the family dynamics so you don’t get your butt kicked all the time.

A: It’s real life, that’s for sure.

J: That’s the thing. It’s real life. It’s not about going off into the desert to live as a religious hermit. It’s not about living inside walled compounds or hilltop fortresses. It’s about living with your neighbours and learning to get along with them through communication and compromise and empathy. It’s not fancy, but it works.

A: The Gospel of Mark makes this message very clear.

J: Christians have long assumed that the author of Luke truly believed in my teachings and was trying his best to convey them in a fresh way to a new generation of believers. Luke, of course, had no interest in my teachings, and was instead trying to promote Paul’s package of religio-political doctrines. This is seen most obviously in the so-called Great Omission — the complete absence in Luke of Mark’s most important theological statement. Luke cut and pasted many parts of Mark’s gospel, and thereby changed their meaning. But he didn’t even try to include the dangerous theology found in Mark 6:47 to Mark 8:27a. He ignored it and hoped it would go away.

A: Why? Why did he want it to go away?

J: Mark’s gospel, as we’ve been discussing, was a direct rebuttal of Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. Paul wrote first (years before Mark), and in the middle of his letter he included 3 linked chapters on freedom and conscience, authority and obedience, sin and salvation, as these themes revolve around food — idol meat and, more importantly, the blood and bread of Christ (1 Cor 8:1-11:1). We can call this set-piece the “Idol Meat Discourse.” In this set-piece, Paul makes a number of claims about God that Mark, following my example, found particularly galling. Mark countered those claims by writing his own 3-chapter set-piece (Mark 6:30-8:26). I’m going to call Mark’s set-piece “the Parable of the Idol Bread.” This was Mark’s head-on attack on Paul’s Eucharist.

A: Mark didn’t support the sacrament of the Last Supper?

J: Mark knew that Paul’s speech about sharing in the blood and body of Christ (1 Cor 10:14-22) was a thinly veiled Essene ritual, the occult Messianic Banquet that had grown out of earlier, more honest offerings of thanks to God. I rejected the notion of the Messianic Banquet, with its invocation of hierarchy and status addiction. Mark rejected it, too.

A: Right before Mark launches into his Parable of the Idol Bread, he includes an allegorical tale about a banquet held by Herod and the subsequent beheading of John the Baptist (which we know didn’t actually happen).

J: Yes. Mark uses a lot of sophisticated allegory in his gospel. (Plus I think the less loving aspect of him wanted to see John’s head end up on a platter, which is where he thought it belonged.) Mark leads up to his set-piece — which, of course, is an anti-Messianic-banquet — by tipping off the reader to an upcoming inversion of religious expectations. He’s telling them not to expect Paul’s easy promises and glib words about “Oneness.” He’s telling them to prepare themselves for an alternate version of Jesus’ teachings about relationship with God.

A: What was that alternate version?

View of the Galilee from Mount Tabor ((c) Free Israel Photos)

View of the Galilee from Mount Tabor. Photo credit Free Israel Photos.

J: It was a radical vision of equality before God, of inclusiveness and non-Chosenness. It was a vision of faith without status addiction. Of faith and courage in numbers. Of freedom from the slavery of the Law. The love of a mother for her children (including our Divine Mother’s love for her children!). A relationship with God founded on trust rather than fear. The healing miracles that take place in the presence of love rather than piety. The ability of people to change and let go of their hard-heartedness (ears and eyes being opened). The Garden of Eden that is all around, wherever you look, if you’re willing to see and hear the truth for yourself. The failure of both the Pharisees and the Herodians to feed the starving spiritual hearts of the people. The personal responsibility that individuals bear for the evil things they choose to do. The importance of not idolizing the words of one man. (There’s no lengthy “Sermon on the Mount” in Mark as in Matthew; in fact, there’s no sermon at all, let alone a set of laws carved on stone tablets!).

A: That’s a lot to pack into three short chapters.

J: This is why I refer to Mark’s set-piece as a parable. As with any properly written parable, the message isn’t immediately obvious. You have to use all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength in order to suss out the meaning.

A: I noticed when I was doing my research papers for a New Testament exegesis course that the setting of Mark’s Parable of the Idol Bread is crucial. Not one but two major teaching events with miraculous endings take place out in the middle of nowhere near the Sea of Galilee. There’s no proximity to important sacred sites such as Jerusalem or Jericho or the Dead Sea or the River Jordan. There’s no Greco-Roman temple or Jerusalem Temple. There’s no holy mountain. There’s no sacred stone. There’s no palace or patron’s villa. But there’s a lot of green grass, with enough room for everybody to recline in groups (as in a Roman banquet) and share the event together.

In the middle section, in Chapter 7, Mark shows you leaving Galilee to carry out more healing miracles, but these healings take place in Gentile areas — everywhere but the sacred site of David’s city. You can tell Mark doesn’t think too much of Jerusalem’s elite.

J: Mark had a scathing sense of humour, much like Jon Stewart’s. When he wrote his gospel, he was thinking of it as a parable and a play at the same time. He wanted the actions of the actors to speak to the intent of the teachings.

A: Actions speak more loudly than words.

J: Yes. He wanted people to picture the actions, the geographical movements, that changed constantly in his story but never went close to Jerusalem in the first act of his two-act play. His Jewish audience would have understood the significance of this.

A: Tell me about the Idol Bread.

J: The meaning of the bread in Mark’s parable makes more sense if you look at the Greek. In Mark’s parable, and again later at the scene of the so-called Last Supper in Mark 14, the bread in question is leavened bread — artos in the Greek — not unleavened bread, which is an entirely different word in Greek (azymos). Mark shows me constantly messing with the bread and breaking all the Jewish laws around shewbread and Shavuot bread and Passover bread. At the teaching events beside the Sea of Galilee, the bread is given to the people rather than being received from the people in ritual sacrifice. It’s torn into big hunks. It’s handed out to everyone regardless of gender or rank or clan or purity. It’s handed out with a blessing on a day that isn’t even a holy day. Nobody washes their hands first. Everyone receives a full portion of humble food. Everyone eats together.

A: If the fish in this parable are a metaphor for courage and strength (see Mark’s Themes of Understanding and Strength) then what does the bread represent?

J: Artos — which is very similar to the Greek pronoun autos, which means “self” and, with certain prepositions, “at the same time; together” — is a metaphor for the equality of all people before God. Everybody needs their daily bread regardless of status or bloodline or rank. It’s about as status-free a symbol as you can get.

A: Something tells me that got lost in the Pauline translation.

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Posted in Church of today, Essenes, First Corinthians, Gospel of Mark, Jesus Redux, Jesus' family of origin, Mark (Jesus' great nephew), Mark vs Paul, Matthew's and Luke's intent, Mother God, Paul vs Jesus, relationship with God and tagged Jesus vs Paul, Mark vs Paul | Leave a Comment

05 Jun 2011

JR47: "Knowledge" Versus "Truth"

A: Tell me how you would explain the difference between “knowledge” and “truth.” There seem to be a lot of different theories floating around.

J: Here’s one of the problems with relying too heavily on words. One person’s “knowledge” is another person’s “truth.” One person’s “knowledge” is another person’s “wisdom.” One person’s “knowledge” is another person’s “fact.” Words can be very messy, very sloppy. It’s important for individuals to be clear about their use of abstract words like these.

A: Okay. How do you, as a soul-in-angel-form and speaker of the English language, use the word “knowledge”?

J: I use the word “knowledge” to mean an accumulation of facts. Lots of raw facts. These facts may or may not be connected to each other. But there are lots of them. Lots of different facts that can be accessed from memory or from sources such as books or computers to answer specific questions of fact.

A: Like the question and answer pairs on Jeopardy.

J: Exactly. These question and answer pairs rely on logic and reason. But there’s usually little emotional content. And there’s no need for “insight” or “understanding” or “truth.” The facts speak for themselves. Of course, as human Jeopardy contenders recently discovered, a honkin’ big computer can access raw facts — “knowledge” — faster than most human brains can.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear(respect) the Lord, and turn away from evil. It will be a healing for your flesh and a refreshment for your body” (Proverbs 3:5-8). If you really want to heal your relationship with God, try humbly accepting you probably have a lot of old beliefs that are messing up the way your brain works. Certain beliefs about God can “freeze up” your neural networks and prevent your brain from being able to process Divine guidance. Without easy access to your Divine guidance, you’re limited to the ideas inside your own brain. And let’s face it, some of those ideas are probably pretty stupid (like Young Earth Creationism). The Truth about you and God (a wonderful Truth!) is already deep within you, but first you have to melt the ice that’s keeping you from feeling your Soul pathways. Photo credit JAT 2022.

J (Cont): Having said that, I want to make it clear that I’m not dissing the importance of “knowledge.” It’s important to be able to remember and access facts. Facts give information about things that are already known, already certain — things that are “a done deal.” Facts help ground the learning process. In fact, learning can’t take place at all in the absence of facts. This is true even in fields such as philosophy and theology. The universe isn’t reinventing itself every few seconds like some big relativistic, existential “symbol” in the sky (as some religious philosophers would have you believe). There are fixed facts, fixed historical realities that guide all choices made by God and God’s angels. The universe has a history — a factual history — that can’t be changed. The universe’s past has a measurable effect on its present. The past matters. And the past is fact — not fiction. The past can’t be altered. Time is linear. Even for God.

A: This will come as a great disappointment to fans of time travel stories. And to theologians who insist that All Time has been known to God since the very beginning. God’s foreknowledge of all that will happen in the future is the basis of Christian “predestination” — the doctrine that says God already knows ahead of time who will be saved in the End Times.

J: Another example of old lies begetting new lies, as you put it. The first lie, of course, was the lie that souls desperately need to be saved from hell and judgment and damnation. But souls don’t need to be saved. Why would God create billions of defective souls that need to be saved by . . . televangelists? Salvation-of-the-soul is a goofy idea from start to finish.

A: But a very profitable one.

J: It’s an interesting fact of neurophysiology that certain forms of serious psychological dysfunction in human beings are accompanied by damage to the parietal lobes of the brain — parts of the brain which are crucial to a person’s ability to relate to time and space. When the volume of the parietal lobes is reduced, and when the density of glial cells is diminished in the parietal-temporal regions, an individual will experience problems understanding boundaries (i.e. his or her location in space) and problems with empathy (i.e his or her location in both time and space — also called boundary issues). These are the individuals who can’t learn from their own mistakes, who can’t empathize with other people’s feelings, who constantly invade other people’s “time and space.”

A: The narcissists.

J: Yes. A narcissist is someone who’s become inwardly focussed to the point of selfishness and self-absorption because he or she has no “brain health” in the areas of time and space — no ability to accurately identify the factual boundaries that surround each soul. She literally can’t see where she ends and another person begins. She can’t see that she’s a separate entity — a separate consciousness — from her neighbour. The boundaries between her and her neighbour exist and are real and are factual. But she can’t see them. It’s all blurry to her. The boundaries exist, but she behaves as if they don’t exist. She behaves as if she and her neighbour “are all one,” as if the neighbour is merely an extension of her own core consciousness. The neighbour, of course, is expected to “behave” — to obey her needs and wishes without question and to reinforce her image of herself as a wonderful person. There’s a perfect analogy for this mindset in the realm of science fiction: Star Trek’s hive queen of the Borg.

A: See, I knew there was good reason for me to be watching the Space Channel.

J: The great thing about the way the Borg Queen character is written is her calm, serene, elevated disposition. She believes her own propaganda about making life better for all the individuals she incorporates into her collective. She goes around telling everyone “we’re all one, we’re all equal.” But what she actually means is, “I’m the only one who really exists, and all you drones are merely inferior beings who were put here to serve me” . . . which brings us to the question of “truth.”

A: The way you’ve just described the Borg Queen reminds me — none too pleasantly — of the modern apocalyptic prophet I spent too much time with a few years ago: Grace. She was always speaking “the truth” that “we’re all one, we’re all equal.” She had the same calm, serene detachment as the Borg Queen. It gave her such an air of believability — even wisdom. She seemed to have let go of all her worries about the past. Very appealing to somebody like me who was dogged by feelings of guilt and shame.

She seemed so believable — until you challenged her. When you challenged Grace’s superiority, her infallibility, it was like a switch went off in her brain. She switched instantly from calm, affable charm to vicious, vengeful violence. The smallest thing could set her off. I still remember the murderous look in her eye one day when I told her that she herself had caused an electrical short in a lighting fixture by twisting the fan/light combo while it was still attached on one side to the ceiling. I could see that she wanted to throw me down the stairs because I’d pointed out her obvious error. The mistake was entirely hers. But she didn’t want to hear about it. She couldn’t handle responsibility for her own mistakes.

J: Good example — though painful. Grace was a person with significant impairment of her biological brain function, as you know. She was able to process “knowledge” — facts — well enough to function in society. She could remember that gas needed to be put in the car, that food had to be bought and prepared. But as for “truth” . . . “truth” was beyond her capacity to grasp because of damage to her biological brain from early, unhealed, profound childhood abuse. Physical, emotional, sexual, and psychological abuse. As a result of the abuse, and the biological damage caused by it, Grace couldn’t read “intent.” She couldn’t understand or be honest about her own inner intent. Her intent was to prove to other people that she was better than they were. That’s the honest truth. The truth is that everything Grace did — all her choices — were shaped by her narcissistic intent. Her words about “oneness” and “equality” meant nothing because her actual intent said something different.

A: So you’re drawing a strong link between “intent” and “truth.”

J: Very much so. Facts by themselves are not “truth,” though “truth” is not “truth” without a foundation of facts. Truth — as I’m defining it — is an observation or insight about the way in which seemingly random facts are linked together by underlying strands of intent. The intent is like the subfloor of the factual foundation. The facts lie on top of the intent. The truth builds on both the intent and the facts. For something to be “true” in a philosophical way, it must objectively assess both a collection of facts AND the underlying intent underneath those facts.

A: Are you saying that a person’s “intent” and his/her “starting assumptions” are the same thing?

J (shaking his head): No. A person’s inner intent is more like his inner “purpose” or “goal.” Your intent speaks to the principle of time — where you were in the past, where you are now, and where you want to go. It’s more like conscious motivation. It’s the motivation that gets you out of bed in the morning and keeps you going, even when things aren’t going well.

A: So it’s teleology?

J: Again, no. Teleology implies there’s a finite, definable end goal or a purpose shaped by the Law of Cause and Effect. “Intent” is not as simple as teleological purpose. “Intent” goes to the very heart of consciousness — what it means to exist as a living consciousness who is separate from (though connected to) other living consciousnesses. Intent can be thought of as a cohesive set of interconnected choices — a series of small choices that, when put together, create one big “meta-choice.” That “meta-choice” is your intent. At a quantum level, “meta-choices” shape the way in which certain energies can and will flow.

A: Can you give us an analogy for that?

J: Sure. I’ll use an analogy I’ve used before — the sower of seeds.

A: I think I see where this is headed . . .

J: In the parable of the sower [Thomas 9; Mark 4], the person — the soul — is the sower of seeds. The seeds represent the person’s potential, the person’s ability to learn, grow, change, and create. But the sower doesn’t create out of thin air. He must plant the seeds — the seeds of potential — in the right place if he wants them to grow. His decision on where to sow the seeds is his intent — his “meta-choice.” The meta-choice is what determines which seeds can and will grow. The seeds don’t grow equally well in all intents. Where seeds fall on a “ground” or “subfloor” of rock, they fail to root and they produce no harvest. Where seeds fall on patches of thorny weeds, they don’t grow and they’re eaten by grubs and caterpillars. There’s nothing wrong with the seeds themselves. The problem lies in the choice of where to plant them. The problem lies with the intent.

A: So a narcissist’s true intent is like the choice to sow seeds on rocky ground or in thorny patches.

J: Or in a bed of fire, as the church likes to recommend.

Seeds don’t grow easily on this rocky ground. “Jesus said: Look, there was a man who came out to sow seed. He filled his hand with seed and threw it about. Some fell onto the road, and birds ate it. Some fell onto rocks and could not root and produced no grain. Some fell into patches of thorny weeds that kept it from growing, and grubs ate it. Some seed fell upon good soil and grew and produced good grain. It was 60 units per measure and 120 units per measure (Gospel of Thomas 9).” Photo credit JAT 2023.

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Posted in "4 S's", boundary issues, empathy, End Times, Gospel of Mark, insight, intent, Jesus Redux, meta-choice, monism, My Spiral Path, narcissism, parables, sense of time & timing, Truth and tagged brain-soul connection | Leave a Comment

29 May 2011

JR44: Mark’s Themes of Understanding and Strength

This is a research paper I wrote in 2009 for a course on New Testament exegesis. It explains in detail some of the major themes found in the Gospel of Mark. I used Wordperfect’s Greek language symbols to type key words that were relevant to the argument. A few of these Greek letters didn’t survive the “cut and paste process,” so I’ll have to substitute English typeface where necessary (mostly for the vowels “eta,” “iota,” “upsilon,” and “omega”). Sorry about that.

P.S. The paper pasted here is as I wrote it, including the endnotes, where I confess I don’t yet understand how the word “artos” (leavened bread, loaf) is being used by Mark. Since then (with Jesus’ help), I’ve figured it out.

“Now the disciples had forgotten to bring any bread; and they had only one loaf with them in the boat. And he cautioned them, saying, ‘Watch out — beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod.’ They said to one another, ‘It is because we have no bread.’ And becoming aware of it, Jesus said to them, ‘Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes, and fail to see? Do you have ears, and fail to hear? And do you not remember? When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?’ They said to him, ‘Twelve.’ And the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?’ And they said to him, ‘Seven.’ Then he said to them, ‘Do you not yet understand?'” (Mark 8:14-21). Photo credit Hemera Technologies 2001-2003.

RADICAL MESSIAH AND THE SHEMA: MARK’S THEMES OF
UNDERSTANDING AND STRENGTH

Graham Stanton, in his discussion about the Gospel of Mark, refers to “Mark’s genius as a story-teller” (41), and says, “perhaps Mark should be seen not so much as a block of toffee (form criticism) or as a string of pearls (redaction criticism), but as a piece of rope with interwoven strands” (41). Later in the chapter, he asks these questions: “Why was this gospel written? Many scholars have proposed quite specific historical or theological settings. But they are usually able to make reasonable sense of only one or two of the many interrelated strands which the evangelist develops” (57-58). One strand which I feel has been overlooked is Mark’s overt addition to the Shema (Deut. 6:4-9) in Chapter12:29 of the Gospel. So obvious would this change have been to a Jewish Christian audience in the early to mid-60’s CE that the question of Mark’s purpose must be raised. What was he signalling to his audience with this change? Why did he dare add to a well-known prayer that, according to the Jewish Study Bible, was being formally recited late in the Second Temple period (379)? It is the thesis of this paper that Mark did not accidentally alter the Shema through lack of knowledge, and that he did not accidentally link the Shema to the commandment in Leviticus 19:18 to love one’s neighbour as oneself (12:31). There was a purpose to his addition of the phrase “and with all your mind (διανοίας)” to the existing formulation of “you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart (καρδίας) and with all your soul (ψυχnς) and with all your might (iσχύος).” This supposition is supported by Mark’s repetition of the Shema in 12:32-33, altered yet again, this time without genitive cases, and with a changed emphasis to understanding (συνέσεως). Here the sympathetic – and sensible (νουνεχwς) – scribe is allowed by Mark to voice the two most important commandments: “You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that ‘he is one, and besides him there is no other; and ‘to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, with all the strength,’ and ‘to love one’s neighbor as oneself,’ – this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” The penny then drops for readers as Jesus says to the scribe, “You are not far from the kingdom of God” (present tense verb, 12:34). Mark has just presented a major clue to unravelling some of the strands of his gospel.

The altered Shema is part of a teaching chreia (12:28-34) that can be seen, it is argued here, as an early creedal statement, the climax and summary of Jesus’ teachings about what it means to be “not far from the kingdom of God” (12:34). It is difficult to understand Jesus’ teachings about the kingdom of God, says Mark in different ways throughout the Gospel. Even Jesus’ closest friends, the disciples, do not understand (4:10-13). The whole thing can be boiled down to two commandments (12:28-31), which sound easy at first, but are much more difficult to practice than the old system of “burnt offerings and sacrifices,” a system which requires Jews to show unswerving loyalty. (Loyalty, not private emotion, is the meaning of the verb aheb, “love,” as it applies to the Shema, according to the Jewish Study Bible (380) and Sakenfeld (376)). A big part of Jesus’ version of faith, according to Mark, is the requirement that disciples use their minds. Fideism is not acceptable. God’s faithful must question the specific ways in which religious teachings are being misused (e.g. 2:23-28; 3:1-6; 7:1-23; 12:38-40; 12:41-44), just as in the past Jews once questioned harmful religious and societal conventions (e.g. Exod. 20:2-6; 21:1 – 22:16; 22:20-12). (Mark thus shows Jesus to be following the “wilderness spirit” of the Sinai Covenant in the Torah (cf. Mark 1:3,4,12), as opposed to the Temple and hierarchy-based Zion Covenant presented in the Psalms and the Deuteronomistic History.[1]) God’s faithful must be willing to not only open their hearts and souls to God’s kingdom, but also their minds (διάνοια) – their innate capacity to think and understand in moral ways (Harder 125). Moral thinking and moral decision-making is a higher form of loving God than being obedient and loyal to the laws of the Zion Covenant.

This kind of “thinking faith,” directed towards loving God (e.g. 1:35-39; 15:25-32), loving others (eg. 9:33-37; 10:41-45), and loving themselves (e.g. 12:31)[2], will put them in opposition to others – family (e.g. 3:21; 3:31-35; 10:28-31), friends (e.g. 6:1-3; 14:66-72), Pharisees (e.g. 3:6, 12:13-17), scribes and chief priests (e.g. 2:6-9, 3:16-17; 11:18), and Gentiles (e.g. 5:14-17; 15:16-20) – who choose to follow honour-oriented traditions. Understanding is not an instantaneous gift from God, however (clearly evidenced in 8:14-21)[3]. Nor is understanding a gift conferred only on the disciples closest to Jesus (e.g. 5:33-34; 9:33-37; 10:17-22; 12:34; 14:6-9). Understanding is a long, difficult process which disciples must willingly participate in (e.g. 4:13; 4:33-34; 10:23-27; 13:9-13). It requires strength, a theme which Mark repeatedly intertwines with the requirement for understanding, as shall be shown. God’s faithful must commit their strength (iσχύς) to a process spread out over time and geography (hence Jesus’ travels back and forth across Galilee and adjacent territories) and also over boundaries of class and honour (hence Jesus’ willingness to heal and teach people from disadvantaged groups). It is a process open to all people, regardless of race, religion, gender, state of mental and/or physical health, wealth, or status. But it is a difficult process.

