JR16: Riddles in the Gospel of Thomas

A: This morning I was looking through my somewhat dusty copy of The Gospel of Thomas [Stevan Davies, Translator. The Gospel of Thomas. Boston & London: Shambhala, 2004], and I noticed that the translator and annotator Stevan Davies says of the 113 original sayings, "The correct interpretation of the sayings is not the final goal but the means to the goal, the discovery of the Kingdom of Heaven. Thomas's Gospel is an exercise book, a list of riddles for decoding. The secret lies not in the final answers but in the effort to find the answers (page 2)." How would you respond to that?  

J: Well, the way these sayings have come down to modern readers certainly makes them seem like a list of riddles for initiates to decode. There's no doubt that most Christians today are confused by the sayings found in the Gospel of Thomas. Many earnest attempts have been made to interpret the sayings. The problem for today's commentators is that they -- the commentators -- lack context. They don't understand the context in which I spoke the sayings, or the context in which John the Baptist wrote down the sayings. Most Christian commentators are also desperately trying to make the Gospel of Thomas fit comfortably within the traditional orthodox Christian framework. Since the traditional orthodox Western framework is based on the teachings of Paul, rather than on my teachings, it's a tall order to try to force the Gospel of Thomas into an orthodox understanding of God.  

A: Yes. I know what you mean. People seem to want to read the Kingdom of Heaven sayings in a traditional eschatological way. They want the Kingdom to be about a future time, a future place. They want the Kingdom to be the special heaven that's close to God, the place where God's specially chosen people will end up on Judgment Day.  

J: An idea that's very old, in fact. And not restricted to orthodox Christianity, either. The Essenes of my day believed deeply in both eschatology and apocalyptic visions of the future End of Days. 

A: How widespread were those Essene ideas?  

J: The people I was teaching seemed to know a lot about the Essene prophecies for the coming End Times. Of course, that's not surprising, since John the Baptist was part of our teaching circle.  

A: You say that John the Baptist wrote down the sayings found in the Gospel of Thomas. Yet biblical scholars have remarked on the fact that there's no congruence between the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of John. The sayings found in Thomas appear frequently in the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke. But not in John. If John wrote down the sayings collected in the Gospel of Thomas, why don't any of those sayings appear in his later writings? 

J: As I mentioned a few days ago, John and I had a complicated relationship spread over several years. When I first sought out John, I was the student and he was the teacher.  

A: Even though he was only 18 at the time? 

J: Lifespans were much shorter then for most people. It wasn't unusual for young adults to take on great responsibilities. If they waited too long to get on with life, they might be dead. So yes -- there were teachers who were quite young. What mattered in John's case was his education, his mastery of the material. It was clear he was highly trained in Jewish religious texts. Who was going to argue with a guy who had memorized big scrolls like Isaiah and could recite them verse by verse?  

A: How old were you when you first met John?  

J: I was older. About twenty-three, twenty-four. By that time I'd been married, divorced, had lost my daughter to illness, and had spent about a year at a Hellenistic "medical school." I was so old in heart and spirit that I felt about 50. I was also half bald by then. Probably from all the family stress I was under.  

A: I can see how it would have been appealing to sit under a tree and talk about God with other like-minded people.  

J: Yes. I was an emotional wreck. And, like so many other people whose lives have been torn apart by tragedy, I needed answers. That's why, when I heard about John's amazing new teachings, I sought him out.  

A: What was your initial impression of him? 

J: He had this serene, otherworldly quality about him, as if he was above all the turmoil and tragedy of the world around him. When you asked him a question about current life, current realities, he always answered with a religious verse. He was so confident that all the answers could be found in the holy texts. 

A: What did he look like? J: He was a big man. Very tall, very robust in stature. I'd use the word "hearty." Hearty as in big, friendly, strong, salt of the earth. Not polished. Not sophisticated. Homespun and down to earth. I thought he was wonderfully natural in comparison to the elegant Hellenistic Jews I'd grown up with.  

A: Again, I can see the appeal.  

J: His voice was a rich baritone. He'd been trained in the arts of speaking and rhetoric, that was for sure. He understood cadence, rhyme, repetition -- all the tricks of persuasive speech. He was always throwing in bits and pieces of wisdom -- small, apt phrases and wisdom sayings. It made him sound very wise. Until I started to notice he had no original thoughts of his own. He could recite ancient wisdom sayings, but he couldn't process new ideas, new insights. That was part of the mental illness that was slowly simmering on the back burner of his mind.  

A: He kept saying the same things over and over.  

J: Yes. But he couldn't seem to learn from his own mistakes. Or from the mistakes of others. That was his narcissism. His narcissism got in the way of his ability to admit he'd made mistakes. 

A: Eventually you overtook him in the role of teacher in your group. Is that right? 

J: The group started to fracture. He had his own loyal followers, who insisted he was still the leader, the long-prophesied Jewish Messiah. Some of the group began to listen to some of the new things I was saying about God. I was actually saying something new about God. John was not. People split down the lines of "belief in tradition" versus "belief in change." Those who believed in change payed less and less attention to John. He hated that.  

A: Describe his reaction to your teachings and in particular to your healing ministry. 

J: When I first started doing some teaching, John didn't mind. He believed at first that I was mimicking his own wisdom, that I was "copying" him. I was tentative at first. I stuck to fairly traditional teaching methods, such as short wisdom sayings. I created some new sayings -- nothing too radical at first -- and John liked these. He wrote them down when they appealed to him.  

A: Did he claim these sayings as his own?  

J: He was having trouble separating his own thoughts and feelings from other people's thoughts and feelings. There was a blurring of boundaries. When he heard me speaking these things, he believed I was somehow transmitting his own thoughts. Broadcasting them. This is a typical symptom of schizophrenia, although these days people with delusions more often believe the TV or radio or Internet are broadcasting their thoughts.  

A: So he identified with those sayings?  

J: Yes. If you pay careful attention to the tone of the Thomasine sayings, you'll see that he picked all the sayings that are vague and somewhat cliched.  

A: Like traditional wisdom sayings that were widespread in the Ancient Near East.  

J: Yes. He picked the short, pithy phrases that resonated with his early training, his early education. Phrases that sound wonderful at first, but say nothing specific. No names, no dates, no places. Lots of metaphors. More poetry than anything. Feelings without facts. Sort of . . . dissociated. Otherworldly. Detached. Serene. But not very helpful when you have difficult questions you want answers for.  

