JR60: The Utoeya Tragedy in Norway

A: Well, big guy, when you're right you're right. On Tuesday (July 19, 2011) you talked honestly but in general terms about the mindset of psychopaths. You talked about a psychopath who props himself up with ideology and believes he's a nice person.

Three days later, on Friday, July 22, 2011, Norwegian police arrested a 32 year old Norwegian man Anders Behring Breivik on charges of setting off a car bomb in Oslo and later mowing down at least 84 young people at a summer camp northwest of Oslo -- on the island of Utoeya. The report I read in Saturday's Globe and Mail ("Death toll reaches 91 in Norway attacks" by Walter Gibbs and Anna Ringstrom (Reuters)) gives some background information about Breivik. Early accounts referred to the gunman's Facebook and Twitter accounts. (Since then, his Facebook page has been blocked.) His Facebook page apparently listed interests in bodybuilding, conservative politics, and freemasonry. He described himself as "a Christian, leaning toward right-wing Christianity." He may also have been a a gun club member.

The real kicker is this: The Reuters account says, "Norwegian media said he had set up a Twitter account a few days ago and posted a single message on July 17 saying: 'One person with a belief is equal to the force of 100,000 who have only interests.'"

This is a horrible real-life example of exactly what you've been talking about for months now on this site. It's almost exactly word for word what you've been saying. An ideologue -- a psychopath who's got his teeth sunk deep into a Big Idea -- is capable of the most vicious crimes.

Sadness. Photo credit JAT 2014.

J: People from all quadrants, especially the conservative Christian quadrant, will be rushing in to offer their breathless analysis of "what went wrong." They'll speculate and cluck their tongues on the question of why a man who had so much, a man who appeared to be so capable and logical and well-organized, went so badly off the rails. Many people will shrug and say, "It's just life. Humanity's a pile of shit anyway, so who should be surprised?" Pious religious folk, including devout orthodox Christians, will invoke the Devil, as they usually do when they don't want to look at themselves and their own contribution to man-made evils such as the Utoeya tragedy. They'll say, "Satan possessed him and took his soul," and similar bullshit. Not many people will be looking at this man and his ongoing choices and saying, "This man turned himself into a psychopath. On purpose. Because he liked the high of hurting other people." But that's the only appropriate response.

This is the response the angels around me are having to this crisis. God's angels know what this man did this to himself. We forgive him, as we always forgive our brothers-and-sisters-in-temporary-human-form. But we can see this man's brain, and this man's brain is a seriously fucked-up mess. It also happens to be a fucked-up mess is a highly predictable and observable fashion. There's a pattern to his behaviour. A definite, clear, observable pattern. Brain scans would show this pattern. Nobody has to take my word for it. Prove it to yourselves through more research. Please!

A: Don't blame the Devil. Blame the brain.

J: Yes. You have to place the responsibility where it lies: squarely on the brain of this man Breivik. He made the choices and he made the plan. It's his responsibility. Years ago he stopped listening to his own soul. But he's still in charge of the rest of his brain and the rest of his choices, and he's still responsible -- legally and morally responsible -- for his choice to use his logic and planning skills to carry out an intentional crime against humanity. He's not a nice person, and he needs to be held to account during his human lifetime for the suffering he's chosen to create.

A: Is it actually possible for a person who's just mowed down 84 teenagers with a gun to still believe he's a nice person? How could he possibly think that? It's beyond belief! (Note: As of July 30, 2011, the number of dead at Utoeya is reported at 69, with the number of injured at almost 100.)

J: It's beyond belief to you because you're not a psychopath. You have a conscience and a connection to your heart and soul. Brievik has no such connections. He decided years ago to cut them off inside his own brain.

A: But . . . how is that possible? How can a human being actually sever connections inside their own brains? Aren't there fail-safes for that? Aren't there Darwinian imperatives to prevent that from happening?

J: The human brain is an extremely complex series of organs. Way more complex than any other system in the biological body.

A: This month's issue of Scientific American says essentially the same thing on the Forum page. ("A Dearth of New Meds: Drugs to treat neuropsychiatric disorders have become too risky for big pharma" by Kenneth I. Kaitin and Christopher P. Milne, Scientific American, August 2011, p. 16.)