Mark – for all that he is trying to describe a “thinking faith” – seems very wary of directly invoking Hellenistic or Judeo-Hellenistic notions of philosophy, rational thought, or “wisdom” (σοφία). Σοφία is used 51 times in the New Testament, but only once in Mark (on the lips of the surprised synagogue attendees in 6:2). The adjective σοφός appears 22 times in the New Testament, but not once in Mark. Whatever claim Mark is making, it is not a claim for σοφία (wisdom, insight, intelligence, knowledge, divine knowledge). He prefers the cognates of the more “practical” verbs συνίημι (understand, comprehend, perceive, have insight into) and διαλογίζομαι (discuss, argue, consider, reason, wonder about, question). It is notable that, although he uses the adverb νουνεχwς once, and the verb νοέω a few times, he does not use the Greek word νοuς, a noun meaning perception, understanding, thoughts, or reason. Νοuς is attested since Linear B; it was used by Plato to mean “the highest of the three parts of the soul” (Harder 122), and still later used in the post-canonical, apocryphal era of Jewish literature in a sense associated with the will or deliberation (Harder 125). It is difficult to tell whether Mark avoids using νοuς because in Hebrew there is no direct equivalent for it, and the Septuagint rarely uses it (Harder 124) (compare to Paul, who uses it in Romans and 1 Corinthians); or whether Mark avoids using it because he has a general tendency to not include abstract “wisdom words” such as “peace,” “hope,” and “righteousness” words in his writing[4].

It is interesting to ponder Mark’s non-use of the “wisdom words” frequently attested in books of the Old Testament, as well as in the other Gospels, Acts, and the accepted letters of Paul. Certainly it can be argued that these words are malleable enough to serve any purpose (“Peace in our time!”). Perhaps, by not making abundant use of “wisdom words,” Mark hopes to make his readers think, to apply their minds in new ways to the difficult question of what it means to be close to the kingdom of God. (Mark himself lends this impression in 13:14, where he suddenly interjects with “let the reader understand (νοείτω).”) “Out with the poetry, in with the praxis,” seems to be his approach. He therefore intentionally avoids “telling us” at length what Jesus said, and insists on “showing us” what Jesus did – what Jesus’ actions and choices were, where he went, who he talked to, who he aided, and what he did despite his friends’ lack of courage, faith, and love. Mark’s Radical Messiah is a man of relatively few words who teaches by example, and is not interested in raising his own status. (Even the scribe in 12:28-34 is accorded great dignity by Jesus – and also by Mark.) Therefore, for Mark, the examples are what matter most. (By contrast, Matthew’s Jesus seems very fond of the sound of his own voice, and John’s Jesus has a case of the “I ams.”)

It is clear from a review of word usage articles that, by the first century CE, there was a blurring between Jewish and Hellenistic concepts of heart, mind, and soul, and this may explain why Mark felt he needed to add to the traditional phrasing of the Shema. In the Septuagint translation of the Shema, for instance, leb is rendered as καρδία; yet Holloday’s Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon shows 11 different meanings for leb: the physical heart organ; the seat of vitality; the seat of one’s feelings and impulses; mind, character, disposition, inclination, loyalty, concern; determination, courage, high morale; intention, purpose; mind, attention, consideration, understanding; the self; conscience; metaphorically the “interior” or “middle”; and finally the organizing power of living beings (nefesh – the word which is translated as ψυχή in the Septuagint’s version of the Shema ) (171-172). Harder points out that Septuagint translators rendered the Hebrew leb or lebab as νοuς only six times, as διάνοια 38 times, and as καρδία in most other instances (124). Sorg reports that the Septuagint occasionally translates leb as ψυχή (181). Meanwhile, ψυχή itself (used 101 times in the New Testament) encompasses a broad range of meanings: the whole person or creature; a person’s actual, physical life; the seat of the emotions; the inner life or personality of a person; the part of the person that lives on after death (Harder 682-686; Carrigan). Καρδία can be used literally to mean the physical heart, or it can be used metaphorically. In the New Testament, it is used in 148 passages with a variety of meanings: the seat of intellectual and spiritual life; the inner person or personality/ego; the seat of doubt and hardness; the mind or reason; will, desire, intention (Sorg 182-183). To state, as Cameron does, that “since Hebrew psychology lacked precise terminology, there is some overlapping in the use of nepesh, leb/lebab, and ruah” is something of an understatement. Perhaps Mark, aware of the confusion amongst Jews and Jewish Christians about the meanings of leb and καρδία, nefesh and ψυχή, decides to make certain that no one can dispute the necessity of “mind” and “understanding” (as distinct from Hellenistic wisdom!) by his explicitly including both διανοίας and συνέσεως in the crucial teaching chreia of 12:28-34.

Mark wants to talk about the Radical Messiah’s “thinking faith,” but at the same time he demonstrates a prudent fear of both Jewish and Roman authorities. He does not wish to be arrested for apostasy or political treason (he is writing during a time of heightened political-religious conflict, both within Judaism itself, and between Judaism and the Roman Empire). Therefore, while he shies away from “wisdom words,” he makes ample use of allegory. It is difficult, for instance, to see Mark’s repeated use of boat crossings on the “Sea” of Galilee as anything but a metaphor. It is a lake, after all, and not a very big one, at that – a fact that early Jewish Christian readers in the region would have known. Pheme Perkins points out that the Q Source has no sayings about fishing or grapes, and no stories about storms on the Sea of Galilee (94-95). Mark, however, introduces the Sea of Galilee, fishermen, and boats in his first chapter (1:16, 1:16-20, and 1:19-20 respectively). He is hinting at something. What does a boat do? we then must ask. A boat helps us cross the waters. What have bodies of water traditionally represented in Jewish thought? The forces of chaos that are overcome by the sovereign powers of God (Gen. 1:2 – 2:3). And how does one overcome the forces of chaos? In part, by using one’s strength – at which point it is very hard to overlook the similarity in sound between the word for “fish” (iχθύς) and the word for “strength” (iσχύς). (We know that Paul uses plays on words, so it is not unreasonable to conclude that Mark does the same.) Once this is observed, the two miraculous feedings of the crowd with bread and fish (6:34-44 and 8:1-9) become emblematic of the “strength” with which Jesus feeds the people [5,6] – the same strength that is spoken of in a positive light twice in 12:28-34, in a negative light in 14:37, in a perplexing light in 3:27 and 5:4, and in a contextual way in 15:46, where Joseph of Arimathea has the strength to roll a “very large rock” across the tomb by himself.

In the important verses of 8:14-21, Mark draws an overt link between the allegorical feedings – with their relationship to the theme of strength – and the issue of understanding. Here, while Jesus and the disciples are sitting yet again in their boat (8:14 – the final reference to boats in the Gospel of Mark), Jesus castigates the disciples harshly, in several different ways, because they do not yet understand (νοεiτε) or realize (συνίετε). This pericope is filled with Greek verbs related to the thinking faculties of people (thinking faculties which include input from the senses): the disciples “forgot” the bread (8:14); Jesus cautions them to “see” the yeast of the Pharisees and of Herod (8:15); the disciples “reasoned” among themselves (8:16); Jesus “knows” their attempt at reasoning and asks them why they are still “reasoning” that way instead of “understanding” and “realizing” (8:17); have their “hearts” been hardened? Jesus asks (8:17); do they have “eyes” that don’t see, and “ears” that don’t hear? (8:18); do they not “remember”? (8:18); do they not yet understand? (8:21). Verses 14-21 of Chapter 8 can be seen to conclude and epitomize the first half of Mark’s Gospel, as some scholars have suggested (Perkins 131); however, reading the Gospel in this way does, as Perkins points out, present “as much of a challenge to the audience as the ending of the Gospel does” (131) because of its critical depiction of the disciples. The disciples, both male and female, lack understanding and strength. They have not applied “all their mind” and “all their strength” to loving God or their teacher, Jesus, and therefore – unlike the scribe of 12:28-34 and perhaps unlike Joseph of Arimathea – they have not been able to draw near to the kingdom of God. It is not enough to be loyal, according to Mark. It is not enough to be close to the Rabbi. The disciples will not be able to understand what the kingdom of God is like until they give themselves heart, soul, mind, and strength to the praxis of loving God and loving other people, the sort of praxis which Jesus models on every page of this complex gospel.

ENDNOTES

1. The two covenant thesis in the Jewish Bible is convincingly argued by W.M.

2. Not all scholars agree that 12:29 commands people to love themselves (Klassen 389).

3. Mark does not tell us how Jesus acquired his understanding. We know only that God has adopted Jesus as his son (1:11 and 9:7), and is well pleased with him.

4. In marked contrast to other New Testament authors such as Matthew, Luke in Luke/Acts, and Paul, Mark uses the words “peace” (only 3 times), “hope” (zero times), “love” (X 4), “joy” (X 1), “freedom” (X 0), “glory” (X 3), “just/righteous” (X 3) or “holy” (X 7). (Nelson’s Concordance)

5. I have not yet figured out how “artos” is being used in these passages.

6. In this context, the numerological references in the two miraculous feedings (e.g. 5,000 people, 12 baskets of leftovers, 7 loaves) can be read as being indicators to treat these passages allegorically (unlike the healing miracles, which Mark treats in a factual way).

WORKS CONSULTED

Berlin, Adele and Marc Zvi Brettler, Eds. The Jewish Study Bible: Jewish Publication Society TANAKH Translation. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004.

Cameron, W.J. “Soul.” New Bible Dictionary. 2nd Ed. Ed. J.D. Douglas. Leicester and Wheaton IL: Inter-varsity and Tyndale House, 1982. 1135.

Carrigan, Henry L. “Soul.” Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible. Ed. David Noel Freedman. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000. 1245.

Coogan. Michael D., Ed. The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha, College Edition. 3rd Ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2001.

Ellison, John W., Ed. Nelson’s Complete Concordance of the Revised Standard Version Bible. New York: Nelson & Sons, 1957.

Harder, Georg. “νοuς.” The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology. Vol. 3. Rev. Ed. Ed. Colin Brown. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1986. 122-130.

Harder, Georg. “ψυχή.” The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology. Vol. 3. Rev. Ed. Ed. Colin Brown. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1986. 676-689.

Goetzmann, Jurgen. “σύνεσις.” The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology. Vol. 3. Rev. Ed. Ed. Colin Brown. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1986. 130-134.

Holloday, William L., Ed. A Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1988.

Klassen, William. “Love in the New Testament and Early Jewish Literature.” The Anchor Bible Dictionary. Vol. 4. Ed. David Noel Freedman. New York: Doubleday, 1992. 381-396.

Morrison, Clinton. An Analytical Concordance to the Revised Standard Version of the New Testament. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1979.

Perkins, Pheme. Introduction to the Synoptic Gospels. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007.

Sakenfeld, Katharine Door Sakenfeld. “Love in the Old Testament.” The Anchor Bible Dictionary. Vol. 4. Ed. David Noel Freedman. New York: Doubleday, 1992. 375-381.

Schattenmann, Hans-Georg. “Iσχύς.” The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology. Vol. 3. Rev. Ed. Ed. Colin Brown. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1986. 712-716.

Sorg, Theo. “καρδία.” The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology. Vol. 2. Ed. Colin Brown. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1986. 180-184.

Stanton, Graham N. The Gospels and Jesus. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1989.

Posted in Bible, courage, Divine Love, faith, Gospel of Mark, historical Jesus, insight, Jesus Redux, Jesus' original writings, Kingdom teachings, Mark vs Paul, miracles, parables, Soul and tagged Kingdom teachings, Mark vs Paul | Leave a Comment

24 May 2011

JR43: The Case for "Mark Versus Paul"

Study of the Gospel of Thomas, which has strong links to the Q Source and the Synoptic Gospels, makes it easier to see what Jesus was actually saying and how Jesus’ teachings differed radically from Paul’s teachings. Ceiling mosaic in the original Queen’s Park entrance of the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto. Photo credit JAT 2017.

A: Today, I’m shifting back into academic mode on the question of what Jesus actually taught 2,000 years ago — as opposed to what the Church says he taught.

I’ve had an inquiry about my academic arguments on the “Mark versus Paul” question — that is, on my thesis that Mark wrote his gospel as a direct rebuttal of Paul’s First Corinthians. To present this argument in its entirety would fill at least one big fat Zondervan text (as if Zondervan’s editors would publish such a thesis!) so all I can do at this stage is present a brief list of comparisons between the two texts. I’m aware that in order to build a case for each “talking point” in a complete academic format — a format that would be acceptable to a peer-reviewed journal — would require many months of research for each point and a long research paper for each. The work would go faster, however, if others were willing to help. If you’re interested in helping with this project, please contact me.

I’m going to present some of the major contrasts I see between First Corinthians and the Gospel of Mark. I’ll assume for this purpose that the extant copies of these two books represent with a fair degree of accuracy the original texts as they were written by Paul and Mark respectively, with the exception of Mark 16:9-20 (the very ending of Mark), which is generally believed to be a later addition.

If you want to see which researchers I rely on, please refer to the post called “The Author’s Research Bibliography” (http://jesusredux.blogspot.com/2011/03/authors-bibliography.html).

I use more than one form of biblical criticism — more than one analytical tool — in this comparison. I tend to start with traditional methods — socio-historical criticism, source criticism, form criticism, and redaction criticism — and then I cross-reference these arguments with recent scientific insights from quantum theory, neurophysiology, psychotherapy, archaeology, and recent historical findings. I also use my own personal mystical faculties, but I won’t apologize for this, since insights derived from mystical conversations are only a starting point, not an ending point. Other researchers get “aha” moments and call them intuition, or divine revelation, or just plain ol’ personal brilliance. Me, I’m being honest about where I get my starting point for this discussion. After that, it’s up to me to use logical human tools to make my case.

Fortunately for me, what Jesus and my angels pointed out to me leads to an extremely strong case.

To the best of my knowledge, there are no biblical scholars currently publishing on this topic. So this is original research you’re reading. You’ll probably wonder straight away how I — an obscure blogger from Canada who has no PhD and no publishing record of note — could see evidence of a book-to-book biblical feud that nobody else has seen. To this I must reply that the feud has been obvious “to those who have eyes and those who have ears” (Mark 8:18) since these two texts began to circulate simultaneously in the latter part of the 1st century CE. Christians have always been called to decide whether they choose Paul’s teachings or Jesus’ teachings (even if they haven’t been able to articulate the choice in scholarly terms). However, it’s only now that Christians are getting round to being honest about this fact.

If Mark had simply written about entirely different themes than Paul did, there would be no point in trying to show that Mark wrote his gospel as a rebuttal of Paul’s First Corinthians. But Mark didn’t write about different themes than Paul did. He wrote about exactly the same topics and inverted them. He also chose his words as carefully as Paul did. He never uses Paul’s favourite word: nomos (Greek for law, authority, unbreakable tradition). Nor does Mark use the words charis (grace) or elpis (hope). The words nomos, charis, and elpis are part of the vocabulary of apocalyptic thought. And Mark is trying to show, contrary to Paul’s claims about Jesus, that Jesus himself rejected apocalyptic thought.

Mark never uses the words nomos, charis, and elpis. But for a man who never uses these words, he talks about them a lot in his book. He talks about what it means for a person of faith to be in full relationship with God the Mother and God the Father.

Here is a point form list of some of the direct comparisons. I reserve the right to edit, modify, add to, and clarify this list whenever additional information comes to light in future. If information is suggested to me by other writers, I will so note the contribution(s).

Concerns of Form:

1. Viewpoint Character
In Paul: The viewpoint character is Paul himself.
In Mark: The viewpoint character is Jesus; the author (Mark) is not present; reference to “a certain young man” in Mark 14:51 may indicate an eyewitness to whom Mark later spoke about events surrounding Jesus’ arrest.

2. Narrator’s Voice
In Paul: The narrator speaks in first person (Paul himself).
In Mark: Third person narration.

3. Literary Genre
In Paul: Written as a letter; uses rhetoric, exhortation.
In Mark: Written as a biographical narrative interspersed with parables, sayings, and teaching actions (i.e. teaching chreia).

4: The Narrative Hook: “The Hero’s Journey”
In Paul: The hero Paul recounts highlights of his long and arduous journey to save the Gentiles; the focus is on important urban centres; the hero’s personal journey is a metaphor for the path of spiritual ascent (i.e. the vertical path that leads to salvation and eventual bodily resurrection).
In Mark: The hero Jesus takes many small trips around a small freshwater lake; the focus is on unimportant outlying communities; the hero’s journey is horizontal, not vertical; the path is not straight; bad things happen on high hills; good things happen near boats and water.

Theological and Social Concerns:

5. Relationship to the Jerusalem Temple:
In Paul: The physical Temple has been replaced by Jesus and “believers” (1 Cor 3:9-17; 6:19-20); the Temple is now purely mystical; it is more important than ever. (Note: the actual physical Herodian Temple was still standing in Jerusalem at the time Paul wrote his letter and Mark wrote his rebuttal).
In Mark: The physical Temple exists and is the centre of corruption in Palestine (Mark 11:12-24;12:35-44; 15:38).

6. Relationship to the city of Jerusalem:
In Paul: Jerusalem is still favoured as shown by the collection for the Jerusalem church (1 Cor 16:1-4).
In Mark: Jesus spends little time in Jerusalem; healing miracles all take place outside the city; Jesus’ friends live outside the city; Jerusalem is the place where genuine faith withers away (Mark 11).

7. Healing Miracles:
In Paul: No mention of healing miracles.
In Mark: Several healing miracles take place; the theme of healing is introduced early on and repeated until Jesus reaches Jerusalem.

8. People With Disabilities:
In Paul: No special mention of individuals with physical or mental illnesses or disabilities or special needs.
In Mark: Those deemed “impure” according to Jewish custom and law are healed, touched, spoken to in violation of purity laws.

9. The Kingdom of God:
In Paul: The Kingdom is a reality outside the self; it depends on power (1 Cor 4:20; 15:24-28; 15:50).
In Mark: There is no simple explanation of the Kingdom, but empathy is central to it (Mark 10:13-31; 12:28-34).

10. Relationship of Body to Soul:
In Paul: Influenced by Platonic dualism.; the flesh is corrupt (1 Cor 3:1-4; 7:8-9; 9:24-27; 15:42-49). Souls are in peril without belief in Christ.
In Mark: Holistic attitude toward the body; non-Platonic and non-Covenantal; flesh is not impure or corrupt; right relationship with God involves caring for the body. Souls live as angels in the afterlife (Mark 12:24-27)

11: Forgiveness:
In Paul: No mention of forgiveness.
In Mark: The theme of forgiveness is introduced early on (Mark 2:1-12); both God and humans can forgive (Mark 11:25).

12: The Definition of Human Virtue:
In Paul: “Foolishness” (morias) and unquestioning faith are the highest expressions of right belief (1 Cor 1:10 – 2:5); obedience, fellowship, holiness, “strong consciousness,” and the proper exercise of freedom are emphasized.
In Mark: Courage (ischys) and a questioning faith are the highest expressions of right belief (Mark 8:11-21); egalitarianism, service, forgiveness, and insight (suneseos) are emphasized.

Posted in apocalyptic prophecy, faith, First Corinthians, Gospel of Mark, healing miracles, Jerusalem Temple, Jesus Redux, Jesus' teachings, Kingdom teachings, Mark vs Paul, Mother and Father God, Paul vs Jesus, Paul's teachings and tagged Mark vs Paul | Leave a Comment

04 May 2011

JR36: Saying 56 in the Gospel of Thomas

A: When we wrote last time (“Father of Lights, Mother of Breath”), I ran out of time, and we didn’t get a chance to return to the question of Saying 56 in the Gospel of Thomas. I was hoping we could continue that discussion. (For the record, Stevan Davies translates Saying 56 as “Jesus said: Whoever has known the world has found a corpse; whoever has found that corpse, the world is not worthy of him.)

J: I can’t help noticing the irony of a person who’s “alive” having a discussion with a person who’s “dead” about the question of “alive versus dead.”

A (rolling eyes): Very funny. I prefer to call you “molecularly challenged.”

J: Hey — I left some bones behind when I died. Traces of them are sitting in a stone ossuary in a warehouse owned by the Israel Antiquities Authority. Kinda reminds me of the final scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

A: The IAA can have them. I somehow doubt you’re going to be needing them again.

J: Well, you know, there are still people on the planet today who believe in the concept of bodily resurrection on the Day of Judgment. According to that way of thinking, I might actually need to retrieve my bones so I’ll be complete on the final day of judgment.

A: Hey! You’re not supposed to have any bones. According to Luke, you ascended bodily into heaven — at least once, maybe twice! (Luke 24:51 and Acts 1:1-11). Prophets who are “beamed up” aren’t supposed to leave body parts behind. That’s the whole idea.

J: Nobody gets out of a human life “alive.” At some point, the biological body reaches its built-in limits, and the soul returns to God in soul form. There’s no ascension. Never has been, never will be. Luke is lying.

A: Maybe Luke just didn’t understand the science of death. Maybe he was doing his best to explain something he didn’t understand.

J (shaking his head): Luke was lying. On purpose. If Luke had been sincere and well-meaning — if misguided — he would have to stuck to one story about my ascension. But one man — the man we’re calling Luke — wrote two scrolls together to tell one continuous story. He wrote the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles as a two-part story. The Gospel finishes in Bethany, the hometown of Lazarus (who was the subject of a miraculous healing), and the last thing we hear is about is the disciples. Apparently, they obediently returned to Jerusalem to continually pray.

A: Yeah, like that was gonna happen.

A major problem for the spread of Pauline Christianity among Jews and Gentiles was the Eucharistic ritual instituted by Paul. A lot of people didn’t like the idea of ritualistically eating the flesh and drinking the blood of a divine being. So one of Luke’s jobs, when he wrote the two-part Gospel of Luke and Acts of the Apostles, was to soften the impact of it for newcomers, while preserving Paul’s occult meaning for those who were “in the know.” What you see at the end of Luke’s Gospel and the beginning of Acts is a slyly written (and entirely fictitious) account of twelve men who are “chosen” for the special privilege of receiving the Cloak of Glory from the Holy Spirit after they’ve properly prepared themselves for 40 days in the presence of the mystical body of Christ. They eat from the mystical body in order to purify themselves for the coming baptism of fire on Pentecost. Then, on the appointed day, the twelve (well, thirteen, if you count Paul’s later baptism of fire) suddenly receive the intense fire of Glory that Luke says was promised to the twelve by God through Jesus. After that, nobody is allowed to challenge the authority of the apostles. Please note that if you’re having trouble following this narrative in its established biblical form, there’s a good reason for that: the secret knowledge wasn’t meant to be easily understood by everyone. Interestingly, though, the themes of this secret knowledge have been found in other religious traditions, too. For instance, in this photo of the Tantric Buddhist deity Acala, “the Immovable One,” he is braced by the fiery tongues of phoenix flame — much like the fire delivered to the apostles at Pentecost. Who doesn’t like a really good bonfire when Divine Power is the prize? This wooden sculpture is on display at the British Museum. Photo credit JAT 2023.

J: Meanwhile, when you open up the book of Acts, which picks up where Luke left off, you get a completely different story from the same author. In Acts, he claims that after my suffering I spent 40 days with my chosen apostles in Jerusalem, and then was lifted up by a cloud from the Mount of Olives (which is just to the east of Jerusalem’s city walls). The Mount of Olives is closer to Jerusalem than Bethany, the “authentic” site of my so-called Easter ascension in the Gospel. Luke also adds two mysterious men in white robes to the Acts version of the story. These two sound suspiciously like the two men in dazzling clothes who appear in Luke’s account of the tomb scene (Luke 24:4). Luke is playing fast and loose with the details — an easy mistake for fiction writers to make.