A: There's a marked lack of context in the sayings from the Gospel of Thomas. They could have been written almost anywhere by anyone. There's a quality of "timelessness" to the book. And I don't mean that in a good way. I mean the tone is kind of spacey, kind of "out of it." Not fully engaged with reality or with life. 

J: That's how John came across. It was a sign of his major mental illness, and shouldn't be mistaken by others as wisdom. No one who's suffering from schizophrenia should be placed on a religious pedestal and labelled "wise." People suffering from schizophrenia need firm, compassionate care, not reinforcement of their delusions. 

A: Mental illness was not understood 2,000 years ago. 

J: Well, as with all things, that depended on the person. Not all people then believed that psychotic behaviour was a sign of demon possession, just as not all people believed that physical infirmities were a sign of divine judgment from God. Cultural ideas about mental illness usually dictate how a mentally ill person is treated by the majority. But there's always a minority who understand mental illness to be just that -- an illness. You can't blame everything on cultural ideas. Just because the majority of people in my culture believed in demon possession was no excuse for them to go with the "status quo" on these illnesses. There was plenty of solid science, solid scientific research at the time. In fact, there was more interest in solid scientific research then than there would be in Europe for many years. So I have no sympathy for the attempts made by Christian theologians to excuse the cruel treatment of the mentally ill that appears in the Bible. It wasn't acceptable then, and it isn't acceptable now. The author of Mark tries to make that point very clear. 

“Jesus said: The Kingdom of the Father is like a merchant with goods to sell who found a pearl. The merchant was thoughtful. He sold the merchandise and bought himself the pearl [Gospel of Thomas 76A].” Jesus’ sayings about pearls are difficult for us to understand today because pearls are fairly common and inexpensive. In Jesus’ time, however, pearls were exceedingly rare and couldn’t be faked or counterfeited by clever human beings. Finding a pearl in the Mediterranean was no easy task, either, as most shells brought up through the risky diving process contained no pearls at all. So to randomly find a miraculous pearl, as the merchant does in this saying, was a sign of God’s blessing and truth, a far more valuable gift than the usual man-made goods. From a theological perspective, the merchant decides to set aside his “earthly treasures” and buy into God’s economy, where the benefits are sure and lasting and unrivalled in their beauty. It’s also important to note the merchant makes his choice voluntarily. No one forces him into it. Photo credit By UWAKOYA – httpuwakoya.rudatapicturesrakushka.jpg, Public Domain, httpscommons.wikimedia.orgwindex.phpcurid=10607484

A: You know what's weird? I remember that when I first looked at the sayings in the Gospel of Thomas -- some years before I set out on my path of becoming a mystic -- I felt very stupid because I couldn't make hide nor hair of the wisdom that seemed to be hidden in the sayings. They felt like riddles I couldn't solve. Just as Stevan Davies says in his notes.  

J: And now?  

A: Now most of the sayings make perfect sense to me -- but only because I fully understand the religious and social and medical context in which they were spoken. You know, there's actually some pretty good stuff in there if you know what to look for.  

J: Thank you.  

A: Hey. No worries. You can spend the next umpteen years fleshing out those sayings and explaining in more detail what you meant way-back-when.  

J: I look forward to it.

JR15: Parable of the Candlesticks

A: This morning I got up, and was talking to Jesus, as usual, and he said, "It feels like a parable day. Time to write a parable." So here's the parable he put together this morning. Once a parable writer, always a parable writer.

 

Candlesticks on Oak (c) JAT 2015

Parable of the Candlesticks

Once upon a time there was a prayerful mother who had two little children, a boy and a girl. The mother owned two beautiful brass candlesticks that had belonged to her mother and to her grandmother and to her great-grandmother before that. The candlesticks were her pride and joy.

Every day the mother got out the jar of specially made brass cleaner and the specially woven cloth so she could polish the beautiful brass candlesticks. As she laboured over the candlesticks, she would quietly hum the prayers of devotion she’d been taught. Then she would place two pure white candles into the candlesticks and light them. The candles were made of the finest beeswax. God had told her once in a dream to follow the light of the purest candles he had ever made. So each day she followed his instructions. She knew God would hear her prayers when she knelt before the table that held the beautiful brass candlesticks.

One day, as she was polishing and praying, her son came running into the room. "Mommy, mommy," he called. "I’ve found the most wonderful treasures outside. Please come and see them with me."

"What have you found, my son?" she asked as she picked up her buffing cloth to polish the brass base with all the devotion she could muster.

"There’s a half moon hanging in the sky and the robins are building a new nest near the roof of the front porch and blue and white flower buds are opening in the garden. It’s quite exciting. Won’t you come and see?"

"My child, I am polishing the candlesticks, and I’m sure you understand how important this task is for all our family. If I fail to polish the candlesticks perfectly, and if I fail to light the candles properly, then God will not be able to hear our prayers and answer them. It is more important that I ensure God’s blessing upon our family. Our family is so lucky to know the secret. We must honour the blessing God has given us. Otherwise he will take it away."

The boy’s smile faded, and he nodded obediently. "Yes, mother. You are very kind and loving to look after us in this way. I am very grateful. Thank you for your prayers, Mother."

"You’re most welcome, my son."

A short while later, her daughter came running into the room. "Mommy, mommy," she called. "I’ve found the most wonderful place in our neighbourhood. It’s filled with books. Beautiful, wonderful books. With pictures! Mommy, will you come and read me a story?"

"My child, you know how important it is that I finish work on the candlesticks so I may properly offer prayers on your behalf to God. You must be protected, child. I cannot ask God to protect you until the light shines perfectly from the mirror of the polished brass. See, my daughter? If you look into the polished brass, you can see your reflection there. Is it not wondrous?"

"Yes, mother. You are very wise. Perhaps one day, if you think I am worthy, you will teach me to light the candles as your mother taught you."

"And her mother taught her before that."

"We’re lucky, aren’t we, Mother, that our ancestors were so blessed by God?"

"Very lucky, my daughter," said the mother, gazing with pride upon the candlesticks she polished every day with the purest devotion to God that anyone could imagine. "We’re the luckiest family there could ever be. Thanks be to God."

JR14: Crimes of Religious Passion

A: I have a confession to make. I was looking back at some earlier posts, and I realize that both you and I were guilty of using the terms "light" and "dark" in a less precise way than we might have. So first I want to apologize if we confused anybody.  