J: I can't emphasize enough the stupidity of treating the human brain as if it's a single organ like the heart, and the insanity of pretending that human beings don't have information from their souls hardwired into their DNA. And when I say "souls" I mean only good souls. I have no time or patience for patently abusive religious doctrines such as original sin. I will not tolerate any Christian saying to me, "Oh, yes, of course we believe in the scientific reality of original sin being hardwired into our human DNA! Why, anybody can see he was born evil!" This is NOT what I mean.

Our man Breivik wasn't born evil. He wasn't born in a state of original sin. His biology has been gradually changed and altered over many years because of conscious choices he's been making. It's taken years for him to become a psychopath. Years. But the signs have been there. The signs of his status addiction and his obsessive compulsive dysfunction are clear from his Facebook page and other reports. He was fixated on bodybuilding, conservative politics, guns, freemasonry, right-wing Christianity, and the Big Idea of "us versus them" (i.e. Dualism). This is a package deal, folks. An observable package, an observable pattern of choices followed by an observable pattern of behaviour. Why would Breivik's soul, his true self, like any of these things? Why would his true loving self enjoy obsessive bodybuilding that damages the physical body over time? Why would his true loving self choose conservative politics that take away the sense of balance in a community between the rights of an individual and the rights of the group? Why would his true loving self think it's fun to shoot other people for the heck of it? Why would his true loving self accept the myths of Hierarchy and Dualism?

Why would he choose any of these things if he were in a state of balance and wholeness? He wouldn't. He just wouldn't do it. It would feel wrong to him. But he can't feel that wrongness because he opted years ago to start listening only to the stupid parts of his own brain -- the parts of the brain that are supposed to help people look after aspects of their human lives that are purely 3D, purely temporary. Necessary but temporary because life on Planet Earth is temporary.

A: In the past you've called these parts of the brain the Darwinian circuit.

J: Yes. There are parts of the brain devoted to human physiological needs and human safety needs. These can be thought of in a general way as the Darwinian circuitry. There are also parts of the brain that specialize in the soul's need for love and belonging, along with the soul's need for self esteem. These latter two parts can be thought of as the Soul circuitry. All these parts have to be working together in order for a person to feel balanced and whole and sane and safe. Self-actualized, as Abraham Maslow called it. All these parts are needed for the experience of faith -- genuine soul-based faith. It should go without saying that our man Breivik has the Big Idea but absolutely no faith. He calls himself a Christian, but he has no faith. All he has is the Big Idea.

A: You talked on Tuesday about score cards. You said a psychopath has a score card inside him instead of a heart.

J: The great dilemma for the psychopath -- the person who's dissociated from his own empathy and his own ability to love and trust -- is how to get through the day. How to fill up all the looooooong, boooooooring hours between waking and sleeping.

A: Seriously?

J: Oh, yeah. Tell a psychopath he has to sit under a tree and be still and quiet for 8 hours and he'll want to pull his hair out.

A: Really? I could sit under a tree for 8 hours and have a wonderful time.

J: Yes, but you don't feel empty inside. You don't feel purposeless and hopeless and restless and bored all the time.

A: Sometimes I feel restless.

J: How often?

A: I don't know. Maybe a couple of times each week.

J: A psychopath feels like this all the time. He lives constantly for the next brief high, the next brief hit of status or cocaine or sex. It's all he's got to get him through the day. There's only such much cocaine he can do each day, only so many times he can get an erection each day. So the mainstay for him is status points. He'll do anything to get status points for his internal scorecard. He'll keep his cell phone on 24 hours each day so he can get a "hit" from the fact that he's needed by somebody at 4:00 in the morning. He'll check his Facebook status 20 or 30 times each day. He'll play computer or video games that rack up big points. He'll gamble. He'll gossip. He'll focus fanatically on professional sports. Or, if he goes in a religious direction instead of a secular direction to find his daily supply of status points, he'll become a man of the Book. A pious, obedient follower of the Law. An obsessive compulsive religious devotee.

A: But not a nice person. Not a person of empathy and patience and humbleness.

J: He has to choose between being an addict and being a nice person. He can't be both at the same time.

A: Yet he's certain he can be. He's certain he's a nice person who's not an addict.

J: What's the greatest obstacle to healing for those who suffer from addiction?

A: Denial.

J: Our Norwegian man, Mr. Breivik, is in a serious state of denial about his addiction to status. He'll have no chance of recovery as a human being until somebody is honest with him about the nature of his addiction. Unfortunately for him, the doctrines of orthodox Christianity will only excuse his behaviour rather than force him to confront it. Pauline Christianity is, in essence, an anti-Twelve-Step Program.

This isn't exactly the sort of helpful Church teaching God's angels have in mind.