A: Well, as you and I have discussed, Luke was trying very hard to sew together the Gospel of Mark and the letters of Paul. Mark puts a lot of focus on the Mount of Olives — a place that was most definitely not Mount Zion, not the site of the sacred Temple. Luke probably needed a way to explain away Mark’s focus on the non-sacred, non-pure, non-holy Mount of Olives.

J: You wanna bet the Mount of Olives was non-pure! It was littered with tombs. Religious law dictated that no one could be buried within a residence or within the city walls, so it was the custom to bury people in the hills outside the city walls. To get from the city gates of Jerusalem to the top of the Mount of Olives, you had to pass by a number of tombs and mausoleums. If you got too close to death, though, you were considered ritually impure, and you had to go through a cleansing and purification process once you got back to the city — especially during a big religious festival. Mark’s Jewish audience would have understood this. They would have wondered, when they read Mark, why there was no concern about contamination. They would have wondered why the Mount of Olives became the site of important events when the purified Temple precincts were so close by. It would have defied their expectations about death and purity and piety.

A: This was easier to understand when the Temple was still standing.

J: Yes. It would have made a lot of sense in the context of Herod’s humongous Temple complex. It started to make less sense, though, after the Romans destroyed the Temple in 70 CE.

A: A fact that Luke took advantage of.

J: Yes.

A: Mark doesn’t include the saying from the Gospel of Thomas about corpses (saying 56), but Mark’s portrayal of you shows a man whose least important concern is ritual purity — not what you’d expect at all from a pious Jew, in contrast to Matthew’s claim about you (Matthew 5:17: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.”)

J: Matthew says this, but Mark says the opposite.

A: Not in so many words, but by showing your ongoing choices and actions.

J: Later Christian interpreters wanted to believe that God had given me special powers over demons and sin and death, and this is how they understood Mark’s account of my ministry. But this isn’t what I taught. I didn’t have the same assumptions about life and death that most of my peers had. It’s not that I had special powers over life and death — it’s simply that I wasn’t afraid of life or death. I wasn’t afraid to “live” and I wasn’t afraid to “die.” I wasn’t afraid to embrace difficult emotions. I wasn’t afraid to trust God. Maybe to some of the people around me it seemed that I had special powers, but I didn’t. All I had was maturity — the courage to accept the things I couldn’t change, the courage to accept the things I could change, and the wisdom to know the difference.

A: The Serenity Prayer.

J: Yes. It seemed to me that Creation is much more like a rainbow than like night-versus-day. It seemed to me that the world I lived in was not “evil” and “corrupt,” as many occult philosophers had said. (Including the Jewish sect of Essenes.) Yes, there were corpses, it’s true. People died. Other creatures died. Beautiful flowers died. But obviously death led to new life, and wasn’t to be feared. Death wasn’t the enemy. Fear of the self was the enemy. Fear of trusting God, fear of trusting emotions such as love and grief, were the obstacles between individuals and God.

To get over those fears, you have to face your initial fears about death — about “corpses.” You have to begin to see the world — Creation — in a new, more positive way, and accept — even love in a sad sort of way — the corpses. You have to stop spending so much time worrying about your death, because it’s gonna happen whether you like it or not, and no religious ritual can stop it. Accept that it’s going to happen, then focus on what you’re doing today. Focus on the Kingdom of today. Build the love, build the relationships, build the trust. Physical bodies come and go, but love really does live on.

“My friends, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing” (James 1:2-4). Photo credit JAT 2017.

A: Some people might take that as an endorsement of hedonistic behaviours or suicidal behaviours, since, in your words, death isn’t to be feared.

J: There’s a big difference between saying “death isn’t to be feared” and saying “death is to be avidly pursued.” If you avidly pursue death, it means you’ve chosen to avidly reject life — the living of life to its fullest potential. Trusting in God means that you trust you’re here on Earth for a reason, and you trust that when it’s your time God will take you Home. What you do with the time in between depends on how you choose to view Creation. Is God’s Creation a good creation, a place of rainbows where people can help each other heal? Or is God’s Creation an evil “night” that prevents you from ever knowing the pure light of “day”?

A: What about those who’ve chosen to view Creation as an evil place of suffering, and are now so full of pain and depression that they can’t take it anymore? What happens to those who commit suicide?

J: God the Mother and God the Father take them Home and heal them as they do all their children. There is no such thing as purgatory or hell for a person who commits suicide. On the other hand, our divine parents weep deeply when families, friends, and communities create the kind of pain and suffering that makes people want to kill themselves. There would be fewer tears for everyone if more human beings would take responsibility for the harmful choices they themselves make.

A: And learn from those mistakes.

J: Absolutely. It’s not good enough to simply confess the mistake. It’s important to confess the mistakes, but people also have to try to learn from their mistakes. They have to be willing to try to change. They have to let go of their stubbornness and their refusal to admit they’re capable of change.

A: Easier said than done.

Posted in Essenes, Gospel of Mark, Gospel of Thomas, Jerusalem Temple, Jesus Redux, Law (Nomos), life and death, Mark vs Paul, Matthew's and Luke's intent, Paul vs Jesus, relationship with God, Talpiot Tomb and tagged Jesus vs Paul, Kingdom teachings | Leave a Comment

20 Apr 2011

JR34: Chaining God to the Rock

A: I’d like to return to an idea that was endorsed in Karen Armstrong’s book (The Spiral Staircase), the idea that “when speaking of the reality of God we are at the end of what words or thoughts can usefully do (page 292). I find this idea self-serving and smug. I also find it very demeaning. In fact, I find most religious ideas about God to be self-serving, smug, and demeaning. Demeaning to human beings and demeaning to God. Since this is Holy Week, it seems like a good time to talk to you about your thoughts on the reality of God and what this reality can mean for our lives.

“Jesus said: If they ask you, ‘Where are you from?’ reply to them, ‘We have come from the place where light is produced from itself. It came and revealed itself in their image.’ If they ask you, ‘Are you it?’ reply to them, ‘We are his children. We are the first fruits of the living Father.’ If they ask you, ‘What is the sign within you of your Father?’ reply to them, ‘It is movement. It is rest.’ (Gospel of Thomas 50 a-c).” Photo credit JAT 2021.

J: I see you’re still upset about the way people are talking about God.

A: I’m upset about the fact that theologians and mystics are not being honest with themselves and with others. I’m upset about their “closed-shop” attitude. I’m upset about their tiny, closed, pessimistic view of God and Creation. I’m upset about their narcissistic refusal to open wide the doors of theological inquiry. I’m upset about the pettiness. I’m upset about the way religion teaches — or actually doesn’t teach — people to be in relationship with God. I’m especially upset about the religious rituals that get in the way of the relationships.

J: The crucial problem here is worship.

A: Worship?

J: People of faith all over the world are trying to be in relationship with God. Their souls long to know God, to feel the Presence of God in their daily lives. They long for the comfort, the solace of that love. But among those millions of people, how many of them do you think have actually felt that Presence?

A: Not many. You can tell by the look in a person’s eye when you put the words “trust” and “God” in the same sentence. People of faith are disillusioned and very, very hurt.

J: There are three great obstacles to the experience of relationship with God in the daily life of regular human beings. The first obstacle we’ve talked about a fair bit — the role of status addiction in creating suffering and abuse in the lives of humans and other creatures on Planet Earth. Status addiction is deeply imbedded in all major world religions, even the non-theistic ones. Status addiction in a religious setting becomes a self-reinforcing cycle that ruins lives.* The toxic effects of status addiction have not yet been recognized. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine how the Vatican could continue to uphold its teachings on sin, separation from God, sacraments, and salvation in the absence of status addiction. Status addiction is one of the three main glues that hold together the Vatican house of cards.

A: Being named Pope is quite the status symbol. Right now the History Channel is showing “The Borgias,” the mini-series about the corrupt family that owned the Papacy at the turn of the 16th century.

J: The second of the three glues holding orthodoxy together is a tenacious belief in the Law of Cause and Effect — the Materialist philosophy you and I have been discussing. What’s astonishing about this belief system is its arrogance. It’s completely oriented towards the supremacy of human beings. The term “anthropocentric” hardly begins to capture it. The Law of Cause and Effect, whatever its particular religious manifestation, teaches people that the Law is more important, more effective, and more divine than God. They say the Law is merely a manifestation of God’s wishes, but what they really mean is that God is utterly bound by all the provisions of the contract law — sort of like Prometheus chained to the rock. This is the source of human religious authority, the foundation on which they claim all their status, power, money, fame, and sexual gratification. This is also the source of human psychological authority — the need to assuage one’s own suffering by claiming there really isn’t a personal God who intervenes in people’s lives. The need for narcissists to obtain psychological authority has never been adequately examined or addressed in the church. The last thing a status-addicted narcissist wants to hear about is a personal God who isn’t chained at a safe distance and who can generate consequences for the narcissist’s smug self-idolization. Today.

A: Okay. What’s the third glue of orthodoxy?

J: The third is worship. I’m defining worship as any spiritual practice that centres around the goal of escape.

A: I’ve never heard that definition of worship before. I tend to think of “liturgy” and “worship” as being more or less the same thing. You go to “worship” on Sundays, and the exact form of this worship is the liturgy — the specific prayers and hymns and sermon content for that particular day.

J: There’s the source of the confusion right there. There’s nothing wrong with liturgy. There’s nothing wrong at all with the idea of people getting together once a week to say some prayers and sing some hymns and hear an uplifting, encouraging, inspiring sermon and maybe even sit together in safe, companionable silence. It’s a healthy practice, one I totally endorse. The idea of setting aside one day per week — the Sabbath — for mutual uplifting and compassionate spiritual reflection is crucial to the health of all human beings. There are lots of different ways to express your love and trust in God on the Sabbath. You can go to church or synagogue. You can visit someone who’s sick in hospital. You and a friend can go outside with a garbage bag and clean up your local parks and streets. You can have a family games afternoon — playing old fashioned board games like Monopoly or Scrabble. The single uniting factor in all these expressions of spirituality is relationship. You’re building positive relationships. You’re connecting to other people and to Nature. In creating these connections, you’re also creating a stronger connection with God the Mother and God the Father. You’re saying “yes” to life, love, service, and laughter. The last thing you’re trying to do is escape.

A: You’re trying to fully engage with life.

J: Yes. I taught engagement, not escape. This is why you see me in the Gospel of Mark as a man who doesn’t retreat into the wilderness, who rarely prays, who never worships in the Jerusalem Temple, and has no use for righteousness in the Law.

A: Yet Mark shows you living a life filled with faith, forgiveness, healing, and redemption. A life filled with relationships. Messy, complicated, frustrating relationships. But that’s what it means to be human, eh?

J: Worship and liturgy are two completely different things. Worship and faith are two completely different things. Worship is the “work” of pious people. Worship is the set of actions they undertake to achieve their long-term goal of escape. Orthodox Western Christians call this escape “salvation.” Buddhists call this escape “nirvana.” Atheists call this escape “saving lives.” At the core of these belief systems lies the intersection of status addiction, Materialism, and worship — the complete abandonment of God by human beings. I want to make it clear that I don’t mean God is doing the abandoning. I mean that human beings are doing the abandoning. I mean that every time a pious Christian devotes an hour or more each day to intercessory prayer, he or she is abandoning God. The more time a person spends in worshipful prayer each day, the farther he or she is getting from God. God doesn’t need your prayers or anyone else’s prayers in order to act. God is not bound by bizarre religious claims about Cause and Effect. God the Mother and God the Father have free will. They’re not chained to the rock. This means that you, as a human being, aren’t that important prayer-wise in the grand cosmological scheme of things. Contrary to the claims of many religious leaders, the sky will not fall down if the “chosen” nuns, monks, and mystics stop praying the Divine Office each day. (The theory here is that God needs to hear the recitation of the Mass and the Divine Office every day to help empower God in his great battle against the Devil to save human souls). Prayers of worship tell the God you’re trying to connect with that you don’t trust God. It’s like shooting yourself in the foot over and over again and then demanding to know why you’re lame.

A: Our prayers of worship may not be needed, but I know one thing for sure — our ability to love and forgive is sure needed.

J (nodding and smiling): God the Mother and God the Father don’t need or want our prayers of worship. AT ALL. On the other hand, they very much need our love. They want and need to be in relationship with us. We’re their children, and they’re just heartbroken, to be honest, when their own beloved children turn away from their divine family — their divine parents and their divine brothers and sisters. It’s very painful for God when human beings choose logic over love, mind over heart, and law over miracles and forgiveness. Some logic is needed, some mind is needed, and some law is needed. This should go without saying. But there has to be balance. And there has to be trust — trust in a loving, forgiving, amazingly brilliant but very humble God. This is what I was trying to teach.

A: It’s what I feel every day — a comforting sense of God’s loving presence, a comforting sense that I’m never alone. I get confused and upset about daily events like everyone else, but I know that at the end of each day God will be there to help me figure it out. I also know that when I screw up, God will help me recognize my mistakes, just as you’d expect mature, loving parents to do. They forgive me when I make a mistake, and they don’t hold any grudges. Their forgiveness helps me find the courage to learn from my mistakes, correct my mistakes, and move forward. Their forgiveness means I’m not caught in that horrible hamster wheel of shame, blame, regret, revenge, and self-loathing that I remember all too well from my earlier years. Their forgiveness has freed me to live.

J: Who needs escape on a future day when the miracle of forgiveness can free you today?

*For an introductory discussion of the role of status addiction in the orthodox Western Church see The Corruption of Free Will Through Addiction and Jesus: The Anti-Status Teacher.

Posted in "4 S's", "Escape", Buddhism, Cause & Effect, Church of today, forgiveness, free will, Gospel of Mark, Jesus Redux, Law (Nomos), life and death, Materialism, prayer, relationship with God, spiritual practices, status addiction, trust and tagged ethical mysticism, spiritual practice in the 3rd millennium | Leave a Comment

28 Mar 2011

JR28: Paul’s Easy Salvation

A: You’ve said that Paul’s Temple teachings were very different from your own Kingdom teachings — so much so that when your great-nephew “Mark” read what Paul had written in the letter called First Corinthians, he blew a gasket and started work on his own version of your teachings. Why was Mark so upset about Paul’s Temple teachings?

J: Mark knew that one of my basic teachings had been about the Jerusalem Temple and the stranglehold the Temple and its priests exerted on regular Jewish people. It was much the same equation as Martin Luther faced when he decided to go public with his rejection of Papal and Vatican corruption in the early 1500’s. Luther didn’t reject the idea of faith in God — far from it. But he rejected a number of official claims made by the Church. He thought the Church was no longer representing the ideals of true Christian faith. So he protested.

A: This was part of the beginning of the Protestant Reformation.

J: Yes. But Luther was protesting from within the Church, not from outside it. He was an Augustinian monk and priest, highly educated and highly devout. He held a doctorate in theology. So he wasn’t easily dissuaded from the idea — once he saw it — that the Church wasn’t “practising what it preached.” I had the same problem with the Jerusalem Temple and the priestly hierarchy in my time. Once I saw the problem, I wasn’t easily dissuaded. Much to the chagrin of my aristocratic family.

A: You’ve said your mother was descended from the priestly bloodline. That must have given your family a lot of status, a lot of authority.

J: My family was somewhat on the fringes of the power and authority that priestly families were entitled to. This was partly due to the fact that my mother’s line wasn’t descended from the “first son of the first son.” We were related to the “junior sons,” so to speak — pretty good as far as pedigrees go, but not “the best of the best.” Another factor was our geographical location. I wasn’t born and raised in Jerusalem — one of the hotbeds of Jewish political intrigue. I was born and raised in the city of Philadelphia, on the other side of the River Jordan. It was a Hellenized city, but also quite Jewish in its cultural norms, so I was raised with a strange mix of values and religious teachings. That’s what allowed me, when I reached adulthood, to be more objective about trends in Jewish thought — by that I mean the blend of religious, political, cultural, and social ideas that were intertwined in people’s hearts and minds. I was far enough away from the Temple — physically and geographically — to be sceptical about the grandiose claims being made by the Temple priests.

A: In the Gospel of Mark, it’s quite apparent what the author thinks of the Temple. Mark shows you visiting all sorts of Jewish and Gentile locations to teach and heal, but the one place you don’t visit till the end is Jerusalem. Things start to go badly for you as soon as you get to David’s city. This is a strange claim to make if you’re trying to promote the idea that Jesus is the prophesied Saviour of the Jewish people.

J: Well, my great-nephew did think I was an important teacher, a rabbi who could help the Jewish people become free from oppression, but his understanding of my role was not the traditional Jewish understanding of who — or what — the Messiah would be. Mark was a very spiritual fellow — a free thinking Jewish scholar who made his own observations and his own decisions. He got a little carried away, I think, with the idea that I was an important teacher, but on the whole he embraced my ideas about the Kingdom and did his best to live them.

A: Mark wrote his gospel before the Roman destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE.

“Jesus said: Grapes are not harvested from thornbushes, nor are figs gathered from thistles, for they yield no fruit. A good person brings forth good from his treasury; a bad person brings forth evil things from his mind’s corrupt treasury, and he speaks evil things. For out of the excesses of his mind he brings forth evil things” (Gospel of Thomas 45 a-b). The photo shows a marble Mithraic relief, (restored), from Rome 100-200 CE on display at the Royal Ontario Museum. The Mithraic Mysteries, in so far as we know what they entailed, showed uncanny similarities to the teachings of Paul. The teachings of Jesus, meanwhile, explicitly rejected the occult practices and secret rituals of mystery cults. Photo credit JAT 2017.

J: Yes. And this is an important detail to bear in mind. Paul and Mark both wrote their comments about the Temple before the Temple was physically destroyed. This fact is important to bear in mind, especially when you’re trying to understand what Mark is saying. Mark was seriously — and I mean seriously — pissed off about Paul’s “moveable Temple.” For Mark, as for me, the only way to free the Jewish people to know God and be in full relationship with God was for us to confront the harm and the hypocrisy of the Jewish Temple — a huge, bloated, phenomenally expensive physical structure that had robbed people of their livelihood through high taxes and ongoing dues, payments, sacrifices, and obligatory pilgrimages. Herod the Great spent a fortune — a literal fortune — on his building projects. His children continued his habit of profligate spending on status symbols to impress the rest of the Roman Empire. Meanwhile, the widows and orphans and foreigners we were supposed to look after — according to Exodus — were going hungry and selling themselves into slavery because of their poverty. This was unacceptable to me and to many others. I certainly wasn’t alone in being outraged at the unfairness, the hypocrisy, the status addiction, and the corruption.

A: Chapter 13 of Mark has long puzzled Christian scholars. It’s viewed by reputable scholars such as Bart Ehrman as a “little apocalypse” because it seems to prophesy the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. They use this chapter as part of their proof that you yourself claimed to be an apocalyptic prophet. How do you respond to that?

J: Without wishing to be harsh, I’d say these biblical scholars need to refresh their memory on what the earlier Jewish prophetic books and Jewish apocalypses actually said about the role of the Temple in the prophesied End Times. It’s clear that highly revered earlier writers such as First Isaiah and Second Isaiah and Zechariah believed the physical Temple on Mount Zion (i.e. Jerusalem) would be absolutely central to the ideal future restoration of Judah in the End Times. Yet Mark uses imagery from apocalyptic texts like Daniel to turn these predictions on their head. Mark 13 shouldn’t be called the “little apocalypse”: it should be called the “anti-apocalypse” because of the way it intentionally subverts and repudiates the prophecies of Zechariah. Mark may be attacking Paul’s theology throughout his own gospel, but he uses well-known Hebrew prophecies to do it. Mark’s own Jewish audience would have understood these references. They would have understood that Mark was openly attacking traditional Jewish teachings about the future End Times when God would one day return and “fix everything.”

A: Traditional teachings that Paul continued to endorse in his letters (1 Corinthians 15).

J: Yes. Paul enthusiastically taught his followers about the coming End Times — a traditional Jewish teaching in itself — and on top of that he added a wonderful new theological guarantee. He promised people that if they gave themselves over fully to a belief in Christ, then God’s Spirit would be able to live inside of them in the “Temple” (1 Corinthians 3:16-17; 6:19-20). Paul took the sacredness of the Jerusalem Temple and made it “moveable,” an inner sanctuary of purity for the Spirit, just as the Essenes had already done in their Charter (1QS 3 and 1QS 8). He didn’t try to undermine the importance and authority of the Jerusalem Temple. He actually added to it (as the Essenes had done) by elevating it to an inner mystical state that could only be known to true believers who followed Paul’s teachings. This is a simplified version of Paul’s Temple theology, but you get the picture. He’s offering his followers the ultimate in “easy salvation.” “You no longer have to go to the Temple; the Temple will come to you.”

A: And once you have the Temple, you can access all those spiritual goodies that Paul promises (1 Corinthians Chapters 2, 12, and 14).

J: It’s a theology that’s very appealing to people who want all the benefits without doing the hard work.

A: I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — your teachings are much harder to stick to than Paul’s are. It’s impossible to follow your recommendations for connection with God without making spiritual commitment a regular part of everyday life. Once a week on Sundays — or twice a year at Christmas and Easter — won’t do it. You ask a lot of regular people.

J: Only because I have faith in you. Only because I have faith.

Posted in apocalyptic prophecy, Essenes, First Corinthians, Gospel of Mark, historical Jesus, Jerusalem Temple, Jesus Redux, Jesus' family of origin, Mark (Jesus' great nephew), Mark vs Paul, Messiah, Paul's teachings, slavery and tagged Mark vs Paul | Leave a Comment

25 Mar 2011

JR27: Paul’s "Temple" versus Jesus’ "Kingdom"

“Jesus said: I stood in the midst of the world. I came to them in the flesh. I found all of them drunk. I found not one of them to be thirsty. My soul was saddened by the sons of men for they were mentally blind. They do not see that they have come into the world empty and they will go out of the world empty. But now they are drunk. When they sober up they will repent” (Gospel of Thomas 28). Photo of Komombo Temple, dedicated to Sobek and Horus, Aswan, Egypt. Author Dennis Jarvis. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

J: Today I’d like to talk about the starting place for understanding the many differences between what I taught and what Paul taught.

A: Sounds good to me.

J: I’ve mentioned before that Paul and I had different motivations, different purposes behind our respective religious movements. One of the few things we had in common was a strong sense of conviction. Paul believed in his cause, and was willing to argue for it. I believed in my cause, and was willing to argue for it. We both had strong opinions. We just didn’t have the same opinions.

A: Part of Paul’s cause involved arguing against your cause.

J: Definitely. Paul rejected — even feared — my teachings on the nature of the Kingdom. He was sure my Kingdom teachings would lead to anarchy. Widespread civil and social disobedience. His fears were shared by others.

A: Why was he so afraid?

J: Well, Paul, like so many others then and now, had allowed his brain to become focussed — riveted — on the perfection of Divine Law. Of course, he thought it was Divine Law he was giving all his time, energy, and devotion to, but really it was human law, human authority. He didn’t see it this way, though. He convinced himself that he was doing the right thing in aggressively attacking me because he was protecting Divine Law. He believed that Divine Law justified — gave sanction to — his actions.

