My son stated to me simply, “I do not remember when I was born.”
My immediate response was to laugh, but I described the world that existed before his birth. I spoke about the other children in our family playing older video games than what we currently own. I mentioned the first time I changed his dirty diaper in the hospital, while Mom asked me to get her Taco Bell instead of survive on Cream of Chicken for the next few days in the hospital.
Later, I took my son's words as a statement of truth.
Most of us, unless those higher human beings tapping into their former lives, do not remember our birth, nor can we trace the history when we lived as a tiny fetus in our mother's stomach. Suddenly, this concept of birth extends beyond human beings and fetuses.
We do not know when the entire human culture was born, for we can only trace back our origin to a particular historical estimation and then we can find major clues through science and anthropology. But, still, we are unsatisfied with this disconnection to the uterus and embryo—both analogies of the beginning of the earth.
We lead then to the ultimate question: the first cause.
What caused the universe to shake? Are we merely products of science and evolution? Is some creator God behind our existence? If so, why would a creator God breed human beings who suffer?
We have ultimately a few answers to consider, and none of these answers may arrive with pure scientific evidence, reason, or rationality. The first answer is simple.
1.We ultimately will never know the first cause beyond identifying a theory, such as the Big Bang. But still, though Science is measurable, we cannot predict how energy and matter first existed, for how can something be created out of nothing? What initiated the Big Bang? We can only conjecture? If the answer is God, which is not a scientific answer but a guess, what initiated God? The riddle continues, and we must recognize the first cause cannot be known.
2.Since the first cause cannot be known, how, then, should we progress in understanding our origin? We can believe what our parents tell us. We can listen to our ancestors. We can read our ancient history and arrive at conclusions from the world or nature surrounding us. We can look at every culture existing on our planet and examine their viewpoint on existence, first cause, and religious experiences and align our path by accepting the belief system. However, we are still guessing and trusting the various histories of religion as evidence of our human commonality to the past. We are looking for that first cause hoping that it will satisfy us.
3.Many people are satisfied with step two, and they may even premise their belief system that faith in their belief system is more powerful than scientific evidence or reason. In other words, humans will completely block out through defense mechanisms evidence of their belief system possibly being false in order to feel the devotion of their service to the belief system—that is either true or false. Many will even ignore evolution to remain innocent in their simplistic view of their religion, for the hard questions ultimately lead some to depression, suffering, and confusion. Who wants to live in this state of mental confusion leading a person ultimately to obsess over the point.
4.Faith is not always important to all religions. Buddhists, for example, decide to take a non-theistic approach to the first cause, and this idea may be the most useful. Buddha says that we can concentrate on the metaphysical elements and never arrive at an answer. Confucius basically says that we should worry less about the cosmos, which we will never understand, because we cannot even improve ourselves. Why worry about the cosmos our entire life? Are we not wasting away social harmony and relationships? Isn't the here and now of things the most important elements to develop? How can we develop if we worry about systems we cannot fully understand?
5.While this idea is appealing, most religions do not accept this form. We must not ignore the cosmos. The Hindus believe we are part of the cosmos, and through many reincarnations, we reach a level of moksha or liberation from the cycle of life. We no longer are human and are merged with the cosmos or heaven. Likewise, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism—in their own solutions—reach the same goal as Hinduism. Believe in God and live righteously to attain salvation to enter heaven. Do not accept these ideas and experience hell. The problem, though, with these ideas is the same issue with my point in number two. We are relying on systems that are ultimately developed by humans who may or may not have experienced an ultimate divine revelation.
6.The final thought, then, is to reject history and trust the self in his or her adventure in religious experiences. However, human beings are so random. How do I know when a revelation or thought stems from my own delusion of the truth or the truth itself? I trust the Hindu swami's ideas more than I trust my own expectations, for he seems persuasive, dresses in a neat outfit, and says ideas I have yet to discover for my own.
So, there are the options: trust yourself, trust the idea of common connections of religions, do not ask impractical questions, believe by faith, trust the mythologies of the past, or live in scientific inquiry and reason.
We, of course, can combine many of these ideas, but ultimately, these points represent our choices. Which one convinces you the most?
--Jinglett
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Tough Questions
God is an evolution of human thought; because of historical developments,God is a social construct of human time. In other words, we have created God into the image of man and woman, and we have defined him so.
By no means do I mean to say that God does not exist. He does. But we have to be wary of how we make him exist. We can create an historical lineage of God connecting Jesus to the house of David. By doing that, we are damaging God and forming merely a human bond in Christianity that Christians desire for historical purposes. The Book of Matthew creates this relationship between Jesus and the various fathers of the Old Testament, even though Judaism bases itself on a matriarchal lineage. You are Jewish—in the orthodox sense—by your mother.
The apostle Paul creates the existence of God in a different route altogether: a mystical vision. Paul, who saw the stoning of Stephen, later rebukes his antithetical views of Christianity when a light from heaven is revealed to him. That mystical experience and not seeing the resurrection of Christ persuades Paul that Christianity is real. Likewise, we can speak about Muhammad's mystical visions, too, as Gabriel speaks directly to him and provides Muhammad with an oral discourse founded on the principles of monotheism.
The above paragraphs demonstrate the historical dimension of religion. First, the book of Matthew clearly argues that Jesus is the son of God merely by historical lineage, yet little do we really know about an exact lineage of a God. And, why create God within a system of birthrite? He is God because his lineage deems it so? Would we make that argument now in the United States? We are a democracy and shun lineages for the most part, even though we have Presidents whose sons also followed in the footsteps. Clearly, if Christ were born into the United States, the Gospel of Matthew might make a different argument for his authenticity; he would need to be endorsed by Oprah.
The idea of a mystical vision is a dangerous one to understand. Christianity and Islam may not have survived without the powerful personalities of Paul and Muhammad. Moreover, the mystical vision gives them a driven purpose for responsibility and success. Yet, what makes their vision any different from the quiet vision of a child, whose purpose may never be known? Or, does the vision itself create the authenticity of purpose and clarity to change reality?
I ask these questions because I, too, have visions, but they are quiet, personal visions that I share with my creator. They do not require death and destruction, as Constantine permitted Christianity to act as the official religion of the Roman Empire. So, visions can lead many people astray, so how do we trust one vision over another? Paul focuses on the vision of Christ as the Roman Catholic Church is established across the empire. Were we wrong to trust Paul? Are we wrong to trust one person's vision for an entire religion, as some do in many religions, including the Mormans and Sikhs?
My point, then, is simple. We do not know God any better than our definitions from centuries and millennium of searching for him. We do not know for sure if he is our father or mother. We do not know if he exists within this universe or beyond the universal laws. If he exists, he seems to be beyond history and mystic revelations--antithetical to them—for many reasons.
1.If he is confined to history, then why do we continue to define him with history? God cannot be a pantheist in an earlier time and then transcendental in a different time within a specific religious practice. These are guesses of people and reacting to God according to these guesses, which become inherently livable, active, and real to the people as traditions are passed from one generation to the next. Therefore, a generational God—the God of the Gospel of Matthew—cannot exist historically. Otherwise, he ends historically until another history overtakes his existence and re-plays the vision in a different context.
2.There are too many religions. Why would God allow this concept, unless human beings have attempted to reveal the idea of God locally instead of universally. The God of Christianity is a Trinity; the God of Judaism is an ethical monotheistic one; and the God of Islam is a distant God. The God of Hinduism looks polytheistic, although many Hindus will state that 333 million Gods ultimately equals one God/Goddess. The God of Buddhism is ignored, although many deities arrive on the scene, particularly in Mahayana Buddhism. Dante established the various levels of heaven in hell in his Italian epic, The Inferno, and levels exist in most religions in one form or another, although none of us have experienced these places, unless reincarnation exists, and in another form, we have identified them before being born only to forget them. Which of these God-views are correct? None of them? All of them? Who knows? Does one believe that God allows us to experience him differently according to cultural context? Either one religion is right or all of them are right or some of them have elements correct? It is a difficult task to define God!
3.If God decides to reveal himself locally to some human beings, why not show himself to everybody? We can argue that he shows himself, but we must constantly reach out for that revelation. Don't we, though? Am I not as spiritual as the pentecostal preachers who hear God's voice in their ears and then say, “God has revealed this or that to me.” King David was a man “after God's own heart,” yet as a King and politician, he sent people into battle to die, lusted after a married woman, and married the woman in the end. No person is perfect, not even Jesus or Muhammad. Nor Paul. Nor the Pope. Nor the Dalai Lama. In fact, Buddha, according to legend, did not want to allow women to first participate in the monkhood; only after his aunt continued to persuade or push the great and enlightened Guatama did he relent and allow his un-enlightened viewpoint change to an enlightened one. Why, then, does God reveal himself to such imperfect people and their viewpoint carries on the great histories of these religions? Why, then, does human record tone down the imperfection of men and woman and create a glorious, idealized viewpoint of human being's interaction with God?
Since people are imperfect and act upon their own behalf most of the time, why should we trust a mystical translation of God? Put ten people in a room, whisper in one person's ear a secret that God revealed, and by the time it gets to the tenth person, that original vision completely changes. Try it in your spare time. We used to do this often as children and change the original words on purpose, just as all humans tend to do when they are acting in their own self interest or an interest in their communities part of the time. If I had a mystical experience, please run the other direction and do not trust it. A mystical vision taps into my own brain and perhaps if I am lucky the area where God resides. Unless God places his entire form upon me as I write out the vision, there are people who will read it with their own interpretation. The vision becomes literal instead of symbolic, and all of a sudden, like the Book of Revelations, people are calculating the exact year Jesus will return to the earth to brutally murder the evil ones who do not believe in his kingdom. Of course, “the brutally murder” concept could be simply a metaphor and not to be taken literally, but people believe the literal over the metaphoric, even when the Bible clearly states that Jesus will return “like a thief in the night,” a simile.
That is all I have today. I have now officially attacked every religion in the world. I expect hate mail, even though I heard that God is Love. I am not trying to be angry toward religion; I am simply trying to understand God in this time period. And, I will not because history gets in the way of a clear photograph of the great being we do not know completely.
--Jinglett
By no means do I mean to say that God does not exist. He does. But we have to be wary of how we make him exist. We can create an historical lineage of God connecting Jesus to the house of David. By doing that, we are damaging God and forming merely a human bond in Christianity that Christians desire for historical purposes. The Book of Matthew creates this relationship between Jesus and the various fathers of the Old Testament, even though Judaism bases itself on a matriarchal lineage. You are Jewish—in the orthodox sense—by your mother.
