The Spiral Path

Wonder, Science, and Faith

Archive for the category “Son of Man”

14 Sep 2012

RS33: The Way of the Cross

St. Michael's Mount 02

“For he did not despise or abhor the affliction of the afflicted; he did not hide his face from me, but heard when I cried to him (Psalm 22:24). Pictured here is the garden at St. Michael’s Mount, Cornwall, which for some reason reminds me of the Garden of Gethsemane. Photo credit JAT 1997.

A:  Tell me more about the practice you taught of “taking up the cross.”

J:  We got a little side-tracked last time, didn’t we?

A:  As usual.  No straight lines around here.  Always curves and meandering paths.

J:  Funny how the clearest and truest path to the heart is never straight.

A:  It took me a long time to figure this one out.  But there’s so much freedom, so much peace, in understanding that love isn’t linear and isn’t supposed to be.  It has its own strange rhythms.  But in the end it’s stronger than anything I’ve ever known.  It’s so  . . . so  . . . strong.  It’s so complex.  It’s not a pure strand of anything.  It’s this amazing tapestry, as you’ve described it before.  A tapestry with so many colours and so many songs and so many tears.  All woven together into this picture, this portrait, of life.  Life filled with passion and wonder and awe.  Life where you’re constantly surprised.  But also life where you don’t mind being surprised.

J (nodding):  It’s very important, the idea of being surprised and not minding.  It’s the “not minding” part that sets apart a person who’s listening to his/her soul and a person who’s not.  The soul doesn’t mind surprises.  The brain’s Darwinian Circuitry hates surprises.  You can tell a great deal about a person’s brain health in the small moments when surprise strikes.  The soul takes these unexpected events in stride.  The Darwinian Circuitry seizes up and panics and can’t take swift, wise action.  The soul continues to be able to act during a crisis.  The Darwinian Circuitry comes to a grinding halt.

A puzzling thing happens when the Darwinian Circuitry panics.  Inside the brain there’s a sudden “disconnect” between the decision-making centres and the movement centres.  People literally freeze like a deer in the headlights.  This is when they’re most vulnerable to lies — to words spoken aloud with authority by people who are in a position of trust.  This is when mobs can be persuaded to riot.  But it only works — and I want to emphasize this — it only works when people have already panicked.  It only works when people have stopped listening to their own souls.  You can’t force people who are listening to their own souls to join a mob.  They won’t do it.  They find no pleasure and no safety in the ridiculous idea that’s floating around of “homo duplex.”  Mob mentalities — hive mentalities — are dangerous to the goals of healing, peace, and redemption.  Mob mentalities lead to Crusades.  Crusades are never a positive thing in the eyes of God or God’s angels.

A:  It’s interesting how individuals stop taking personal responsibility for their own actions when they’ve agreed to hand over their own free will to a mob leader.

J:  For those who can’t hear the inner wisdom of their own soul, it’s a relief to hand over their free will to somebody else.

A:  It’s a difficult process, reclaiming your own free will.  (Sighhhhh.)

J:  Yes.  There’s probably no greater challenge for a human being.  Nonetheless, it’s the challenge that all human beings are called to.  They must wrestle with what it means to have free will.  They must question it, be confused by it, be angry at it, reject it, and finally come to terms with it.

A:  What you just said reminds me of the stages of grief.

J:  That’s exactly what the process is.  It’s an experience of working through grief.  And, by god, you need forgiveness to get you through it, because somewhere in the middle of the process you’re going to come face to face with the reality of all the times when you didn’t apply your free will in loving and trusting ways.  You’re going to feel like a shit.  This is where forgiveness sees you through.  Forgiveness is the act of free will that allows you to keep going, to get up the next day and keep going even when you’ve stopped denying the harm you’ve created here on Planet Earth.

A:  This is where you really need a mentor.

J:  Yes.  You need to know that somebody else has already forgiven you so you can find the courage to forgive yourself.

A:  That mentor can be God.

J:  Yes.  If a person trusts that God the Mother and God the Father forgive her even when she’s been a shit, she can lean on their strength as she struggles to learn from her mistakes and forgive herself.  It takes time to learn to forgive, but that’s okay.  People have to believe that God doesn’t expect instant results.  Indeed, instant results aren’t scientifically supportable or biologically possible.  God only expects consistent effort.  God will help you if you’re willing to make a consistent effort to be the best person you’re capable of being.

A:  Warts and all.

J:  God doesn’t mind warts.  Human beings end up covered in warts and scars and cracked bones and broken hearts in their time on Planet Earth.  God forgives you anyway.  I can’t emphasize this enough.  God sees past all the warts and scars and cracked bones and looks straight into your broken heart.  You can’t hide a broken heart from God.  Nor should you want to.

A:  It’s so difficult for regular human beings to believe they’re worthy of God’s daily forgiveness.  I really struggled with this in the beginning.  But I’m glad you persisted!