A: Where have I heard that before?

J: Rigid, perfectionistic thinking is a symptom of imbalance and dysfunction in the wiring of the biological brain. It’s common in bullies throughout the world.

A: Paul spends a lot of time in his letters telling the people of his churches that they don’t need to follow Jewish laws on food and circumcision. If he believed so much in the law, why was he dissing it? It doesn’t make sense.

J: It makes perfect sense if you understand that Paul wasn’t trying to protect the “praxis” laws of regular Jewish people — laws about “petty little daily practices,” as he saw them. To him these minor practices were nothing, they were of no consequence. He wasn’t interested in the small stuff, the things that matter to regular people on a day to day basis. He was after the big stuff. The End Point. The Omega. The be all and end all. He was after the Power.

A: What power?

J: The power that he and many others close to him believed was woven into the fabric of Creation. The power to command the universal Law of Cause and Effect.

A: That sounds seriously creepy. And not even very Jewish.

J: Well, as we’ve talked about, there were different schools of religious and philosophical thought that used the sacred Hebrew texts, and these schools fought fiercely among themselves. In the 1st century CE, there was no agreement on what it meant to be a pious Jew, just as today there’s no agreement on what it means to be a pious Christian. Most people forget that there was a civil war among Jews in Judea in the 60’s CE. Sure, the Romans came in eventually and torched everything in Jerusalem. But before the Romans sent in their troops, the Jews were doing a fine hatchet job on themselves. This mood of dissension among Jews was already brewing when I was teaching and healing in Galilee. It’s part of the reason I left my home in Philadelphia (modern day Amman) and went to Galilee. There was a measure of religious sanity that still existed there.

A: The Bible claims that Paul was a Pharisee.

J: In Philippians Chapter 3, Paul is very clever about the claims he makes for himself. He says that according to Jewish laws of bloodline, he’s a member of the tribe of Benjamin. Big deal. Lots of people could make that claim. He says that according to prevailing Jewish customs around religious authority, he’s a Pharisee — a sort of rabbi/lawyer/teacher who deserves to be treated with respect for his religious knowledge. Then comes the clincher: he says that according to “zeal” (zelos in Greek) he was an early persecutor of the church and according to “righteousness” he was blameless in his actions against the church. When Paul talks about “zeal” and “righteousness,” he isn’t talking about “beliefs” or “opinions.” He isn’t saying he was just really enthusiastic or really committed. He’s saying he had “the zeal” inside of him. He’s saying he had a piece of Divine Law inside of him, a spark of God inside of him that was guiding him, commanding his thoughts and actions. He’s saying he was a “vessel of humility” into which God had poured the divine substance called “zeal.” Zeal is a kind of love, therefore — a love for the Law. Devotion to the Law. Obedience to the Law. Adoration, even, of the Law. It sees the Law as a quasi-divine being. Sort of an embodiment of the Divine desire for orderliness in Creation. More than just a philosophical structure. An animated, conscious entity, if you will. Wisdom — Sophia — was also envisioned in this way as a semi-divine female being.

A: Plato talked about the Laws in this kind of weird anthropomorphic way.

J: Yes. And so did the Essenes. The Essenes were very much a fringe cult within Judaism. They had the most highly developed mystical rituals, the most “out there” beliefs about God and Creation and occult magic. They were also highly devout, highly wealthy, and highly powerful. They were a scary bunch. And Paul was greatly influenced by Essene teachings about God, the Spirit, the indwelling Temple, and occult ritual.

A: Would you say that Paul was an Essene? An accepted member of the yahad?

J: No. He wasn’t teaching pure Essene thought. But he was influenced by their thought. He also had strong links to another important school of thought that’s harder to track.* He blended ideas from Essene thought and Hellenistic thought to create his “new and improved” version of the Law of Cause and Effect. By the time he began his “mission to the Gentiles,” he was no longer interested in mainstream Judaism, with its focus on Mosaic Law. He’d “moved up” on the spiritual ladder of ascent, on that ever so narrow and hard-to-find ladder of spiritual hierarchy. He’d found an enticing and intoxicating blend of occult magic and hidden knowledge — the kind of hidden knowledge reserved only for a few select apostles. He was drunk on the idea that this new knowledge would lead him to power — power over evil entities.

A: What evil entities?

J: The corrupted versions of Law and Wisdom and Life — their “evil twins.”

A: Their evil twins? This is sounding like some of the “contemporary horror” dramas that are so incredibly popular in books and movies and TV shows these days.

J: Same old, same old. It’s just a dysfunctional, distorted version of the Law of Cause and Effect when taken to occult extremes. It goes like this: “Well, if there’s a Perfect Law, a semi-divine being who brings only virtue and righteousness to people of virtue, then, logically speaking, there must be an evil twin of Perfect Law — a powerful semi-divine being who sows vice and corruption in the world.” It’s a nice, neat, simple mathematical formula to explain why evil exists. Sons of Light versus Sons of Darkness, as the Essenes clearly formulated it. What could be easier to understand?

A: It’s so easy to see what you’re saying by looking at Paul’s Letter to the Romans. Romans is filled with paranoid, dualistic, judgmental thinking. Paul tells people in gory detail how they can fight the evils of Law, Sin, and Death, and overcome these evil cosmic forces through the power of Christ’s name.

J: Yes. For Paul, Mosaic Law had become the evil twin of the pure Essene Temple Law. Sin was the evil twin of Wisdom (implying by analogy to Wisdom’s femaleness that Sin was also female). And Death was the evil twin of Life. Paul called this evil trinity Law, Sin, and Death.

A: On my God. That makes a ridiculous amount of sense. It explains how Paul could go around telling people they wouldn’t die if they believed in Christ — a promise that soon proved to be a lie, because some of Paul’s followers had already died, and he had to answer for it in his letters.

J: It’s popular these days for theologians to make excuses for this kind of apocalyptic promise, excuses based on the naive assumption that people in the 1st century CE “just didn’t know any better” and “can’t be blamed for believing in salvation from death.” This, I’m sad to say, is hogwash. No balanced, mentally healthy individual is going to accept the idea that human beings can escape physical death and continue to live for centuries on Planet Earth the way their mystical forebears supposedly had (e.g. Methuselah). It’s just goofy. It’s what Paul promised his followers in the beginning of his mission, but it’s goofy. In his Letter to the Romans, he has to go through huge theological contortions to try to salvage people’s belief in him. It’s a pretty sad way to go, if you think about it.

A: Promises, promises.

J: You know what works best in the Gospel of Mark? The fact that there are no “Cause and Effect” promises. Everything’s messy. Everything’s unpredictable. Shit happens, but so what? It can’t take away your courage or your faith or your trust in God or your desire to help other people. Even shit can be turned into very useful fertilizer.

A: So your Kingdom is about turning shit into fertilizer, and Paul’s Temple is about the quest to stop shitting at all?

J: And you say I have a way with words.

* For more on Paul’s true motives and affiliations, please see “The Peace Sequence” (Jesus Redux 38).

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Posted in Cause & Effect, Essenes, Favourite Posts, Gospel of Mark, historical Jesus, Jerusalem Temple, Jesus Redux, Jesus' family of origin, Kingdom teachings, Law (Nomos), Materialism, occult themes, Paul vs Jesus, Paul's teachings, Plato, spiritual ascent and tagged Jesus vs Paul | Leave a Comment

23 Mar 2011

JR26: Materialism, Pauline Thought, and the Kingdom

A:* For the last couple of days, ever since you introduced the idea that Pauline Christianity has always been in some ways a Materialist religion, my head has been spinning, and I’ve been trying to figure out exactly what you mean. I can feel that it’s right in the part of my self that’s intuitive, but the rest of my head hasn’t caught up to my intuition yet. So can we take it from the top?

J:* No problem.

A: How ’bout we start with some definitions? And by the way, I’d just like to comment once again on the fact that you’re a true philosophy geek, you know that? Your face lights up like a Christmas tree every time you get to talk about a juicy philosophical dilemma. I can sure see how you ended up being a radical theologian in your time.

J: I was a much more successful philosopher than I was a carpenter. Honest to God, although I had to work as a tradesman to pay for my room and board, I’m pretty sure some of my handiwork could have ended up on “Galilean DIY Disaster.”

A: Measure once, cut twice?

J: I’m not a natural when it comes to tools. I think like a designer, not like an engineer. I would flunk out of civil engineering, I’m sure of it. But redesigning the layout of a home so it supports a person’s soul needs — that I can do.

A: My father, the retired engineer and all-round handyman, would think you’re a wuss. But you’re so much like most of the other male physicians I know — great with healing, great with academic study, not so good with the toolkit. (For the record, my ex is a physician, and we socialized with other people who were in medicine. So I know — or rather, knew — a lot of the male physicians around here.) Anyway, back to the philosophizing.

J: Okay. Well, the philosophy of Materialism is based on the theory that matter — by that I mean baryonic matter — is the only thing that exists. It’s a WYSIWYG understanding of reality — what you see is what you get. What you see is atoms and molecules and measurable substances and Newtonian laws. Therefore, according to this theory, all things in Nature — including mind, thought, consciousness, even love — can be explained solely by looking at the small little parts that make up the whole. It’s the idea that macroscopic reality — the daily reality that human beings live and work and breathe in — is just a bigger version of the microscopic reality of atoms and molecules and gravitational forces, etc. Of course, as researchers in various scientific disciplines now know, there are huge gaps between the “macro” theories and the “micro” theories. At the subatomic or quantum level, the universe is a weird, weird place. At the other end of the scale — the cosmological or grand universal scale — the universe is also a weird, weird place. Only at the immediate level of reality, if I can call it that — the level where human beings happen to live a fairly safe and predictable Newtonian kind of life — only here is a Materialist philosophy even remotely justified.

A: How does Materialism understand God?

J: A person who embraces Materialist belief in the natural laws of “cause and effect” may or may not believe in the existence of God. Many, if not most, Materialists are atheists. Atheists, of course, believe that existence can be explained entirely on the basis of scientific research. No God is required. However, it’s entirely possible to be a religious Materialist, a Materialist who believes in God. Deism is a good example of this.

A: Deism is a belief system that says there’s a God, one God who created the universe, but that this God later stepped away from his Creation and doesn’t participate in an active way in our lives or our suffering. God is the Great Clockmaker who made a perfect timepiece and now lets it run without interference. However, there’s still an acceptance of the idea that God will reward virtue and punish vice in the afterlife. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson were all Deists . . . Tell me again why Deism isn’t the same as Pauline Christianity and Platonism?

J: It is Pauline/Platonic Christianity. Deism is what you get when you strip away later church doctrines about ritual and sacraments and prayer to saints (intercession) and belief in Marianism and belief in holy relics and belief in holy Crusade and belief in papal infallibility. Deism is Pauline thought in its purest form — a belief in the inviolability and perfection of Divine Law. Divine Law that governs “cause and effect” in the material world.

A: But Paul goes on and on in Romans about the inherent peril of “the law,” how knowledge of the law led him into sin.

J: Paul isn’t attacking all Law. He’s attacking the laws he no longer agrees with. Paul spends all his time in his letters talking about the “new and improved” Law — the Law that he himself is teaching. The New Covenant. It’s easy to forget that Covenant is Law — nomos in the Greek. Nomos was a complex idea that included both human authority and divine authority. When Paul talks about the “new covenant,” he’s talking about a new version of Divine Law. A new version of the Law of Cause and Effect. “If you do this (believe in Christ), then according to the inviolable Law of Creation, you must receive this (salvation plus a reserved parking spot in Heaven).” It’s a reductionist philosophy. Just as Materialism is a reductionist philosophy. Everything is reduced to a simple “cause and effect” formula.

“They asked him: When is the Kingdom coming?He replied: It is not coming in an easily observable manner. People will not be saying,’Look, it’s over here’ or ‘Look, it’s over there.’ Rather, the Kingdom of the Father is already spread out on the earth, and people aren’t aware of it” (Gospel of Thomas 113). Each autumn, this walnut tree yields its harvest to those among God’s creatures who need it most. They receive these gifts without any reliance on human prayers or covenants. There’s wonderful freedom in trusting God to do what God does best when you don’t take on the burden of believing you’re somehow responsible for maintaining the laws of Creation. Photo credit JAT 2014.

A: Just as Wisdom teachings in the Ancient Near East were a “cause and effect” formula: if you obey the instructions on the “virtue lists” and disavow the behaviours on the “vice lists,” God is required to reward you because the Law says so.

J: Paul, clever manipulator that he was, observed that there was a “niche market” of people who’d become disillusioned with the certainty of Wisdom teachings. Obviously there was something missing from the formula if slaves were still slaves and women were still being punished for being women. The Hellenistic cities of the Roman Empire were filled to bursting with resentful slaves and restless, intelligent women. Who better to target if you’re planning to launch a new religious movement? Slaves with money and women with money. You don’t need to slog through the trenches and carry out years and years of missionary work — you just need to get yourself some patrons with deep pockets. Paul doesn’t even deny his reliance on patrons.

A: One staggering fact that jumps out in the Gospel of Mark is the fact that you have no patron. Nor do you seem to want one. This would have shocked readers in 1st century CE Roman-held regions.

J: Part of my objective was to refuse to “play by the rules.”

A: In the end, so many of these religious debates and religious conflicts boil down to “the rules” — the law, the covenant, the nomos. But all these rules . . . they’re external. They come from outside the inner self. They pretend to be objective. They pretend to be based on observable realities from nature. Yet enforcement of them relies on brute force, on rote memory, and on loyalty to patrons or other important religious/political leaders . . . at least I think that’s right. Is that right?

J: Yes. The one thing Paul doesn’t want is for people to know how to tap into their own inner wisdom, their own inner guidance. He doesn’t want them to know how to hear God’s quiet voice in the still, clear night. He doesn’t want his “community of fellowship” to find actual freedom. He only wants them to believe they have freedom (exousia) through the proper use of conscience (suneidesis). He wants them to be willing slaves. Slaves who won’t rock the boat of authority.

A: This is really sick, you know that?

J: Of course it is. There’s a reason these teachings have spontaneously led to generation after generation of abuses — abuses against the poor, the environment, against other Christians, not to mention countless non-Christians. Also abuses against God. These abuses are the “weeds” that have grown from the “seeds” that Paul intentionally planted.

A: Is this why Paul never mentions healing miracles in the letters he himself wrote?

J: Yes. Paul can’t afford to have his community of hagiasmos and koinonia (holiness and fellowship) distracted by the idea that God is deeply committed to ongoing healing, communication, and relationship with all people through the Kingdom within. The Kingdom within, of course, is the core self — the soul. The good soul. That’s how God connects with all God’s children — through the good soul that everybody is. God can and does communicate by other means, too, but the one connection that can never be taken away is the soul connection. You can cut out somebody’s eyes so they can’t see any more signs (and, unfortunately, this has been done). You can cut out somebody’s ears so they can’t hear any more external messages. You can cut out somebody’s tongue so they can no longer speak the prayers they long to sing aloud. All these abuses have been perpetrated “in the name of God” at one time or another. But nobody can cut out the connection to the soul. You’d have to carve out the entire brain and central nervous system of a person in order to fully quench the soul connection, the body-soul nexus. Obviously this would lead to death.

A: Hey! It’s another thing to add to the Jesus’ Seminar’s pot for the question of “Why Jesus Pissed People Off So Much That He Got Himself Crucified.”

J: Paul works very hard to ensure that his followers believe in a Kingdom that’s on the outside — “out there” in the Materialist world of cause and effect. “Out there” where they have no control over any of it themselves. Even more brilliant, Paul insists the Kingdom of God isn’t here yet. It belongs to some maybe-not-so-distant Day of Judgment. So not only is the Kingdom a materialistic reality outside the self, but it hasn’t even “arrived” yet. [1 Corinthians 15]. This prompts regular people to be thinking about the future instead of the present. This encourages them to shift their focus, their attention, and even their relationships to the future. To the future “effects” of today’s “causes.” People are so busy worrying about the future that they can’t hear God’s voice today.

A: Therefore they can’t hear the guidance they long for.

J: The guidance they want and need.

A: I like your version of the Kingdom teachings much better.

* If you’re new to this site, A=Author and J=Jesus

+71

Posted in apocalyptic prophecy, Cause & Effect, Gospel of Mark, Jesus Redux, Kingdom teachings, Law (Nomos), Materialism, Paul vs Jesus, Paul's teachings, quantum theory, slavery, Soul and tagged Kingdom teachings, science & faith | Leave a Comment

14 Feb 2011

JR10: Son of David or House of David?

A: You’ve said more than once that you were the son of a wealthy, aristocratic family, a descendant of priests. Were you a descendant of King David? Was your father “of the house of David,” as Luke says in Luke 1:27?

J: This is the great thing about modern socio-historical criticism of ancient religious texts. Today’s research gives so many terrific, irrefutable facts that contradict the Church’s teachings. It’s like a game of Battleship, blowing up beloved traditions and sacred doctrines one piece at a time.

A: So I’m thinking the answer to my question is “No”?

J: With a capital “N.” There is no way — no possible way — that the Jewish hierarchy or the Roman hierarchy would have allowed a male with a proveable link to the lineage of David to survive, let alone go around preaching a radical doctrine about God. That lineage was dead. Long gone. Jesus scholars trace the last reference to a verifiable descendant of David in Hebrew scripture to the 5th century BCE Book of Ezra-Nehemiah. After that, the Jewish texts are silent on David’s genealogy.

A: This appeared to be no obstacle to the writers of the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke. Matthew and Luke both insist you’re an actual descendant of David, and give you a genealogy to prove it.

J: Yes, but they don’t give the same genealogy, which has to make you wonder . . . could it be possible these men made it up? [Voice dripping with facetious humour.]

A: You mean, invented the genealogy. Lied about it.

J: Well, there’s certainly no truth to either of their genealogies.

A: If a written record of David’s line of descent had actually existed in the first century, where would it have been kept?

J: In Jerusalem. In the Temple. The records of bloodlines for the high priests and the other priests were highly valuable documents. They were carefully preserved. Any record of Judah’s or Israel’s ancient kings would also have been preserved. During the Second Temple period, the safest storehouse for valuables was the Temple and its precincts. The originals were kept there.

“His disciples said to him, ‘Who are you to say these things to us?’ [Jesus replied]: ‘You do not know who I am from what I say to you. Rather, you have become like the Jewish people who love the tree but hate its fruit, or they love the fruit but hate the tree'” (Gospel of Thomas 43). In this saying, Jesus is referring to the struggle within 1st century Judaism to reconcile opposing claims about authority. Some taught that bloodline was the key. Others taught that rigorous knowledge and obedience to the Law was the key. Jesus himself rejected both these arguments, even though he came from a priestly family and was highly educated. He taught a holistic approach wherein the ability to love God and to love other people took precedence over both bloodline and advanced study of scripture. Photo credit Hemera Technologies 2001-2003.

A: But in 70 CE, the Romans destroyed the Jerusalem Temple. Any scrolls that were saved were probably taken into hiding. Making them hard to check, hard to verify — at least until the political situation had settled down.

J: A fact that “Matthew” and “Luke” both took advantage of. Both of them wrote after the Temple was destroyed. “Mark” wrote just beforehand. Mark was very careful not to make any claims about my background that could easily be disproved.

A: Yet in the Gospel of Mark, there’s reference to you as “the son of David.” How do you explain that?

J: That’s an easy one. Mark never says that I’m from the “House of David.” Mark says that a blind beggar named Bartimaeus called out to me as the “son of David.” The short and simple answer — plain as can be — is that “House of David” and “son of David” mean two completely different things.

A: Explain.

J: To claim to be of the “House of David” is to make a genealogical claim — a claim to be a direct blood descendant of a former king. It’s like saying, “I’m descended from King Henry VIII” or “I’m descended from Queen Elizabeth I.”

A: Except that everybody knows Queen Elizabeth I died without children, without direct heirs. So anybody making that claim would have a hell of a time proving it to historians and archivists.

J: Same thing with King David. If descendants of King David were still known, still living, where were they when the Hasmoneans — the so-called Maccabeans — claimed both the High Priesthood and the de facto Kingship of Judea in the 2nd century BCE? Why didn’t the Davidic family step forward then to reassert their “claim” to the throne? Or when Pompey invaded in 63 BCE and made Judea a Roman protectorate? Or when Augustine officially turned the Roman Republic into an Empire with the Emperor as divinely appointed ruler and keeper of the Pax Romana in Judea, (as well as everywhere else)? It’s just not historically realistic to believe there really was a “House of David” by the first century of the common era.

A: So when “Matthew” and “Luke” made their claims about your ancestry, we should understand these as fictional claims — about as meaningful and factual as it would seem to us today if Stephen Harper were to say he’s a direct descendant of King Arthur of the Round Table. Pure hype.

J: You bet. On the other hand, if Stephen Harper were to liken himself symbolically or metaphorically to King Arthur — if he were to say he’s following the inspiration of his hero King Arthur — then people would respond differently.

A: It never hurts for a politician to model himself after a popular hero.

J: And in the 1st century CE, David was a popular folk hero. Not David the King, but David the humble shepherd lad who brought down the oppressor Goliath with one well-aimed blow of a stone.

A: Plus a swift sword to the neck.

J: People often forget that just as there are two different versions of the Creation story in Genesis, there are two different versions of the early David story in First Samuel, and there are two strikingly different “images” of David in the Bible — one humble, one royal. Which version is going to appeal more to regular folk oppressed by their leaders, both domestic and foreign?

A: The version where David is the little guy up against the big, mean, nasty Goliath.

J: Or the big, mean, nasty Herodian Temple, in my case.

A: It was a metaphor, then. A reference to the heroic folk tale of David. A reminder that God doesn’t always choose “the big guy” or “the firstborn son.”

J: Regular people didn’t love David because he was a king. Regular people loved David — the young David, the innocent David — because they could relate to him. David was a popular symbol amongst the slaves and the hard-working lower classes who longed to be freed from the cruelty of unjust leaders.

A: Huh. Well, as the Staples commercial says, “That was easy.”

Posted in Bible, Book of Genesis, Gospel of Mark, historical Jesus, Jerusalem Temple, Jesus Redux, Jesus' family of origin, Matthew's and Luke's intent and tagged historical Jesus | Leave a Comment

06 Feb 2011

JR7: John the Baptist and Jesus

Theologians and biblical researchers have tended to overlook the significance of this passage from Mark 3: 13 – 19, in which Jesus names the twelve apostles: “. . .James son of Zebedee and John the brother of James (to whom he gave the name Boanerges, that is, Sons of Thunder)”. The Gospel writer Mark isn’t telling his audience that James and John were powerful preachers (as Christian writers would like to believe); Mark is telling his audience that James and John were claiming for themselves a powerful pedigree. Among the Dead Sea Scrolls, in the charter for the Yahad is a reference to two prophesied Messiahs — a priestly Messiah and a Messiah of Israel (a royal commander for the armies) — who will serve together in the Last Days at the Messianic Banquet. Once it’s clear that the Yahad was waiting for a pair of Messiahs rather than a single Messiah, the reference in Mark to the Sons of Thunder takes on much greater significance. Mark is saying that James and John were claiming divine heritage, just like the long parade of gentile heroes who insisted they were the sons of Zeus, Jupiter, and other Thunder Gods. (And I don’t think Mark thought much of this particular claim.) Shown here is the mosaic above the entrance to the Chapel of St. John and the Grotto of the Revelation on the island of Patmos. Photo credit JAT 2001.