J: Language is fluid. Communication is fluid. Words like "light" and "dark" have a lot of different meanings, depending on the context. This is why I say the intent is more important than the words. The goal here is not to speak or write like a corporate lawyer, but to talk about feelings and ideas related to the spiritual journey. Writing "live" on a blog has some of the same problems as being interviewed live on TV. People will look for ways to trip you up. But that's their choice. That's their intent. If their intent is to be legalistic for their own benefit, that's up to them. Small errors in speech are going to happen, and each individual has to decide how to react to those errors. It's a choice like any other choice. 

A: It's a choice to look at the intent behind the words or actions.

“Jesus said: What you will hear in your ear, in the inner ear proclaim from your rooftops. For no one lights a lamp and puts it under a basket, nor does one put it in a hidden place. Rather, one puts it on a stand so that all who come and go will see its light” (Gospel of Thomas 33 a-b). In this saying, the act of lighting a lamp shows both your intent and the consequences of that intent. No matter how hard you try, and no matter how many excuses you invent, you can’t hide your actual intent from either your inner self (your inner ear) or from God. Your actual intent shines as brightly as a lamp to those who have the emotional maturity to see it. So it’s best to be honest about your intent and start trying to fix your mistakes in a responsible way (instead of blaming other people or blaming God or Satan for what you yourself chose to do). The photo above is a graphic reminder for me about the steps involved in taking personality responsibility. In the “oops, I made a mistake” department, I forgot to check the old back shed before the start of winter and failed to notice the hole chewed by a family of rodents so they could bring in a pantry-full of seed-filled cones. Cleaning up after the mistake I made wasn’t fun, but one of the important spiritual practices is learning how to be honest with yourself about your own mistakes and then figuring out how best to clean up after yourself. God is always happy to help you with this spiritual task. Photo credit JAT 2016.

J: Yes. People make mistakes. It's part of the human condition. Everybody makes mistakes. But not all mistakes are made with intent. Many mistakes are nothing more than accidents -- pure accidents, with no intent to harm. Sometimes the results of purely accidental mistakes can be tragic. More often than not, though, the greatest harm is caused by people who have harmful intent towards others. Among adolescents and adults, the majority of mistakes carry with them a harmful intent. A young child who drops a glass of milk because his motor skills aren't fully developed has no harmful intent. An adult who gets behind the wheel of a car after drinking may not be planning to crash into another car -- so from this point of view a crash is an "accident" -- but his intent is clearly harmful from the moment he gets behind the wheel. He intends -- he chooses -- to drive regardless of the consequences to himself or anyone else. That's what I mean by a mistake with harmful intent. 

A: He made a choice and hoped he wouldn't get caught.  

J: The body of law known as common law understands this principle. You treat a crime done "on purpose" differently than you treat an accidental harm. You look at the intent of the people involved, and ask yourself if anybody had motive. Did anybody stand to gain?  

A: Can acquisition of status can be considered a motive, an incentive, a measurable and desirable gain in the eyes of some individuals?  

J: Acquisition of status lies behind many a crime. 

A: Including religious crimes against humanity -- the ones committed by status-seeking religious leaders? 

J: Especially the crimes of religious passion. Especially those.

JR13: Jesus Speaking on Prayer

A: This morning I was tidying up some papers and I came across an insert from the worship bulletin of a small local church. This particular church is a "one of a kind" group that's blending ideas from Unitarianism, the United Church of Canada, Gnosticism, and maybe some Eastern ideas filtered through a New Age lens. I notice that I circled the group prayer and wrote in the margin, "How Not to Pray." I wondered if you could go through the prayer with me and explain -- from your angelic perspective -- why this kind of prayer isn't helpful. 

J: Sure. Can you type the prayer here for reference? 

A: Typing fingers coming right up. Okay. It says on this insert that the prayer is called the "Prayer of Transfiguration," adapted from the Prayer of Abandonment by Charles de Foucauld. Here's the text: I abandon myself to the Light; Let it transform my life. Whatever it does, I am open; I am present to all, I accept all. Let the Divine will be done in me. And in all creation -- I wish no more than this. Into the hands of Life I commend my spirit; I offer it with all the love of my heart. For I am Light, And so need to give my self, To surrender my self into Life's hands without reserve, And with boundless confidence and gratitude, For we are all called -- to Live in the Light!  

A: I think a lot of people would find this prayer quite lovely, quite meaningful. However, I happen to know from personal experience that you don't encourage people to pray this kind of prayer. Can you explain your thoughts, your reasoning?  

J: Prayer is a messy topic. People of faith have a tendency to claim that all prayer is good, all prayer is helpful. But it's not. From the point of view of angels -- the angels who are tasked with looking after the human beings who live on Planet Earth -- all prayer is not created equal. There are what I might call genuine prayers -- the ones spoken with the soul's own loving intent. There are also pseudo-prayers -- words strung together with unkind intent and directed at God. Pseudo-prayers predominate, unfortunately.  

A: Let's talk more about the pseudo-prayers. Can you be more specific about the "unkind intent" you're referring to? 

J: When people try to speak with God, communicate with God through prayer, the words they speak are of little interest to God or to God's angels. There are meaningful prayers that consist of only one word or one sound. The actual words are not that important.  

A: Mantras. When you speak of prayers that contain only one sound, you're talking about mantras.  

J: Mantras work for some people. Not for everyone. But for some people. Mantras should not be recommended for everyone on a spiritual path. 

A: Why not?  

J: Because everyone's soul is different. Therefore everyone's learning style is different. And everyone's communication style is different. There is no single form of communication with God that can recommended for all people. Each person has to find his or her own best path.  

A: I'm not a mantra person. I'm definitely a word person. I have to talk with God in words.  

A utility shed made into a charming gift that lifts the soul and brings a smile to your day. A great way to pray is to simply say, "Thank you for lifting me up in this moment. I really needed that. Thank you for guiding me to this!" New Brunswick Botanical Gardens. Photo credit JAT 2022.

J: I'm also a word person. It works for me, but it doesn't work for everyone. Here's one area where people definitely shouldn't try to do what Jesus does. They should try to find their own best form of communication with God. There are many nuanced forms of conversing with your Divine Parents. Some people need to go outside and sit quietly in the sun. Some need to be actively engaged in the outdoor world of nature -- maybe through hiking, camping, sailing, canoeing. Gardening is another big one. Some people can't hear God unless the music is on really, really loud. Some people can't hear God unless the room is very, very quiet. There's no one correct way. They're all equally valid, equally beautiful ways as far as God is concerned. God always meets you where your soul longs to be. So if your soul is the kind of soul that hears God when it's very, very quiet, that's when God will be speaking with you. God respects who you are as a soul. Therefore, God won't try to "force" you to listen at a time that's not good for you. God is nothing if not respectful.  