J:  It changes everything when you’re willing to accept God’s forgiveness.  Everything.  You find the freedom to move — really move.  So instead of being nailed helplessly to the cross, immobile, desperate, unable to flow with the changes and surprises of each day, you begin to be able to move.  Sure, at first you have to drag the damn cross with you, and it’s heavy, and it hurts.  But at least you’re moving!  And you’re starting to reclaim your sense of your own self, your own true potential.  After a while the cross you’re dragging around starts to feel different to you.  It starts to feel less like a heavy burden and more like . . . gravity.  A place where you can feel the weight, the seriousness, the reality of honest truth and not be afraid of it.  A place where honest truth is your ally, your very foundation.  Your centre of gravity.

A person who has chosen to pursue status (“gaining the whole world” at the expense of honest truth) relates strongly to the image of the crucifix — Jesus nailed to the Cross — because this is the way he or she feels in relation to the world and to God.  He feels trapped.  Nailed down.  Impoverished of health and happiness.  Stuck in an endless circle of pain and self-sacrifice.  So he thinks the image of the crucifix is right.

By contrast, a person who has chosen the path of knowing free will, love, forgiveness, healing, and redemption sees the cross in very different terms.  He sees a symbol of freedom from the self-enslavement of status addiction, a symbol of the courage to be yourself and know yourself and trust yourself in a world that tells you this is impossible.

To be disenfranchised from Empire is not necessarily a bad thing.

 

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Posted in brain's Darwinian Circuitry, brain-soul connection, conscience & morality, courage, Divine Love, forgiveness, free will, honesty, Jesus' teachings, Peace Sequence, personal responsibility, Realspiritik, relationship with God, Son of Man and tagged | Leave a Comment
11 Sep 2012

RS32: Resurrection of the Son of Man

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Old City of Jerusalem ((c) Free Israel Photos)

A:  Did you know ahead of time — before you went to Jerusalem — that you were going to die?  Most Christians believe you were prophesying your own death in Mark 8:31.

J:  Well, I did know my time was running out, but I kept that suspicion to myself.  So the question about the Son of Man in the Gospel of Mark is a separate question.  When Mark talks about the Son of Man being rejected, killed, and resurrected, Mark isn’t talking about me or any other human being.  For me, and also for my great-nephew Mark, “Son of Man” meant humanity’s highest potential, humanity’s ability to transcend terrible suffering and turn it into something positive and life-enhancing.  Not “life” as in existing and surviving, but “life” as in choosing to do what’s right with courage and conviction and respect for all creatures.

Like Job, a person who refuses to take “no” for an answer in his quest to be in full relationship with God is going to go through some difficult times.  To search for love and trust in a world that rejects love and trust is no easy task.  There will be no support from “the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes” in this quest.  Those in authority will do their best to destroy you and your dogged determination to find the truth about your heart and soul.  They certainly won’t reward you for teaching others how to hear God’s voice.  But at the end of the day they can’t stop these truths from being constantly reborn in the hearts and minds of those who believe in humanity’s highest potential.

This is the kernel of divine truth that lies at the heart of the resurrection story.  The truth about Divine Love can be temporarily crushed — killed by the elders, chief priests, and scribes — but it always returns.  It always reignites in the hearts of those who are listening to God through the lens of the heart.

A:  But Peter and James and John didn’t like what you were saying.

J:  That’s an understatement.  Compare what Mark says about choosing between status and “life” (eg. Mark 8:34 – 9:1) to what John says throughout his gospel.  For John, it’s all about the status.  Status so pure and so elevated it will save you.

A:  A lot of Christians have been confused by Mark’s statement that those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life based on your teachings will save it.  But it makes perfect sense in the context of choosing between status (“gaining the whole world”) and losing your ability to love and trust (“forfeiting their life/soul”).  Seems pretty clear, actually.

J:  These passages (plus some others) in Mark have often been interpreted as an endorsement of asceticism.  I want to emphasize that I didn’t ever teach or endorse the practice of asceticism.  And I didn’t teach the practice of self-dissolution.  I taught the practice of denying the cravings of status addiction.  I taught the practice of “taking up the cross.”

A:  Can you explain that in more detail?

J:  The Romans in the first century CE were brutal tyrants, despite all their talk of honour and law and Pax Romana.  Their culture was profoundly status-oriented.

A:  As many cultures continue to be to this day.

J:  Yes.  Romans held great store in the rights of citizenship.  If you were a Roman citizen, you had special rights and privileges.  Citizenship was a sign that you were favoured by the gods.  But if you weren’t a citizen — and most Jews in the province of Palestine weren’t — you had no recourse to the laws that applied exclusively to Roman citizens.  If the Romans didn’t like you, they could crucify you.  Tens of thousands — hundreds of thousands — of people who weren’t citizens ended up on crosses throughout the Roman Empire.  Theoretically, however, citizens couldn’t be crucified.  So the cross became a symbol of disenfranchisement — of being cut off from the ancient rights and privileges that had accrued to various ancient peoples over the centuries.  Second Temple Judaism had built up a strong body of laws.  But these laws meant nothing if the Romans took a dislike to you.  A lot of disenfranchised Jews ended up on crosses.

A:  Yet you were a Roman citizen.  And they put you on a cross.

J:  Yes.  Which is why they had to take me down after only a few hours.  But the cross isn’t what put me at death’s door.  I was almost dead by the time they tied me up there.