A: Tell me more about John. Why do you say that John the Baptist and John the Evangelist are one and the same person? Is there any proof for that in the Bible?

J: You have to know what to look for. Mark’s account of John’s beheading is much more than it seems. But Mark is like that throughout his gospel. You really have to know your sources — important early texts — to understand Mark. Mark was highly intelligent and very well read. He riffed off well known symbolism and motifs to tell his tale of intrigue. And intrigue it was.

A: The Gospel of John mentions John the Baptist’s early ministry several times, but then he sort of fades out of the picture. The Fourth Gospel doesn’t say what happened to the Baptist.

J: That’s because John the Baptist was still alive and still teaching long after I died.

A: Tell me about him as a person.

J: How much time do you have?

A: The Gospel of John is considered by many Christians to be the clearest expression, the clearest depiction, of the ministry and divinity of Jesus. Theologians love John’s “high Christology.” Many people feel that when they’re listening to the voice of John, they’re listening to divine truth. The prologue — John 1:1-18 — is poetic, elegant, mystical. It helps people feel they’re getting closer to God.

J: John was a gifted communicator, a skilled rhetorician and poet. If he hadn’t been, I wouldn’t have been drawn into his movement in the beginning. He was truly charismatic when he spoke. His writings definitely reflect that. Even his last writing — the book of Revelation. Even when he was profoundly psychotic, as he was in the later years of his life, the poetry and metre of the texts he’d read again and again in his childhood infused all his thinking. In a way you could say that the poetry and metre of those early texts — the logos — acted for him to lessen the pain, fear, and confusion that comes with psychosis. The logos was a soothing mantra. Olanzapine in word form, you might say.

A: Olanzapine being a highly effective atypical anti-psychotic medication.

J: Yes. Before the advent in recent years of tailored psychiatric medications, those who were suffering from major mental illness — including the flattened affect and hallucinations that accompany schizophrenia and related forms of psychotic illness — suffered more than most people can imagine. The suffering is internal but intense. Sometimes it feels to them as if their head is on fire. Or that ants are crawling everywhere inside them. It’s a horrible feeling. They have to find relief wherever they can. The majority turn to addictive substances — substances that trigger the dopamine circuitry in the brain, the pleasure circuitry. Others turn to religion. It’s sad to say, but extreme religiosity — rigid piety, fideism, blind faith, obsessive observance of ritual — all these careful, minutely observed rituals can bring relief to a suffering individual, depending on what parts of their brain have been ravaged by the effects of the disease process.

A: When I was working in the mental health field, I saw firsthand that one of the hallmarks of psychotic illness is paranoia. A fear that people are out to “get them.” When they’re floridly psychotic they’re often afraid of their own family members and medical caregivers. They’re sure they’re being watched, spied on. They’re afraid somebody will put poison in their medications. They think they’re perfectly sane and everybody else is sick. They have no objective understanding that they’re ill when they’re ill.

J: It’s the tragedy of the disease. They don’t believe they’re sick. If they get proper treatment, and become medically stabilized, they begin to develop insight. They begin to understand that the voices they’d been hearing in their heads weren’t normal, weren’t real. They can begin to trust their family members again. However, it’s not possible to persuade a floridly psychotic person to trust you. You can’t use logic to get through to them. As those working in the field of psychiatry know, sometimes you just have to lock the person up for a while and treat him against his will. Of course, by the time he’s that psychotic, he doesn’t really have free will — not as you and I would understand it. He has lots of thoughts, but they’re not balanced, they’re not integrated. There’s no functioning internal framework to hold his thoughts together, to help him process his thoughts and experiences, and learn from them. It’s a big jumble in his head — very frightening, very confusing.

A: So if he can find an external framework that makes sense to him . . .

J: Right. If he can find an external framework such as a strict religious code, then he can lean on that code. He no longer has to make sense of anything on his own. He’s off the hook, so to speak. The code tells him what to do and when to do it. This means he doesn’t have to decide these things for himself. For a person with schizophrenia (not really one disease, but a related cluster of illnesses) this is a huge relief. Life becomes liveable. Painful but liveable. The tradeoff is the fear. You can’t get rid of the fear. You’re constantly afraid of attack from “evil forces” such as the devil or demons or vampires or aliens. But at least you can blame the “evil forces” for your fear. You don’t have to blame your family. So from that point of view, the strict religious code makes it easier for you to stay with your family and receive the care you need.

A: Can you explain how all this relates to the man named John?

J: The man I knew as John — though his real name wasn’t John — would be diagnosed today under the category of schizophrenia. I first met him when he was about 18, and he already showed signs then of the illness.

A: As I understand it, that’s a common age for a diagnosis of schizophrenia to be made. The signs and symptoms often show up in late adolesence, early adulthood.

J: Yes, except I didn’t have a DSM-IV to refer to, and I didn’t recognize his illness at first for what it was. I thought he was an inspired prophet.

A: What was his background? Where did he come from?

J: He was an Essene. He was born Essene and raised Essene. He wasn’t a raw recruit, as some were — including myself for a short time.

A: You were an Essene?

J: I never officially joined the yahad or “Unity,” as they described themselves. In fact, I never made it past the “inquiry phase,” as you might call it. I was curious about the yahad. Many Jews were. Like many spiritual inquirers, I thought the Essenes might have the answers I was looking for. So when I heard about the new prophet named John, I went to check him out. It took me a long time to understand that John didn’t have the answers. He spoke endlessly and eloquently, but had no answers for me or anyone else. He was far too delusional to help anyone, including himself.

A: You said his real name wasn’t John. What was his real name?

J: I never knew. Not during my lifetime as Jesus. Readers today may have a hard time understanding what I’m about to say, but when I was growing up, “name magic” was a big deal. If you believed in the mystical “truth” of name magic, you didn’t lightly give out your real name.

A: Why not?

J: Your real name was said to be a source of great power. If an evil sorcerer or magician got hold of your name, he could gain power over you.

A: Interesting. That idea is still floating around. I remember reading Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea novels when I was growing up. The power of true names was central to her stories.

J: Kabbalah also embraces this idea.

A: Not a big fan of Kabbalah myself.

J: Kabbalah owes a lot to the ancient ideas of the Essenes.

A: What goes around comes around.

J: There aren’t a lot of new mystical ideas under the sun. The human brain, when diseased and dysfunctional, tends to produce certain distinctive patterns of thought, mood, and behaviour — what physicans call signs and symptoms. When patients start believing — truly believing — in occult magic, psychiatrists get worried. It’s okay to believe in things you can’t see if those things have a scientific origin — because one day the science will catch up with the theory — but there’s a line.

A: For instance, it’s okay to believe in love, even though we can’t see it. Though neuroscientists are now trying to capture it on brain scans.

J: Right. But mature love makes the world a better place, a more compassionate place, a more logical place. Occult magic doesn’t do any of these things. Belief in occult magic makes people less mature, less balanced, more grandiose, more controlling, and therefore less able to bring healing and compassion into the world around them.

A: Belief in occult magic ties in with the signs and symptoms of major mental illness.

J: Including psychopathy and severe narcissism.

A: Only a profoundly narcissistic person would believe that God gives special magical powers to small groups of bullies and tyrants who abuse others in the name of God.

J: There you go — your description of John in a nutshell. Raised to believe he was one of the Essene’s two prophesied Messiahs, hence profoundly narcissistic and dysfunctional by the time he was 18.

A: I guess he didn’t like you very much, then.

J: The Essenes were taught to hate the Sons of Darkness and raise up the Sons of Light. As far as he was concerned, I proved myself beyond dispute to be an apostate to the yahad cause and a Son of Darkness worthy of death. By the time I was arrested, John hated my guts.

A: So much for the theory that John himself was the Beloved Disciple.

J: Yeah, but I forgave him anyway, even after he tried to kill me.

Posted in Book of Revelation, dissociation, Essenes, Gospel of Mark, historical Jesus, Jesus Redux, John the Baptist, Messiah, occult themes, religion and mental Illness and tagged historical Jesus, religion + mental illness | Leave a Comment

02 Feb 2011

JR6: John and the Gospel of Thomas

A: I had a letter from a reader in the U.S. who’s curious about the Gospel of Thomas, so I thought we could switch gears a bit and talk about the manuscript known as the Gospel of Thomas.

J: Okay. Where do you want to start?

A: Well, for readers who aren’t familiar with it, maybe we could start with some background.

J: I happen to know you already have a book on your desk with the relevant facts, so perhaps you’d like to talk about the history of it.

Papyrus fragment from Wikimedia Commons: Gospel of Jesus' Wife (author unknown)

Papyrus fragment: Gospel of Jesus’ Wife (sourced from Wikimedia Commons, author unknown). This fragment is not from the Nag Hammadi collection, but is a good example of an early Christian text written in Coptic on papyrus. This fragment has itself been the source of much recent controversy.

A (referring to textbook): The discovery of the Gospel of Thomas was one of those serendipitous finds, so extraordinary that you’d expect to see it in an Indiana Jones movie. But the history isn’t disputed. Late in 1945, two Egyptian men discovered a large sealed pottery jar hidden beneath a large boulder near the village of Nag Hammadi in southern Egypt. They smashed the jar and found 13 leather-bound volumes inside, which were later sold. These volumes, which date from the mid-4th century CE and contain more than 50 texts, soon attracted the attention of scholars. The collection is called the Nag Hammadi library, and it’s proven to be a goldmine for scholars of early church doctrine. The texts are considered to be Gnostic Christian rather than orthodox Christian, and some scholars have suggested the texts were hidden to protect them from a wave of persecution against Gnostics. The most famous of the books is the collection of Jesus’ sayings — your sayings — called the Gospel of Thomas. There’s disagreement among scholars as to whether the Gospel of Thomas should be considered a Gnostic text. Some believe it should instead be considered a text originating in a different but very early school of Christianity — not quite Gnostic but not orthodox, either. Anyway, it’s unique because it doesn’t follow the narrative format of the four gospels we know from the Bible. Instead, it’s a collection of sayings. Some of those sayings have sparked renewed mystical and creative interest in Jesus’ original teachings. The movie Stigmata is an example of that interest.

J: And don’t forget all those Da Vinci Code type books.

A: Those, too. You don’t want to be learning your history from these books and films, but it’s fun to sit down with a cup of hot tea and an entertaining novel on a cold snowy day.

J: Like today.

A: Yes. That’s quite the storm out there today. A storm front all the way from Texas to Nova Scotia. I hope my boss calls to say we’re closed today. Then maybe I could do a little reading. Catch up on the Gospel of Thomas — which, to be honest, I haven’t looked at in about two years. Last time I read it, I hadn’t figured out the Gospel of Mark. But I think it’s time to revisit the sayings in the Gospel of Thomas and try to figure out how they relate to Mark. All I really know at this point is what you’ve told me in the past about the authorship of the Gospel of Thomas.

J: You mean the fact that the apostle John wrote the Gospel of Thomas.

A: It’s so confusing. Who wrote the Gospel of Mark? Oh, that would be Matthew. But not the Matthew who wrote the Gospel of Matthew, because that author would be Paul’s disciple Barnabas. And don’t forget that Luke and Acts weren’t written by a physician named Luke. And the newly discovered Gospel of Thomas wasn’t written by Thomas, but was actually written by John. It’s enough to give a person a headache.

J: It’s interesting, isn’t it, that John’s name is actually on his other writings — the Gospel of John, the letters of John, and Revelation.

A: Yes. How is it that John’s name got preserved in so many places, and Paul’s name got preserved in so many places, and your name didn’t get preserved on any writings at all? We have texts we call “Pauline,” and we have texts we call “Johannine,” but we don’t have any “Yeshuan” texts. In fact, we don’t even have an adjective in English that corresponds to the name Jesus, so I have to use an adjective based on the Aramaic form of your name, Yeshua. Yet I know you did a lot of writing. So what happened? What happened to your name? And what happened to your writings?

J: Long story. It’s complicated. It makes more sense if you understand the cast of characters, the people I actually lived with and worked with. It makes more sense if you understand the personal motivations for each person involved.

A: Including your own motivation.

J. Yes. Mine, too.

A: Okay. Let’s start with your motivation, then. Can you describe briefly the core of your motivation?

J: To bring healing to disadvantaged children so they didn’t have to go through what my daughter had to go through.

A: Oh.

J: Theologians have been pontificating for centuries about who I was and what I was trying to do. But nobody’s taken the time or trouble to ask me. They all want me to be a reflection of themselves — somebody who’s more interested in how many angels can fit on the head of a pin than somebody who’s interested in the core questions about humanity. Life and love. Healing. But after my daughter died, I couldn’t have cared less about the Covenant or the Law. The Covenant did nothing to help my daughter. In fact, I’d say the Covenant was partly to blame for her death. After you’ve had a child die — a child you care deeply about — your life changes. It’s no great mystery. I embarked on a journey of spiritual questioning and spiritual agony because I felt I owed it to my beloved child. It’s as simple as that.

A: I understand.

J: Yes, because you’ve gone through the same thing. Nobody but a bereaved parent can completely understand. To lose a beloved child is to have your heart ripped out. Except that you don’t lose your heart. If you accept the grief and you accept the loss, you end up finding your heart. It bleeds a lot, but it’s there.

A: Many of the theologians who’ve written about you over the centuries have been neither parents nor bereaved parents.

J: Augustine of Hippo was a bereaved parent. This didn’t help him find his heart, unfortunately.

A: Perhaps he was in denial. It’s not uncommon for bereaved parents to withdraw completely from their emotions because it’s too painful. They retreat into logic and end up focussing on the “mind” and “reason” so they don’t have to feel anything anymore.

J: Exactly. Unfortunately, the orthodox Church is riddled with the immature “victim” psychology that comes with being emotionally crippled, with abandoning healthy, mature relationships with each other and with God.

A: Explain what you mean by “emotionally crippled.”

J: I mean men and women who are emotionally immature, emotionally stunted, emotionally dissociated. Adults who don’t have the courage of their own hearts and souls. It’s hard work to deal with grief. And love. And Pauline Christians aren’t good at it because they haven’t been taught how. Whenever I hear the phrase “one body in Christ,” I think of a zombie — a lifeless corpse walking around with no heart and no capacity for empathy or deep compassion. There’s lots and lots of talk in the Church about free will and reason and blind faith, but if you look closely, you’ll see there’s little talk about emotional maturity or emotional healing or faith based on empathy rather than on pure logic. That’s why the Church doesn’t teach people about forgiveness. Forgiveness is part of a messy package that includes love and grief and pain. Forgiveness is very hard work at an emotional and spiritual and psychological level. It has no appeal for people who are emotionally immature.

A: People like Paul.

J: And people like John the Baptist.

A: Hey — that’s a non sequitur.

J: Not when you know that John the Baptist and John the Evangelist were one and the same person.

A: I take it that reports of his death were greatly exaggerated?

J: There are always wars and rumours of wars. Always deaths and rumours of deaths. Sometimes the one prevents the other.

Update on August 9, 2015: For an interesting commentary on the Gospel of Thomas, please see the article called “The Gospel of Thomas: Jesus Said What?” by Simon Gathercole in the July/August 2015 Biblical Archaeology Review. In this article, Dr. Gathercole talks about the history of the Gospel of Thomas’s discovery, discusses theories for its date, and reviews some the Gospel’s major theological themes.

On the question of whether the Gospel of Thomas can be understood as a Gnostic work, he says this:

“Nevertheless, it has always been something of an embarrassment for the “Gnostic” view of Thomas that there is no talk of an evil demiurge, a creation that is intrinsically evil, or of other familiar themes such as “aeons” (a technical term for the divine realms in the heavens). Properly Gnostic gospels such as the Gospel of Judas and the Nag Hammadi Gospel of the Egyptians, have very complicated accounts of how multitudes of deities and aeons come into existence from a demonic power before the birth of the world. There is nothing of this in Thomas, though.”

Update on February 26, 2018: Over the past few months, starting in mid-2017, I’ve been adding verses from the Gospel of Thomas to the photo captions of the Jesus Redux posts. Since I don’t read Coptic, I must rely on translations into English from a number of reputable scholars (though occasionally I piece together my own translation based on information that’s arisen through my mystical conversations with Jesus). Here’s a list of some of the sources I’ve been using throughout this process:

Davies, Stevan. The Gospel of Thomas: Translation and Annotation by Stevan Davies. Boston & London: Shambhala, 2004.

Ehrman, Bart D.. Lost Scriptures: Books That Did Not Make It Into the New Testament. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Grondin, Michael W.. “An Interlinear Coptic-English Translation of the Gospel of Thomas.” 1997-2015. http://gospel-thomas.net/x_transl.htm. (I find Grondin’s site incredibly helpful.)

Meyer, Marvin, ed.. The Nag Hammadi Scriptures. 1st Edition. New York: HarperCollins, 2007.

Pagels, Elaine. Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas. New York: Random House, 2003.

Patterson, Stephen J.. The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus. Salem, Oregon: Polebridge Press, 1993.

Skinner, Christopher W.. What Are They Saying About The Gospel of Thomas? Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 2012.

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Posted in forgiveness, Gnosticism, Gospel of Mark, Gospel of Thomas, historical Jesus, Jesus Redux, Jesus' family of origin, Jesus' original writings, John the Baptist, Mark (Jesus' great nephew), Matthew's and Luke's intent, My Spiral Path and tagged historical Jesus, Kingdom teachings | Leave a Comment

23 Jan 2011

JR3: Some Family History of Jesus

“Jesus said: It is not possible for anyone to enter a strong man’s house and take it over forcefully unless he first ties his hands. Then he can steal from that house” (Gospel of Thomas 35). Photo of a side entrance of the Royal Conservatory of Music, Bloor Street, Toronto. Photo credit JAT 2017.

A: On my Concinnate Christianity blog, I take aim at the Apostle Paul and try to show some of the ways that his teachings were very different from your own. I wonder if we can talk some more about that.

J: There’s a lot there to talk about.

A: One of the things that has surprised me most over the past few years is the shortage of people willing to examine the differences between you and Paul. Even serious biblical scholars — people like the scholars of the Jesus Seminar — have a blind spot around Paul. They seem to want to pretend that Paul was preaching the same core teachings as you. But it’s not that hard to draw up a list of the similarities and differences between First Corinthians and Mark. In fact, it’s one of the easier academic analyses I’ve tried in the past few years. The differences are blatant. I mean, scarily blatant. So I’ve gotta ask — what the heck has been going on? Why are so many Christians, even the ones who label themselves Progressive, so completely unwilling to be objective?

J: Brain chemistry.

A (rolling eyes): Why did I know you were going to say that?

J: It’s the brain chemistry. It’s the way most people have wired their brains — or have allowed their brains to be wired for them. Their biological brains are loaded with software packages about God and religion, and there’s a conflict between the existing software — provided in the beginning by Paul — and the “new” software I and other angels have been trying to reintroduce. Of course, it’s not really “new.” It was old when I was teaching it 2,000 years ago. But the Church tried very hard to eradicate it early on, and to keep eradicating it each time it sprang up again. So to today’s readers it seems “new.”

A: Can you give us an analogy that will make sense to today’s readers?

J: Yes. It’s like the difference between early Macs and PC’s. Groups were fighting over which platform was better. At that point PC’s couldn’t read Mac software. Mac software existed, and Mac software was useful and real, but PC’s couldn’t read it. So a lot of users missed out on good programs. The human brain can end up like that — wired so it can only read one kind of software, though others kinds of software do exist. For many Christians, their brains have become so used to the ideas of Pauline Christianity that they literally can’t “hear” any other ideas about God. Their brains can’t process the information. They’re literally the people who have ears but cannot hear. They’re not able to understand the “new” message at first because their brains aren’t used to hearing that kind of language.

A: What you describe sounds a lot like brainwashing. People conditioned to the point where they can hear only one kind of “truth.”

J: You could put it that way.

A: That’s scary.

J: Yes. But it’s not new. It’s a very old way to control a large group of people. You don’t have to put chains on everybody in your culture to get them to do what you want. A clever tyrant controls the mind — keeps the body free, but controls the mind. Nothing new there.

A: Except that 2,000 years ago your culture had real slavery — the kind where human beings were bought and sold and forced to do all sorts of things against their will.

J: The kind that continues in many parts of the world today.

A: Yes, that too.

J: One reason my great-nephew Matthew — the man you know as the author of the Gospel of Mark — went ballistic when he read what Paul was writing about “Jesus Christ” was Paul’s take on slavery. Paul never comes out and says that slavery is wrong. Instead Paul tries to preserve the status quo by persuading slaves to understand slavery as an illusion — something not worth fighting about because they have something more valuable than freedom: the higher “truth” of salvation.

A: Right. But can we back up the truck for a minute? I’d like to go back to that historical tidbit you just dropped in. The part about your great-nephew Matthew.

J: Matthew was the grandson of my brother Andrew. Andrew was the only one of my siblings who believed in my teachings.

A: And this Matthew who was your great-nephew . . . is this the same man who wrote the Gospel of Matthew?

J: No. The author of the Gospel of Matthew was not named Matthew. Just as the author of the Gospel of Mark was not named Mark.

A: Okay, well at least that part is known to scholars. But this is all very confusing. Is it okay with you if I keep calling the author of the Gospel of Mark, “Mark”? It’s much less confusing to call him Mark.

J: Sounds like a plan.

A: So you’re saying that your great-nephew wrote the Gospel of Mark.

J: Well, one of my great-nephews wrote the Gospel of Mark. I had a lot of great-nieces and great-nephews, but only the children and grandchildren of my brother Andrew carried on my teachings the way I taught them. More or less. The rest of my family didn’t like me very much.

A: You and I have talked about this a lot. But can you talk a bit today about why your family didn’t like you?

J: Basically because I was a shit-disturber. I disagreed with most of the values my family raised me to believe in, and I went on record to say my family and their social class were wrong about the way they were treating other people and God. I grew up in an aristocratic family where we held slaves and where we believed we were chosen by God. I said that was wrong. My family didn’t like it. I was embarrassing them.

A: The way a man from the state of Georgia, for instance, would have embarrassed his wealthy plantation owning family in the 19th century if he’d joined the Abolitionists.

J: Or if a son of the Kennedy clan had disavowed the Kennedy myth and run away to live in Canada in a small town where nobody cared that he was a Kennedy.

A: As Canada is to the U.S., so Galilee was to Judea.

J: As Port Hope is to Washington, so Capernaum was to Jerusalem.

A: So you picked Galilee on purpose because it was not a major centre of religious and political influence.

J: And because the people in Galilee had different priorities. They were interested in real healing, real teaching, and they had no use for arrogant priests or rabbis who had their heads stuck up their asses.

A: You always have such a way with words.

