JR5: Jesus and the Jerusalem Temple

A: Jesus, could you please explain why the brain health of people 2,000 years ago makes a difference to what you're saying today? Why should people on a spiritual journey care about the question of brain health?  

J: Well, there are a couple of different approaches to that question. Many religious individuals don't care about this question and don't want to care. These are individuals who are happy with their current understanding of God. They believe they have the correct understanding. Therefore, from their point of view, it's a complete waste of time to be asking about the brain health of the people I lived and worked with. There's only one reason a person today would be asking about the brain health of Jesus and Paul and John. Only a person who's interested in the historical facts about what happened would ask such a question.  

A: You mean a person who suspects the Church hasn't been telling us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing about the truth?  

J: Yes. A person who isn't afraid of asking difficult questions about the past. Questions that can help bring healing into the world today. 

A: The same sorts of difficult questions that cultural groups in the 20th century had to ask themselves repeatedly. Questions about the motivations that lay behind crimes against humanity. Questions about personal responsibility and ethical conduct in the face of horrendous mob behaviour. 

J: There was no shortage of opportunities for deep soul-searching in the 20th century. 

A: Here in Canada we've had to address our treatment of First Nations people and ethnic and religious minorities. It isn't easy to be honest about past mistakes, but it's in acknowledging our mistakes that we're able to learn from them and make our society more inclusive, more compassionate.  

J (nodding): It's a painful struggle to bring major change to a society. But it can be done when a sizeable group decides to "get on board." You need a critical mass of people to bring about effective change. Individual members of a society have to be willing to decide for themselves that change is a good thing. It has to come from within people's hearts. When the rules are imposed on them from the top down by a small cadre of rulers or leaders, that's not change. That's fascism or totalitarianism. 

A: Or church authority.  

J: Exactly the point I was trying to make 2,000 years ago.  

A: Tell me more about that. 

J: There was no church at the time, of course. But there was a Temple. Actually, there were lots of temples, because many different religions co-existed in the first century, and most of them built temples as places of worship. I wasn't interested myself in Greek or Roman or Egyptian temples. I knew about them, had visited them, but my main concern was the Jewish Temple.  

A: In Jerusalem.  

J: Yes, physically the Jewish Temple was in Jerusalem. But the Temple was more than that. It was a symbol. A powerful symbol. It overshadowed Jewish people no matter where we lived. If you were Jewish, you couldn't get away from it.  

A: Was this a good thing?  

J: Sure, if you were a wealthy Sadducee. Or a member of the privileged Jewish aristocracy. Or a wealthy Roman merchant-mercenary. 

A: You mean Roman merchants and Roman mercenaries?  

J: No, I mean the unique class of Roman culture that was clawing its way up the rigid social class system by making buckets and buckets of money in various mercantile enterprises of dubious ethical merit. 

A: Huh. That sounds a lot like some corporations today.  

J: There's a reason the English word "corporation" comes from the same Latin root as Paul's "one body -- corpus -- in Christ."  

A: That's pretty inflammatory. 

J: Yes. But accurate. Religion was THE biggest business in the first century. It was intimately linked with politics and power, even more so than people can imagine today. It's just crazy to pretend that Paul was talking about love and salvation. When you get right down to it, Paul was a businessman. He wasn't selling relationship with God. He was selling power. Like certain televangelists in recent years who've been building market share -- along with their own investment portfolios. Same old, same old. 

“Jesus said to his disciples: Compare me to something and tell me what am I like. Simon Peter replied: You are like a righteous messenger. Matthew replied: You are like an intelligent lover of wisdom. Thomas replied: Teacher, my mouth is utterly unable to say what you are like. Jesus said: I am not your teacher; because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated from the bubbling spring that I have tended. Jesus took Thomas and they withdrew. Jesus said three things to him. When Thomas returned to his friends, they asked him: What did Jesus say to you? Thomas replied: If I tell you even one of the sayings he spoke to me, you will pick up rocks and stone me, and fire will come out of the rocks and burn you up” (Gospel of Thomas 13). This photo shows the underground alleys in the old city of Jerusalem. Credit FreeIsraelPhotos.

 A: And that's not what you were doing? Building a power base for your own ideas? 

J: I was interested in dismantling the power base of the Temple. Brash, crazy, and impossible at the time. But I gave it my best shot. 

 A: Some political observers would suggest this makes you a Zealot -- a first century Jewish political revolutionary. Were you a Zealot?  

J: No. The Jewish faction known as Zealots were the equivalent of today's radical religious fundamentalists. I was as far from religious fundamentalism as it was possible to get. 

A: But you also weren't a religious conservative devoted to preserving the status quo.  

J: No. I came from a family of religious conservatives. My mother's father was a Sadducee. My father was a Roman citizen from Greece who hobnobbed with Roman merchant-mercenaries. As a young adult, I rejected the social values my family taught me.  