A:  Tied?  I thought the Romans nailed people in place.

J:  It was a bit of a rush job.  They would have come back later to properly nail me down if they hadn’t been forced to take me down from the cross after an old friend alerted the authorities to the crime of crucifying a Roman citizen.

A:  Why were you almost dead?

J:  I’d been in prison for three months.  I’d been stabbed in the lower abdomen by John.  I’d been poisoned by Peter.  But I didn’t have the decency to die in prison.  So finally, late in September, James got fed up.  He bribed some officials to send me out with a batch of prisoners who were scheduled to die.  He didn’t think anyone would recognize me and raise a ruckus.  He was wrong.

A:  So your own brother was the one who tried to make you die an ignominious death on the cross.  That’s just  . . . well, there are no words for such a betrayal.

J:  My older brother Judas was in on the original plan to capture me and put me in prison.  But when the rest of the story unfolded . . . he couldn’t take the guilt.  He committed suicide.

A:  You say you’d been in prison for three months, and you were tied to the cross in September.  That doesn’t add up with the Passover timeline.

J:  John created the Passover timeline.  It suited his mystical belief that I’d been overlighted by God.  He also couldn’t remember, from a factual point of view, when I’d been arrested.  His memory for poetry and scripture was excellent, but his memory for historical facts and dates was very poor.

A:  So in his mind your arrest did take place in the early spring at Passover.

J:  Yes.  And, as always, he was persuasive in his charismatic prophecy, so people took him at his word.  He said it happened at Passover, so this date was quickly embraced by new followers after my death.  From everyone’s point of view, there was a lovely mystical symmetry — even a mystical necessity — in this date.

The truth is that I didn’t go to Jerusalem for Passover in my final year.  It was a shocking heresy on my part, but I couldn’t agree to go to the Temple to participate in a festival I believed was morally wrong.  I couldn’t agree to participate in a ceremony that celebrated the escape of one group of people through the death of innocent children — children who were murdered by an avenging God.  And all the other plagues . . . the whole thing felt wrong to me at a gut level.

A:  Starting to see why your family hated you so much.  You rejected one of their cherished traditions.  One of the traditions that gave them status.

J:  I rejected traditions founded in hatred and vengeance.  But there were other traditions worth keeping.  This is why I went to Jerusalem seven weeks later for the celebration of Shavuot (Weeks) — what Christians later called Pentecost.  Shavuot was a whole different kettle of fish.  Shavuot was about gratitude — thanking God for the bountiful gifts of food in the first harvest.  I had no use for the Passover laws, but I saw how Shavuot could be a time of real healing and redemption for Jews of faith — like an ancient but very Jewish version of Christmas, with people sharing their gifts and their hearts with each other and with God.

My problem was that I said this out loud.  I gathered my friends and family and followers together, and presented them with this “new version” of Shavuot — a supper where we would sit together as equals and invite God the Mother and God the Father to share a humble meal of bread and water with us.

A:  The Last Supper.

J:  And it was, indeed, my last supper as a human being where my body wasn’t filled with pain and fear.  I was arrested later that night.

A:  Had you decided before you went to Jerusalem that you were going to suggest this “new Shavuot”?  Or was it a last minute idea — a sudden flash of inspiration?

J:  I knew before I went.  I also knew I’d make a lot of new enemies for daring to change old customs in this way.  But it was the right thing to do.  So I did it.

A:  So you knew ahead of time you risked arrest, even death.

J (nodding):  I knew.

A:  And you didn’t try to stop it.

J:  Don’t get me wrong.  I wasn’t trying to be a martyr.  And I didn’t want to be arrested and tortured.  I saw no joy or fulfillment in that prospect.  On the other hand, I wasn’t going to back down.  I wasn’t going to lie to other people about who God is.  I wasn’t going to pretend that all Jewish traditions were blessed by God, because, you know, they weren’t.  I wasn’t afraid to tell the truth.

The truth about love and trust, about humanity’s ability to love God and trust God, about God’s choice to love humanity and trust humanity, always manages to be reborn.  No death can stop it from happening.

The Son of Man always returns in the hearts and smiles and courage of those who love.  It’s our inheritance as children of God.

 

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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 , | 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.

(c) Image*After

“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 , | Leave a Comment
05 Jul 2011

JR55: Healing: The Easy Way and the Hard Way

A: Apart from the Kingdom sayings and the puzzling Son of Man sayings, you also left behind some curious sayings about protecting the master’s house and making it strong against thievery or attack — especially attack from within. Thomas 21b and Luke 12:37-48 and Mark 3:20-27 all use this theme. The passage in Luke is especially confusing. Luke 12:37-38 is a makarism: “Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them. If he comes during the middle of the night, or near dawn, and finds them so, blessed are those slaves.”