Posted in First Corinthians, Gospel of Mark, historical Jesus, Jerusalem Temple, Jesus Redux, Jesus' family of origin, Jesus' teachings, Mark (Jesus' great nephew), Mark vs Paul, Paul vs Jesus, slavery and tagged historical Jesus, Mark vs Paul | Leave a Comment

05 Dec 2010

CC48: The Crucifixion and Resurrection

Today is Second Advent, so this seems like a good time to talk about miracles.

You’d think that, with all my talk about science and brain chemistry, I’d be the sort of person who would reject the reality of miracles. Because practical people who believe in science are sort of obligated to reject the reality of miracles. Aren’t they?

Sunset, October 2014 - I captured this dazzling ray effect close to my home when my angels unexpectedly told me to pick up my camera, get in the car, and go! (c) JAT 2014

Sunset, October 2014 – I captured this dazzling ray effect close to my home when my angels unexpectedly told me to pick up my camera, get in my car, and go! Photo credit JAT 2014.

Most United Church of Canada members seem to think so. They’re squeamish about the idea that the soul exists as a scientific reality. Same thing with miracles. Officially, they won’t talk about miracles. Off the record, some United Church members will confide they believe in unexplainable, God-given events. But when they talk about miracles, they speak awkwardly and self-consciously — the same way people react when they’re invited to sit at a formal dinner table where there are three different forks on the left and three different knives on the right, plus a whole bunch of spoons, and they don’t know which utensils they’re supposed to use first. So they spend most of their time trying to watch the other guests to see which fork they should use when. They’re so busy paying attention to their feelings of embarrassment and discomfort that they can’t enjoy themselves. The whole situation is stressful rather than enjoyable.

I’d like to be able to say that United Church members have gone on the defensive about miracles because of repeated attacks from atheistic scientists such as Richard Dawkins. But it’s not that simple. United Church members are on the defensive because they’ve been repeatedly bullied by “progressive” Christian theologians (e.g. Rudolf Bultmann) who have loudly proclaimed that the miracles performed by Jesus in the Gospels couldn’t possibly have happened.

In the view of Bultmann and others, no sensible Christian should believe in these miracles because to believe in miracles is to reject science. These theologians recommend that Christians read the miracle stories . . . symbolically. Symbolically — my favourite word (grrrr).

These same theologians call into question the reality of the Crucifixion and Resurrection. They insist we should understand the Resurrection metaphorically rather than literally. In their view, the Resurrection couldn’t possibly have happened for real. Naturally, this makes it easier to believe that Jesus himself wasn’t real, either, but instead was an invented religious symbol.

I think they’ve got it all backwards. They’ve started with the assumption that miracles aren’t scientifically possible (an assumption that’s not scientifically valid), and on the basis of this assumption they’ve concluded that the miracle stories (especially those in the Gospel of Mark) must have been invented by gullible, superstitious, scientifically uneducated 1st century authors who didn’t know any better. Or maybe by authors who were just following a popular ancient trend of inserting invented miracle stories into their biographical narratives. (The fact that today’s Christian televangelists are still inventing new miracle stories to dupe the public should remind us not to make blanket statements about the motives of all ancient writers.)

Queen’s University history professor Dr. Jaclyn Duffin, who is both a practising hematologist and a professor in the history of medicine (a modern day physician scholar, as it were), has recently published a book about the history of canonization and attested healing miracles in the Roman Catholic Church. She sums up medical miracles in this way: “The doctor is surprised.”

The doctor is surprised. The doctor is surprised that, on the basis of current scientific understandings of the disease process, the patient somehow manages to fully recover despite all scientific predictions of imminent death.

I would suggest that when the doctor is surprised, it can mean one of two things: (1) the doctor was wrong from the beginning about the diagnosis or (2) the doctor isn’t as smart as she thinks she is about the disease process, quantum biology, healing, and God.

Usually it’s the latter.

The Resurrection as described in the Gospel of Mark is very sparse on details. (I agree with biblical scholars who suggest the book originally ended at Mark 16:8, not at Mark 16:20). All we really know for sure is that Jesus was crucified, was declared dead, was taken down from the cross, hastily placed in a tomb, and somehow managed to disappear from said tomb. Mark’s account leaves a lot of scientific wiggle room for a doctor to be surprised.

It’s a powerful symbol, the cross that Jesus hung upon. (It’s okay for symbols such as crosses or a stars to be symbols; it’s just not okay for historical facts to be treated as symbols instead of as facts.) The story of the cross has something important to say to us, even today, because it’s still a story where the doctors are surprised and we, the regular people of faith, are filled with awe.

For me, the miracle in this story is not that a man died and was raised from the dead. (I don’t think that’s scientifically possible.) For me, the miracle is that the man didn’t die in the first place.

How did Jesus son of Joseph escape death on the cross? That is the miracle in question.

It’s a much bigger question than Paul’s Christ myth asks. Paul’s Christ myth asks you to believe with blind faith that a human man fully died but was fully returned to life after three days because he was divine — the chosen son of God. He furthers asks you to believe with blind faith that if you fully accept Paul’s teachings about Judgment Day, then you, too, will be resurrected on that day. Sin is the enemy and death is its consequence. The great question for Paul is, “How can I escape death?”

The Jesus reality (as told by Mark) asks a different question. The Jesus reality asks you to ask new questions about God. The Jesus reality tells a powerful story about the relationship between God and God’s children, and asks you to not rely on blind faith, but to use your own common sense, your own senses, and your heart.

The Jesus reality is a powerful story about the kinds of things that are possible in God’s Creation when human beings walk side by side and hand in hand with Mother Father God.

It’s a story about courage. And trust. And humbleness. It’s a story about God’s free will and our own. It’s a story about miraculous (though still scientific) healing. And it’s a story about grief.

One of the things we can be certain of when we read Mark is that Jesus is not trying to escape death. Jesus has no fear of dying. He tells his disciples he’s going to die, but then he gets on with his life of service as a teacher and healer. He ignores all the Jewish purity laws around disease and death. He puts himself in harm’s way by going to Jerusalem. His Last Supper is not a last supper but a first supper, where he rejects the Passover ritual of eating unleavened bread by choosing instead to drink water and to eat risen bread. He breaks all the laws designed to protect the pious from death. His message is not about escaping death. His message is about embracing courage and trust and gratitude and devotion in our relationships with each other and with God.

The Jesus reality is Mark’s way of saying that death is part of human life, and no one — not even a gifted physician scholar filled with learning and love — can fight this reality. Jesus had to die because he was a creature of Earth, and all creatures of Earth will one day die. It’s meant to be this way. It’s part of the fabric of Creation. It’s painful and emotionally overwhelming for us to lose someone we love, but it’s the way it has to be. Our lives here are only temporary. When it’s time for one of us to go Home to our eternal reality, God the Mother and God the Father (both of whom are brilliant scientists and brilliant healers), come and gently lift us out of our mortal body and tenderly carry us Home. There we’re reunited with our loved ones, and our hearts break open to pour out all the tears and sorrows of our lonely human lives so we can be healed and restored in God’s loving arms.

Yet, despite all this, we’re left with a mystery. Despite the reality of Jesus’ total trust in God, despite the reality of Jesus’ courage in the face of death, we’re left with the puzzling fact that God the Mother and God the Father in their wisdom decided that a man named Jesus of Nazareth would not die on the cross that day, but would, in fact, escape that terrible death, and live to tell the tale — for a short while, anyway, before he, too, surrendered his human life, as all of us one day must.

What is it that God was saying?

Thanks be to God the Mother and God the Father this Advent Sunday.

Posted in "Escape", afterlife, atheism, Concinnate Christianity, Divine Love, Gospel of Mark, healing, healing miracles, historical Jesus, Jesus' teachings, life and death, miracles, Mother and Father God, resurrection and tagged Kingdom teachings | Leave a Comment

03 Dec 2010

CC47: Hidden in Plain Sight: The Cunning of Paul

“Toews2010WinterOlympics” from Wikimedia Commons – author Rosie Perera – originally posted to Flickr as G9-20100221-3457

You may recall that in an earlier post I put forward the thesis that the Gospel of Mark was written as a direct rebuttal of Paul’s First Corinthians (“The Gospel of Mark as a Rebuttal of First Corinthians,” August 18, 2010). Today I’d like to talk about that in more detail.*

Maybe you’re thinking that sounds pretty boring, so you’ll go read the sports page for a little blow-by-blow excitement. Bear with me, though. This story is packed with more drama than an NHL brawl combined with a daytime Soap Opera.

On one side, we have Team Salvation (blue and white). Team Salvation comes onto the ice first with the biggest, meanest lines you’d ever want to see. Paul is the Captain. His best forward is Luke and his strongest defenceman is Matthew. These guys have stamina and brute strength in spades. They’re not nimble. They’re not fast. Their wrist shot sucks. Their overall strategy is to slam the other team into the boards, start fights, and keep the puck moving fast so the audience has trouble following the play. They’ve done this many times before, and they’re the crowd favourite, so they’re convinced their strategy will work.

On the other side, we have a rookie team, Team Redemption (red and black). Team Redemption is late getting on the ice. Mark is the Captain. His forwards are unknown draft picks. But they’re fast and smart and they skate and stickhandle like a young Wayne Gretsky. Team Redemption has only one line, but they play with everything they’ve got. They put their heart and soul into the game.

Paul scores an easy first goal, as he expected, but then Mark gets the puck. Mark is not like any of the opponents Paul has played before. Paul keeps trying to check him, but Mark seems to have wings on his skates, and he dekes the goalie to score three quick goals. Paul starts a fight and slams Mark’s head into the boards. Mark won’t quit. So Matthew gets the puck and moves the play across the centre line. It’s offside, but the refs don’t call it because they’re paid on the sly by Paul’s team. Mark’s wingers retrieve the puck, score another goal with a beautiful slap shot. Paul is furious. He tells Luke to kill the clock until Team Redemption’s line drops from exhaustion. Which they do.

Just for the thrill of it, Paul pummels every red jersey who drops to the ice.

Okay. That’s the gameplay for the 1st century battle between Paul’s team and Mark’s team. Only the stakes were much higher for Paul and Mark, and the play was much more brutal than anything you’d see in a 1980’s NHL game.

And you thought the New Testament was talking about boring ol’ topics like peace, love, and hope!

The biblical book known as First Corinthians is a letter that was written by a confident “team captain.” You can tell by the tone of the letter that Paul believes his preaching mission is going fairly well, despite some kinks that have be worked out with the Christian groups who live in the Greek city of Corinth. He’s sure of his own authority. He describes himself in glowing terms as “like a master builder [who] laid a foundation” (1 Cor. 3:10). “For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ.”

In other words, Paul, the master builder, has chosen as the foundation for all his authority, all his church building, and all his theology one man whom he calls Jesus Christ. This man Jesus is already dead. So Paul figures he can use this man’s name and this man’s “face” with impunity.

For a while, he gets away with it. (Goal #1). But he doesn’t count on a direct challenge to his fabricated claim about “the Christ.” He doesn’t count on copies of his letter to the Corinthians ending up in Palestine. He doesn’t count on somebody — a somebody who knows a lot about the actual Jesus in question — reading the copied letter and objecting vehemently to the content. He doesn’t count on this somebody writing a searing point-by-point rebuttal of Paul’s claims. He doesn’t count on the courage of a man who wants to tell the truth about the life and teachings of Jesus son of Joseph.

By the time Mark writes his rebuttal in the early to mid 60’s (a few years before the Romans destroyed the Jerusalem Temple), Paul himself can’t do anything about it. (He seems to have stopped writing in the late 50’s, and we don’t know for certain what happened to him.) But his successors can do something to undermine the dangerous assertions made by Mark. They can take Mark’s manuscript and do a hatchet job on it, cutting and pasting the various fragments into new compositions (the Gospel of Matthew, the Gospel of Luke), new compositions that change the original meaning and intent of Mark’s portrayal of Jesus. They can try to force a blue and white jersey onto a physician scholar who was clearly playing for the red and black team, and if they’re lucky, the audience will be so confused by the changing scorecard that they won’t contest the final score of the game.

Based on the lasting success of Paul’s strategy, along with his successors’ strategies in the orthodox Western Church, I’d say his plan was quite effective. Ruthless. Heartless. Cruel. Inhumane. But very, very effective.

* For more on this topic, please see “Materialism, Pauline Thought, and the Kingdom,” as well as “Seventh & Final Step: Remove the Thorn in Jesus’ Flesh (That Would Be Paul)”

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Posted in Concinnate Christianity, First Corinthians, Gospel of Mark, historical Jesus, Mark vs Paul, Matthew's and Luke's intent, Paul, Paul vs Jesus, redemption and tagged Jesus vs Paul, Mark vs Paul | Leave a Comment

30 Nov 2010

CC46: Understanding God’s Relationship With Us

My New Testament professor once said in class, “Give me 15 minutes and I can find a proof text in the Bible for anything you want to justify.”

You’ll have noticed by now that I treat the Bible with a great deal of caution. For me and for many others, the Bible is a lot like a pit bull with a hair-trigger temper. One minute it’s wagging its tail at you, spouting happy thoughts. The next, it’s trying to rip your throat out.

I’m not one of those mystics who thinks the Bible is a lap dog that will always treat you kindly — an immortal, timeless lap dog whose eyes are always filled with serenity and bliss if you know the secret of looking at it the right way. Spiritual talk of secrets — secret knowledge (gnosis) and secret interpretations (symbolic readings of the Bible) — makes me very nervous. I’ll tell you why. It’s because spiritual leaders who say they can teach you how to unlock the secret biblical interpretations are making some powerful claims about God. They’re claiming that God isn’t a very loving God or a very nice God at all.

Take the example of the book called Song of Solomon (also known as Song of Songs). Here is a lyric poem about human love (eros). It’s filled with erotic imagery and metaphors that nobody can miss. Scholars think the poem (or collection of poems) was probably written in the 4th or 3rd century BCE. Despite the extremely obvious fact that the Song of Solomon is part of an ancient tradition of erotic love poetry written for a pre-Viagra age, the Song of Solomon started to be interpreted symbolically by religious teachers sometime around the start of the Common Era.

For about 2,000 years, then, theologians have been teaching the faithful to read Song of Solomon symbolically — as an account of the love between God and Israel. Pious and devout people are expected not to notice or respond to the explicit sexual content. And fourteen year old boys are not to read it late at night by candlelight.

If this is a sacred text about the relationship between God and God’s people, I’ll eat my hat.

I’m very unhappy that this symbolic interpretation can only be arrived at through some pretty twisted mental gymnastics. I’m also wondering why it’s only through a special secret scholarly key that regular people can see the “light of truth” hidden in this poem. As many mystics would have you believe, the majority of people — regular people who aren’t privy to the secret key — won’t be able to see and understand the wonderful “truth” buried in this erotic text. Regular people are too dull to see the “truth.” Their corrupt, inferior human senses make them too stupid to understand what’s actually written here.

And, of course, that’s the way God wants it to be! (according to Gnostic teachers). God, in God’s infinite wisdom, decided that most human beings are just too darned stupid and weak and untrustworthy to be entrusted with divine truth. So God hid it. God hid the light of truth in the deepest, darkest swamps, where regular people can’t find it, and then God chose a few select warriors to go out and find the light and guard it. Because God is too weak and stupid to protect it. God, Creator of all Creation, is too weak and stupid to parent trustworthy children. God is too weak and stupid to share divine truth with all children equally. God is too weak and stupid to tell the honest truth honestly. God is too weak and stupid to communicate clearly to all people without the help, aid, or benefit of that trusty band of “specially chosen warriors of light.”

Maybe it’s because God is too busy thinking lascivious thoughts about the luscious gazelles and wild does in the Song of Solomon.

I hope the last sentence creeped you out. I know it creeped me out. But don’t yell at me. I’m not the one going around claiming that Song of Solomon has an elevated message about the sacred love God feels for a few chosen children.

We have a term we use today for parents who engage in sexual conduct with their own children: we call them child abusers, and if we catch them, and succeed in convicting them in a court of law, we put them in jail. As we should.

The God I know is nothing like this. Nothing like this at all. The God I know and talk to every day as part of my mystical practice are my divine parents. God the Mother and God the Father are wonderful people. They’re kind and thoughtful and generous and funny. They’re extraordinarily patient. They always explain things in a way I can understand with my very human brain. If I don’t understand something, they don’t call me weak or stupid, but instead they always try a new tack to help me “put it together.” They love me as their child, but I know I’m not loved more than anyone else. They love all their children with as much ferocity as they love me. It’s the ferocious love that all loving parents know towards their children. It’s lifelong devotion, commitment, sacred trust. It’s safety. It’s eternity.

There are precious few passages in the Bible that convey this sense of God’s relationship with us as angels-in-human-form. The passages that do exist are almost buried under the holy mountain of piety, righteousness, law, fear, and obedience.

I say “almost.”

Beautiful things grown in marshes. These blue flags from the iris family grow in many wet spots in Ontario. Photo credit JAT 2014.

The really cool thing is that the truthful passages “somehow” survived all the cuts, revisions, and ruthless doctrinal choices made by narcissistic theologians in the past. “Somehow” the Letter of James made it into the Christian canon, although many influential theologians (including Martin Luther) were openly hostile towards this letter. “Somehow” the Gospel of Mark was preserved, despite the best efforts of the authors of Luke and Matthew to eradicate its message by “improving” on it. “Somehow” the non-elitist Psalm 116 got tucked in there among the more famous Royal and Zionist Psalms.

I just love the way these truthful messages are “hidden in plain sight” where anyone with an open heart and a lick of common sense can find them.

Even better, these passages say what they say in an open, honest way. No special training is required. No promises are made to you about the hidden truth that will one day be revealed to you if only you submit to blind faith.

Divine truth needs no embellishment. It’s beautiful just the way it is. Today. Not centuries from now, but today.

Which is pretty much what you’d expect from a wonderful, loving God.

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Posted in apocalyptic prophecy, Bible, Concinnate Christianity, Divine Love, Gnosticism, Gospel of Mark, Letter of James, Matthew's and Luke's intent, Mother and Father God, mysticism, relationship with God and tagged Divine Heart | Leave a Comment

18 Aug 2010

CC29: The Gospel of Mark as a Rebuttal of First Corinthians

The Charioteer of Delphi, bronze statue, early 5th C BCE. Photo (c) Hemera Technologies 2001-2003

There’s no excuse any longer for people of faith to accept the Church’s interpretation of the Bible.

For almost 2,000 years, the orthodox Western Church has successfully hoodwinked people into believing that Paul was an apostle of the man named Jesus of Nazareth. If the New Testament can be said to be a “testament” at all, it should be understood as a testament to the determination and marketing genius of certain men and women who wanted the kind of power that only comes through a theocracy.

I can certainly understand how regular people would fail to understand the implications of what Paul and Mark wrote. Even though I had two university degrees before embarking on a Master’s degree in theological studies, I had no understanding until the age of 49 that the Church had been lying to me all my life. I naively assumed until then that the Church was telling me the truth about Jesus, and that the Church was wanting to tell me the truth about Jesus.

Then I went back to university. There, using the research tools my professors taught me, it soon became clear to me that the pages of the New Testament don’t say what they’re “supposed” to say if you’re a good, pious, orthodox Christian. Instead, the pages tell a story about a family ripped apart, a man who longed to know God, a death that didn’t come to pass, and the frantic attempts of other people to hide the truth about this man, this man’s family, and this man’s “non-death.”

What surprised me even more than what I saw in the pages of the New Testament was the reaction of my professors and classmates to what’s written there. They did NOT want anyone to point out that Paul’s theology is completely different from Jesus’ theology as presented in Mark. They wanted to keep the myth that Paul was chosen by God to preach “the good news.” They seemed content to ignore the avalanche of research material that now makes it impossible for a person of academic integrity to claim that Paul and Mark were even “in the same book,” let alone “on the same page.” The proof is right there in black and white for anyone who wants to take the time to examine it objectively.

So different are Paul and Mark’s theologies, in fact, that I contend here that Mark wrote his narrative biography about Jesus as a direct written rebuttal of the letters written by Paul in the short collection we now call First Corinthians.

The vast majority of Christians have no idea (and why should they?) that the Gospel of Mark was written several years after the letters of Paul. Christians assume (and why shouldn’t they?) that the books of the New Testament are arranged in the order in which they were written. So they read Matthew’s Gospel, with its detailed Nativity story, and they conclude the Bible is reciting Jesus’ story to them from the beginning (which only makes sense). But, as most biblical scholars will tell you, the Gospel of Matthew was written after the Gospel of Mark, not before. And Mark, in turn, was written several years after the uncontested letters of Paul.*

The books of the New Testament would look a lot different if they were printed in the order in which they were written. If they were printed in this order — first the Letter of James, then the Q Source, then parts of the Gospel of John, then Paul’s 7 letters in the order mentioned in the footnote below, then Mark, then Matthew, then Luke and Acts back to back (because Luke and Acts were written as a two-part story by the same author), then the rest of John’s writings (which grew increasingly erratic, paranoid, and apocalyptic over time) — you’d be able to see without too much trouble what was actually going on during the time of Jesus and his immediate successors.

To make the differences between Jesus and Paul even easier to see, all you have to do is find an internet site that offers the complete text of a solid Biblical translation such as the RSV, the NIV, or the NRSV, then cut and paste the text of First Corinthians into a word-processor chart beside the text of Mark’s Gospel (minus Mark 16:9-20, verses which scholars generally agree were tacked on by a later scribe). Now you have your very own free Biblical Synopis chart like a biblical scholar with a Ph.D.!

You’ll probably find the hardest part of this exercise is the mental effort to ignore what Matthew and Luke say. Pretend Matthew, Luke, and Acts don’t exist (because they didn’t exist when Mark was written). Focus only on what Paul says and what Mark says a few years afterward. Focus on what Paul doesn’t say about Jesus. Then notice what Mark does say about Jesus. Don’t you think it’s strange that the later source — Mark — refuses to agree with Paul about who Jesus was and what Jesus taught? Don’t you think it’s strange that Mark makes no mention of grace? Or “foolishness” in Christ? Or Spirit’s gifts of prophecy and tongues? Or the moveable Temple that is Spirit dwelling in your body? Don’t you think it’s strange that Mark makes no mention of the chosen prophet Paul (an historical figure by the time Mark wrote), nor of “our Lord Jesus Christ” (supposedly also a famous historical figure by the time Mark wrote)?

Are where, for that matter, can we find Mark’s themes of forgiveness, courage, and healing miracles in Paul?

We can’t. Because they’re not in Paul. Paul wasn’t interested in the theme of forgiveness. That’s because forgiveness and grace are antithetical to each other. Paul chose grace. Jesus chose forgiveness.

Choose one. Because you can’t have both.

If you prefer Paul’s theology, that’s fine, but at least have the decency to be honest about it. Don’t pretend you’re following in the footsteps of Jesus when you’re not. Have the courage to stand up and be counted as a follower of Paul. Then let the followers of Jesus’ teachings go their own separate way, as they’ve been trying to do for almost 2,000 years.

Can you tell I’m tired of the bullshit?

* Biblical scholars have used a variety of tools to establish that some of the canonical books traditionally attributed to Paul were almost certainly written by other authors, and not by Paul himself. There are 7 books that are generally agreed upon as authentic to Paul himself. These books are First Thessalonians; Galatians; First Corinthians; Second Corinthians; Philippians; Philemon; and Romans. There is no general agreement on the order in which these 7 books were written. I place Romans last, though others think Philippians was written last. Second Corinthians is also problematic because the letter as we know today it is actually a compilation of at least three different letters written at different times.