A: None of the spiritual practices you just mentioned sound like traditional religious prayer. Why not? 

J: As I was mentioning, it's not the words that God listens to. It's the intent. God pays no attention to rote prayer, to be honest. It's just a waste of everybody's time. Rote prayer isn't about communication or relationship. Rote prayer is just a habit -- a habit like making your bed every day or putting the toilet paper roll on the same way every time. It's something you do because it helps you cope with daily stress. Or maybe it's something you do so you won't be punished by an authority figure who expects you to pray. But it's not relationship between you and God. You can't expect to recite the Lord's Prayer every day and have it mean anything or do anything. The Lord's Prayer has no special power in Creation, despite what many orthodox Christians would like to believe. 

A: Define what you mean by "unkind intent." Can you give specific examples of that? 

J: Sure. Prayer directed at getting somebody cursed by God. Prayer directed at getting special favours for yourself at the expense of those around you. Prayer directed at cursing yourself for your own unworthiness before God. Prayer directed at getting healing for somebody else. Prayer directed at getting somebody's soul saved. Prayer directed at getting somebody's loved ones released from purgatory or hell. Prayer directed at being chosen to be among God's elect. Prayer directed to saints. Prayer directed to holy relics. Prayer directed at getting somebody blessed by God.  

A: So . . . pretty much all the most popular orthodox Western Christian prayers. 

J: Yup. God doesn't curse people. God doesn't favour you over your neighbour. God doesn't accept your self-pity, because God knows your true potential. God heals with or without anybody's prayers, but it's up to God to decide the right time and the right place. God hasn't lost any souls, so God doesn't need to save any souls. There is no purgatory and there is no hell, so God doesn't need help freeing anyone. God doesn't have any chosen children and there is no group of elect souls. All souls are created equal, so there is no hierarchy of saints or angels to intervene on anybody's behalf. Praying to holy relics is occult magic, and it hurts your brain, so don't do it. All of God's children are equally blessed.  

A: You don't give an inch to tradition, do you? Not one tiny inch.  

J: No. Martin Luther, John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli, and others didn't go nearly far enough with their "protesting" reformation of Western Christianity. The work of reforming the church to reflect the core values of God the Mother and God the Father still remains to be done. 

 A: A make-work project for the church of the third millennium. Okay. I'd like to return to the original question about the "Prayer of Transfiguration" above. What about this prayer feels "out of synch" to you, if I can use that expression?  

J: It feels out of synch with the values of the soul because of the underlying assumptions implicit in the prayer. To begin with, I take issue with the imagery of "light."  

A: Why? Haven't spiritual seekers long equated good spiritual choices with "light"?  

J: My point exactly. Nobody's questioning the metaphor. People say, "Oh, the light, the light, we're getting closer to the truth! Hurray! We're making progress!" But if people are moving towards the light, what are they moving away from?  

A: The darkness.

“Jesus said to them: If you fast you will bring sin to yourselves, and if you pray you will be condemned, and if you give to charity you will damage your spirits. When you go into a region and walk around in the rural areas, whenever people receive you, eat whatever they provide for you, and heal their sick. For what goes into your mouth will not defile you, but what comes out of your mouth can defile you” (Gospel of Thomas 14 a-c). In other words, if you want to have a strong faith relationship with God, you have to give up the idea that God enjoys displays of power, rote piety, religious ritual, and subjugation of others. Use your skills instead to help others find their own courage, faith, and humbleness. Photo shows a scarab commemorating Kushite victory over inhabitants of the Negev desert, carved from steatite, 25th Dynasty, c. 710 BCE. On display at the Royal Ontario Museum. Photo credit JAT 2017.

J: Exactly. It's an immature, dualistic claim. Good versus evil. Light versus dark. It's so ingrained in people's minds that they don't even question the metaphor any longer. But let me ask you -- what's so bad about the dark? Is the night sky to be feared? Is the darkness of the ocean bottom to be despised? Why is light good and darkness bad? Why does "white" mean pure in Western culture, and "black" mean corrupt or evil? God's Creation isn't about good versus evil and light versus dark. Creation isn't dualistic. So why have people recite a prayer that reinforces sloppy dualistic thinking? The human brain -- the biological 3D brain -- is kind of stupid at times, and it needs good guidance. It needs to be constantly reminded not to fall into overly simplistic thinking, which leads to overly simplistic "solutions." A solid prayer of the genuine kind is a prayer that challenges people to acknowledge and respect the complexity of God's Creation. A solid prayer does not speak of abandonment and surrender without first acknowledging the difficulty of this spiritual task (and spiritual task it is!). A solid prayer reminds people that they have an important role to play in Creation, even if they don't fully understand that role. A solid prayer speaks of balance -- both the difficulty of finding it and the difficulty of maintaining it. A solid prayer never speaks of people as empty vessels to be filled by pure Divine will. To speak of empty vessels negates the integrity of the soul. A solid prayer helps people remain humble yet at the same time courageous. The prayer typed above is a prayer of humility, not a prayer of humbleness. And you know what I think of false humility!  

A: Yessiree. Do I ever! Any final words of advice for readers who want to be able to communicate clearly with God? 

J: Yes. Don't ever put yourself down while you're engaged in prayer. Don't ever say you're unworthy of God's love and forgiveness. Be honest about mistakes you've made, but ask God to help you learn from your mistakes. Be brave. Don't whine. Remember you're a child of God. And I mean that in every possible way. You're a child of God, and nobody can take that away from you. That's a pretty good starting point for finding the courage to make gradual changes in your life.  

A: And yes, folks! You're not listening to anything I haven't had to listen to a thousand times myself. And yes! Angels really do talk this way. (Don't you feel sorry for me?) And yes! Sometimes you just want to scream because your angels are so tough and so determined to help you make positive changes, and they're so annoyingly dedicated to helping you be your best self! And guess what? YOU CAN'T MAKE THEM GO AWAY NO MATTER HOW HARD YOU TRY. They stick to you like Velcro. SO IF YOU CAN'T LICK 'EM, YOU MAY AS WELL JOIN 'EM. That's my humble opinion, anyway.