Now, I know you had nothing nice to say about the custom of slave-owning. So the passage in Luke (12:37-48) must be a parable, an analogy for something else, even though the Oxford NRSV calls these verses a collection of “sayings on watchfulness and faithfulness” rather than a parable.

newburgh - wendy & david's 06 01

“Therefore I say: If a householder knows a thief is coming, he will keep watch and not let him break into his house (of his kingdom) and steal his goods. You must keep watch against the world, preparing yourselves with power so that thieves will not find any way to come upon you” (Gospel of Thomas 21b and 21c, translated by Stevan Davies). Photo credit JAT 2013.

J (grinning): Oh, yes. It’s a parable. One I wrote myself.

A: Ah. And I see that this parable references “the Son of Man” in verse 40: “You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.” Many commentators have assumed this verse is a reference to an apocalyptic prophecy you made. They assume “the Son of Man” is an actual person — you — who will be coming back on a future day to bring about the prophesied day of judgment. Is this what you meant? Because Matthew 24:36-51 certainly makes it sound as if this is what you meant.

J: Matthew, as we’ve discussed earlier, was no friend of mine and no friend to my teachings. Matthew was like a gardener who sees another’s man field and hates the way the plants are arranged. So he sneaks in with a shovel at night and digs up the other man’s plants and takes them to a new field and replants them in an entirely new garden composition and adds some new plants of his own, then steps back and loudly proclaims he’s done great honour to the other man. Meanwhile, the other man’s garden is a potholed ruin.

A: Always with the parables. You just don’t quit!

J: It’s who I am.

A: Okay. So what were you getting at? Why were you so fond of the image of the master’s house that needs to be protected? Who was “the master”? Was it God?

J: Nope. The master in the parable of the responsible slave (Luke 12:37-48) is the soul of any human being who’s walking around on Planet Earth. Any human being at all.

A: Say what?

J: Although today’s commentators assume I was an idiot who spouted apocalyptic prophecy and hadn’t a drop of common sense in me, I actually had a “method to my madness.” The sayings I left behind all speak to a few internally consistent, common sense teachings about the soul. I said a small number of things a great many times. The things I said all relate to each other in a logical, coherent, heart-based way. If I spoke again and again about the psychological reality of the Kingdom (wholeness and maturity of the self), and the importance of respecting “boundaries of the self” and “boundaries of the other,” and the potential of human beings — all human beings — to seek healing and redemption through the power of forgiveness, then there’s only one person this “master” can be. The master is the self. The master is the core self, the soul that each person is. The true self. This parable is a metaphor about the human brain. It’s an attempt to explain in layman’s terms what’s going on inside a person’s head, and why there’s no such thing as demon possession. It’s an attempt to explain why the path of redemption seems so harsh at times.

A: “Foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay down his head and rest.” (Thomas 86)

J: Yes. Foxes know who they are and where their “home” is. Birds know who they are and how to build a home for themselves and their children. Human beings, of all God’s creatures on Planet Earth, are the least likely to know who they are and how to build a “home” for their highest potential. For a human being, this home is their brain — their biological brain and central nervous system. This home has to be painstakingly built over many years. Nothing so simple as building a bird’s nest, no sir! The “insides” of a person have to be carefully built to match the “outsides.” This is the holistic path to maturity for all human beings.

A: This goes back to what you were saying a few days ago about Saying 22 in the Gospel of Thomas (Saying 22 in the Gospel of Thomas). One thing I love about your teachings on wholeness — on Whole Brain Thinking — is the fairness of it. These teachings apply to all people in all places in all cultures. It’s radically egalitarian. Everyone gets the same basic toolkit for building a garden of peace. But each person’s garden will look different because each soul is different. I just love that part!

J: Yes, but before they can get to the point of being able to admire each other’s gardens — instead of envying and destroying each other’s gardens — they have to get through the healing stage. This is the stage where most people quit, where they run away from the difficulties and challenges of building an inner “home” — a field full of good soil — inside their own heads. This is the stage most people don’t even know IS a stage.

A: The Church has done precious little to help us understand this — even today, when we have so much knowledge about the human brain and its hard-wiring for empathy and change.

J: Two thousand years ago, I certainly had no knowledge of neuroanatomy or neurophysiology or neurotransmitters or the like. But I was a keen observer of human nature, and I was scientifically minded. More to the point, I was a mystic. I had unflinching faith in God’s goodness because of my mystical practice, and I knew there had to be something better than “demon possession” to account for frightening behaviour. So I looked to a scientific model. It wasn’t that hard, really. You work through empirical observation and rudimentary statistical analysis. That’s how all science advanced for thousands of years until recently. You take careful notes, you try to stay objective, you look for patterns, you try to prove you didn’t simply invent the patterns because you wanted to see them. Objectivity is crucial, of course. If you’re determined to find an imaginary Cause X, you’ll find it because you want to. However, this isn’t science. This is narcissism.

A: So your lack of narcissism — or I suppose I should say your eventual lack of narcissism — made you more open to honest fact-finding about the human condition.

J: I was open to the idea that there could be scars on the inside of a person’s body as well as on the outside.

A: In James 1:8, you use the unusual Greek word “dipsychos,” which is usually translated in English as “double-minded.” What were you getting at here?