The apostle Paul creates the existence of God in a different route altogether: a mystical vision. Paul, who saw the stoning of Stephen, later rebukes his antithetical views of Christianity when a light from heaven is revealed to him. That mystical experience and not seeing the resurrection of Christ persuades Paul that Christianity is real. Likewise, we can speak about Muhammad's mystical visions, too, as Gabriel speaks directly to him and provides Muhammad with an oral discourse founded on the principles of monotheism.
The above paragraphs demonstrate the historical dimension of religion. First, the book of Matthew clearly argues that Jesus is the son of God merely by historical lineage, yet little do we really know about an exact lineage of a God. And, why create God within a system of birthrite? He is God because his lineage deems it so? Would we make that argument now in the United States? We are a democracy and shun lineages for the most part, even though we have Presidents whose sons also followed in the footsteps. Clearly, if Christ were born into the United States, the Gospel of Matthew might make a different argument for his authenticity; he would need to be endorsed by Oprah.
The idea of a mystical vision is a dangerous one to understand. Christianity and Islam may not have survived without the powerful personalities of Paul and Muhammad. Moreover, the mystical vision gives them a driven purpose for responsibility and success. Yet, what makes their vision any different from the quiet vision of a child, whose purpose may never be known? Or, does the vision itself create the authenticity of purpose and clarity to change reality?
I ask these questions because I, too, have visions, but they are quiet, personal visions that I share with my creator. They do not require death and destruction, as Constantine permitted Christianity to act as the official religion of the Roman Empire. So, visions can lead many people astray, so how do we trust one vision over another? Paul focuses on the vision of Christ as the Roman Catholic Church is established across the empire. Were we wrong to trust Paul? Are we wrong to trust one person's vision for an entire religion, as some do in many religions, including the Mormans and Sikhs?
My point, then, is simple. We do not know God any better than our definitions from centuries and millennium of searching for him. We do not know for sure if he is our father or mother. We do not know if he exists within this universe or beyond the universal laws. If he exists, he seems to be beyond history and mystic revelations--antithetical to them—for many reasons.
1.If he is confined to history, then why do we continue to define him with history? God cannot be a pantheist in an earlier time and then transcendental in a different time within a specific religious practice. These are guesses of people and reacting to God according to these guesses, which become inherently livable, active, and real to the people as traditions are passed from one generation to the next. Therefore, a generational God—the God of the Gospel of Matthew—cannot exist historically. Otherwise, he ends historically until another history overtakes his existence and re-plays the vision in a different context.
2.There are too many religions. Why would God allow this concept, unless human beings have attempted to reveal the idea of God locally instead of universally. The God of Christianity is a Trinity; the God of Judaism is an ethical monotheistic one; and the God of Islam is a distant God. The God of Hinduism looks polytheistic, although many Hindus will state that 333 million Gods ultimately equals one God/Goddess. The God of Buddhism is ignored, although many deities arrive on the scene, particularly in Mahayana Buddhism. Dante established the various levels of heaven in hell in his Italian epic, The Inferno, and levels exist in most religions in one form or another, although none of us have experienced these places, unless reincarnation exists, and in another form, we have identified them before being born only to forget them. Which of these God-views are correct? None of them? All of them? Who knows? Does one believe that God allows us to experience him differently according to cultural context? Either one religion is right or all of them are right or some of them have elements correct? It is a difficult task to define God!
3.If God decides to reveal himself locally to some human beings, why not show himself to everybody? We can argue that he shows himself, but we must constantly reach out for that revelation. Don't we, though? Am I not as spiritual as the pentecostal preachers who hear God's voice in their ears and then say, “God has revealed this or that to me.” King David was a man “after God's own heart,” yet as a King and politician, he sent people into battle to die, lusted after a married woman, and married the woman in the end. No person is perfect, not even Jesus or Muhammad. Nor Paul. Nor the Pope. Nor the Dalai Lama. In fact, Buddha, according to legend, did not want to allow women to first participate in the monkhood; only after his aunt continued to persuade or push the great and enlightened Guatama did he relent and allow his un-enlightened viewpoint change to an enlightened one. Why, then, does God reveal himself to such imperfect people and their viewpoint carries on the great histories of these religions? Why, then, does human record tone down the imperfection of men and woman and create a glorious, idealized viewpoint of human being's interaction with God?
Since people are imperfect and act upon their own behalf most of the time, why should we trust a mystical translation of God? Put ten people in a room, whisper in one person's ear a secret that God revealed, and by the time it gets to the tenth person, that original vision completely changes. Try it in your spare time. We used to do this often as children and change the original words on purpose, just as all humans tend to do when they are acting in their own self interest or an interest in their communities part of the time. If I had a mystical experience, please run the other direction and do not trust it. A mystical vision taps into my own brain and perhaps if I am lucky the area where God resides. Unless God places his entire form upon me as I write out the vision, there are people who will read it with their own interpretation. The vision becomes literal instead of symbolic, and all of a sudden, like the Book of Revelations, people are calculating the exact year Jesus will return to the earth to brutally murder the evil ones who do not believe in his kingdom. Of course, “the brutally murder” concept could be simply a metaphor and not to be taken literally, but people believe the literal over the metaphoric, even when the Bible clearly states that Jesus will return “like a thief in the night,” a simile.
That is all I have today. I have now officially attacked every religion in the world. I expect hate mail, even though I heard that God is Love. I am not trying to be angry toward religion; I am simply trying to understand God in this time period. And, I will not because history gets in the way of a clear photograph of the great being we do not know completely.
--Jinglett
Jesus, Interrupted
Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don't Know About Them)
Bart D. Ehrman's Jesus, Interrupted—a catchy title—is another book criticizing a literal or fundamental reading of the New and Old Testament scripture, but Ehrman approaches his subject with more passion and devotion than some of the other texts of the day, such as God is Not Great or God is a Delusion.
Ehrman early on describes himself as an agnostic, but he also describes that his scholarly friends agree with his ideas yet maintain deeply-rooted Christian values. So, this book, if you are a fundamental, orthodox, or literalist Christian reader, may attack the very beliefs you ascribe to. However, if a person is open to an historical reading of Jesus and the various developments in Christianity, then she will find illumination within the text. And, if one is an unbeliever, a believer of another faith, agnostic, or an atheist, his book—I firmly think—will give insight and appreciation into Ehrman's historical approach to Christianity.
His first three chapters focus on showing many contradictions in the New Testament and argues persuasively that the contradictions create a Bible informed by human conditions and contexts across many historical periods. As we approach this claim, we may compare his thesis to the idea of revisionist history. As we know now, Thomas Jefferson, one of the greatest thinkers and writers during the American Revolution, owned slaves and had a child with one of them. Likewise, Ehrman examines Christianity through the lens of an historian and unravels exactly what an historian should do: without pre-conceived notions and through the lens of historical evidence.
So, what exactly does he find?
First and foremost, he states the evidence clearly reveals that Jesus is an historical person. That idea itself should soothe the majority of Christians! However, the first three chapters inform the reader that the historical Jesus is buried in the various narratives of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, other New Testament scriptures, and the various “heretical” sacred texts of early Christianity. (Of course, the ”heretical” texts are so because they did not fit into the belief system of the dominant Christian scholarship in the Roman empire.)
One major point that interests me most is his willingness to concede that the disciples of Jesus were “lower class, illiterate, Aramaic-speaking peasants from Galilee,” while “the authors of the Gospels were highly educated, Greek-speaking Christians who probably lived outside Palestine.” This statement, by no means, implies that Jesus or his followers are less sophisticated; Ehrman simply means that early Christianity evolved in the same forms as many or most religions: through oral discourse and stories instead of a written system of organization. The orality of the early Christians, he claims, allowed it to spread in various directions opening up the possibility that Christianity merged the historicity of Jesus with a mythology of Jesus. (Fundamental Christians, close your ears here!) In fact, while Jesus' traditional death occurs around 30 CE, the earliest text, Mark, was probably written forty years later in 70 CE not by the Aramaic-speaking disciples of Jesus but by Greek-speaking Christian writers, who demonstrated some “ignorance of Palestinian geography and Jewish customs,” which possibly “suggests they composed their works somewhere else in the [Roman] empire.”
Ehrman establishes these and other claims in the early chapters, such as the following:
1.There were multiple oral sources influencing the gospels of the New Testament. (His book does not focus on the “pagan” influences of these sources, but I assume these elements are a book on their own.)
2.The Apostle Paul wrote during the period of 50 CE before even the gospels were probably written down. Therefore, even Paul was influenced by oral sources and may not have had written discourses of the various gospels.
3.The Gospel of Mark was written before the other three and makes some reference to the destruction of Jewish temple in 70 CE. Therefore, the earliest written account we have of Jesus is forty years after his death.
4.Matthew and Luke, probably written around 80-85 CE, were based partially on the Gospel of Mark and other possible written texts, which we no longer have. Luke also references the destruction of the Jewish temple.
5.Finally, the Gospel of John is written around 90-95 CE and is the only gospel that explicitly claims that Jesus is divine. According to Ehrman, “Jesus's divinity was part of John's theology, not a part of Jesus' own teaching.”
6.Ehrman also spends considerable time differentiating actual canonical texts written by Paul and those which may be forgeries but still accepted as part of the canon. He bases his evidence on the historical context and the writing style of the author. For example, he claims that 1st Timothy, 2nd Timothy, and Titus were written by Christian writers of the 2nd century long after the death of Paul. Ehrman states that “Paul's churches were not hierarchically structured” and the churches were “run according to the Spirit of God working through each member.” These “forgeries” claiming to be written by Paul give a more hierarchical structure to the church possibly because of chaos among the churches and “heretical” ideas emerging within the systems that even Paul rejected in his written discourses.
The first three chapters cover such ideas, which I have read in many other texts, and though they are interesting and needed to set up the rest of his book, I became mostly interested in the text by Chapter Five: Liar, Lunatic, or Lord? Finding the Historical Jesus.
His method of finding the historical Jesus is by using a cross-referencing method of the four gospels. What are their commonalities? Where do they differ? This method is perhaps what he means by creating an historical approach to understanding the gospels, but I think Ehram may be missing an important point that the scholar Karen Armstrong describes in many of her books. Armstrong argues that each gospel speaks distinctly to a different audience. Matthew's lineage of Jesus speaks directly to converting a Jewish audience, while other gospel languages have intent of persuasion rather than simply tracking down a specific history of Jesus' authenticity. Therefore, the gospels read separately attract a different audience to Christianity. The less authoritative Jesus in Luke, for example, might appeal more to women, children, the sick, poor, and oppressed.