JR12: A Divine Love Story

A: You know, for the past two weeks I've been doing a lot of research on the Dead Sea Scrolls, and after wading through the English translations [Wise, Abegg, and Cook]* of the Essene's own teachings, I'm sick of them. Just sick of them.

Beauty. Photo credit JAT 2014.

 
J: Sick of the teachings? Or sick of the Essenes?
 
A: I'm sick of the teachings. And I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to go to dinner with anybody who believes in these teachings, either. The writings are so . . . so self-centred and narcissistic. So full of themselves. So full of hot air. They don't say anything moderate or balanced about our relationship with God. They're full of cliches and bluster and prophecy and big long strings of fancy-sounding words. But where is the love? There's no love in them -- no kind, respectful, trusting, compassionate, inclusive love. It's just narcissistic bullshit. Did I say that already? I think I said that already.
 
J: Don't forget paranoid. The teachings are also very paranoid. 
 
A: Yeah. Enough with the evil Belial, for God's sake! Enough with the final battle where the pure and virtuous Essenes will lead the armies of Light to victory! Get a life, people.
 
J: Or Pauline Christianity.
 
A: Say what?
 
J: If they don't want to get a life, they could always get some serious, heavy-duty evangelical Christianity. Evangelical Christianity doesn't say much that the Essenes didn't say within their own brand of Community Rule.
 
A: Yeah, well, I'm not feeling the love from evangelical Christianity, either. Again, lots of narcissism, not so much trust in God. I can't believe what these people are saying about God! 
 
J: Which people? The Essenes or the Pauline Christians?
 
A: Both. I'm not seeing a lot of difference between them, as you've pointed out. This is not what you've taught me about God. I don't see any resemblance at all. I don't see any resemblance between your teachings and Paul's teachings, or your teachings and John's teachings. This is crazy! How did orthodox Christianity get so far from the truth?
 
J: I hate to sound like a broken record, but, again, it's the mental health issue. My teachings have no appeal for narcissists. Or psychopaths.
 
A: Because there's no "fuel" for status addiction. Narcissists and psychopaths suffer big-time from status addiction.
 
J (nodding): And as for people suffering from psychotic illnesses . . . they're not in a position to take full control of their thoughts and feelings. They can't. The illness interferes with their thinking and feeling processes. So they're filled with fear and paranoid thoughts even before you add the religious paranoia. They can also suffer from narcissism on top of those biologically confused thoughts and feelings, as John did. But the main point is they're not mentally or emotionally well, and their writings -- if they write about spiritual or religious topics -- always reflect their inner mental state. The writings of a person suffering from a psychotic illness sound psychotic. You have to step back from their writings and ask yourself . . . would an adult human being with a clean bill of health as far as the DSM-IV is concerned -- and taking into consideration the psychopathy that the DSM-IV writers left out for bizarre reasons -- would a non-paranoid, non-manic, non-depressed, non-psychotic, non-substance-addicted person write this? Is this writing the reflection of a person in a highly stressed mental state? Is this writing the reflection of a person who understands what compassionate love is? Is this writing the reflection of a person who understands what it means to trust in God's goodness? Because let's be honest -- a person who writes all the time about the devil or Belial or whatever you want to call this imaginary evil entity is showing that he or she does not trust in God's goodness. How can anybody say they trust wholly in God, then turn around and say God is too weak to prevent the existence of a devil? You can't have it both ways.
 
A: Orthodox Western Christianity says you can. And another thing --
 
J (starting to chuckle):
 
A: Yes, I'm on a rant this morning. I'm sick of the way these writers -- the Essenes and Paul especially -- talk about women. I'm sick of the way they've just gone ahead and eradicated the Divine Feminine from everything. I'm sick of their pompous warrior-king Messiahs and I'm sick of their divinely appointed male priests and I'm sick of their testerone-soaked jockeying for the best places at the table. Me, me, me. Look at me -- I'm special! That's all these people can talk about. For religious people who claim to be serving God humbly and piously, they sure spend a lot of time bragging about their own status and putting other people down. Have you read what the Essenes say about people with physical infirmities and imperfections [IQSa]? It's just plain cruel!
 
J: The difference between humbleness and humility. You and I have talked about that a lot.
 
A: It wasn't very humble of early teachers such as Second Isaiah or the redactors of Genesis to go ahead and do a hatchet job on God the Mother -- to just slice her out of the story of Creation. Even the Greeks, for all their crazy Homeric myths, had the sense to include strong female archetypes in their pantheon. Anybody with half a heart can see that Creation -- the world of beauty and wonder and mystery all around us -- is a Love Story. It's a testament to the love shared by God the Mother and God the Father for each other, a record of their journey of love, growth, commitment, struggle, and faith. It's a gigantic love story. That's what you've taught me. That's what I feel myself. It's a painful story, but a truthful one. Everything around us talks about the importance of relationship, the importance of balance. How can religious people look at the world and see a Judeo-Christian Covenant? How can they think "it's all about them"?
 
J: Narcissists always think it's all about them. It's how they view the world -- through a very small lens of "I." Me, myself, and I. It doesn't matter whether or not they're religious. The issue isn't one of spirituality or faith or God. It's simply a matter of biological brain health. Sadly -- broken record again -- it's about the human brain and how people use the brain God gives them.
 
A: I notice that God gave women brains, too. You'd think that would count for something in the grand religious scheme of things.
 
J: Not to mention the thorny reality that 75% of the human sex chromosomes are X chromosomes -- female chromosomes, not male. I'm thinkin' that's probably an important "Post-It Note" in the biologist's Book of Creation.
 
A: I'm so glad I was raised in a family where I was taught that men and women are equal in terms of their intellectual gifts and in terms of their right to be treated with dignity, respect, and equality. Thanks, Mom and Dad!
 
J: I'll second that. I wouldn't be able to talk to you this way if your human brain hadn't developed along the lines of dignity, respect, and equality. That's what the relationship between God the Mother and God the Father is all about -- dignity and respect as the basis of their mutual love and trust, despite their respective differences in temperament and talent and size. As above, so below. When human beings live according to the values and principles of their beloved Divine Parents, they can feel the love of God coming into their daily lives. When they reject those values, their biological brains become like big pots of quivering jello -- lots of colour, lots of movement, but not much substance. It's fun to eat, but 15 minutes later, you're hungry again.
 