A: Okay. So you weren't a Zealot. And you weren't a Sadducee. What else was left within Judaism at the time?  

J: There were the Pharisees. Their influence had been steadily growing for decades. They were highly obedient to the Jewish Law and the traditions of the Jewish Temple.  

A: And you weren't. 

 J: Nope.  

A: So you didn't have much in common with the Pharisees.  

J: Not by the time I came to my senses.  

A: Which was when?  

J: When I realized that the group Josephus calls the Essenes were extremely powerful and dangerous, and that they were influencing the teachings of well-meaning Pharisees. I decided then to stop listening to "factions" within Judaism and start listening to my own heart and soul. 

A: So basically all the Jewish religious factions that existed in Palestine in the first century (that we know of) would have considered you a heretic?  

J: Damn straight.

JR4: Talking About Psychopathy

A: I notice that human nature hasn't changed in the past 2,000 years. Families still fight over the same issues. 

J: Right. And it's not surprising from a scientific point of view. Two thousand years is a very short amount of time as far as the human genome is concerned. Human DNA is still the same today as it was then. Most importantly, the DNA involved in mental health issues hasn't changed. Two thousand years ago, people were just as susceptible to major mental illness as they are today. There's a bias among scholars who are trying to recreate the cultural mindset that existed in the first century (CE). They seem to want to believe that people's brains worked differently then, and that people's mindset was "unique" to the time, and impossible for us to understand today. But that's not true. If you start with the logical scientific assumption that human brain physiology hasn't changed in the past 2,000 years because the human DNA that shapes the physiology hasn't changed, then you have a different starting point. You can look at the issues involved in major mental illness today, and you can assume that the same issues must have existed in the 1st century. This starting point can free historians from the false assumption that we can never understand what people were thinking and feeling in the Roman Empire of the 1st century. On the contrary, you can understand them better by using the new research tools available to you. 

A: Tools like brain scans.  

J: Exactly. You can't actually run a brain scan on a skeleton that's been dead for 2,000 years. But you can use medical forensics to extrapolate backwards. You can make better guesses about the past by using new research data that's only become available recently.  

A: The History Channel has a show based on that idea. It's called "Ancients Behaving Badly." Sometimes I wonder, though, about their experts' understanding of psychopathy. 

J: Psychopathy is not well understood by psychologists. There's a tendency to pretend it isn't a major mental illness because it's not treatable. There's no drug regimen and no effective psychotherapy model that can be patented or copyrighted. So there's not a lot of good research. Also, people are worried about the legal implications. People are worried that if psychopathy is labelled a major mental illness then it will be used in court cases to prove a lack of responsibility in major crimes. There's a risk of this because there's currently such a poor understanding of how the human brain works. However, proof of psychopathy is in no way proof of lack of responsibility or lack of criminal intent. Psychopathy is a class of major mental illness characterized by a complete lack of conscience that is accompanied by a complete preservation of logic, will power, and intent. It's an illness because a psychopath's brain is not functioning properly -- it's not wired according to the psychopath's DNA package. Nonetheless, the psychopath is responsible for his or her actions because he/she is consciously aware of the choices he/she is making. That conscious awareness is the test for criminal intent in a legal proceeding.  

“Jesus said: Blessed is the lion that the human will eat, so that the lion becomes human. And foul is the human that the lion will eat, and the lion will become human” (Gospel of Thomas 7). Being a successful psychopath is lot like being a trained pilot who can land near the shore of a frozen lake without crashing through the ice. It takes rigorous training, commitment, logic, and a laser-eye view of where you want to be and what you need to accomplish to get there – even if it means mowing down all the people between you and your goal. Being a successful psychopath is also a lot like being a lion on the hunt. Photo credit JAT 2015.

A: In other words, psychopaths know what they're doing is wrong, so they shouldn't be given a "Get Out Of Jail Free" card.  

J: Exactly. They should be held accountable for their choices and their actions. At the same time, they should also receive appropriate medical therapy and intervention to assist them to learn how to make better choices.  

A: Healing and redemption for serial killers. 

J: It's possible. But not likely in the current climate of Newtonian psychology.  

A: Newtonian psychology. That's an interesting phrase. I've never heard it before.  

J: By Newtonian psychology I mean the current vogue in neuroscience research. Researchers are examining small little bits of the human brain in isolation as if the brain is nothing more than a complex Lego set. But the brain isn't like that. It's much more sophisticated than that. The sum of the parts does not make the whole. The whole is . . . the whole is almost beyond words. It's not called "the three pound universe" for nothing.  

A: I've been noticing that researchers themselves get so caught up in the details that they lose sight of the big picture. They can't see the forest for the trees, as the saying goes. I picked up the current issue of Discover (Jan/Feb 2011) with its list of the 100 Top Stories of 2010. Top Story No. 62 ("Glia: The Other Brain Cells") breathlessly informs me that glial cells in the brain might actually play an active role in brain function, rather than just a structural role. I've known this for years because you told me years ago to keep an eye on glial cell research. And there's been good research on glia, too. Fascinating stuff. It's a shame that many other researchers haven't been paying attention. 