Nevertheless, Ehrman believes that cross-referencing the basic elements of the gospels will lead the reader to the most historically accurate account of Jesus. How does this cross-referencing appear?
1.Jesus came from Nazareth. (The cross-referencing rejects the idea that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, a statement, he claims, Christians after Jesus died described in some of the gospel narratives to match the Messiah passages from the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament.
2.There is a close association between John the Baptist and Jesus, placing them in an apocalyptic view of reality—the idea that the end of the world is approaching. The Gospel of Mark, the first source of the Jesus narrative focuses entirely on this idea of the end times and, at times, seems rushed as Jesus moves from place to place quickly. Perhaps also the least complex gospel of Mark persuades Ehrman in the idea that cross-referencing should focus first in Mark, which may be a weakness in Ehrman's interpretation. Could there have been, for example, biographical information in Matthew and Luke unbeknown to Mark?
3.Jesus was probably baptized by John the Baptist. This idea is interesting, for how could the God-Man be baptized by a person? Obviously, the historical Jesus was initiated into the same ideas and values as John the Baptist. This close alignment with John the Baptist supports the notion of the apocalyptic view of the present. We are going to die and be judged soon. The Messiah is coming!
4.Jesus described that the Son of Man is coming to rule God's kingdom. Ehrman's analysis is that Jesus may not be the Son of Man (or the Messiah). In fact, Ehrman states that “Jesus believed his own disciples would be the rulers of the future, earthly kingdom of God” after Jesus dies and the Son of Man arrives on the scene. The gospels always question whether or not Jesus is the Messiah. He mostly denies it. His acceptance as the Messiah could have been part of the revisionist view of Jesus after the death of the historical Christ.
5.Not only was Jesus apocalyptic in his vision of the world's end, but his disciples and the apostle Paul also take this approach.
6.If this large focus of the apocalypse is correct, then the moral teaching of Jesus are less about the ethical monotheism of Judaism, but about repenting quickly before the world ends. This idea de-emphasizes how much Jesus focuses on teaching through the parable and spending time discussing love and the Beatitudes, one of the most beautiful aspects of the Bible, which, from an historical perspective, cannot necessarily be attributed to Jesus, since they do not participate in the cross-referencing analysis. Bummer!
7.Christ, traditionally thought to side mostly with the Pharisees, represents an entirely new path of Judaism (again the apocalyptic path of John the Baptist). Therefore, he takes a different approach from the Pharisees, interested in “keeping the law,” the Essenes, interested in living monastically to preserve their own purity, the Sadducees, interested in continuing their aristocracy and positive relationship with the Roman Empire, and the Zealots, interested in military action against the Roman Empire to restore Israel to its former glory.
8.The miracles of Jesus should be interpreted from a symbolic and apocalyptic perspective that the kingdom is already near. In fact, Ehrman views the various miracles of Jesus as part of the early folklore tradition of Christianity.
9.Jesus clearly made a ruckus in the Jewish Temple, but the amount of damage he caused may be overstated by the gospels. Otherwise, he probably would have been arrested at an earlier period. (Here, Ehrman misses a good opportunity to see how the mythology of the gospels speaks directly to the history of the first century. Jesus overthrowing the temple could be an anti-Semitic description of Christianity replacing or displacing Judaism, since the Jewish temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE. This story reminds me briefly of when Muhammad decided to pray toward Mecca instead of Jerusalem.) So, I wonder if Ehrman can positively state the temple issue as clearly part of the real history of Jesus through the cross-referencing technique.
10.A disciple, Judas, betrayed Jesus, but the reason is not clear. Ehrman imagines that Judas knew the secret of Jesus—that he claimed to be the messiah. If this were the case, then Ehrman contradicts himself earlier in his attempt to show Jesus not believing he is the Messiah-King.
11.Jesus died on a cross and was buried.
That is as far as Ehrman will go with the Jesus History. He then claims that an historian cannot trace miracles: only facts. Therefore, he takes an agnostic approach to Christianity possibly an easy route out of the mess of what is or isn't Jesus. Jesus could be a miracle worker and resurrected, or the miracles could be attributed to mythology. This agnostic approach is actually enlightening as a reader, because in this day and age, revisionist history of Jesus and Christianity are sometimes more rhetorical, powerful, or condescending.
His other chapters describe the various Christian movements already described in many other texts, so there is nothing new in this area. However, in the context of his cross-referencing idea, these movements are needed to show how the Bible takes its form and is ultimately canonized in the Catholic tradition.
Overall, I enjoyed Jesus, Interrupted. He establishes the historical approach to reading Christianity, provides us with a different perspective on the historical Jesus, places large emphasis on the difference between the Jesus-man and what the Christians created: the Jesus-God. He concludes personally about talking about his agnostic view and how he arrived at it not by the discrepancies in the New Testament but because of other ideas related to suffering, which he explores in his other book, God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question—Why We Suffer. He restates that a Christian can view these ideas he mentions and still be a devoted Christian.
As a non-fundamental, non-sectarian Mystic Christian and Buddhist (yes, very paradoxical), I did not find my belief system threatened whatsoever. And, even though I grew up in a fundamental household, I already came to the conclusion that Christianity is a social construct and contextual to its time period. However, I am not a fundamentalist, and I can see this book problematic for many Christians reading it. However, I think they should. It challenges the reader to think in terms of historical accounts, for Christ lived in history and died in history.
Though the book challenges Christ's miracles, the resurrection, and the divinity of Christ as God, I left his book with a sense of calmness. Jesus existed. He attempted to reform Judaism and still be Jewish. He died possibly because the Romans saw Jesus as a threat to the Empire. After Christ's death and now, can we still say with some agreement that the kingdom of God is where it has always been? In the soul of the believer and not necessarily in the history of Jesus!
--Jinglett
Bart D. Ehrman's Jesus, Interrupted—a catchy title—is another book criticizing a literal or fundamental reading of the New and Old Testament scripture, but Ehrman approaches his subject with more passion and devotion than some of the other texts of the day, such as God is Not Great or God is a Delusion.
Ehrman early on describes himself as an agnostic, but he also describes that his scholarly friends agree with his ideas yet maintain deeply-rooted Christian values. So, this book, if you are a fundamental, orthodox, or literalist Christian reader, may attack the very beliefs you ascribe to. However, if a person is open to an historical reading of Jesus and the various developments in Christianity, then she will find illumination within the text. And, if one is an unbeliever, a believer of another faith, agnostic, or an atheist, his book—I firmly think—will give insight and appreciation into Ehrman's historical approach to Christianity.
His first three chapters focus on showing many contradictions in the New Testament and argues persuasively that the contradictions create a Bible informed by human conditions and contexts across many historical periods. As we approach this claim, we may compare his thesis to the idea of revisionist history. As we know now, Thomas Jefferson, one of the greatest thinkers and writers during the American Revolution, owned slaves and had a child with one of them. Likewise, Ehrman examines Christianity through the lens of an historian and unravels exactly what an historian should do: without pre-conceived notions and through the lens of historical evidence.
So, what exactly does he find?
First and foremost, he states the evidence clearly reveals that Jesus is an historical person. That idea itself should soothe the majority of Christians! However, the first three chapters inform the reader that the historical Jesus is buried in the various narratives of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, other New Testament scriptures, and the various “heretical” sacred texts of early Christianity. (Of course, the ”heretical” texts are so because they did not fit into the belief system of the dominant Christian scholarship in the Roman empire.)
One major point that interests me most is his willingness to concede that the disciples of Jesus were “lower class, illiterate, Aramaic-speaking peasants from Galilee,” while “the authors of the Gospels were highly educated, Greek-speaking Christians who probably lived outside Palestine.” This statement, by no means, implies that Jesus or his followers are less sophisticated; Ehrman simply means that early Christianity evolved in the same forms as many or most religions: through oral discourse and stories instead of a written system of organization. The orality of the early Christians, he claims, allowed it to spread in various directions opening up the possibility that Christianity merged the historicity of Jesus with a mythology of Jesus. (Fundamental Christians, close your ears here!) In fact, while Jesus' traditional death occurs around 30 CE, the earliest text, Mark, was probably written forty years later in 70 CE not by the Aramaic-speaking disciples of Jesus but by Greek-speaking Christian writers, who demonstrated some “ignorance of Palestinian geography and Jewish customs,” which possibly “suggests they composed their works somewhere else in the [Roman] empire.”
Ehrman establishes these and other claims in the early chapters, such as the following:
1.There were multiple oral sources influencing the gospels of the New Testament. (His book does not focus on the “pagan” influences of these sources, but I assume these elements are a book on their own.)
2.The Apostle Paul wrote during the period of 50 CE before even the gospels were probably written down. Therefore, even Paul was influenced by oral sources and may not have had written discourses of the various gospels.
3.The Gospel of Mark was written before the other three and makes some reference to the destruction of Jewish temple in 70 CE. Therefore, the earliest written account we have of Jesus is forty years after his death.
4.Matthew and Luke, probably written around 80-85 CE, were based partially on the Gospel of Mark and other possible written texts, which we no longer have. Luke also references the destruction of the Jewish temple.
5.Finally, the Gospel of John is written around 90-95 CE and is the only gospel that explicitly claims that Jesus is divine. According to Ehrman, “Jesus's divinity was part of John's theology, not a part of Jesus' own teaching.”
6.Ehrman also spends considerable time differentiating actual canonical texts written by Paul and those which may be forgeries but still accepted as part of the canon. He bases his evidence on the historical context and the writing style of the author. For example, he claims that 1st Timothy, 2nd Timothy, and Titus were written by Christian writers of the 2nd century long after the death of Paul. Ehrman states that “Paul's churches were not hierarchically structured” and the churches were “run according to the Spirit of God working through each member.” These “forgeries” claiming to be written by Paul give a more hierarchical structure to the church possibly because of chaos among the churches and “heretical” ideas emerging within the systems that even Paul rejected in his written discourses.
The first three chapters cover such ideas, which I have read in many other texts, and though they are interesting and needed to set up the rest of his book, I became mostly interested in the text by Chapter Five: Liar, Lunatic, or Lord? Finding the Historical Jesus.