J: If you read the parts of the Letter of James that I wrote — James 1:2-27; 2:1-8a; and 3:1-18 — you can see me struggling to put into words the problem of understanding the human brain and all its competing “intents.” I used several different metaphors there to try to explain what a lack of inner wholeness results in. Which is tragedy. Pain, suffering, and tragedy.

A: You also express the idea in James 1:8 that “the doubter, being double-minded and unstable in every way, must not expect to receive anything from the Lord.” This is a pretty tough statement, don’t you think?

J: Many will think so. They’ll assume I’m talking about divine judgment and divine retribution. But I’m not. I’m talking about the scientific reality of the soul-body nexus. I’m talking about the built-in set of checks and balances that exists within the human self to promote mature, loving choices.

I’m going to come at your question from a different direction. If there really is a God, and there really are good souls, and there really are souls who choose to incarnate in a temporary 3D body where they have to struggle to balance the needs of their souls and the needs of their biological bodies . . . would it make sense to you in this context that God would refuse to provide built-in roadmaps and compasses and warning signals and obvious feedback so you could safely navigate all the confusion? Does that make sense to you?

A: No.

J: It didn’t make sense to me, either. So in the parable of the responsible slave, the “house” of the master is — to use you as an example (sorry, hope you don’t mind) — is your entire head, including your skull. The “master” is your soul, and in particular the non-plastic parts of your brain that are controlled by the thoughts and feelings and actions of your soul. The “slaves” are the semi-autonomous regions of your brain that are supposed to be in charge of your physiological needs, but which all too often end up running the show — and doing a very poor job of it, I might add. If you were to let the “slaves” manage your choices, abuses would occur. Abuses of your self and abuses of others. Naturally, your core self — your soul — wouldn’t like this very much, and your core self would have something to say about it. This isn’t punishment “from above.” This is you standing up for your own core integrity! This is you trying to get yourself back in balance!

A: By first recognizing that there’s a problem. With your own choices.

J: Healing begins with insight. Before you can heal, you have to admit there’s a problem. Unfortunately, people can get their heads caught up in some pretty unhealthy thinking patterns. They can become so dysfunctional that they confuse the “slaves” with the “master.” They can’t hear their own inner voice, even though the inner voice never stops talking.

There’s always the easy way and the hard way. You can listen to your own inner voice, and begin to heal, in which case the journey won’t be as difficult.

A: You’ll get a “light beating” (Luke 12:48).

J: The majority of human beings, then and now, however, end up by default on the hard way.

A: So their bodies get a “severe beating” (Luke 12:47) from their own souls.

J: Well, it looks that way from the outside in the beginning.

A: People will say you’re blaming the victims of illness.

J: It’s not that simple. People get ill for a variety of reasons. But ONE of the reasons people get sick is because they opt to make certain very poor choices. This is simply a statement of fact. It’s not a judgment to say that a person who chooses to eat 5,000 calories per day and is morbidly obese (with all the attendant health problems of extreme obesity) bears SOME of the responsibility for his or her state of health.

A: When you put it that way, it seems pretty fair and reasonable. There are lots of intentional human choices that can lead to serious illness and disability. We often don’t want to change the choices we make until we really, really understand the consequences that are involved.

J: Observable consequences are part of each person’s built-in roadmap for living a life of wholeness in accordance with the wishes and needs of the soul. If your biological body is way out of balance, you need to listen to what your soul is saying. It’s only common sense.

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Posted in boundary issues, brain-soul connection, Gospel of Thomas, healing, Jesus Redux, Jesus' original writings, Kingdom teachings, Letter of James, makarism, Matthew's and Luke's intent, parables, Son of Man, Whole Brain Thinking and tagged | Leave a Comment
02 Jul 2011

JR54: The Meaning of "the Son of Man"

A: We’ve been talking a lot about the Kingdom and gardens and finding peace through personal responsibility. How does the phrase “the Son of Man” fit into all this? If ever there was a phrase in the New Testament that people don’t understand, it’s the “Son of Man” phrase — ho hyios tou anthropou in Koine Greek, bar nasa in Aramaic, and ben adam in Hebrew. Somehow I suspect the translation of the Greek phrase into English doesn’t do justice to the original meaning.

J: It’s very easy to forget that the Hebrew word adam wasn’t used primarily as a name in Second Temple Judaism. Adam can also be translated as “ground/soil” or as “humankind.” Similarly, the Greek word anthropos meant “humankind,” not just “human beings of the male sex.” These nuances are lost in the traditional English translation “Son of Man.” A much better translation in English would be “essence of humanity” or “highest potential of humankind.” I used the phrase ho hyios tou anthropou to express a concept — a concept for which no vocabulary existed at the time.