J: Well, the neuron is the "fad du jour." It's a nice easy-to-understand Lego block, and it's easier to design experiments with. Researchers are limited by experimental constraints.  

A: And funding grants. Research often follows the money. There's more money in tracking the parts of the brain that can be changed by patented medications. It's a huge industry.  

J: And a very powerful one that has a vested interest in viewing the brain as a collection of fixable Legos.  

A: Not much room in there for a doctrine of the soul, is there?  

J: That's the whole idea, actually.

JR3: Some Family History of Jesus

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

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

 

J: There's a lot there to talk about. 

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

J: Brain chemistry.  

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

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

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

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

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

J: You could put it that way.  

A: That's scary.  

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

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

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

A: Yes, that too. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

J: Sounds like a plan. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A: You always have such a way with words.

JR2: Not a Technological Sort of Fellow, But Still Likes Gadgets

A: A few days ago, I got a big surprise. I punched the phrase "choosing between Paul and Jesus" into Google's search engine, and the only site I came up with was my own blog Concinnate Christianity. Also, every post on my blog seemed to be "tagged" with this particular phrase. Somebody tagged my posts, but it wasn't me, because I don't know how to do that. Any comments?  

J (laughing): Don't look at me. That's a different department. I'm not in the technology department. There's a reason I lived as a human being 2,000 years ago! No computers to contend with!  

A: Typing on a blog doesn't count as technology? 

J: Well, to be honest, I'm not typing on a blog. I'm talking, and you're typing. You're the one who has to contend with the technology. All I have to do is talk -- which I love to do. So, technically speaking, I'm doing what I do best -- which is philosophising. I leave the computer stuff to the computer department. So if there are mysterious search tags appearing on your blog, it's their fault. I wouldn't have the first idea where to begin.  

A: You're saying there's a department of angels whose job it is to focus on technology?  

J: Yup. There's no field of human research that's "outside the box" as far as God is concerned. You name any human researcher in any obscure field, and there are at least 12 angels in the immediate vicinity who know 12 times more about the topic than the human researcher.  

A: Hey, twelve times twelve. I like your symbolism.  

J: It wouldn't be a proper mystical teaching if I didn't randomly throw in some numerology to make people lose sleep at night wondering what I mean. 

A: That's a bit cynical!  

J: Just realistic. It's an honest statement of fact that the Bible is filled to the brim with numbers that are supposed to be mystically significant. Numbers like 12. And 40. And multiples of 7. So now it's official. This blog is certifiably mystical. Jesus has spoken the sacred seal of twelve times twelve. All is now right with the world.  

A: Whoa! You sound pretty upset! 

J: I'm an angel, and angels are pretty upset these days. We're tired of the bullshit.  

A: Can you elaborate on that point?  

J: It'll take me a while. There's a lot of bullshit in the world today.  

A: People will probably be shocked that an angel would even say such a thing. Especially you. You're Jesus. You're supposed to be pure light and pure love. Won't people be upset that you would speak so . . . so . . .  

J: Bluntly? 

A: I was thinking more along the lines of "impolite."  

J: I'm a blunt sort of fellow, and I call a spade a spade. There's no polite way to describe what's going on in the world today. I'd much rather be honest than polite. 

A: There's the Jesus I know.  

J: I guess it's who I am as a soul.  

The Jesus I know reminds me a lot of this magnolia tree. Really. I’m not kidding. Photo credit JAT 2017.

A (chuckling): How true! Most people would be surprised as hell to know you as you really are. You're sure not what they're expecting. I say that from personal experience. You aren't anything like the Sunday School portrait I was taught when I was growing up! Like, no way, Jose.  

J: Hey, I'm just a guy.  

A: That's what I mean. You're actually a guy -- a real guy.  

J: Last time I checked.  

A: Yes, but many people on a spiritual path think that angels are all androgynous, that they have no gender, and even worse, that they have no individual uniqueness or individual identity. You've certainly proved that theory wrong over the years!  

J: You know, I may not be a technology person per se, but I have to admit that all those gadgets with buttons on them have a certain appeal. Take TV remote controls, for example. I wouldn't mind having one of those. And maybe a big screen TV. With crisp, high definition colour. I can see why so many men enjoy that stuff. I guess it's a guy thing.  

A: No matter what dimension a guy is in.  

J: Certain attributes of the self are timeless and dimensionless. So yeah -- guys love gadgets with buttons. And wheels. No matter where they live in Creation. Isn't that great?  

A: Even God the Father?  

J: Even God the Father. 

A: So God the Mother doesn't get to hold the remote?  

J: I think probably not.  

A: Huh. Go figure. I don't understand what that means, but it feels right. Like so many of the things you tell me.  

J: One day at a time. One day at a time. That's all anyone can do.  

A: Ya got that one right.