His method of finding the historical Jesus is by using a cross-referencing method of the four gospels. What are their commonalities? Where do they differ? This method is perhaps what he means by creating an historical approach to understanding the gospels, but I think Ehram may be missing an important point that the scholar Karen Armstrong describes in many of her books. Armstrong argues that each gospel speaks distinctly to a different audience. Matthew's lineage of Jesus speaks directly to converting a Jewish audience, while other gospel languages have intent of persuasion rather than simply tracking down a specific history of Jesus' authenticity. Therefore, the gospels read separately attract a different audience to Christianity. The less authoritative Jesus in Luke, for example, might appeal more to women, children, the sick, poor, and oppressed.
Nevertheless, Ehrman believes that cross-referencing the basic elements of the gospels will lead the reader to the most historically accurate account of Jesus. How does this cross-referencing appear?
1.Jesus came from Nazareth. (The cross-referencing rejects the idea that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, a statement, he claims, Christians after Jesus died described in some of the gospel narratives to match the Messiah passages from the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament.
2.There is a close association between John the Baptist and Jesus, placing them in an apocalyptic view of reality—the idea that the end of the world is approaching. The Gospel of Mark, the first source of the Jesus narrative focuses entirely on this idea of the end times and, at times, seems rushed as Jesus moves from place to place quickly. Perhaps also the least complex gospel of Mark persuades Ehrman in the idea that cross-referencing should focus first in Mark, which may be a weakness in Ehrman's interpretation. Could there have been, for example, biographical information in Matthew and Luke unbeknown to Mark?
3.Jesus was probably baptized by John the Baptist. This idea is interesting, for how could the God-Man be baptized by a person? Obviously, the historical Jesus was initiated into the same ideas and values as John the Baptist. This close alignment with John the Baptist supports the notion of the apocalyptic view of the present. We are going to die and be judged soon. The Messiah is coming!
4.Jesus described that the Son of Man is coming to rule God's kingdom. Ehrman's analysis is that Jesus may not be the Son of Man (or the Messiah). In fact, Ehrman states that “Jesus believed his own disciples would be the rulers of the future, earthly kingdom of God” after Jesus dies and the Son of Man arrives on the scene. The gospels always question whether or not Jesus is the Messiah. He mostly denies it. His acceptance as the Messiah could have been part of the revisionist view of Jesus after the death of the historical Christ.
5.Not only was Jesus apocalyptic in his vision of the world's end, but his disciples and the apostle Paul also take this approach.
6.If this large focus of the apocalypse is correct, then the moral teaching of Jesus are less about the ethical monotheism of Judaism, but about repenting quickly before the world ends. This idea de-emphasizes how much Jesus focuses on teaching through the parable and spending time discussing love and the Beatitudes, one of the most beautiful aspects of the Bible, which, from an historical perspective, cannot necessarily be attributed to Jesus, since they do not participate in the cross-referencing analysis. Bummer!
7.Christ, traditionally thought to side mostly with the Pharisees, represents an entirely new path of Judaism (again the apocalyptic path of John the Baptist). Therefore, he takes a different approach from the Pharisees, interested in “keeping the law,” the Essenes, interested in living monastically to preserve their own purity, the Sadducees, interested in continuing their aristocracy and positive relationship with the Roman Empire, and the Zealots, interested in military action against the Roman Empire to restore Israel to its former glory.
8.The miracles of Jesus should be interpreted from a symbolic and apocalyptic perspective that the kingdom is already near. In fact, Ehrman views the various miracles of Jesus as part of the early folklore tradition of Christianity.
9.Jesus clearly made a ruckus in the Jewish Temple, but the amount of damage he caused may be overstated by the gospels. Otherwise, he probably would have been arrested at an earlier period. (Here, Ehrman misses a good opportunity to see how the mythology of the gospels speaks directly to the history of the first century. Jesus overthrowing the temple could be an anti-Semitic description of Christianity replacing or displacing Judaism, since the Jewish temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE. This story reminds me briefly of when Muhammad decided to pray toward Mecca instead of Jerusalem.) So, I wonder if Ehrman can positively state the temple issue as clearly part of the real history of Jesus through the cross-referencing technique.
10.A disciple, Judas, betrayed Jesus, but the reason is not clear. Ehrman imagines that Judas knew the secret of Jesus—that he claimed to be the messiah. If this were the case, then Ehrman contradicts himself earlier in his attempt to show Jesus not believing he is the Messiah-King.
11.Jesus died on a cross and was buried.
That is as far as Ehrman will go with the Jesus History. He then claims that an historian cannot trace miracles: only facts. Therefore, he takes an agnostic approach to Christianity possibly an easy route out of the mess of what is or isn't Jesus. Jesus could be a miracle worker and resurrected, or the miracles could be attributed to mythology. This agnostic approach is actually enlightening as a reader, because in this day and age, revisionist history of Jesus and Christianity are sometimes more rhetorical, powerful, or condescending.
His other chapters describe the various Christian movements already described in many other texts, so there is nothing new in this area. However, in the context of his cross-referencing idea, these movements are needed to show how the Bible takes its form and is ultimately canonized in the Catholic tradition.
Overall, I enjoyed Jesus, Interrupted. He establishes the historical approach to reading Christianity, provides us with a different perspective on the historical Jesus, places large emphasis on the difference between the Jesus-man and what the Christians created: the Jesus-God. He concludes personally about talking about his agnostic view and how he arrived at it not by the discrepancies in the New Testament but because of other ideas related to suffering, which he explores in his other book, God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question—Why We Suffer. He restates that a Christian can view these ideas he mentions and still be a devoted Christian.
As a non-fundamental, non-sectarian Mystic Christian and Buddhist (yes, very paradoxical), I did not find my belief system threatened whatsoever. And, even though I grew up in a fundamental household, I already came to the conclusion that Christianity is a social construct and contextual to its time period. However, I am not a fundamentalist, and I can see this book problematic for many Christians reading it. However, I think they should. It challenges the reader to think in terms of historical accounts, for Christ lived in history and died in history.
Though the book challenges Christ's miracles, the resurrection, and the divinity of Christ as God, I left his book with a sense of calmness. Jesus existed. He attempted to reform Judaism and still be Jewish. He died possibly because the Romans saw Jesus as a threat to the Empire. After Christ's death and now, can we still say with some agreement that the kingdom of God is where it has always been? In the soul of the believer and not necessarily in the history of Jesus!
--Jinglett
The Sparrow and the Crow
As an adolescent, I lived in Northwest Conway, Arkansas and was surrounded by forests, hills, and a lake. My morning breakfast consisted of a bowl of Cheerios with a pinch of sugar for flavor, but really, my morning meditation happened simultaneously while I stared out the kitchen window to watch the finches, cardinals, blue jays, and other hungry birds eating birdseed. Together, we spent the morning as one species.
Some mornings, the larger blackbirds and sometimes the blue jays would dominate the smaller birds, which flew into the trees awaiting the larger species to leave before returning to the seeds. When this happened, I grunted and judged the larger birds as the predators—the ones spoiling the tranquility for the rest of the birds, including me, the young bird in my family of four.
Years later, I read about the concept of Shi-Fei in Daoism. Basically, the concept asks us not to view reality in a dualistic form; we should abandon judgment and view reality without distinction. As soon as we create the concept of this/not this and either/or, we categorize and criticize the natural elements of nature.
As a child, I thought I followed the concept of Shi-Fei. I sat at the kitchen window enjoying my dualistic perception of reality—my idealized version of reality. I believed that the small, beautiful birds and the brightly red cardinals represented the goodness of my soul, and I developed a level of disappointment and frustration when the larger black birds—the crows—flew in like air force jets to claim territory not belonging to them.
Why did I not appreciate the entire perception of reality? Why did I merely idealize the beauty apparent in the finches, sparrows, and scissor-tail flycatchers? Could I abandon judgment without distinction and learn to love the crows?
Tonight, I sit in Border's Bookstore. Some days, my thought process shifts toward the erratic (typically around a new or full moon), and I argue with my wife and children for no apparent reason other than being trapped in a dualistic state of mind focused entirely on me.
“Why is the trash not taken outside?”
“Whose turn is it to do the dishes?”
“Where are my headphones!?
“Get in here now and listen to me while I am talking!”
My wife is a selfless human being, the beautiful “finch” I love to watch fall asleep each night, but sometimes, I make her or the kids the crow—the cause of all my pain and suffering, when my dualistic perception is the ultimate cause of my suffering.
Like my childhood, I now realize that the sparrow/crow symbolism not only exists in nature but also tightly in my thought process, and as long as I separate these two birds as “good” and “bad,” then I can never learn the real concept of Shi-Fei—the abandonment of dualistic thinking and, ultimately, judgment.
Let's return to the two birds in my head. Looking out my window, I see the little birds eating the bird seeds. After they complete part of a meal, the other birds, the crows, join in the meal. They eat their share and leave. The other birds return faithfully, and what happens amazes me. Both birds receive their required amount of food in order for the survival of the species. How beautiful now the scene engages me! How natural. How harmonious!
Let's predict the future. My wife and I watch a film related to the financial conditions of the United States. We laugh at the comedy, and instead of thinking about our own financial conditions and how she or I are to blame for any debt we have accumulated over the years, we laugh at our past mistakes together, enjoy the midnight air filled with the crescent moon and a few clouds, and return home together with a conversation about Oklahoma weather and its pleasant surprises—a snowstorm one week and a tornado the next.
Together, we abandon judgment and live the power of the Tao within ourselves because we no longer cling to the either/or fallacy nor define any complexity of our beautiful, natural relationship.
We are like the sparrow flying into a distant tree branch while watching our brother, the crow, complete his morning meal.
--Jinglett
Some mornings, the larger blackbirds and sometimes the blue jays would dominate the smaller birds, which flew into the trees awaiting the larger species to leave before returning to the seeds. When this happened, I grunted and judged the larger birds as the predators—the ones spoiling the tranquility for the rest of the birds, including me, the young bird in my family of four.
Years later, I read about the concept of Shi-Fei in Daoism. Basically, the concept asks us not to view reality in a dualistic form; we should abandon judgment and view reality without distinction. As soon as we create the concept of this/not this and either/or, we categorize and criticize the natural elements of nature.
As a child, I thought I followed the concept of Shi-Fei. I sat at the kitchen window enjoying my dualistic perception of reality—my idealized version of reality. I believed that the small, beautiful birds and the brightly red cardinals represented the goodness of my soul, and I developed a level of disappointment and frustration when the larger black birds—the crows—flew in like air force jets to claim territory not belonging to them.