A: They feel empty inside when they reject the core values of the soul.
 
J: Which is all very confusing when it's their time-honoured religious traditions that insist they reject their soul's own values. They're taught by their religious leaders to reject divine notions of equality amongst all life, to reject balance, to reject symbiotic relationships -- to reject all mutuality. Then they complain because they can't feel God's love. They complain they've been abandoned by God. It's a crock. It's not God who's abandoned them. It's they who have abandoned God. They usually don't realize that this is the cause of their feeling of inner emptiness. They think their religion is helping them fill the void. But unless they have an unusually mature, unusually intuitive religious leader, their church services are just making the inner bowl of jello bigger. There's no substance because there's a lack of will, a lack of courage, to teach the truth about God.
 
A: The truth that God is the God Who Is Two, not the God Who Is One. And not the God Who Is Three, if you're a Trinitarian.
 
J: It's a simple truth, seen everywhere in Creation. There's no relationship when it's only "me, myself, and I." Relationship MUST begin with two. It can involve more than two -- and, in fact, the angelic community of God's children is so large, so much bigger than two, that I can't give you a number that's meaningful to the human brain.
 
A: Bajillions?
 
J (smiling): Yes. bajillions of angels, both male and female. But no matter how many angels exist within God's family, it's still about relationship. It's still about people -- angels -- knowing each other, respecting each other's uniqueness, respecting each other's differences, working together in a symbiotic way to make a "whole" that's much larger than the component "parts." The sense of Oneness that people long for in their relationship with God isn't a sense of losing themselves in the infinite Mind of God. It's the sense of Oneness that comes from combining your strengths with the strengths of your brothers and sisters towards a common goal. It's not Oneness of identity. It's Oneness of Purpose. It's Oneness of Commitment. It's family. It's people with differences coming together to work as a Team to create something much bigger than each could create on his or her own. That's what Divine Love feels like.
 
A: Habitat For Humanity. It feels like the charity called Habitat For Humanity. Where groups of committed people volunteer their time and their skills to help build safe, affordable housing for families.
 
J: Exactly. It feels just like that. Everybody has different talents. Some are good with plumbing. Some are good with woodworking. Some are good with designing. But all the talents are needed, and no one talent is more important than another. Everybody's got a job to do, and everybody's job is important.
 
A: Especially the guy who makes the coffee. Ya gotta have your coffee breaks while you're busting your butt to get a job done.
 
J: Even angels take coffee breaks.


*  Wise, Michael, Martin Abegg Jr., and Edward Cook, trans.  The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation.  New York: HarperCollins–HarperSanFrancisco, 2005.

JR11: More on John the Baptist

A: You said a few days ago [Feb. 6] that the man you knew as John the Baptist had been raised to believe he was one of the Essene's two prophesied Messiahs. Tell me more about that.  

J: In order to understand the history of John the Baptist, you have to understand the mindset he was raised in. Most normal people -- by that I mean psychologically and emotionally well adjusted -- can't relate to the mindset. This is true regardless of what time period you're looking at. By that I mean there were normal, well-adjusted people 2,000 years ago who were just as bewildered by John as normal people would be today. He was an extreme person -- and his extreme nature brought out a lot of different reactions in people. Some people thought he was a hero. Others thought he was a dangerous provocateur. The normal people thought he was a dangerous provocateur. 

A: Yet you spent several years hanging out with him.  

J: I did. I genuinely believed he had important things to teach me about God. He had a masterful grasp on the sacred writings of the Hebrew tradition. His recall was phenomenal. It was rote learning, pummelled into his brain by years and years of study. I didn't understand for a long while that rote learning isn't the same thing as insight.  

A: You thought he had insight.  

J: He was so different from other people I knew. He seemed so focussed, so pure in his devotion to his calling. He never had doubts. He seemed almost . . . almost invincible. His faith seemed as sturdy as a mountain. Unshakeable. Unmoveable. I found it fascinating. I wanted to understand how to get faith like that. Of course, it turned out he had no faith in God at all. He had faith in the teachings of his religious sect, the Essenes. Faith in sacred teachings is not the same thing as faith in God. 

A: I learned that one the hard way.  

J: As did I. As did I. The Essenes were a breakaway sect -- one of several groups that all used the sacred Hebrew texts but in very different ways. There was no single form of Judaism then. And not just Judaism. There were too many different religions at the time to count -- some Greek, some Egyptian, some Persian, some mainstream, some cult-like, some offering wisdom, some offering salvation, some offering healing. It was a giant mishmash of religious options. A giant smorgasbord. People think it's bad today. But it was much worse 2,000 years ago. It was confusing as hell. 

A: So a prophet with unshakeable conviction was very appealing. 

J: People need certainty. Not in everything, of course, but in their relationship with God, they want clear answers. John seemed to have those clear answers. 

A: What was John's relationship with other religious groups? How did he view other Jews, for instance? I should probably ask something else first, though, just to be sure . . . was John a Jew?  

J: Most definitely. He was a circumcised male. As far as he was concerned, the tribes of Israel were the chosen people, and he was one of their chosen leaders. He had no use for Jews who fraternized with the enemy -- the enemy being a rather broad category that included almost every non-Essene on the planet.  

A: How did John feel about Jewish groups such as the Pharisees? The Pharisees were interested in teaching people how to live according to the laws of the Torah. So was he more sympathetic to the Pharisees?  

J: No. As far as John was concerned, the Pharisees were just another bunch of corrupt, impure, impious, unfaithful Jews. Anyone who rejected the Essene's phenomenally rigid purity laws were inferior in John's eyes. That's why the Pharisees are not painted in a positive light in John's gospel.  

A: Nobody's painted in a positive light in John's gospel except for the Son of God.  

J: And maybe John the Baptist. 

A: Yes, he does "show" rather well, doesn't he?  

J: It's John who makes the definitive identification of the Messiah.  

A: So if John believed he himself was the Messiah, why did he write a whole gospel dedicated to making you into the Messiah?  

J: Well, you know, that's the tricky thing. John doesn't really make me -- the fleshly, earthly me -- the Messiah. He uses my name. He uses some of my own writings. He uses some of the people and events in my life. But he doesn't tell the story of me -- the man who rejected Essene teachings and the legitimacy of the Temple. He creates a myth. He creates the man he eventually believed me to be. He creates an elaborate dream-myth of mythical overlighting to explain -- largely to himself -- why he himself wasn't actually the Messiah. His gospel is his justification, his justification of himself and his actions. He created a tale of a human figure who was so divine -- so impossibly elevated beyond the reality of human life and human understanding -- that nobody -- not even the most righteous Jew -- could come close to his perfection. This got John off the hook. Because if nobody could come close to the perfection of the Son of God, then John himself couldn't come close. Not even with his impressive pedigree.  