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Posted in Bible, Concinnate Christianity, Favourite Posts, First Corinthians, forgiveness, Gospel of Mark, Letter of James, Mark vs Paul, Paul and tagged Jesus vs Paul, Mark vs Paul | Leave a Comment

08 Aug 2010

CC28: Realspiritik

Last Christmas, when everyone was putting out their favourite Christmas decorations, I chanced to see an interesting item in a store. It was a Nativity scene. All the traditional details of the Nativity narrative that Christians love and cherish were carefully rendered in this modern-day creche, from the timbers of the stable to the angel on the roof. The nativity scene could be set on a tabletop, and enjoyed in this way as a reminder of the Christmas story. But for true fans of the story, there was more. The creche was fitted with a high-tech digital sound and lights device. At the touch of a button, the soothing, mellow voice of a male narrator suddenly filled the space around the creche with a reverent retelling of the Christmas story, as tiny moving “spotlights” highlighted each character in sequence. It was quite well done, and I’m sure whoever bought it will get a lot of pleasure out of it.

It’s a touching story, this Nativity tale, and it’s one that many people find great comfort in. They can’t imagine Christmas without it. It’s such a great story, with all the bells and whistles of a good Saviour myth: divinely chosen human parents, a virgin mother, mystical signs and portents leading up to the time of birth, a long-prophesied male child from a sacred bloodline who must be whisked away and hidden from evil kings until he comes of age. Why, it’s a story worthy of Harry Potter! Or King Arthur! Or Aragorn son of Arathorn! Or Luke Skywalker! It’s such a terrific, timeless story that it’s no wonder there are two completely different versions of it in the New Testament — one in Matthew, one in Luke. Why stop at one invented Nativity story when you can have two? That way, people can pick and choose what they like, and they can paste the details together in new and creative ways called “blended truth,” and there’s something for everyone, so all people can relate to the story — even the lowly shepherd folk!*

Being told from early childhood that you’re very, very special is a double-edged sword. Photo of 17th century Mughal ceremonial court dagger set with jewels from Royal Ontario Museum special exhibit. Photo credit JAT 2019.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love a good tale of intrigue, adventure, and heroism. Plus I think we really need good storytelling. Good stories teach us timeless truths, and help us understand our own lives and our own painful experiences. Stories told through books, visual art, music, plays, film, dance, and performance art are deeply important to the human experience. But stories are stories, and facts are facts, and a lot of damage is caused when the two become interchanged, when story is treated as fact, and fact is treated as story.

We can sometimes recognize situations where story is being treated as fact: we call it propaganda, spin, political manoeuvring, brainwashing, or manipulation. Our history books (and our newspapers) are filled with examples of leaders who’ve used “the big spin” to control political, religious, and economic events.

However, we’re less familiar with examples of fact being treated as story. By this I mean we’re less familiar with examples of individuals who spoke an honest truth and were ignored by their contemporaries until later commentators “took up the cause” and “improved” it to make it more appealing to a wider audience. This process of “improvement” involves the addition of a thick layer of myth to a foundation of fact. An excellent example of this is the way in which Lenin and Trotsky “improved” upon the writings of Marx and Engels to create Russian Communism.

The reality of Jesus’ life and teachings — the actual events, and the actual people — is another instance of fact being turned into story. So many layers of myth, allegory, and invention have been added to a basic foundation of fact that orthodox Western Christianity now resembles a nutritious, single-layered, carrot cake that’s been piled high with three feet of gooey, calorie-laden icing. There’s so much icing, we don’t realize there’s still a cake inside there somewhere. All we can see is the icing. We eat piece after piece of icing, and always feel sick to our stomachs. But if we could get down to the carrot cake, made with wholesome ingredients such as eggs, oil, carrots, unbleached flour, spices, and a little sugar, we’d probably find our spiritual food nourishing instead of nauseating!

Let me ask you a question. A practical question based on realistic observations about realistic human behaviour. Okay . . . you’ve read the tabloid headlines (even when you don’t want to admit it), and you’ve seen the TV interview shows, and you’ve been on Facebook or Twitter or YouTube. Over and over again you’ve seen the reports about famous child stars and their tragic lives as adults. Right? You’ve heard again and again about famous child stars who had everything, but ended up crashing and burning in early adulthood. Famous child stars who’ve been battling addiction disorders since their early teens. Famous child stars who can’t sustain monogamous romantic relationships. Famous child stars who’ve become abusive towards others and are brought before the courts to answer for their abuse. Famous child stars who become narcissistically self-indulgent, no longer capable of understanding what empathy is.

What turns these talented young actors into narcissistic monsters (because they sure as heck weren’t born this way)? The answer is status addiction.

These young people, who started out as normal boys and girls, have been told countless times over many years that they’re special, that they’re different, that they’re deserving of fame. They fall prey to status addiction at an early age. Once they’re biologically addicted to status, they’re much more vulnerable — both psychologically and physiologically — to other addictions, such as alcohol and street drugs. It’s no surprise at all that they can’t control their emotions or their choices by the time they’re young adults.

So here’s my question . . . just exactly how do you think a young boy raised from infancy to believe he’s the long-awaited Messiah would escape the fate of these young Hollywood stars? How do you think such a boy would be any different?

Do you think his biology would be different? Do you think his physiology would be different? Do you think his DNA would be different? Do you think he’d be immune to the realities of status addiction? Do you think he’d be invulnerable to the slings and arrows of status addiction, like some sort of Jewish Achilles, dipped by his semi-divine mother into a baptismal pool of magic river water so he’ll be divinely protected from almost everything real? Do you think he could spend years in a household where he’s treated differently from his brothers and sisters, where he’s trained from birth to fulfill “a special purpose” as Israel’s Messiah, yet somehow not end up becoming a self-entitled, narcissistic, addiction-addled brat? (And, by way of comparison, isn’t it interesting that Homer’s Achilles grows up to become a self-entitled, narcissistic, addiction-addled brat?)

I can think of only one modern example of a person who was raised in such an elitist spiritual environment without losing all his humbleness and courage, and that person is the current Dalai Lama. My hat’s off to him and his teachers because he’s managed to preserve the sanity and compassion he was born with. I can’t in all honesty say that orthodox Western Christian doctrines would be of any use to a boy or girl who genuinely wanted to be close to God.

The reality is that if Jesus had been raised to believe he was the Messiah, he would have been a pretty useless Messiah. He would have ended up “broken,” broken in the way so many other men and women have become broken because they were raised to believe that God had chosen them before birth to become special prophets and leaders. If Jesus’ family had raised him in this way, they would have turned him (without meaning to) into a garden-variety spiritual narcissist with serious addiction problems.

This is not the Jesus we see in the Gospel of Mark. Nor is it the family of Jesus we see in the Gospel of Mark.

In the Gospel of Mark, there is no Nativity story at all. In fact, Mark gives only hints to his readers about Jesus’ family of origin, and these hints aren’t very flattering.

Isn’t it interesting that Mark thinks the historical facts about Jesus’ mission speak more loudly to his audience than any myth could?

Ya gotta wonder what Mark knew that Paul didn’t want you to know.

* Although most readers today assume that Luke is referring to sheep herders in Luke 2, there’s good reason to suspect that Luke is alluding to Egyptian rulers — shepherds caring for their people — whose ancient symbols had long been the crook and the flail. If this is true, it means that Luke is showing Egyptian rulers (wise kings) travelling to Bethlehem to offer obeisance to the Christ child, just as Matthew shows the Persian Magi (wise kings) doing the same in Matthew 2.

Posted in Concinnate Christianity, Gospel of Mark, historical Jesus, Mark vs Paul, Matthew's and Luke's intent, Messiah, narcissism, status addiction and tagged Jesus vs Paul, Mark vs Paul | Leave a Comment

25 Jul 2010

CC27: Jesus: The Anti-Status Teacher

There is currently no major world religion that bases its doctrines and spiritual practices on the teachings of the man who once lived as Jesus.

There are several world religions that owe a significant doctrinal debt to ancient Egyptian mystery cults. There are several world religions that would not be recognizable in their current form without the legacy of ancient apocalyptic groups. There are several world religions that have incorporated the teachings of ancient Wisdom literature into their texts. But there are no major world religions that approach the deep questions of spirituality and relationship with God in the way that Jesus approached these concerns.

This isn’t new. At the time Jesus was teaching and healing, many different religions and philosophies were competing with each other to attract devoted followers. Many of these “pagan” religions were quite successful, far more successful than the modest house churches that sprang up in response to Jesus’ message. So successful were these “pagan” religions, in fact, that in the end they won out over the teachings of Jesus.

Most Christians believe it’s the other way around, that Christianity’s “truth” won out over paganism’s “heresy.” But orthodox Western Christianity isn’t based on the teachings of Jesus. It’s based on the teachings of Paul and his vigilant successors — men such as the author of Matthew and the author of Luke-Acts (whose writings were decreed canonical), and men such as Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and Cyprian of Carthage (whose writings helped shape orthodox thought). These men took the ancient teachings of the mystery cults, the apocalyptic groups, and the Wisdom sages, and repackaged them, rebranded them, into a “new and improved” religion called Christianity.

So while early orthodox Christianity had everything to do with Christ — an ancient saviour figure who was central to Egyptian, Persian, and Greek mystery cults — early orthodox Christianity had nothing to do with the teachings of the physician-scholar named Jesus son of Joseph. In fact, the doctrines promoted by Paul and the men of the “apostolic succession” are the antithesis of Jesus’ teachings about God.

Paul wanted desperately to preserve the ancient teachings of the mystery cults, the apocalyptic groups, and the Wisdom sages because these three approaches to religion, though very different from each other on the surface, all share one fundamental feature: they encourage people to become addicted to status.

Paul offered people a new religion that gave them “bonus points” in their drive for status. Paul promised people more status, extra status, new and improved status, special status, irrevocable status. It’s a status-addict’s dream!

Jesus, meanwhile — as evidenced in the Gospel of Mark, the reconstructed Q source, and parts of the Letter of James — desperately wanted to get rid of the ancient teachings of the mystery cults, the apocalyptic groups, and the Wisdom sages. Why? Because he understood that the widespread addiction to status was the single greatest impediment to people’s understanding of God.

free_israel_photos_animals_two_camels_1024 - small

Photo credit Free Israel Photos

You’ve probably heard the biblical saying that it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God (Mark 10:25). This is usually interpreted as a condemnation of money and wealth, the idea being that if you give away all your money and wealth, you’ll be closer to the kingdom of God.

This is too simplistic. “Rich” people can give away all their money and wealth, and still not feel God’s presence because all they’ve done is exchange one form of status anxiety (wealth acquisition) for another form (asceticism, a.k.a. purity acquisition). Money per se isn’t the problem. Money can be used for hospitals, schools, meal programs, and so on. It’s not money that’s the root of all evil — it’s status addiction.

The only way for people to feel God’s ongoing presence in their lives is for them to acknowledge their addiction to status, and to make a commitment to heal this addiction.

It goes without saying that status addiction is rampant in our society. It’s not an easy thing to heal (about as easy as that camel going through that narrow gate). But it can be done. To be free of status addiction is to be kind and loving towards others in the guileless manner of a young child.

For this reason, Jesus compares those who want to enter the kingdom of God to little children (Mark 10:13-16). Young children haven’t yet been taught to hate others on the basis of class, race, or gender. They haven’t yet been taught that they’re “better” than others, that they’re more loved by God than others, that God will save them and their families but not others. They haven’t yet absorbed the cultural norms of competition, superiority, perfectionism (all forms of status addiction). Young children are still free. They still have free will. They still have the ability to love. They still have the ability to forgive. They still have the courage to look at other people, and see them as people, not as slaves, property, or lesser beings.

A young child knows nothing of Law or Covenant (both of which are hopelessly interwoven with status). Nor does a child care about “whole burnt offerings and sacrifices” (Mark 12:33). What a young child cares about is love — love that’s infused with respect, and dignity, and egalitarianism, and empathy, and mature relationship, and simple kindness. Love that doesn’t boast (since boasting is food for status addiction). Love that doesn’t presume to prophesy (since prophesying is food for status addiction). Love that doesn’t claim to be centred in the Mind (since pure logic is food for status addiction). Love that doesn’t punish the body through ascetic practices (since asceticism is food for status addiction). Love that never seeks revenge (since revenge is to status addiction what crack cocaine is to substance abuse). Love that can’t be taken away or withheld as a form of punishment. Love that isn’t co-dependent. Love that isn’t a synonym for “obedience.” What a young child wants is love that forgives. Love that’s . . . well . . . divine.

What children need, and what they in turn give to others, is divine love — the kind of love our God (God the Mother and God the Father) feel for all their children. The kind of love that Jesus wrote about in a text that Paul subsequently “borrowed” for his letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 13:1-8a).* The kind of love the orthodox Western Church doesn’t teach you about.

This is a love based on the power of the soul, the power of free will, the power of forgiveness, and the power of redemption. It has nothing to do with sin, separation, sacraments, and salvation. It’s a love that can be difficult for human beings to understand. It’s a love that can be difficult for adults to master (the whole “camel squeezing through the narrow gate” thing). But once it’s yours, nobody — not even an angry Church cleric or an angry Temple priest — can take it away from you, because it’s a sacred trust that exists between you and God.

It’s a sacred trust that fills you with wonder, and devotion, and gratitude, and humbleness. It’s a sacred trust worth dying for, as the man named Jesus once knew. It’s a sacred trust that opens the door to the kingdom of God while you’re living here as a somewhat confused but unquenchably hopeful human being on Planet Earth.

The keys to the kingdom are not found in the person of Jesus. The keys to the kingdom are found in the teachings that Jesus introduced to anyone who wanted to listen to his annoying and exasperating attacks on the status quo.

If you’re a Christian, and you want to start to work on the problems of status addiction in your own life, you’re going to have to let go of the doctrine that Jesus is your Saviour. This doctrine is food for your status addiction. There is no Saviour. You don’t need to be saved, because God don’t make no junk. There’s nothing wrong with your soul. Your soul is just fine, thank you very much.

It’s okay to think of Jesus as a teacher and mentor in the same way you think of Mahatma Gandhi or the Dalai Lama or Martin Luther King, Jr., as inspiring teachers and mentors. But please don’t put Jesus on a pedestal. That’s the last thing he’d want anybody to do.

Jesus wasn’t trying to teach his followers about himself. That would have been the height — the very pinnacle — of status addiction. He was trying to teach his followers about God the Mother and God the Father. He was trying to take out the “middle men” — the prophets, priests, and philosophers — whose grandiose, narcissistic musings about the One God had made it all but impossible for anyone to have a loving, trusting, forgiving relationship with the God who is Two.

If the church of the third millennium wants to follow the teachings of Jesus, it must let go of its apocalyptic, mystery-ridden, wisdom-elevated “Saviour,” and shift its focus to God.

Now there’s a radical idea.

* It’s fashionable these days for theologians and biblical scholars to express their profound regret that Jesus wrote nothing down because he was an illiterate Galilean carpenter who spoke only Aramaic. This is nonsense. No lasting Indo-European movement has ever got off the ground without an articulate, knowledgeable leader and a written record of the movement’s main tenets. To those scholars who insist that Jesus couldn’t write down his own original and penetrating observations about God, healing, and psychodynamics, I want to say, “Get a life , , , and a history book!”

Posted in "4 S's", Concinnate Christianity, Divine Love, Gospel of Mark, historical Jesus, Jesus' teachings, Kingdom teachings, Letter of James, Matthew's and Luke's intent, Paul, status addiction and tagged Divine Heart, Jesus vs Paul | Leave a Comment

14 Jun 2010

CC20: Further Update on the Vatican’s "Sin Within"

Last Friday, on June 11, 2010, Pope Benedict XVI addressed 15,000 priests who were in St. Peter’s Square to mark the end of the Vatican’s Year of the Priest. In his homily, Benedict asked forgiveness from God and from affected people for the sins of the sexually abusive clerics in the Roman Catholic church. He also promised “to do everything possible to ensure that such abuse will never occur again” (Nicole Winfield, “Pope Begs Forgiveness, Promises Action on Abuse,” The Globe and Mail, June 11, 2010).

While I’m quite certain that God the Mother and God the Father do, indeed, forgive Benedict for his own errors, and do, indeed, forgive the priests who’ve intentionally harmed the faithful in their care, I’m equally certain that hidden abuse will continue in the Roman Catholic church.

Many Christians want to make this a question of theodicy: how do we explain evil in the world while at the same time preserving our image of God as good and loving? If God allows abuse to continue in the church, does it mean that God is powerless and ineffectual? Impotent against the powers of the devil? Or does it mean that God is actually not a very nice person?

Many of the Christians I know would much rather blame the problem of evil on God and/or the devil than put the blame where it belongs: on the values and moral beliefs held by both individuals and by cultural groups.

The Roman Catholic church is a cultural group. It teaches particular cultural beliefs. (These comprise its theological doctrines). It has a consciously promoted schedule of active teaching. Its goal is to teach its people early on in life how they should conduct themselves in relationship to God, church hierarchy, and empire. Traditionally, it has punished members who question its teachings or its authority (the Inquisition). It has conferred upon itself the mantle of infallibility. It claims it is the one true church, the only legitimate path to salvation.

The Roman Catholic church has long held a vision of how society should be — how society should look, act, and “feel.” Its body of theological doctrines has been carefully cultivated so that only kind of garden can grow in its presence. The church has no one but itself to blame for this.

at the Vatican (c) J MacDonald 2011

The conditions in a garden dictate what kinds of plants will thrive there. A garden that has full sun, lots of water, and lots of nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, etc.) will grow very different plants than a garden that has shady conditions or low nitrogen or a high pH. If you restrict certain nutrients, you restrict which plants will flower abundantly. If you water some plants and not others, you control which plants will flourish, and which plants will live a miserable life of bare subsistence before dying a premature death.

Throughout its history, the orthodox Western church has been heavily committed to the lessons learned from gardening. Hewing closely to the principle that the person who controls the conditions of a garden will control the ultimate harvest of said garden, the church has intentionally chosen a specific blend of nutrients for its religio-political garden. The nutrients in this case are its doctrines. The doctrines are what “feed” the hearts and minds of the faithful. If you precisely control the “mix” of doctrines available to your people, you precisely control the rate at which people’s hearts and minds can grow. If you balance this mix with the precision of a master botanist, you can ensure that the people in your congregations grow just enough to offer you the occasional flower without ever getting big enough to overshadow you.

It’s a new idea, this idea that the introduction of particular belief systems can alter the physical structure and biochemical functioning of a person’s central nervous system and brain. I suppose I should amend that to say it’s a new idea among neuroscientists — unfortunately, it’s not a new idea among history’s power mongers.

Long before the advent of brain scanning technologies, would-be tyrants had empirically observed that people’s behaviour could be altered through the careful repetition of certain ideas. These tyrants didn’t understand the changes at a biochemical or neurophysiological level, and they didn’t need to — all they needed to understand was the result, the harvest of their ideological campaigns. Early orthodox Church Fathers understood this principle well.

Early in the history of the church, orthodox Christian teachers made a conscious decision to take an axe to the teachings of Jesus as represented in the Gospel of Mark, and to overshadow Jesus’ sunny, open “vineyard” with the giant magic beanstalk of spiritual ascent (a beanstalk seen later in the children’s fairy tale of that name). They’ve been feeding this beanstalk of “elevation” for the “elect” with their repeated assertions that the devil exists, that Judgment Day is coming (soon, very soon! — or at least sometime, maybe, we’re pretty darned sure, because it says so in the apocalyptic books), that the soul is tainted by original sin, that Jesus is your only hope of salvation, that Holy Mother Church is the only portal through which you can gain access to the gold at the top of the beanstalk.

This set of teachings was well established by the mid-3rd century CE. It’s not new (and it certainly didn’t originate with Jesus himself!). The problem with the church’s teachings is that their doctrines damage your biological brain. When you fully embrace these teachings as “divine truth,” your brain stops working the way God intends. Your brain responds exactly like the plant that’s been crippled because the gardener has intentionally withheld the water, nutrients, and care you need. Your heart and mind don’t really grow. You spend all your life sitting in the shadow of the towering beanstalk and feeling like crap. You feel like crap because all the truth — all the spiritual nutrients — about the actual nature of your relationship with God have been artfully concealed from you. You wouldn’t recognize the plants that grow in a sunny, lush, well-watered garden if they came chasing after you.

Such as forgiveness. Would you be able to recognize forgiveness if it entered your life? Probably not. Most Christian’s can’t. That’s because the orthodox Church has never taught people about forgiveness (which is why I’m somewhat sceptical about the Pope’s current pleas for forgiveness).

Why hasn’t the Church taught people how to forgive when it’s obvious from reading the Gospel of Mark that Jesus insisted on the message of forgiveness? The Church doesn’t want to teach people how to forgive, because once people catch onto the feeling of forgiveness, they’ll be able to figure out for themselves that divine forgiveness is the antithesis of “salvation” and “grace.” They’ll realize the church has been lying to them for centuries about their souls. The garden of orthodoxy might start to look like a thorny patch of weeds and thistles instead of the prophesied paradise!

It’s no mystery why some church clerics have been sexually abusing vulnerable people in their care. You can’t expect a human being’s brain to produce a harvest of compassion, integrity, inclusiveness, and enlightenment when all you do every day is try to fill that person’s brain with a steady diet of dissociation, lack of forgiveness, hierarchical control, and suppression of learning.

If Pope Benedict really means it when he says he wants to do “everything possible to ensure that such abuse will never occur again,” the only truly effective strategy will be for him to call a Council along the lines of Vatican II, and embark on the painful path of rescinding some of the church’s most cherished doctrinal beliefs.

Somehow I’m not holding my breath.

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Posted in "4 S's", Church of today, Concinnate Christianity, forgiveness, Gospel of Mark, occult themes, orthodox teachings about the soul, Paul vs Jesus, relationship with God, Soul, spiritual ascent, spiritual practices, theodicy and tagged religion + mental illness | Leave a Comment

23 May 2010

CC14: Why I Think Jesus Was A Physician-Scholar

Among Progressive Christians in Canada these days there’s a popular new trend in church reform. This is the “Jesus-is-obsolete” trend.

Well-known authors such as Gretta Vosper and Tom Harpur, along with less well known but influential biblical scholars such as William Arnal (plus my own New Testament professor), have concluded that even if we could figure out who the historical Jesus was with some degree of accuracy, it wouldn’t matter to the church today. According to these authors, if Jesus has any remaining importance to us in the third millennium, it’s only in a symbolic way. In other words, the symbol of Jesus is more important than the reality of Jesus. Our acceptance of this reality will help the church move forward, say these authors. Tom Harpur is so convinced of this that he no longer believes a real individual called Jesus of Nazareth even existed. For him, Jesus the Pagan Christ was an entirely fictitious character from the get-go.*

I guess you wouldn’t be surprised to learn that I don’t agree with these authors or my New Testament professor.