Why did I not appreciate the entire perception of reality? Why did I merely idealize the beauty apparent in the finches, sparrows, and scissor-tail flycatchers? Could I abandon judgment without distinction and learn to love the crows?
Tonight, I sit in Border's Bookstore. Some days, my thought process shifts toward the erratic (typically around a new or full moon), and I argue with my wife and children for no apparent reason other than being trapped in a dualistic state of mind focused entirely on me.
“Why is the trash not taken outside?”
“Whose turn is it to do the dishes?”
“Where are my headphones!?
“Get in here now and listen to me while I am talking!”
My wife is a selfless human being, the beautiful “finch” I love to watch fall asleep each night, but sometimes, I make her or the kids the crow—the cause of all my pain and suffering, when my dualistic perception is the ultimate cause of my suffering.
Like my childhood, I now realize that the sparrow/crow symbolism not only exists in nature but also tightly in my thought process, and as long as I separate these two birds as “good” and “bad,” then I can never learn the real concept of Shi-Fei—the abandonment of dualistic thinking and, ultimately, judgment.
Let's return to the two birds in my head. Looking out my window, I see the little birds eating the bird seeds. After they complete part of a meal, the other birds, the crows, join in the meal. They eat their share and leave. The other birds return faithfully, and what happens amazes me. Both birds receive their required amount of food in order for the survival of the species. How beautiful now the scene engages me! How natural. How harmonious!
Let's predict the future. My wife and I watch a film related to the financial conditions of the United States. We laugh at the comedy, and instead of thinking about our own financial conditions and how she or I are to blame for any debt we have accumulated over the years, we laugh at our past mistakes together, enjoy the midnight air filled with the crescent moon and a few clouds, and return home together with a conversation about Oklahoma weather and its pleasant surprises—a snowstorm one week and a tornado the next.
Together, we abandon judgment and live the power of the Tao within ourselves because we no longer cling to the either/or fallacy nor define any complexity of our beautiful, natural relationship.
We are like the sparrow flying into a distant tree branch while watching our brother, the crow, complete his morning meal.
--Jinglett
Self-Reliance and God-Consciousness
Today, I propose a solution to an issue confronting my thoughts for many years—the existential problem between self-reliance and god-reliance.
First, let me explain what I mean by these terms.
Self-reliance says that we are human beings experiencing reality in a subjective form. From an objective point, we all see the color blue similarly, but every individual experiences the color blue in an individual brain. Our brain processes tell us through the experience within the world that blue is an image we interpret, unless, of course, we are color blind.
Self-reliance is a human condition bound by science and the subjective experiences we come to know as belief. By experiencing the subjective, we can arrive at a common understanding with other individuals and experience reality similarly. So, I am not stating here that Self-Reliance means that we are on our own. We are not. We have family, friends, and community. However, reliance ultimately exists within the boundaries of human experience.
The question remains. Is Self-Reliance enough?
The Buddhists take a non-theistic approach and focus on overcoming suffering and, ultimately, self-reliance by recognizing that no matter how difficult the human condition is, we must recognize it fully, find the root cause of suffering, and then map out a practical solution.
The Buddhists attempt to un-bind us from this view that we are even trapped in this dualistic reality of self-recognizing. In many respects, Buddhism is the middle way out of relying too heavily on ego, craving, traps, false desires, and human guilt. We cannot do it on our own. Try to be the hero. You will fail or you may succeed. Nevertheless, in a Western Viewpoint, we search for self-reliance through our heroes. Yet, Buddhism takes a different approach: why not dissolve the hero concept altogether and become equal among all equals—a human being that is common to all of us whether we strive in one direction or another. In the end, we die. In the end, we fail according to standards. So, instead of failing, let's relax a bit and strive toward some common goal—the four noble truths as the Buddha describes and the 8-fold path, which is common among all religions.
I agree with the foundational components of Buddhism. There are only human beings with no hierarchy. There is social disconnection we must attempt to identify. After identifying the problem with social disconnection, we must reconcile it with social harmony, similar to a Confucian model of social reliance. We, by denying a little bit of our ego, work to help others and provide compassion and joy to all living beings. It is a beautiful Utopian model to some degree and a workable, practical model on other levels if we practice it daily.
But. Yes. A but always exists. I can only move so far toward a model of self-reliance, which Jung calls individuation. I can move beyond the ego, but as I practice, I even move closer to the emptiness of self-reliance and see my ego dissolving toward emptiness and arriving toward balance and harmony in my life. But the more I practice and hear about the Buddha mind and nirvana and ego-less perfection, I still am alone existentially, even though the colors I see are still the same rainbow colors you see.
Is being human enough?
That is the existential question.
And, from the Buddhist perspective, is the idea of the Bodhisattva—the enlightened Buddha who remains on this earth to help others achieve an enlightened state—part of being human or tapping into some higher dimension that we sometimes yearn for?
The Buddhists take a non-theological approach to enlightenment, so it is centered in the gravity of human awareness and circumstance. They do not want to enter the conversation of theism or the concept of god-consciousness, because there is so much controversy about god. Which god? Which practice? Which religion? Ultimately, discussing god-consciousness creates dissonance within the human being. Gods destroy in some traditions. Gods love in other traditions. Gods are defined by rules and creeds, and though the Noble Truths and Eightfold Path seem like creeds, I would suggest they are simply ideas the Buddha designed to say, “Go and practice to see if it works for you. If it works, then continue. If it does not, then at least you tried.” There is a certain relaxation in that answer.
However, while meditating and feeling happy, I find myself automatically crying out to a voice beyond the human condition, even though I am not even interested in this other-ness comforting me whatsoever or reducing my suffering. I call this other-ness the god-consciousness, which either exists inside of me or beyond me in a metaphysical—beyond the written universe—condition I have tapped.
In other words, while being self-reliant and freeing myself from the limitations and boundaries of this earth happily, I still cried out to the same nothingness and emptiness some traditions have called God, Allah, Yahweh, Jesus, Dao, Vishnu, Shiva, or Ahura Mazda. I do not intend to leave out any ideas of religious traditions here, but I simply give these examples of this yearning that sometimes arrives after the self-consciousness emerges into its own form and arises into the emptiness of what I might call a transcendental voyage to nothingness beyond the physical universal self-reliant form.
I wrote a handful, but that is where I stand as I write today.
ONE: I am a human being who suffers in this conditioned state.
TWO: Buddhism and even Daoism are two non-dualistic religions or traditions that have given me a large sense of who I am and who I am not. They have brought me to a state of compassionate joy without judgment.
THREE: Within this joy, love is expressed to others and to myself. Love is also expressed to the universe itself through my joy.
FOUR: The universe speaks in return and then dissolves itself into emptiness.
FIVE: This emptiness leads me to the god-consciousness either within me or beyond physical conditions.
SIX: I find this God-consciousness, though transcendental, very much a component of my being.
SEVEN: If this is so, then I am participating in a conversation or experience with a spirit either within or beyond my conditions, since I have dissolved the emptiness within me.
EIGHT: What is left is the dissolving of all reality and an arrival at the metaphysical being touching the void in me and loving me in return. Again, within this mystical experience, I cannot tell the difference between my own conditional self-reliant experience and this god-consciousness. Does it come within or without, I know not. If anything, it becomes between, yet between is a judgment I cannot define with language because I can only physically articulate the color blue and not the color god-consciousness. (See the book, I and Thou, by Martin Buber)
NINE: There is at some point a return to the conditional reality of self-reliance, and I am left with the human condition of suffering, ego, craving, hunger, and desire. But, I touched the void!
TEN: I bring that void back to the earth, self-reliant me and the mystical experience completes itself. It opens a door to a wider degree of love than simply the self-reliant consciousness. The god-consciousness brings itself into human nature, and I feel even a larger urge to love other people beyond theological disagreements. This tenth step takes me away from the existential issue, and I am free.
Self-reliance and God-acceptance have merged!
First, let me explain what I mean by these terms.
Self-reliance says that we are human beings experiencing reality in a subjective form. From an objective point, we all see the color blue similarly, but every individual experiences the color blue in an individual brain. Our brain processes tell us through the experience within the world that blue is an image we interpret, unless, of course, we are color blind.
Self-reliance is a human condition bound by science and the subjective experiences we come to know as belief. By experiencing the subjective, we can arrive at a common understanding with other individuals and experience reality similarly. So, I am not stating here that Self-Reliance means that we are on our own. We are not. We have family, friends, and community. However, reliance ultimately exists within the boundaries of human experience.
The question remains. Is Self-Reliance enough?
The Buddhists take a non-theistic approach and focus on overcoming suffering and, ultimately, self-reliance by recognizing that no matter how difficult the human condition is, we must recognize it fully, find the root cause of suffering, and then map out a practical solution.
The Buddhists attempt to un-bind us from this view that we are even trapped in this dualistic reality of self-recognizing. In many respects, Buddhism is the middle way out of relying too heavily on ego, craving, traps, false desires, and human guilt. We cannot do it on our own. Try to be the hero. You will fail or you may succeed. Nevertheless, in a Western Viewpoint, we search for self-reliance through our heroes. Yet, Buddhism takes a different approach: why not dissolve the hero concept altogether and become equal among all equals—a human being that is common to all of us whether we strive in one direction or another. In the end, we die. In the end, we fail according to standards. So, instead of failing, let's relax a bit and strive toward some common goal—the four noble truths as the Buddha describes and the 8-fold path, which is common among all religions.
I agree with the foundational components of Buddhism. There are only human beings with no hierarchy. There is social disconnection we must attempt to identify. After identifying the problem with social disconnection, we must reconcile it with social harmony, similar to a Confucian model of social reliance. We, by denying a little bit of our ego, work to help others and provide compassion and joy to all living beings. It is a beautiful Utopian model to some degree and a workable, practical model on other levels if we practice it daily.
But. Yes. A but always exists. I can only move so far toward a model of self-reliance, which Jung calls individuation. I can move beyond the ego, but as I practice, I even move closer to the emptiness of self-reliance and see my ego dissolving toward emptiness and arriving toward balance and harmony in my life. But the more I practice and hear about the Buddha mind and nirvana and ego-less perfection, I still am alone existentially, even though the colors I see are still the same rainbow colors you see.
Is being human enough?
That is the existential question.
And, from the Buddhist perspective, is the idea of the Bodhisattva—the enlightened Buddha who remains on this earth to help others achieve an enlightened state—part of being human or tapping into some higher dimension that we sometimes yearn for?