“Jesus said: Adam came into being from enormous power and wealth, but he was never worthy of you, for had he been worthy of you he would not have died” (Gospel of Thomas 85). This saying doesn’t make much sense unless you stop to consider what Genesis 2-3 says about the allegorical relationship between humankind (Adam) and God. In the Garden of Eden, there are two trees that embody the deepest and most mystical elements of God, Creation, and faith: (1) the tree of life and (2) the tree of knowledge of good and evil. These two trees are supposed to be in balance, and while they are, Adam and Eve live a life of trusting relationship with God. At some point, however, Eve, followed quickly by Adam, decide they’re more interested in having knowledge than in having a trusting relationship with God. So they eat of the metaphorical fruit from the tree of knowledge and find themselves aligned with the many ancient philosopher kings who also chose knowledge over relationship with God. In Jesus’ teachings, choosing a life that places knowledge far above trust, love, and relationship with God is really no life at all. For Jesus, the mind is important, but not more important than the heart. So the metaphorical example of Adam and Eve — who lost the balance between mind and heart and as a result struggled for the rest of their lives with “death” instead of “life” — is not the example we should be following. Seek instead the path of peace that’s based on relationship with God. This ivory depicting The Fall of Man (by Balthasar Griessmann, c. 1670-1690) is part of the Thomson Collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Photo credit JAT 2018.

A: What concept were you trying to teach about? Enlightenment?

J: No. Forgiveness.

A: Sayings 85 and 86 in the Gospel of Thomas refer to “Adam” and to “the son of man.” Saying 85 says, “Jesus said: Adam came into being from enormous power and wealth, but he was never worthy of you, for had he been worthy of you he would not have died.” Saying 86 goes on to say, “Jesus said: Foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the son of man has no place to lay down his head and rest.” Thomas 86 also appears almost word for word in Luke 9:58. How do these verses relate to the concept of forgiveness?

J (sighing): I’ve always been fond of word plays, puns, alliterations, rhymes, and poetry. “Foxes have holes and birds of heaven have nests, but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head” sounded catchier in Greek than it does in English.

A: But I guess the important thing to keep in mind is the fact that you weren’t talking about a particular man in this saying. You weren’t talking about yourself. You were trying to explain a concept that was unfamiliar to your students.

J (nodding): The people around me had been raised on a steady diet of values that had no place in humanity’s relationship with God the Mother and God the Father. No matter where you turned, you heard tales of might, tales of glory, tales of revenge. Everyone thought they had the “correct” God — or gods — on their side. Everyone thought they were truly pious, truly deserving of divine reward. Everyone had their own version of the “God will avenge me” myth. The avenging God had as many “faces” as a circus performer has costumes.

If you were a person with a black sense of humour — as I came to be — you could go to bed in the evening and count all the ways you’d offended this god and that god in umpteen hidden ways on that day alone. You could count all the ways you’d be punished. You could count all the ways your masters would take revenge against you for your “heinous crimes” against God. Of course, it was your earthly masters — not the unseen gods of heaven — who were the ones who had the rod in their hands to beat you. It was your earthly masters who would use any “divine” excuse possible to beat you into submission and humility.

But they’d often go easy on you if you offered a payment. Some sort of compensation — an eye for an eye. Some sort of bribe. Contract laws dictated what terms of compensation were acceptable. These contract laws weren’t civil laws in the way you’d understand a Western nation’s legal codes today. These contract laws had political and economic purposes, of course, but they were primarily religious laws and traditions. Nomos in Greek. Nomos provided a list of crimes and a list of acceptable “payments” to balance the scales if you committed a crime. Often these “payments” were sacrifices. Temple sacrifices. In most Greco-Roman religions of the time — not just Judaism — you could bring a sacrifice (a payment, really) to the local temple so you could literally “buy back” God’s favour. This is what “redemption” used to mean. It meant trading something you had — money or goods or livestock or agricultural produce — to get something you needed: divine favour. It had nothing to do with divine love or divine forgiveness as you and I have defined these concepts on this site.

A: And then there was slavery. The actual buying and selling of human beings based on contract laws. A slave could, under certain circumstances, “buy back” his rights. Or a slave could be manumitted — legally freed by his or her “owner.” But contract law gave people the excuse they needed to treat others cruelly. Contract law justified their cruelty.

J: They gave themselves permission to violate the soul’s own understanding of free will, justice, integrity, and respect. They were listening to their own selfishness and not to God’s voice. And I said so. Out loud. Frequently.

A: So your friends and students were conditioned to understand their relationship with God in terms of contract law. In terms of payments to a master or sovereign lord. In terms of monetary debts or “obligatory service contracts” (i.e. slavery).

J: Slavery was — and is — a terrible violation of the soul, of what it means to be a soul, a child of God. Slavery is an artificially created human condition in which a slave’s personal boundaries are invaded in every way imaginable. A slave is forced to give up all rights to physical and sexual safety. All rights to choose where and with whom to be in relationship. All rights to follow his or her own soul’s calling. Even a slave who has property — and there were many wealthy slaves in the Roman Empire — even such a slave is taught to believe he doesn’t actually own the skin he’s in. It’s not his. It belongs to somebody else. His own skin is “dead” to him. His mind and his heart may be free, but his skin — his body — is dead. He can’t view himself as whole — as a “whole bean” — because in his own mind and in the mind of his society he isn’t whole. He’s a sort of ghoulish inhabitant of a body that belongs to somebody else. If, in addition to being a slave, he’s also sexually violated — a fate that was brutally common for young boys and girls in the first century Empire — chances are extremely high that he’ll grow up to be seriously mentally ill. Why? Because children who are beaten and sexually abused and psychologically tortured bear the scars of that treatment in their biological brains, bodies, and psyches until they are healed. It’s a simple statement of fact.