JR59: News of the World: "New Lamps For Old"

A: I see a lot of similarity between the current phone hacking scandal in the U.K. and the behaviour of the apostle Paul and his cronies in the first century CE. In both situations, a very powerful man does whatever he wants regardless of how unethical, corrupt, manipulative, and cruel it is. The only difference between then and now is that Rupert Murdoch's employees have received a public shaming. Without the huge public outcry that accompanied the recent re-revelation about phone hacking at the News of the World, the authorities wouldn't have reopened the investigation or arrested more people. The authorities -- or rather I should say certain individuals in senior positions of authority in the police and government -- knew about the accusations of unethical conduct and did nothing much about them until regular people started yelling and putting their foot down.

“But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at their image and, on going away, immediately forget what they look like. But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act — they will be blessed in their doing” (James 1:22-25). Replicas of Ancient Greek vessels. Photo credit JAT 2014.

J: The parallels are uncanny. If people today are having trouble imagining what it felt like for my followers soon after my death, they can read about the phone hacking scandal and put themselves in the shoes of the families of the murder victims who were psychologically assaulted by the News of the World reporters, editors, and decision makers.

A: I think most people would be shocked to learn how unethical Paul really was. How cold and calculating he really was.

J: He was a business man. Very practical, very logical. He was like the editor at the News of the World who approved the phone hacking strategies. Anything was okay as long as it got the job done. "The end justifies the means" and all that crap. Success at any price. Just the way his bosses in Alexandria wanted it.

A: Yet you've said in previous discussions that Paul truly believed in what he was doing.

J: Sure. A successful psychopath is an ideologue. It's what separates the successful psychopaths -- "snakes in suits," as researcher Robert Hare calls them -- from the garden variety criminals who get caught and thrown in jail for reckless, impulsive crimes. An ideologue, on the other hand -- and Paul was a religio-political ideologue -- uses "The Big Idea" as a crutch to hold up his dysfunctional brain. It's a coping mechanism. It's an external framework of ideas that the psychopath clings to because he's lost his own internal compass. He can't hear the voice of his own soul telling him what's right and wrong. But he's still very logical, very goal-oriented, and he's addicted to status. So if he can "attach" himself to an external Big Idea, and apply his logic and ambition to it, he can acquire status and not end up in prison.

A: Why won't he end up in prison? Aren't psychopaths inherently impulsive? Prone to risk-taking behaviours and uninterested in consequences? Doesn't this make him more likely to do something criminal?

J: Yes. It's part of the package for psychopaths. But if you put a psychopath in a structured organization where there are very strict rules, very clear punishments, and rigid ladders of governance, he'll be so busy trying to claw his way up "the ladder of success" he won't bother going out to rob banks or gas stations. The buzz he gets from plotting his long-term strategy for "success" is much better than the temporary high of terrorizing a gas station attendant.

This is not to say the snakes-in-suits are "nicer" psychopaths. They're not nice people at all. But no one can question their ability to promote "The Big Idea" (whatever their Big Idea happens to be) with charismatic passion. Regular people are easily sucked in by this passion.

A: So Paul was a snake-in-a-suit. I kinda like the way this ties in with the conversations we've had about the Book of Genesis.

J: Paul was promoting the Big Idea of salvation. Escape from a life without status. Escape from a death without status. He and his followers built a humongous empire on the "4 S's" -- sin, separation, sacraments, and salvation. But Paul's Big Idea was just that -- an idea. A belief system. A theory without proof. A theory that's never had proof. Its very lack of provableness is what makes it so attractive to psychopaths. Why? Because there's nothing in the Big Idea that can act as a mirror for a psychopath's true intent. There's nothing to make him look at himself honestly. There's nothing to challenge him to be his best self. The Big Idea gives him 1,001 excuses to brush his abusive behaviour under the carpet. Unfortunately, until the psychopath sees himself as he really is, he has no incentive to change.

A: I think we've just spiralled back to your analogy between a psychopath and the Greek monster Medusa. Medusa's hideous face turned everyone into stone until Perseus held up a mirror-like shield and forced her to look at herself.