The Buddhists take a non-theological approach to enlightenment, so it is centered in the gravity of human awareness and circumstance. They do not want to enter the conversation of theism or the concept of god-consciousness, because there is so much controversy about god. Which god? Which practice? Which religion? Ultimately, discussing god-consciousness creates dissonance within the human being. Gods destroy in some traditions. Gods love in other traditions. Gods are defined by rules and creeds, and though the Noble Truths and Eightfold Path seem like creeds, I would suggest they are simply ideas the Buddha designed to say, “Go and practice to see if it works for you. If it works, then continue. If it does not, then at least you tried.” There is a certain relaxation in that answer.
However, while meditating and feeling happy, I find myself automatically crying out to a voice beyond the human condition, even though I am not even interested in this other-ness comforting me whatsoever or reducing my suffering. I call this other-ness the god-consciousness, which either exists inside of me or beyond me in a metaphysical—beyond the written universe—condition I have tapped.
In other words, while being self-reliant and freeing myself from the limitations and boundaries of this earth happily, I still cried out to the same nothingness and emptiness some traditions have called God, Allah, Yahweh, Jesus, Dao, Vishnu, Shiva, or Ahura Mazda. I do not intend to leave out any ideas of religious traditions here, but I simply give these examples of this yearning that sometimes arrives after the self-consciousness emerges into its own form and arises into the emptiness of what I might call a transcendental voyage to nothingness beyond the physical universal self-reliant form.
I wrote a handful, but that is where I stand as I write today.
ONE: I am a human being who suffers in this conditioned state.
TWO: Buddhism and even Daoism are two non-dualistic religions or traditions that have given me a large sense of who I am and who I am not. They have brought me to a state of compassionate joy without judgment.
THREE: Within this joy, love is expressed to others and to myself. Love is also expressed to the universe itself through my joy.
FOUR: The universe speaks in return and then dissolves itself into emptiness.
FIVE: This emptiness leads me to the god-consciousness either within me or beyond physical conditions.
SIX: I find this God-consciousness, though transcendental, very much a component of my being.
SEVEN: If this is so, then I am participating in a conversation or experience with a spirit either within or beyond my conditions, since I have dissolved the emptiness within me.
EIGHT: What is left is the dissolving of all reality and an arrival at the metaphysical being touching the void in me and loving me in return. Again, within this mystical experience, I cannot tell the difference between my own conditional self-reliant experience and this god-consciousness. Does it come within or without, I know not. If anything, it becomes between, yet between is a judgment I cannot define with language because I can only physically articulate the color blue and not the color god-consciousness. (See the book, I and Thou, by Martin Buber)
NINE: There is at some point a return to the conditional reality of self-reliance, and I am left with the human condition of suffering, ego, craving, hunger, and desire. But, I touched the void!
TEN: I bring that void back to the earth, self-reliant me and the mystical experience completes itself. It opens a door to a wider degree of love than simply the self-reliant consciousness. The god-consciousness brings itself into human nature, and I feel even a larger urge to love other people beyond theological disagreements. This tenth step takes me away from the existential issue, and I am free.
Self-reliance and God-acceptance have merged!
The Mustard Seed of Light
God truly exists on his, her, or its own without the complexity of the universe standing in its way, for he is not born from or within the universe but somewhere else, which we cannot fully own or know. In some respects, God is emptiness without mass or energy but a mustard seed waiting to create a spectacular movement.
Thus, God, from which we do not understand, illuminates the universe like a massive light exploding heat and expanding mass over billions of years, as the Big Bang still moves our universal expansion of territory. The universe is not static. This now silent drifting production is God's creativity, gift, and architecture for us to visualize, even if it is beyond belief even to know if there is a reason behind how these structures unfold logically or by chance alignment of our earth to the sun.
However, as the light first forms, we soon form afterwards but after a long period of time waxing and waning in a heated earth and melting and cooling in a changing form. We become participatory action in the dance of the insect, the crab, the great whale, the large dinosaurs, the cute but killer monkeys, and the human being itself drifting out of Africa on a voyage of self discovery.
Leaving and staying in Africa, we do not know for certain if or when God plants his mustard seed explosion within our soul, nor do we know where or if the soul resides. But, there is illumination of a seed planted within us, and that seed represents the Original Light!
Our purpose, then, is to move in two directions simultaneously—an paradox of sorts. We are to expand into the light as the universe still arises from the light many years before us and return to the beginning of God's explosion to understand the manifestation of our existence and share that divinity with others. These directions touch the void within us, dissolve the past suffering and deception we create within ourselves, and move us directly to the present Light—the primeval and informative light within.
We must learn to become the emptiness of God like a mustard seed and approach a divine conclusion of illumination through the spirit of internal/eternal cooperation.
--Jinglett
Thus, God, from which we do not understand, illuminates the universe like a massive light exploding heat and expanding mass over billions of years, as the Big Bang still moves our universal expansion of territory. The universe is not static. This now silent drifting production is God's creativity, gift, and architecture for us to visualize, even if it is beyond belief even to know if there is a reason behind how these structures unfold logically or by chance alignment of our earth to the sun.
However, as the light first forms, we soon form afterwards but after a long period of time waxing and waning in a heated earth and melting and cooling in a changing form. We become participatory action in the dance of the insect, the crab, the great whale, the large dinosaurs, the cute but killer monkeys, and the human being itself drifting out of Africa on a voyage of self discovery.
Leaving and staying in Africa, we do not know for certain if or when God plants his mustard seed explosion within our soul, nor do we know where or if the soul resides. But, there is illumination of a seed planted within us, and that seed represents the Original Light!
Our purpose, then, is to move in two directions simultaneously—an paradox of sorts. We are to expand into the light as the universe still arises from the light many years before us and return to the beginning of God's explosion to understand the manifestation of our existence and share that divinity with others. These directions touch the void within us, dissolve the past suffering and deception we create within ourselves, and move us directly to the present Light—the primeval and informative light within.
We must learn to become the emptiness of God like a mustard seed and approach a divine conclusion of illumination through the spirit of internal/eternal cooperation.
--Jinglett
Real Faith
I would like to recommend the new book, Saving Jesus from the Church, by Robin Meyers, but today there is too much good information to give it a complete review. Therefore, I want to focus specifically on one element he describes in his book: faith.
The traditional view of faith is believing in what we cannot see—a sort of giant leap or blind faith. When a person says to you, “There is no historical evidence of Jesus in history,” you may respond, “I believe because I have faith.”
Is that a weak answer? Does that really convince you? Is that all faith really is?
If so, then we are persuaded too easily and practicing a theological mind game of deceit rather than looking deeply into what Jesus brings to the table beyond his mythology. And, this movement beyond the historical/mythological controversy of Jesus is exactly what Robin Meyers describes in his book.
Meyers describes “faith as fiducia (radical trust in God), as fidelitas (loyalty in one's relationship to God), and as visio (a way of seeing creation as gracious).”
Jesus is personified in these three basic areas, and if we are Christian or not, we should begin looking at the Jesus message within this identity of faith instead of the traditional one.
We have a moral conscience that is God's breath—his perfect image within us. God freely gave this gift, and in return, we should look to this moral conscience (or spirit) for guidance and radically trust in it! We also have free choice, but free choice also means we can look to our God-breathed moral conscience and have radical faith in its power and energy. This idea is no different than the Buddha telling us simply to seek compassion and love through the Eightfold Path. If we are God's breath, then let us allow it to enlighten us, and through its radical enlightenment, we are then moved to radically trust the God in others as a mutual relationship between all human beings. (Did I say radical enough!?)
Next, in Buddhism, meditation is practiced not to look cool or peaceful but to take on the responsibility of the world's suffering. The Mahayana form of Buddhism suggests that we show loyalty to every human being until every grass blade attains enlightenment. The Mahayana Buddhists devote their life to the loyalty of fidelitas, and Christians and other religions should also recognize the power and energy of loyalty. Loyalty seems to suggest a hierarchy, but though Meyers does not describe this concept in great detail (for he has much to do in this book), loyalty represents a cause of devotion not only to God but to others, too. Loyalty is again seeing the image God breathed into us and knowing that he made all of us equally. Loyalty is rejecting the hierarchy of capitalism and, if you are the business owner, helping your customers and employees not fear you but respect you in a mutual reciprocity as described sometimes as love or ren/jen in Confucian terms. Loyalty is walking into a temple, as Jesus may have done, and seeing how the temple abuses the authority of God. Loyalty means speaking out against the status quo and sometimes getting into trouble and other times being thrown in a Lion's Den to serve the greater cause—not you—but your moral conscience—the Yetzer Ra of Judaism.
Finally, the final element of faith is, as Robert Frost suggests, the realization that we all have “miles to go before I sleep” because each mile is a gift—a gracious one. The Garden of Eden may seem like a utopia to take away our suffering, but let's remember that each footstep we place in the snow is a gift from God. Some people cannot walk, others cannot see, and still others live on breathing machines, yet we all metaphorically live within our own perceptive ailments keeping us from the illumination God grants to us daily and each second of our lives. A morning prayer from Judaism is important here: “You, God, existed before the world was created; you exist after the world was created.” Yet, for some reason unknown to our little thoughts, he placed us here to be loyal to him and to it, for there is not much difference between God's loyalty to the entire universe and to our loyalty to God or this environment. So, it is in our best interest to wake up in the morning and be gracious to each other, yet as we pass away from this earth, leave the gracious gift of God with our children, families, and communities to continue on without us. That is the social gospel of Jesus! There is no Garden of Eden here unless we cooperate with each other and bind ourselves to the greater humanity of God sharing love with each other through our works, our words, and our dimensionless abilities to serve, no matter how small, like a bird taking a seed from one tree and planting it elsewhere in God's kingdom.
There is more to faith and Robin Meyer's book, but these elements are only the beginning. I will continue to read more of his book and keep within my Buddha thoughts a greater understanding of faith beyond the counterattack of disbelief. Words are deeds in action!
Thanks you, Dr. Meyers, for helping me understand!
--Jinglett
The traditional view of faith is believing in what we cannot see—a sort of giant leap or blind faith. When a person says to you, “There is no historical evidence of Jesus in history,” you may respond, “I believe because I have faith.”
Is that a weak answer? Does that really convince you? Is that all faith really is?
If so, then we are persuaded too easily and practicing a theological mind game of deceit rather than looking deeply into what Jesus brings to the table beyond his mythology. And, this movement beyond the historical/mythological controversy of Jesus is exactly what Robin Meyers describes in his book.