A: You can see how this kind of treatment would lead to dissociative disorders. A person who’s disconnected from emotions. Disconnected from a strong sense of boundaries and personal space.

J: I was trying to get at the point that even lowly foxes and humble birds are given their own personal space, their own “home,” their own sanctuary by God. Foxes and birds will defend their own homes with all their might, as they have a right to do. They don’t have the right to steal another creature’s home, but they do have the right to protect the one they have. God gives no less a right to all human beings. No human contract law “written in stone” anywhere at any time can supersede the obvious truth that each human being owns his own skin and is the sovereign of his own domain, his own personal kingdom. When he knows this and feels this and lives this, he feels alive. He feels whole. He feels at peace.

A: This is the state of “living” that you refer to so often in the Gospel of Thomas.

J: Yes. It’s a psychological state of balance and health. There’s nothing occult about it. It’s the natural outcome of making choices that lead to emotional maturity. It’s the natural outcome of choosing to live according to the highest potential of humankind. It’s the truest essence of humanity.

A: People being their best selves. On purpose.

J: Yes. On purpose. It’s so very much about the purpose. About the purposefulness of “living.” Which is where forgiveness comes in.

A: How so?

J: Christians are usually taught to think of forgiveness as an act of grace on God’s part, as a somewhat sudden and fickle choice on God’s part, as something that human beings can participate in but can’t initiate. Paul tries very hard to give this impression to his readers. But forgiveness is the opposite of suddenness and fickleness and “divine transcendence.” Forgiveness is purposefulness. Purposefulness of a particular kind. Forgiveness is what you get when you choose to combine your free will and your courage and your love. There’s nothing accidental or preordained about it. It’s a choice. An ongoing choice that calls upon the greatest resources of the eternal soul — each and every soul. It’s the choice to love someone wholly in the absence of payment or retribution or just compensation. Divine forgiveness is not settlement of a debt. Debt doesn’t enter into the equation. Education, mentorship, and personal responsibility enter into the equation, but not debt.

A: This is soooooooo not what they taught me in theological school.

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Posted in Book of Genesis, boundary issues, forgiveness, free will, gender and sexuality, Jesus Redux, Kingdom teachings, Law (Nomos), life and death, Peace Sequence, relationship with God, religion and mental Illness, slavery, Son of Man and tagged , | Leave a Comment
09 Mar 2011

JR19: The Beatitudes of Luke

A: People are often confused about the meaning of your statements on wealth and poverty. There’s a long history of Christians deciding to “imitate you” by giving up all their possessions and taking vows of poverty (among other vows). How do you respond to this interpretation of your teachings?

J: It’s an incorrect interpretation.

A: In what way?

J: Psychologically and spiritually, it’s an incorrect interpretation. There’s no truth to the widespread belief that asceticism is the correct path to knowing God. Asceticism, including the modified form of asceticism preached by the monastic founder Benedict, is an ancient spiritual practice, to be sure, but it’s a dangerous one. It’s dangerous to the human body and the human brain. Therefore it gets in the way of connection with God. I don’t recommend ascetism today. I didn’t recommend asceticism 2,000 years ago.

(c) Hemera Technologies 2001-2003

Then he looked up at his disciples and said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in the Kingdom within; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets. But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.” (Luke 6:22-26, translation from The New Oxford Annotated NRSV, 3rd Ed.) Photo credit Hemera Technologies 2001-2003

A: The Beatitudes and Woes in Luke [Luke 6:20-26] seem to suggest otherwise. The footnotes in the New Oxford Annotated NRSV state that “the focus [in the beatitudes] is on economic and social conditions, not spiritual states” (p. 107 NT).

J: Commentators interpret the Lukan beatitudes this way because the commentators themselves have a dualistic understanding of humanity. There’s a common belief that economic and social conditions can be separated from spiritual states. But they can’t. They’ve always been intertwined. There’s no such thing as a spiritual state that’s separate and distinct from economic and social realities. It’s one of the great myths of religion — the idea that people can dissociate themselves from their own thoughts, needs, feelings, and relationships in order to get closer to God. It’s pure crap. Abusive, damaging crap.

A: Explain.

J: The only path to connecting with God while living as a human being is to become a Whole Brain Thinker. A Whole Brain Thinker is a person who makes balanced choices, holistic choices each day. A Whole Brain Thinker engages all parts of the brain God gave him. He uses his emotions in a balanced, compassionate way. He uses his logic and memory to balance his heart. He honours and respects the needs of his physical body, neither denying himself food nor overindulging at the expense of his physical health. He incorporates his spiritual life into his regular daily life, rather than setting aside just one or two hours per week to attend religious services. He struggles each day to find the balance among all these competing aspects of his true self, but he tries his best because that’s the only path open to a self-realized person. To a person who has found the Kingdom.

A: Are there any measurable benefits to such a path? Any positive outcomes? Any sources of spiritual hope?