A: What do you mean by "mythical overlighting"? 

J: Ah. This goes back to what we were talking about earlier today -- John's extreme but troubled mindset. As I mentioned before, John suffered from a psychotic illness throughout adulthood. His delusions came and went. Like most people who suffer from schizophrenia, he had periods where he had difficulty separating reality from delusion. Unfortunately, this is part of the illness. John's psychopathology made him vulnerable to delusional ideas about the nature of God and humanity. He came to believe that I had not really been a human being. Not in the normal sense of the word. He knew I'd had a physical body, but in his delusional state he decided that I'd been "overlighted" by God. "Taken over," if you will, by the divine presence. "Bumped out" and replaced by pure divine consciousness. Sort of like being "possessed," only instead of being possessed by a demon, it's possession by the One God.  

A: Oh. That idea is still quite popular with fantasy and horror writers. 

J: And many New Age gurus. 

A: Yeah, that too.  

J: This is partly why John's gospel was popular with later Gnostic Christians. Gnostic Christians had an elaborate, dualistic world cosmology where good and evil were doing battle, and sparks of the divine fell to Earth to be trapped in evil human bodies. John's portrayal of an overlighted Messiah fit right in with that.  

A: And of course there was the Docetic heresy, where people read John and decided that Jesus never had a physical body at all and was just pure divine light all along -- a vision of divinity that could only be seen by certain followers.  

“Jesus said: When you give rise to that which is within you, what you have will save you. If you do not give rise to it, what you do not have will kill you” (Gospel of Thomas 70). The experience of redemption comes from within when you accept your own potential to love and forgive and your own potential to be loved and forgiven. Redemption leads to so many internal emotional and spiritual changes that you feel as if you’ve been “saved.” But redemption isn’t the same thing as theological salvation. Theological salvation is something only God or the Universe can effect to remove the threat of future punishment, damnation, or karmic rebirth. When you focus on the negativity of the “salvation model” instead of the positivity of Jesus’ “redemption model,” the constant lack of love can alter the wiring of your brain to such an extent that you begin to suffer from neurological and psychiatric dysfunction (e.g. major depression, addiction disorders, dementia). Photo credit JAT 2015.

 J: This is the problem with taking books that have been written by mentally ill people and labelling them "divine revelation" or "the inspiration of God." John's gospel isn't balanced and isn't truthful. It says all the wrong things about God. It's caused no end of problems.  

A: It sets the bar impossibly high for all human beings. How are we supposed to follow the example of a guy who's the Son of God, and the living bread, and the gate, and the good shepherd, and the vine, and the light of the world, and the resurrection and the life. I mean, that's a tall order.

J: Not if you're God the Mother and God the Father.  

A: Yeah. But John's not talking about God. He's talking about a man named Jesus. That's a whole different kettle of fish. 

J: It keeps people from trying too hard. If you raise the bar too high, people won't even bother trying. That's what John wanted, though. He wanted to raise the bar so he himself wouldn't have to jump it.  

A: That's so selfish!  

J: John was a selfish man. He and his brother James were raised to believe they were the chosen Messiahs. It was their whole life, their whole mission. They weren't going to give it up. When circumstances forced them to give it up, they didn't go down without a fight. John was still fighting for his birthright till the day he died. And the one thing he was determined to do was prevent anyone from following the teachings of "Jesus of Nazareth" as opposed to his divine "Jesus, Son of God." If he couldn't have the crown of glory, he was going to make certain I couldn't have it, either.  

A: You didn't want it, though.  

J: No. I didn't. But John never accepted that. He was certain I was "out to get him" -- that I was trying to take the crown of glory for myself. John was paranoid. And John was angry. And eventually he saw me as his enemy. It ended badly. Very, very badly.  

A: What did he do to you that he would have to drag thousands -- millions -- of other people into his own self-serving fantasy of divine rescue?  

J: He helped turn me over to the authorities. And then he stabbed me. Right in the lower gut. He thought he'd killed me, but he hadn't.  

A: Ah. That might make a person feel guilty enough to try to explain away his actions.  

J: It wasn't a very saintly thing to do.

JR10: Son of David or House of David?

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

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

A: So I'm thinking the answer to my question is "No"?  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A: Explain.  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A: Plus a swift sword to the neck.  

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

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

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

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

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

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

JR9: Jesus Explains "The Kingdom"

A: You told me several years ago that you wrote parts of the Letter of James yourself -- specifically James 1:2-27, James 2:1-8, and James 3:1-18 -- and that after your death your older brother James added the remaining verses to blunt the effect of your writings and make them more "pious." Yesterday I was checking something in the Letter of James, and I couldn't help smiling. What you wrote 2,000 years ago sounds an awful lot like what you said for the record last Wednesday. Do you mind if I put in a quote from James?

J: Knock yourself out. 

A: Okay. Here's the NRSV translation of James 2:1-8a, with a couple of changes in emphasis. Here goes:

• "My brothers, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in God? For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, 'Have a seat here, please,' while to the one who is poor you say, 'Stand there,' or 'Sit at my feet,' have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and becomes judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court? Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you? You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'"

J: You give them one little inviolable spiritual law to follow, and they argue with you until you're blue in the face and dead in the ground. It's 2,000 years since I said that, and a huge number of Christians still don't get it -- you can't love your neighbour and keep your status addiction, too. You have to make a choice. 

A: There are almost no Christians who believe you wrote these verses yourself. Few theologians pay attention to the Letter of James. It doesn't have any real "Christology" in it. To them, it's little more than a typical 1st century wisdom sermon. Martin Luther hated this letter because it seems to deny Paul's doctrine of "justification by faith." Luther called it "an epistle of straw," and would have had it removed from the Protestant canon if he could have. 

J: There you go. More proof for the theory that Paul and I had very different things to say about God. 

A: Tell me what you meant when you described the poor as "heirs of the kingdom."  

J: That goes to the heart of my teachings.  

A: I know.  

J (grinning): No point beating around the bush, eh?  

A: Exactly my thought.  