Meyers describes “faith as fiducia (radical trust in God), as fidelitas (loyalty in one's relationship to God), and as visio (a way of seeing creation as gracious).”
Jesus is personified in these three basic areas, and if we are Christian or not, we should begin looking at the Jesus message within this identity of faith instead of the traditional one.
We have a moral conscience that is God's breath—his perfect image within us. God freely gave this gift, and in return, we should look to this moral conscience (or spirit) for guidance and radically trust in it! We also have free choice, but free choice also means we can look to our God-breathed moral conscience and have radical faith in its power and energy. This idea is no different than the Buddha telling us simply to seek compassion and love through the Eightfold Path. If we are God's breath, then let us allow it to enlighten us, and through its radical enlightenment, we are then moved to radically trust the God in others as a mutual relationship between all human beings. (Did I say radical enough!?)
Next, in Buddhism, meditation is practiced not to look cool or peaceful but to take on the responsibility of the world's suffering. The Mahayana form of Buddhism suggests that we show loyalty to every human being until every grass blade attains enlightenment. The Mahayana Buddhists devote their life to the loyalty of fidelitas, and Christians and other religions should also recognize the power and energy of loyalty. Loyalty seems to suggest a hierarchy, but though Meyers does not describe this concept in great detail (for he has much to do in this book), loyalty represents a cause of devotion not only to God but to others, too. Loyalty is again seeing the image God breathed into us and knowing that he made all of us equally. Loyalty is rejecting the hierarchy of capitalism and, if you are the business owner, helping your customers and employees not fear you but respect you in a mutual reciprocity as described sometimes as love or ren/jen in Confucian terms. Loyalty is walking into a temple, as Jesus may have done, and seeing how the temple abuses the authority of God. Loyalty means speaking out against the status quo and sometimes getting into trouble and other times being thrown in a Lion's Den to serve the greater cause—not you—but your moral conscience—the Yetzer Ra of Judaism.
Finally, the final element of faith is, as Robert Frost suggests, the realization that we all have “miles to go before I sleep” because each mile is a gift—a gracious one. The Garden of Eden may seem like a utopia to take away our suffering, but let's remember that each footstep we place in the snow is a gift from God. Some people cannot walk, others cannot see, and still others live on breathing machines, yet we all metaphorically live within our own perceptive ailments keeping us from the illumination God grants to us daily and each second of our lives. A morning prayer from Judaism is important here: “You, God, existed before the world was created; you exist after the world was created.” Yet, for some reason unknown to our little thoughts, he placed us here to be loyal to him and to it, for there is not much difference between God's loyalty to the entire universe and to our loyalty to God or this environment. So, it is in our best interest to wake up in the morning and be gracious to each other, yet as we pass away from this earth, leave the gracious gift of God with our children, families, and communities to continue on without us. That is the social gospel of Jesus! There is no Garden of Eden here unless we cooperate with each other and bind ourselves to the greater humanity of God sharing love with each other through our works, our words, and our dimensionless abilities to serve, no matter how small, like a bird taking a seed from one tree and planting it elsewhere in God's kingdom.
There is more to faith and Robin Meyer's book, but these elements are only the beginning. I will continue to read more of his book and keep within my Buddha thoughts a greater understanding of faith beyond the counterattack of disbelief. Words are deeds in action!
Thanks you, Dr. Meyers, for helping me understand!
--Jinglett
Three Abrahamic Faiths = One Peace
In a book on Christianity written by Hans Kung, the writer identifies at least Five Areas of interaction between the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic creed. As religions, the Abrahamic faiths stand on their own accord, but as peacemakers to the Western and Eastern cultures, it is imperative that we listen to Kung's analysis and create peace in the individual and collective believers of each faith.
1.All three religions concentrate their “faith in one and the same God of Abraham...the great witness to this one true living God.” God said that he would illuminate Abraham's children like the stars in the skies. The stars are Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Let's bring these stars together instead of seeing them as separate telescopes!
2.All three religions ascribe to “a view of history which does not think in cosmic cycles but is directed toward a goal: it has its beginning in God's creation, is confirmed by God's action and saving signs in time, and is directed toward an end through God's consummation.” Part of this historical viewpoint may have included violence before and still violence now, but the ultimate goal is historical non-violence. When will all nations promote this powerful message once again beginning when Abraham stood on a mountain with a son, whose name we do not need to know to understand the story. God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son, and Abraham willingly does this violent action before God intervenes. That story needs to be read as a moment when God says to all: no more violence toward human beings. Let there be harmony. I demand it!
3.All three religions contain “the ever new proclamation of the word and will of God by a whole series of prophetic figures.” Let's keep our theological concepts to ourselves and simply say we need to understand these prophetic figures in their own religious and historical contexts, but, more importantly, we need to listen to them now. Prophets speak against the status quo of selfishness and lead us all to a better understanding of love through God's covenant with all three religions. We may not always like what a prophet says, but they keep us from living within the confines of cultural relativism so that we can experience the absolute authority of God. Let the prophets speak to us now, as a message to search for God's domain rather than man's colonial mindset that has existed in our Western culture in so many empires: the Assyrian, the Babylonian, the Persian, the Macedonian, the Roman, the Ottoman, etc. Too many empirical and colonial fascination for us to return directly to God, but we must!
4.All three religions describe “the record of revelation to the human being, given once and for all and remaining normative, in the form of revelatory writing. Whether or not there is an agreement on theology, can we not deny the power of the Jewish revelations, the Christian revelations, the Islamic revelations. Reading them humbles me to the floor before God or Allah. Listening to them multiplies peace within my soul. Thinking about them comforts me instead of drawing me away from religion. However, if there is no peace, if cultures cannot adjust well to other cultures, and if we cannot live together within the same territories, then the revelations are meaningless to me and us. We are mocking Yahweh, Jesus (Isa), Muhammad (peace be upon him), and Allah. Do we want to mock the revelation or put down our swords and fight a real spiritual battle called co-existence—something the prophets might call righteousness and justice!
5.All three religions are “grounded in the will of the one God.” We have our Ten Commandments. We have our ethical orientations. We have our holy days! We have everything grounded in an ethical framework given to us ultimately by God. Yet, let us not forget God's will “on earth as it is in heaven.” If heaven is peaceful, as the saying from God reveals to us, then why is earth so unlucky? Let's bring heaven to earth now before it is too late and before three of the greatest Western religions collapse because of egocentric and explosive rhetoric. We are one earth!
--Jinglett
1.All three religions concentrate their “faith in one and the same God of Abraham...the great witness to this one true living God.” God said that he would illuminate Abraham's children like the stars in the skies. The stars are Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Let's bring these stars together instead of seeing them as separate telescopes!
2.All three religions ascribe to “a view of history which does not think in cosmic cycles but is directed toward a goal: it has its beginning in God's creation, is confirmed by God's action and saving signs in time, and is directed toward an end through God's consummation.” Part of this historical viewpoint may have included violence before and still violence now, but the ultimate goal is historical non-violence. When will all nations promote this powerful message once again beginning when Abraham stood on a mountain with a son, whose name we do not need to know to understand the story. God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son, and Abraham willingly does this violent action before God intervenes. That story needs to be read as a moment when God says to all: no more violence toward human beings. Let there be harmony. I demand it!
3.All three religions contain “the ever new proclamation of the word and will of God by a whole series of prophetic figures.” Let's keep our theological concepts to ourselves and simply say we need to understand these prophetic figures in their own religious and historical contexts, but, more importantly, we need to listen to them now. Prophets speak against the status quo of selfishness and lead us all to a better understanding of love through God's covenant with all three religions. We may not always like what a prophet says, but they keep us from living within the confines of cultural relativism so that we can experience the absolute authority of God. Let the prophets speak to us now, as a message to search for God's domain rather than man's colonial mindset that has existed in our Western culture in so many empires: the Assyrian, the Babylonian, the Persian, the Macedonian, the Roman, the Ottoman, etc. Too many empirical and colonial fascination for us to return directly to God, but we must!
4.All three religions describe “the record of revelation to the human being, given once and for all and remaining normative, in the form of revelatory writing. Whether or not there is an agreement on theology, can we not deny the power of the Jewish revelations, the Christian revelations, the Islamic revelations. Reading them humbles me to the floor before God or Allah. Listening to them multiplies peace within my soul. Thinking about them comforts me instead of drawing me away from religion. However, if there is no peace, if cultures cannot adjust well to other cultures, and if we cannot live together within the same territories, then the revelations are meaningless to me and us. We are mocking Yahweh, Jesus (Isa), Muhammad (peace be upon him), and Allah. Do we want to mock the revelation or put down our swords and fight a real spiritual battle called co-existence—something the prophets might call righteousness and justice!
5.All three religions are “grounded in the will of the one God.” We have our Ten Commandments. We have our ethical orientations. We have our holy days! We have everything grounded in an ethical framework given to us ultimately by God. Yet, let us not forget God's will “on earth as it is in heaven.” If heaven is peaceful, as the saying from God reveals to us, then why is earth so unlucky? Let's bring heaven to earth now before it is too late and before three of the greatest Western religions collapse because of egocentric and explosive rhetoric. We are one earth!
--Jinglett
Let there be Darkness!
The lights are out at Barnes and Noble by Quail Springs Mall. They have allowed me to stay in my chair, as I write on my laptop with 90% battery left and ticking away.
I love the silence of no electricity, as a few people huddle next to the books to read their names.
I have a stack of books next to me, which may not be read today, but I am hoping the electric company will say the magical words, “Let there be light!”
Yes, it is Easter weekend. And, the irony exists here in Barnes and Noble. If only this company existed as a Jewish company. We would have candles surrounding us now, but instead of candles, we have other kinds of light, such as this computer monitor, the cell phone, and a bit of light from the generator they must have in the back of the building supplying some energy to a few places. And, if Barnes and Noble were Jewish, the ceilings would be higher, as light from outside would splash against the windows bringing us closer to the energy of the sun.
But, for now...darkness.