J: There are many measurable benefits. Too many to count, in fact. I can’t give a precise list, because each person is different, each soul is different, so there’s variation from person to person. But there are some overall patterns that can be described. There are overall improvements to physical health, mental health, family relationships, and community relationships that develop automatically when individuals start to take control of their own choices, their own thoughts and feelings. Thousands of researchers in hundreds of different fields would back me up on this one.

A: I love it when scientific research backs up the Divine Truth!

J: One area that gets very little research attention is the role of brain health in facilitating the experience of trust. One of the first emotions to get “blocked” in the angry brain, in the addicted brain, is trust. Trust is a complex soul emotion. It’s interwoven with relationships in the soul and in the childhood brain. It’s also interwoven with the physical body through ongoing touch — respectful touch, appropriate touch, sentimental touch. There’s a reason that folk wisdom recommends daily hugs. Hugs are important. Respectful hugs — by that I mean non-sexualized hugs — are hugely important to people’s health. On the other hand, abusive contact, abusive touch has the opposite effect on people’s biology. It damages brain cells. Stress hormones released in the body damage the brain cells of both the abuser and the abusee. A survivor of childhood abuse is likely to grow up unable to trust. Without the emotion of trust, there’s no basis for mature relationship. There’s no basis for mature relationship with yourself or with anybody else. It means you have no foundation for a relationship with God.

A: Because you need to feel trust in order to feel faith. Genuine faith.

J (nodding): Genuine faith is founded on a person’s ability to trust that God actually knows what they’re doing! If you aren’t able to trust God, then you’re always going to be second-guessing God, getting angry with God. You’re always going to be judging God. People don’t like to admit that they’re judging God, but many Christians do it. Every single day they draw up lists of God’s “crimes” of omission and commission. You wouldn’t believe the number of angry prayers God gets every day.

A: So how does all this relate to the message of the Lukan beatitudes?

J: The issue here is the interconnection between trust and faith on the one hand, and anger and addiction on the other hand. The brain isn’t wired — nor should it be — to allow human beings to live a life of trust and faith AND anger and addiction. People have to make a choice. They have to make a choice between living a life of trust and faith — a life where they feel alive every day instead of dead inside, empty inside — OR living a life of anger and addiction. It’s an unfortunate fact that once people become addicted to status, physiologically addicted to the dopamine release of “status hits,” they tend to want to stick with their “drug of choice.” They won’t give it up until they decide their addiction is causing harm. They have to stop denying the harm created by the addiction. So let me ask you . . . how many people do you know who’ve voluntarily given up their status for the sake of inner life, inner freedom, inner joy?

A: I know several people who’ve lost their status involuntarily — not through choice, but through circumstance. Stock market losses. Divorce. Illness. Long-term disability. That sort of thing.

J: You know a number of people with money, status, privilege, possessions. How would you say they’re doing on the “inner joy” scale?

A: Many aren’t doing well. They’re getting clinically depressed. They’re developing chronic health problems — a lot of autoimmune stuff. Sleep disorders. Chronic pain. Unrelenting stress.

J: Right. These responses to stress and status addiction aren’t new. They’ve been around for as long as homo sapiens sapiens has been biologically suspectible to status addiction.

A: The Lukan Woes — Luke 6:24-26 — look different when read in the context you’ve just described. The “consolation” and the “hunger” and the “mourning and weeping” sound a lot like clinical depression.

J: Clinical depression has a genetic component, but it’s also intertwined with internal stresses and external stresses. Sometimes you can’t do anything about the external stresses — things like the Dow Jones average. But the internal stresses have an effect on clinical depression, too. People can really stress themselves out by making choices that harm themselves and harm others. There’s a reason that people with clinical depression respond best to a treatment course that involves both appropriate antidepressant medication AND certain kinds of effective psychotherapy. The medication helps your brain build new “wiring,” which is necessary to the healing process, while the psychotherapy can help you recognize your harmful choices and learn to make more loving choices.

A: Nothing new there as far as an empathetic psychiatrist is concerned.

J: Exactly. And Christianity should jump onto the same page with the empathetic psychiatrists. It’s not money that’s the root of all evil. Money builds schools, hospitals, roads, etc., etc., etc.

A: Whereas status addiction builds huge monuments, huge reputations, huge armies, and professional sports teams.

J: Jared Diamond thinks that civilizations collapse when they harm their own environment and starve themselves to death. But people who are using their brains in holistic, balanced ways have too much common sense to destroy their own environment. Only serious status addicts are stupid enough to destroy their own sustenance for the sake of building a bigger, better Temple.

A: The history of collapse in a nutshell.

J: God won’t back up status-addicted choices. God would rather bring people Home to heal them and release them from the pain of status addiction than leave them in a morass of profound abuse. And make no mistake — religion based on status addiction is profoundly abusive.

A: Including Pauline Christianity. Its doctrines, its teachings.

J: If the shoe fits . . .

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Posted in dualism, faith, healing, Jesus Redux, Kingdom teachings, makarism, Matthew's and Luke's intent, religion and mental Illness, Son of Man, spiritual practices, status addiction, trust, Whole Brain Thinking and tagged | Leave a Comment

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