J: Well, I guess you could say that I was trying to be a good teacher. By that I mean I was doing my best to explain complex ideas in a useful, usable way. Good teaching often involves finding the right image, the right metaphor for the group you're teaching. The right metaphor can open up doors in a student's mind, help her find the connection between what she already knows and what she's learning. You can try to invent new terms, new words for a complex idea. Scholars often do this. Or you can try to work with existing vocabulary and use it in new ways. I opted for the latter. 

A: So you chose the word "kingdom" because of the symbolism attached to it at the time.  

J: Well, here's where it gets confusing. The word "kingdom" by itself was not the exact image I chose -- not that word by itself, anyway. But, like all people, I was sometimes guilty of shortening things for the sake of convenience. The actual phrase I chose was "basileia ton ouranon" -- Koine Greek for "kingdom of the heavens." Eventually, when I was speaking or writing for my own community, I called it "the kingdom" for short. But by then it was understood what I meant. 

A: Which was . . . ?  

J: I was trying to express the idea that each individual person should think of themselves as a whole and complete entity, lacking nothing as far as God was concerned. A tiny kingdom of "selfhood" unto themselves. An inviolable kingdom. A worthy kingdom. A very small kingdom, to be sure, but one they had full rights over as its "sovereign." It's about boundary issues, really. Today's teachers and psychologists use the phrase "boundary issues." I used the phrase "kingdom of the heavens." But it's the same idea exactly. It's the idea that your body and your mind and your heart belong to nobody but you. Therefore, it's wrong to transgress those boundaries. It's wrong for you to invade somebody else's body, mind, and heart, just as it's wrong for them to invade yours. It's about human dignity, human worth. It's about seeing each individual as, well, as . . . 

A: As an individual?  

J: Yes. It's about seeing each individual as an individual, instead of seeing them as property or as a means to an end.  

A: Status addicts. Psychopaths. Narcissists. People suffering from these disorders can't see other people as they really are -- as other people. They tend to see them as objects to be used. 

J: That ideal -- if you can call it that -- was ingrained in the culture of my time. People were so used to hearing about "the chosen" and "the judged" in society that they weren't questioning the wrongness of it. They had little mental framework, little understanding of the idea that slavery was a violation of the soul. Most of the people I worked with in my ministry felt like the proverbial dog who's been kicked. The dog is at the bottom of a long list of people kicking each other according to rank. The dog has the least rank, so he gets kicked the hardest. That's the mentality I was facing in Galilee.  

A: You were facing an uphill battle trying to persuade your students that they were worthy of God's love and forgiveness -- just as worthy as the priests in Jerusalem. 

J: It's not easy to overcome the conditioning of a lifetime. They weren't inclined to believe me. These were people of faith. They didn't want to anger God. They wanted to show God their obedience and faith. They were suspicious of me for a long time.  

A: What turned the tide? 

J: In the end, it was about trust and compassion, I guess you could say. I stuck to my guns. I did what I said I would do. I wasn't a hypocrite -- that alone earned me a lot of trust. I treated people fairly and respectfully the way I thought God wanted me to. Stuff happened.  

A: Stuff happened? Like what stuff? What happened?  

J: Oh, you know. Healings. Changes. Stuff like that.  

A: You mean like healing miracles? That kind of stuff?  

J: Well, yes, if you want to get right down to it, I suppose you could describe it that way. 

A: Healing miracles began to take place, and the people around you -- the poor and disadvantaged of Galilee -- began to notice. 

J (nodding yes without speaking). 

A: Were you the source of the healing miracles? Did you yourself heal them?  

J: No. Never. No human being has that kind of power, that kind of ability. Healing miracles, when they take place, come from God. Only from God and God's healing angels. I was only a facilitator, if you will. A human being people could see and touch with their own senses. My job was to reassure them, comfort them, encourage them to trust. The actual healing was God's work. And I said so. Loudly. As often as I could. I never claimed to be a chosen prophet, and I yelled at anybody who tried to call me the Messiah. I clearly understood that my role -- my task as a human being who'd been given many advantages during my youth -- was to help people feel okay about receiving God's love and comfort and healing. If I was helpful in my role as a physician -- suggesting teas and salves and other sorts of medical treatments -- it was only because God was guiding me in my work. I listened carefully to what God's healing angels were saying (that's where it's handy to be a practising mystic), and I did what they suggested to me. I wasn't being "forced" to listen to my angels. I wanted to listen to my angels, and I wanted to trust their advice. That was my choice -- my own free will. They're damned smart, and they had some wonderful healing suggestions.  

A: Can you give any examples of their advice?  

J: Gosh. They had tons of medical insights. Things like, "Tell that woman she has to eat orange vegetables." Of course, they knew -- although I didn't -- that orange vegetables contain Vitamin A, important for normal vision. Two thousand years ago, that was a miracle. They warned me, as well, about the dangers of lead. Lead was used in those days in many practical ways because of its low melting point and malleability. "Stay away from food vessels or utensils made of lead or pewter," they said. Good advice, that.  

A: And pewtersmiths have stopped making pewter with lead. 

“A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, ‘If you choose, you can make me clean.’ Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I do choose. Be made clean!’ Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, saying to him, ‘See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.’ But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed in the country; and people came to him from every quarter” (Mark 1: 40 – 45). Photo credit JAT 2016.

J: The most important thing my angels taught me, however, was to ignore the standard Temple teachings about illness and healing. To be honest, my angels had nothing nice to say about traditional purity laws. They told me it was okay -- by that I mean medically safe -- to ignore the "do not touch" laws about skin diseases, bodily fluids, and dietary restrictions. My angels said to me, "Touch, touch!" So I touched. I looked in people's eyes when they were sick. I held their hands. I told them their angels were with them. I told them God was with them. Any physician worth his or her salt will know what this means to a frightened patient. The relationship between physician and patient is integral to the healing process.  

A: So you took the healing process away from the designated Jerusalem priests and put it into the hands of God. You made the healing process both more scientific and more compassionate. Which somehow led to more miracles.  

J (nodding yes): Um hum.  

A: I can just imagine how furious the priests would have been that people were getting better from eating carrots instead of from giving sacrifices at the Temple.  

J: The fact that I was descended from priests on my mother's side didn't help the situation any.   

A: They must have been very upset when they started to hear rumours about your healing ministry -- a son of priests performing unsanctioned healings outside the Temple precincts.  

J: That would be an understatement.