And, I am happy for now, though I wish to read so many texts to access knowledge and curiosity. In case my battery dies and I must leave the store, the books I have possessed are of the following:
The New Christians by Tony Jones
The Energy of Prayer by Thich Nhat Hanh
The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
The Courage to Be by Paul Tillich
The Many Gospels of Jesus by Philip W. Comfort and Jason Driesbach
Gnostic Philosophy by Tobias Churton
The First Paul by Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan
Passion for Peace by Thomas Merton
In Search of Paul by John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan L. Reed
The New King James Version
I cannot possibly read all these books today, particular in the dark, but my general purpose was to focus on the Apostle Paul and how he transformed Christianity away from a Jewish sect into a completely new religion altogether. I have always viewed Paul negatively, but today I want to see the other side of Paul. He is the marketing strategist of Christianity, and from a monotheistic perspective, the Jewish God has always used his faulty human beings in different forms. Moses murdered before he became a leader of the Israelites and brought them out of possible slavery in Egypt. David sent Bathsheba's husband to the front line of war and death so that he could marry her, although the prophet Nathan confronted him. So, perhaps with all of Paul's faults—the persecutions of the first Christians—I can find some kind of understanding, even though I personally believe he helped transform a Jewish reformer and rabbi into a God-man.
How odd it is for me to be talking about Christianity in this form today! It's easter! I should be humble and accept that God created Jesus from a virgin, even though that is the language of all the mystery and so-called pagan religions across the ages. Jesus, the rabbi and Jewish reformer, is, however, now married to paganism. He is the child of a virgin. He worked miracles in the same form as Moses and the Egyptian mystery religions. He walked on water defying gravity. Mystery and magic pervade the god-man. But somehow, between these lines, Jesus the man is revealed, and we should be able to clarify it by sorting through the forty years of mythology before Mark and the other gospel writers finally penned down the Jesus myth after the Jewish temple destruction in 70 CE.
There is a saying I created in a poem many years ago. I wrote that “myth and truth mix to sanctify my naïve mind.” Reason is difficult to sort out from an historical perspective, and myth surpasses the historical perspective and lives on in the archetypes of our reality to the degree that we can view reality symbolically.
So, that is where I am today.
Now, the lights have returned to Barnes and Noble at just the right time.
I will begin reading about Paul and probably find some disappointments and clarifications. No matter what, I accept the Jesus complexity and believe, even if Jesus is man or divine, it matters most that I have received experiences of tranquility in this reality and absolutely find peace in this universal, historical thought process.
There is something alive and moving within me—either the human spirit or reason or something else mystical altogether. And, if God or myself somehow is struck with a pattern within me, then I will come closer to this journey that I am on, which many people call religion. And, since it is mystical, I can only report it as many others reported it—as symbolism and reason. Those two mixed together are not exactly science, are they?
Nor will they ever be!
--Jinglett
I love the silence of no electricity, as a few people huddle next to the books to read their names.
I have a stack of books next to me, which may not be read today, but I am hoping the electric company will say the magical words, “Let there be light!”
Yes, it is Easter weekend. And, the irony exists here in Barnes and Noble. If only this company existed as a Jewish company. We would have candles surrounding us now, but instead of candles, we have other kinds of light, such as this computer monitor, the cell phone, and a bit of light from the generator they must have in the back of the building supplying some energy to a few places. And, if Barnes and Noble were Jewish, the ceilings would be higher, as light from outside would splash against the windows bringing us closer to the energy of the sun.
But, for now...darkness.
And, I am happy for now, though I wish to read so many texts to access knowledge and curiosity. In case my battery dies and I must leave the store, the books I have possessed are of the following:
The New Christians by Tony Jones
The Energy of Prayer by Thich Nhat Hanh
The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
The Courage to Be by Paul Tillich
The Many Gospels of Jesus by Philip W. Comfort and Jason Driesbach
Gnostic Philosophy by Tobias Churton
The First Paul by Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan
Passion for Peace by Thomas Merton
In Search of Paul by John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan L. Reed
The New King James Version
I cannot possibly read all these books today, particular in the dark, but my general purpose was to focus on the Apostle Paul and how he transformed Christianity away from a Jewish sect into a completely new religion altogether. I have always viewed Paul negatively, but today I want to see the other side of Paul. He is the marketing strategist of Christianity, and from a monotheistic perspective, the Jewish God has always used his faulty human beings in different forms. Moses murdered before he became a leader of the Israelites and brought them out of possible slavery in Egypt. David sent Bathsheba's husband to the front line of war and death so that he could marry her, although the prophet Nathan confronted him. So, perhaps with all of Paul's faults—the persecutions of the first Christians—I can find some kind of understanding, even though I personally believe he helped transform a Jewish reformer and rabbi into a God-man.
How odd it is for me to be talking about Christianity in this form today! It's easter! I should be humble and accept that God created Jesus from a virgin, even though that is the language of all the mystery and so-called pagan religions across the ages. Jesus, the rabbi and Jewish reformer, is, however, now married to paganism. He is the child of a virgin. He worked miracles in the same form as Moses and the Egyptian mystery religions. He walked on water defying gravity. Mystery and magic pervade the god-man. But somehow, between these lines, Jesus the man is revealed, and we should be able to clarify it by sorting through the forty years of mythology before Mark and the other gospel writers finally penned down the Jesus myth after the Jewish temple destruction in 70 CE.
There is a saying I created in a poem many years ago. I wrote that “myth and truth mix to sanctify my naïve mind.” Reason is difficult to sort out from an historical perspective, and myth surpasses the historical perspective and lives on in the archetypes of our reality to the degree that we can view reality symbolically.
So, that is where I am today.
Now, the lights have returned to Barnes and Noble at just the right time.
I will begin reading about Paul and probably find some disappointments and clarifications. No matter what, I accept the Jesus complexity and believe, even if Jesus is man or divine, it matters most that I have received experiences of tranquility in this reality and absolutely find peace in this universal, historical thought process.
There is something alive and moving within me—either the human spirit or reason or something else mystical altogether. And, if God or myself somehow is struck with a pattern within me, then I will come closer to this journey that I am on, which many people call religion. And, since it is mystical, I can only report it as many others reported it—as symbolism and reason. Those two mixed together are not exactly science, are they?
Nor will they ever be!
--Jinglett
Sunday, April 26, 2009
In religion, country, and culture, human nature tells me that we sometimes exceed with glory and other times fail miserably.
And, like human consciousness, we have a difficult time reconciling these differences.
During the 2008 election, Barack Obama began his nomination by not wearing a flag pin on his jacket. Suddenly, he is recognized as the “non-patriotic” candidate, even though his entire candidacy focused on lifting up “the better angels of ourselves.” This is paradox #1.
During the 2000 election, George W. Bush ran on a platform on compassionate conservatism and sought to restore ethical integrity to the White House. Eight years later, we have entered two unnecessary wars, defied the United Nations' authority, broken international laws of torture, and showed the worst examples of imperialism, colonization, and anger—the worst demons of ourselves. This is paradox #2.
Over sixty years ago, the Roman Catholic Church, among other Christian nations, turned a blind eye to the fascism promoted by Hitler and the Nazis, and during the aftermath of World War II, at least six million Jews and others were gassed, murdered by gunpoint, or died by starvation or other gruesome means. We call this the Holocaust. This is paradox #3.
The United States dropped nuclear weapons of mass destruction on Japan. "But, it probably saved our lives," my grandfather told me many years ago." Would I be alive then without nuclear warfare? Paradox #4
I could spend an entire article on the paradox of culture, particularly the most evil kind of culture, including the rape of women who were later beaten because they became pregnant! However, we don't always like to think of the evil elements in the dark shadows of our unconsciousness. We'd rather forget about the evil and preach a God of forgiveness and love.
However, we must approach history from a real perspective and recognize not only the paradoxes existing in religion, culture, and ethics, but also how to reconcile an earth consciousness to explain what it means to be human on many levels: as an individual, as a participant in larger culture, and as a social construct by other human beings from different geographical locations.
Reconciliation is perhaps based on the paradoxical elements of human nature. We have good qualities, and we sometimes fail. We can celebrate the goodness, but when we fail not as human beings but as human cultures, our individuality is overpowered by the “common purpose.” The “common purpose” sometimes fails horribly!
So, what then is the answer to paradoxical reconciliation.
Jefferson speaks of an absolute, universal truth. All people deserve equality and will receive it...one day. We have yet to reach that ideal, yet looking at the commonality of religions and still respecting the heritage of each human being, perhaps we can reach for something out of Jefferson's idealism and make the crowded world a little more personal and inviting!
--Jinglett
And, like human consciousness, we have a difficult time reconciling these differences.
During the 2008 election, Barack Obama began his nomination by not wearing a flag pin on his jacket. Suddenly, he is recognized as the “non-patriotic” candidate, even though his entire candidacy focused on lifting up “the better angels of ourselves.” This is paradox #1.
During the 2000 election, George W. Bush ran on a platform on compassionate conservatism and sought to restore ethical integrity to the White House. Eight years later, we have entered two unnecessary wars, defied the United Nations' authority, broken international laws of torture, and showed the worst examples of imperialism, colonization, and anger—the worst demons of ourselves. This is paradox #2.
Over sixty years ago, the Roman Catholic Church, among other Christian nations, turned a blind eye to the fascism promoted by Hitler and the Nazis, and during the aftermath of World War II, at least six million Jews and others were gassed, murdered by gunpoint, or died by starvation or other gruesome means. We call this the Holocaust. This is paradox #3.
The United States dropped nuclear weapons of mass destruction on Japan. "But, it probably saved our lives," my grandfather told me many years ago." Would I be alive then without nuclear warfare? Paradox #4
I could spend an entire article on the paradox of culture, particularly the most evil kind of culture, including the rape of women who were later beaten because they became pregnant! However, we don't always like to think of the evil elements in the dark shadows of our unconsciousness. We'd rather forget about the evil and preach a God of forgiveness and love.
However, we must approach history from a real perspective and recognize not only the paradoxes existing in religion, culture, and ethics, but also how to reconcile an earth consciousness to explain what it means to be human on many levels: as an individual, as a participant in larger culture, and as a social construct by other human beings from different geographical locations.
Reconciliation is perhaps based on the paradoxical elements of human nature. We have good qualities, and we sometimes fail. We can celebrate the goodness, but when we fail not as human beings but as human cultures, our individuality is overpowered by the “common purpose.” The “common purpose” sometimes fails horribly!
So, what then is the answer to paradoxical reconciliation.
- We must recognize human compassion as one answer to reconcile differences.
- We must recognize the failure of our past heritages and not hide from them.
- We must do what all religions ask us to do: love our neighbors and seek direction beyond egocentric desire.
Jefferson speaks of an absolute, universal truth. All people deserve equality and will receive it...one day. We have yet to reach that ideal, yet looking at the commonality of religions and still respecting the heritage of each human being, perhaps we can reach for something out of Jefferson's idealism and make the crowded world a little more personal and inviting!
--Jinglett
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