Limestone ossuaries were used in Jewish burials in Palestine for a fairly limited period of time just before and after the start of the Common Era, so they’re a useful archeological tool for gathering information about Palestinian Jewish families from the late Second Temple period. This one, with a common motif of rosettes, was found in Jerusalem and is dated to the Herodian Period. (It’s on display at the Royal Ontario Museum. Photo credit JAT 2017) If you want to know more about this topic, you can read my post called “Excavating James: The James Ossuary and the Talpiot Tomb” at https://jenniferthomas.ca/?p=603

On the other hand, I wouldn’t dispute the level of confusion and disagreement among scholars of the historical Jesus. These are the researchers who use historical, archaeological, anthropological, and linguistic data to try to piece together the facts of Jesus’ life — things like his actual date of birth, his actual date of death, the identity of his family members. They’re looking for information from verifiable sources outside the Bible to try to make sense of the conflicting biblical accounts of who Jesus was. This “Quest for the Historical Jesus” has been going on since the time of the Enlightenment, so it’s not new. Albert Schweitzer was so frustrated by the whole process that he gave up on theology and went off to Africa to be a doctor. (There’s a certain irony in this, as I’ll show.)

A couple of years ago I stumbled across a really cool website called “Historical Jesus Theories,” put together by Peter Kirby (www.earlychristianwritings.com/theories.html). On the first page, you can see at a glance how much disagreement exists among scholars of the historical Jesus. You can see that scholars have studied the “facts” about Jesus, and have concluded that Jesus is best described as “Jesus the Myth: Heavenly Christ.” But wait! There are also 8 more theories! There’s the theory of Jesus the Myth: Man of the Indefinite Past — Jesus the Hellenistic Hero — Jesus the Revolutionary — Jesus the Wisdom Sage (a popular one) — Jesus the Man of the Spirit — Jesus the Prophet of Social Change — Jesus the Apocalyptic Prophet (also a popular one) — and last but not least, Jesus the Saviour.

Wow. All those theories based on the facts, and not a single one that suggests Jesus was a physician-scholar. It’s my own thesis that Jesus is best understood as a physician-scholar, so I can’t suggest any books for you to read on this theory because as far as I can tell there aren’t any books (apart from the one I’m writing).

I also think Jesus was a practising mystic, but secondarily to his role as a physician-scholar. (If you think I ruffled a few feathers in my theology classes with my theory that Jesus was a physician-scholar, you should have seen my Christology professor’s eyes almost pop out of her head when I suggested in a class discussion that Jesus had been a mystic!)

I have to admit I’m somewhat puzzled about the resistance to this idea that Jesus was a physician-scholar. To be frank, this understanding of Jesus fits much better with historical and psychological realities than any of the other theories. It fits like a hand in a glove when you read the Gospel of Mark. When you read only what Mark says, and you try to completely ignore what the other gospels say, you have a story about a guy whose priorities are healing the sick, forgiving people, teaching people, spending lots of time with people (even when they make him slightly exasperated), and trusting God.

Right near the beginning of Mark, Jesus says, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners” (Mark 2:17). Today’s commentators seem to want to interpret this allegorically: they say that Jesus wasn’t actually a physician, but was more like a healer of the soul for those who had sinned. So when Jesus self-identifies with the role of medical practitioner, it’s okay for Christians to ignore it. But when other people who don’t even like or trust Jesus call him “the carpenter” in Mark 6:3, that’s not allegorical — that’s factual! Jesus is a poor, illiterate carpenter! Jesus is a poor, illiterate, Jewish, Aramaic-speaking carpenter who probably couldn’t speak Greek! Jesus is a poor, illiterate, uneducated, Aramaic-speaking carpenter from the Galilee who obtained his amazing ability to engage in sophisticated debate with scribes and Pharisees because . . . well, because the Spirit had chosen him! And, to prove this fact, we can easily see that the history of Christianity has been similarly shaped only by men who imitated Jesus in his illiteracy, who were all were poor, uneducated tradespeople, fluent only in their local dialect, and unable to use the tools of rhetoric to argue their case except when the Spirit moved them! Yes! History and psychology prove that Jesus must be seen in this light! Why, all of Christianity’s thinkers fit this model!

Don’t they?

What . . . you mean you think that history and psychology prove the opposite — that the great religious thinkers who’ve been remembered for centuries (regardless of their respective religious traditions) have — to a person — been highly educated and charismatic but emotionally humble? Like, oh, like maybe Gandhi. Or Martin Luther King, Jr. Or the Dalai Lama. These men are from our own era, yet it’s pretty hard to imagine that any of them could have made a difference if they hadn’t used their personal charisma and advanced education in service to the people they love(d).

Do we have to imagine that Jesus was a carpenter and only a carpenter? (Not that I have anything personal against carpenters. My own father is a tekton in every sense of the Koine Greek word, and has always spent his spare time building and repairing things in his workshop — but my father is also one of the smartest people I know, and he earned a Master’s degree in Chemical Engineering in the 1940’s. The fact that he’s an amateur carpenter doesn’t negate his other training.)

There are many other clues in Mark that together build a portrait of Jesus as an educated physician-scholar. (I won’t go into all of them in this post, or this post would end up as long as a book chapter.)

I’ve wondered from time to time whether today’s scholars can’t “see” Jesus in this light because they’re thinking of “physicians” through their own hermeneutical lens. Let’s face it — modern Western medicine of the allopathic variety is not doing much these days to impress people with its compassionate bedside manner. This is especially true if you live in the United States, where health care decisions are increasingly being made by for-profit insurance companies. If your own personal experience has led you to equate physicians with cold-hearted, scientifically-based, profit-oriented medical care, then you’re probably not going to be looking for Jesus to be a physician. In fact, you probably wouldn’t want Jesus to be a physician, because then you wouldn’t be able to relate to him anymore.

This is where it’s important to step back and apply the criterion of “historical context” to Mark’s picture of Jesus as a physician-scholar. Jesus lived in a time when healing and religion were intertwined in a way we don’t fully relate to in this era of modern medicine. So when Jesus is quoted in Mark 2:17 as saying that sinners are in need of a physician, he means that both medically and religiously. Mark is giving readers the clue they needed in the first century CE to understand what claims he is making about Jesus’ training and background. It would have been obvious to readers then that Mark’s Jesus was a physician-scholar. It also would have shocked many pious people, because according to the “righteous” (who also make an appearance in Mark 2:17) only priests sanctioned by the Temple had the power and the right to heal the sick.

Mark’s Jesus is a rogue healer. He doesn’t follow any of the Laws when he does his healing, either Jewish laws or Greco-Roman laws. This is why I call Jesus a founding member of Doctors Without Borders. He put the suffering of the sick ahead of the Law.

Only those who’ve had a doctor fight for them or their loved ones against today’s institutional medical bureaucracy and conventional scientific wisdom will understand what courage it took for Jesus to do this.

Thanks be to God.

For a scholarly update on some of the early non-biblical sources that talk about Jesus or imply his historical existence, please the article by Dr. Lawrence Mykytiuk called “Did Jesus Exist? Searching for Evidence Beyond the Bible” in the Jan/Feb 2015 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

For more on Jesus’ approach to healing, please see “Spit-Wives and Dead Goats.” For introductory exegetical commentary on healings in the Gospel of Mark, please see The Way, the Truth, and the Life.

Posted in Concinnate Christianity, Gospel of Mark, healing miracles, historical Jesus, Jerusalem Temple, Law (Nomos), Paul and tagged Kingdom teachings, Mark vs Paul | Leave a Comment

21 May 2010

CC13: Choosing Between Paul and Jesus

Orthodox Western Christianity (both Catholic and Protestant) would like to have its Paul and keep its Jesus, too. But as the old maxim about keeping cakes and eating them reminds us, we have to make a decision. The church of the third millennium is going to have to throw in its lot with either Paul or Jesus. It can’t have both.

The United Church of Canada is valiantly struggling to cobble together Paul’s theology with Jesus’ praxis. This would allow them to keep their Articles of Faith (which ultimately originate in Paul’s Christ teachings) while “freshening things up” on the social justice front (thus allowing them to claim unity with Jesus’ teachings).

You can’t blame them for trying. But a continuing pattern of downward membership in the UCC speaks quite eloquently to the “success” of their patchwork solution.

The Mission and Service initiatives of the United Church are important, and I’m not trying to undermine them (well, not the service part, anyway). This is the best part of the UCC experience, as far as I’m concerned. But the theology . . . I can’t abide the theology. The blunt truth is that the theology is driving me away from the church. I love the sense of community in my church, I love the people there, I love the commitment to volunteering, and I especially love the way in which children are uplifted. But I have to sit there and listen to readings from Paul, and I’m not happy about this.

This delicate Hellenistic gold wreath, dated to the 3rd century BCE, is on display at the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto. According to the ROM, such wreaths, often representing laurel, olive, or oak leaves, were placed in Greek burials as expressions of reverence for the dead. Photo credit JAT 2017.

Rather, I should say I’m not happy about the way the church tries to insist that Paul and Jesus were simpatico. Paul and Jesus were anything but.

These two men had dramatically different things to say about God. They had dramatically different goals in mind when they tried to spread their respective teachings. They had almost nothing in common except a childhood strongly influenced by Jewish teachings.

Paul doesn’t write much in his letters about his own life. (Acts of the Apostles is a secondary source, probably written three decades or so after Paul’s last known letter, Romans. Acts, which gives us far more information about Paul’s life than Paul himself gives us, was written by the same man who wrote the Gospel of Luke.) Paul himself doesn’t actually describe the famous conversion experience on the road to Damascus. (The famous story of Saul struck blind by a light from heaven is only found in Acts 9:1-9; 22:6-11; 26:12-18.)

For Paul, a mere conversion experience as an adult wasn’t good enough. Rather than saying he was brought to Christ through a vision from Jesus, Paul actually makes a much more radical claim for himself: Paul was so special in the grand scheme of things that God “set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace . . . so that I might proclaim [his Son] among the Gentiles” (Galatians 1:15-17). Paul says he was chosen by God while he was still in the womb, just as prophets of old in the Jewish scriptures had been chosen.

Note: Paul has placed himself at the top of a very small and very select group of people: the prophets. Nobody who truly believes that God treats all people equally would make such a presumptuous claim about himself or God. Paul, according to his own testimony, has provided himself with an impressive pedigree. Yet most biblical commentators fail to note that in the first century CE, as in the third millennium, an impressive pedigree means nothing to people who aren’t driven by the needs of status addiction. Pedigree means nothing to people who truly believe that all creatures are equal in God’s eyes. Paul says that all people are one in Christ, but Paul means that some people are more important to God than others — starting with himself.

Christian authors such as John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan L. Reed have bent over backwards to try to prove to modern audiences that Paul really was “a saint not only for then, but for now and always” (page 413 of In Search of Paul: How Jesus’s Apostle Opposed Rome’s Empire with God’s Kingdom, A New Vision of Paul’s Words and World (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2004)). In their book, Crossan and Reed try to minimize the brutality of the Letter to the Romans (which, of the letters we still have from Paul, is probably the letter that was written last). And they insist that Paul’s Saviour is identical to the man who taught and healed as Jesus of Nazareth.

Whoever wrote the Gospel of Mark a few years after Paul’s last known letter was clearly trying to refute what Paul had been writing about the man named Jesus. There’s no other way to explain the vast differences in their respective portraits of Jesus. I think it’s naive to suggest that the author of Mark didn’t know about Paul’s teachings, which predated Mark’s in both time and influence. Paul admits he visited Jerusalem and met with Jesus’ brother James (Galatians 1:18-19), and Paul claims he travelled widely in the Eastern Mediterranean. Can we really imagine that Mark, who knew so much about the details of Jesus’ actual life, knew nothing at all about Paul’s strategy to co-opt Jesus as the new face of the anti-emperor Saviour?

Barrie Wilson covers many of these points in the book I mentioned on March 6/10, How Jesus Became Christian. If you want to know more about the background historical elements of this complicated first century CE saga, I recommend Wilson’s book (although, for the record, I don’t agree with Wilson’s comments on the Gospel of Matthew).

Paul had a plan and Paul had a mission. But it was not a plan to spread Jesus’ dangerous teachings. It was a plan to minimize and control the subversive effects of Jesus’ dangerous teachings.

It was a plan to eradicate the rapidly spreading story about a man from an aristocratic family who voluntarily gave up his status, his wealth, and his family connections in order to serve the poor in small towns because he was an educated God-loving scholar-physician. (cf. Doctors Without Borders)

Can’t have the nobility slumming it, you know. It might just catch on.

God forbid that regular people might start to believe that real, live, flesh and blood, aristocratic males could WANT to give up all that power and status, and live a life of humble service to God!

How to fix the problem? Great idea — put the man back on a pedestal, only this time make the pedestal so tall that nobody else can reach it, or even want to reach it.

That’ll keep them in their place . . . .

For me, this subtext is audible every time I hear a reading from one of Paul’s epistles. It makes me want to gnash my teeth, shake my head, and bellow out loud, “Come on — Paul is lying to us.”

But, since none of these reactions would be considered popular at church during worship time, my solution is to stop attending worship. I’ve decided to hang out with God in Nature, in song, in kind words, and in the people I love until such a time as the church decides to follow the teachings of Jesus instead of the teachings of Paul.

I sure do miss UCC Coffee Time, though!

Posted in Church of today, Concinnate Christianity, Gospel of Mark, historical Jesus, Mark vs Paul, Matthew's and Luke's intent, Paul, Paul vs Jesus, prophets and tagged Jesus vs Paul | Leave a Comment

04 Apr 2010

CC7: Radical Jesus in the Gospel of Mark

Today I’d like to talk about the Gospel of Mark.

As I mentioned above in my March 3, 2010 post, I think one of the biggest challenges facing the church in the third millennium is our theology. We believe our theology is an honest representation of what Jesus taught. Because we believe this, we don’t want to challenge our theological doctrines and beliefs. If it was good enough for Jesus, then it’s good enough for us, goes the thinking. And who can blame Christians for wanting to hang onto the teachings that Jesus taught? After all, isn’t that the point?

For me, it’s definitely the point. I discovered to my dismay, however, that what Protestant theology classes teach in Canada in the third millennium is Paul’s theology, not Jesus’ theology.

We’re so used to thinking that Paul was a faithful believer in Jesus that few Christians until recently have examined the gulf that exists between the teachings of Paul and the teachings of Jesus. If you want to read an exploration of the differences between Paul’s Christ Movement and James’ Jesus Movement, I recommend professor Barrie Wilson’s book How Jesus Became Christian (Toronto: Random House Canada, 2008). Wilson bluntly shows that Paul was trying to found a new religious movement that was in competition with the early Jesus Movement of Palestine. Further, Wilson shows how the author of the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles wrote these two books to bridge the gulf between the two religious movements, and make them seem like a unified religion. But they’re not. And they never were.

Why do I agree with Wilson? I agree with Wilson because I’ve studied what I believe to be the earliest layer of writings based on the teachings of Jesus, and when I compare what’s contained in this early layer with what’s contained in Paul’s uncontested letters, I see almost no theological similarities.

For the record, I believe the earliest layer of writings based on Jesus’ teachings to be (1) the parts of the letter of James that Jesus himself wrote (I’ll come back to that in a later post); (2) the parables and anecdotes written down by the beloved disciple Lazarus in the earliest version of the”Q” source (again, food for future thought); (3) the sayings written down by the apostle John in his unattributed “proto-Gnostic” Gospel of Thomas; and (4) the Gospel of Mark.

Of these early writings, the Gospel of Mark would have been written last, about 30-35 years after Jesus’ death, by a person we call Mark. We don’t know much about this fellow Mark except that he was brave enough to write a radical theological statement in Judea during the dangerous and tumultuous decade of the 60’s when Jews were fighting Jews, and Jews were also fighting Romans.

This fish plate, with a small cup in the centre (probably for sauce) comes from the Roman Campania and is dated 330-300 BCE. (This plate is on display at the Royal Ontario Museum, photo credit JAT 2017.)

Most New Testament scholars who analyse the different books of early Christianity will tell you they subscribe to the theory of “Markan Priority.” This is the theory that states that Mark was written before either Matthew or Luke, and that the authors of Matthew and Luke both used a “cut and paste” approach to Mark’s narrative by cutting out sections of Mark’s book, rearranging and changing those sections, and adding their own material. If you want to learn more about this fascinating bit of biblical history, I recommend the recent book by Pheme Perkins: Pheme Perkins, Introduction to the Synoptic Gospels (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007). She provides a readable introduction to the main threads of scholarly research that every serious New Testament inquirer needs to know about.

(I didn’t find out about Perkins’s book until the second year of my graduate studies. I really wish I’d had it on Day 1. It would have saved me a lot of initial confusion!)

A lot of scholars and ministers don’t like the Gospel of Mark. (My New Testament professor, for one, doesn’t like Mark.) People think it’s too blunt and choppy. Fans of Luke, whose use of Koine Greek is more sophisticated, complain that Mark isn’t a very good writer. Others dislike the Christology of Mark. In Mark, Jesus is a confusing fellow. The apostles are confusing fellows. Jesus’ family members are confusing. Jesus’ female followers are confusing. The original ending of Mark at 16:8 is confusing. The Gospel of Mark is downright confusing if you’re looking for biblical evidence that conforms to orthodox Western Christian beliefs about Jesus.

Here’s a thought: maybe the Gospel of Mark is confusing because people have been shoehorning it into Paul’s theology, and have forced Mark to say something about Jesus that Mark himself wasn’t saying.

Maybe in the church of the third millennium we should allow Mark to tell us what he’s been saying all along.

Maybe we should be honest about the fact that Mark’s Jesus is a Jewish Messiah — a very human teacher and healer — not a Saviour, as in Paul.

Maybe we should be honest about the fact that Mark’s Jesus is not a monotheistic Jew, who believes only in God the Father, but is instead a quasi-monotheistic Jew who believes in both God the Father (Abba) and God the Mother (Ruah, Spirit, Holy Dove).

Maybe we should be honest about the fact that Mark’s Jesus is not a wandering Cynic philosopher, nor an apocalyptic prophet, nor an illiterate Jewish carpenter. There’s a great deal of proof in Mark to indicate that Jesus came from a wealthy, literate family. Jesus was a physician-scholar.

Maybe we should be honest about the fact that Mark’s narrative shows a sophisticated understanding of psychodynamics. Mark’s cast of characters behave in realistic, believable ways. He doesn’t pretend that Jesus’ students liked or appreciated his teachings. He doesn’t pretend that Jesus’ family liked or appreciated his teachings. Mark tells the painful truth, because the truth was painful.

Mark’s biography of Jesus is short (relative to other biographies of the time, including those written by Matthew and Luke) for two reasons: (1) he assumed his biography would be read in conjunction with the parables and anecdotes contained in “Q,” and (2) he wrote his narrative with the intention of creating a long parable of the kingdom.

(These two points are my own thesis.)

The first point has more evidence to support it, since scholars have been working hard to reconstruct the contents of the early “Q” source, and they’ve already shown the links among Q, Mark, and the later gospels of Matthew and Luke. There is every reason to suppose that Q was circulating in Judea at the time Mark’s gospel was written.

The second point has arisen through my own work as both an academic researcher and a mystic. It’s my contention that Mark understood what many have failed to understand about Jesus’ teaching parables: the long kingdom parables, most of which probably originated in “Q” and were later cut-and-pasted into Matthew and Luke, only make sense when you listen with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul, and all your strength to Jesus’ message about God (Mark 12:28-34). If you listen only with your mind, you won’t get it. If you listen only with your mind, and reject the input of your heart and your soul, the parables are almost gibberish. They’re illogical. They’re contrary to accepted wisdom. They don’t seem to be wisdom teachings at all. Therefore, they’re easily dismissed by those who’ve placed their bets on traditional wisdom.

Through the medium of a long parable, a teacher can say a lot of harsh things about other people’s religious beliefs, and not get caught. Jesus’ long kingdom parables hide the truth about God in plain sight.

This isn’t the same approach as the early Gnostics took. The early Gnostics believed in the existence of hidden, esoteric knowledge that could only be revealed to specially chosen initiates. They sometimes took steps in their writings to conceal their esoteric knowledge through the use of symbolism.

Jesus took no such steps. He wasn’t interested in hiding the knowledge, or making a “special club” of apostles to whom he would reveal his special secrets. He was forthright in his teachings about a loving Mother God and Father God who are not transcendent. (In Plato and in Paul, God was transcendent). A Mother Father God who are not unemotional. (In Plato and in Paul, God was detached from emotions like agape and forgiveness). A Mother Father God who are not pure Mind. (In Plato and in Stoicism, the Divine was pure Mind). A Mother Father God who do not choose some humans over other humans. (In most religions in Jesus’ time, Jewish and otherwise, the gods or God chose certain people or groups over other people). A Mother Father God who reject the pursuit of status addiction as the driving force of a loving human community (in dramatic contrast to the honour-shame values of Mediterranean culture in the 1st century CE). A Mother Father God who teach inclusive, egalitarian, relationship-oriented community life as the model for spiritual living.

These teachings are evident throughout Mark. But these teachings, then as now, were not popular with religious folk who wanted their religious accomplishments to raise them above their peers, to give them more status than others had, to take status away from others — to reveal how to climb the ladder of spiritual ascent.

This ladder of spiritual ascent was the darling of Plato and his many Platonic, middle Platonic, and NeoPlatonic followers, including orthodox Christians, who, from the time of Paul onward, have had a profound love affair with the doctrine of spiritual ascent — the belief that we have to climb the spiritual ladder one rung at a time to get closer to the Divine.

You have to remember here that Plato wrote about 400 years before Jesus. Plato’s idea of spiritual ascent was well known and deeply embraced by the Greco-Roman culture in which Mark wrote his breathtakingly radical book. So when Mark wrote a biography about a spiritual leader who rejected ascent, and instead embraced a horizontal path of service, Mark was pushing against the currents of his time.

When you carefully read Mark 9:2-9 — the Transfiguration — you’ll see that not only does Jesus reject the offer of staying on the “holy mount” and living in a tent there, but he comes down from the mountain and immediately makes himself religiously “impure” by touching and healing a boy who has epilepsy — a boy who in first century Palestine would have been seen as either “unclean” or as “marked by the gods” in the eyes of both pious Jews and Gentiles, a boy who would have been rejected and ostracized by people of status.

Mark’s Jesus is a human physician, trained in Torah, who thinks compassion, inclusiveness, courage, healing, forgiveness, agape, and service are the path to knowing God the Mother and God the Father.

Mark’s Jesus is a radical dude.

This topic is so big that one or more books could be written on it. I’ve barely scratched the surface here. But I wanted to introduce the idea that the Protestant church of the third millennium has some options open to it. One of these options is to courageously alter the theology we teach. We can alter our theological doctrines to better reflect what Jesus taught, and still have a biblical foundation for that teaching. We can reappraise Paul, and we can reappraise the earliest layer of writings based on Jesus’ teachings. We can reclaim the kergyma, or early teachings, of Jesus. We can have a church founded on teachings about our communal relationship with God the Mother and God the Father.

We can at last allow ourselves to accept the wondrous gift of God’s love.

Happy Easter Sunday to you!