J: Part of the problem here is that regular people don't understand what makes a psychopath tick. Regular people look at a "successful psychopath" -- the guy who has the drive and ambition to work 16 hour days -- and they think he must really know who he is and what he wants. They think they should try to be like him. They think they themselves are failures if they want to go home to their families after working an 8 hour day. But the honest truth is the successful psychopath has no idea who he really is. All he has inside himself is a score card. A score card instead of a heart. His soul is all heart, of course, but he long ago stopped listening to this core part of himself. This is why he has no conscience and no empathy. His soul isn't defective, but his biological brain is seriously out of balance. He's so used to living this way that it's normal for him. Even worse, he likes living this way. He likes hurting other people. He likes to make regular people feel small and useless. And he's not going to change until he recognizes the honest truth that he's not a nice person.

A: It took me years to understand this lesson. I misunderstood what compassion was. I thought compassion meant you should never intentionally make another person feel bad about themselves. That's before I learned (the hard way) that a lot of people out there want to hurt other people and consciously choose to hurt other people and get a high out of psychologically abusing other people and won't decide to stop this behaviour until they're forced to look in the mirror. I also learned the hard way that the more dysfunctional a person is, the more insulted and offended she'll be when you tell her she isn't being a nice person.

J: You're thinking of someone in particular when you say that.

A: Yes. I'm thinking of Grace, the modern day "spiritual leader" (a.k.a. apocalyptic prophet) I hung out with for several years before I came to my senses.

J: These are the people who are quickest to say, "You have no right to say such things about me."

A: Hey, don't forget the other favourite response of the psychopath who insists she's a nice person: "Oh, my dear, tut tut, how can you say such things about me? Why, everyone knows what a good person I am and how hard I work on behalf of the community. I'm so concerned for you, you poor thing. You really need to get some help."

J: A psychopath has extremely strong defences against hearing the truth about his or her own behaviour. It's scary how strong these defences are. The doctrines of orthodox Western Christianity have served as excellent body armour for its successful psychopaths. Pauline Christians are not called upon to look honestly at themselves and make changes to live up to their true potential. Instead they're encouraged to stoop to the level of a psychopath's dysfunctional mind so the psychopath doesn't have to feel bad about himself.

A: You said pretty much the same thing in James 1:22-25.

J: I'm a consistent fellow. But it's not hard to be consistent when you're trying to speak the truth. Truth has an annoying habit of being consistent and provable and open to new and unfolding sources of knowledge. Even if it takes a couple of thousand years for the truth to be recognized, for the facts to be identified, remembered, understood, and acted upon.

A: I'm glad there's finally a solid and widespread foundation of research in place so the truth about Paul's "News of the World" can finally come out.

JR58: The "My Fellow American" Interfaith Initiative

A: I was contacted this week by a person who's working with the Unity Productions Foundation on an interfaith initiative called My Fellow American. The goal of the initiative is to encourage Americans to think of their fellow Americans who happen to be Muslim as fellow Americans. There's a 2 minute film produced by Unity, and there are also uploaded videos and stories from various supporters of the idea that all Americans are equally American, regardless of religion. What do you think of this project?

J (grinning): I think you should post the address.

A: Oh yeah. Good thinking. The address is http://myfellowamerican.us/

I discovered when I went to watch the film how truly outdated my computer really is. Computer updates are not my thing. Good thing the computer at work has more juice in it.

The person who contacted me also wondered if I could maybe Tweet about the project if I checked it out and liked it. I don't know how to tell her this, but I don't even own a cell phone. So the Tweeting is pretty much out.

J: Everybody has their own way of communicating with others.

A: Anyway, I certainly can't argue with the basic principle of treating all your neighbours with dignity and respect and compassion and kindness regardless of religion. This is what makes a society internally strong.

J: The one thing people have to remember is that all human beings are children of God. A Muslim woman is just as a much a child of God as the saints of Christian history. To deny a woman dignity and respect simply because she's Muslim is to withhold divine love from your neighbour. It's as simple as that.

A: I think some people are afraid that if they love and accept the woman with an open heart they'll be required to love and accept all the religious teachings that are part of her tradition. At least that's how they view it.

 

Regardless of religious affiliation, we’re all children of God. Photo (c) Hemera Technologies 2001-2003

J: Religious teachings are very much a human thing. Divine love, on the other hand, is a soul thing. Divine love always trumps religious teachings. Every religion on the face of Planet Earth today has problems -- problems with abusive doctrines, problems with gender issues, problems with "law," and problems with balance. Every religion. Islam is no different from Christianity in this regard. Sure, Islam has some problems. But so does orthodox Western Christianity. This is no excuse for failing to love your neighbour and failing to believe in his or her best self. Everybody's struggling. People of all religions have to hold each other up. People have to work together. It's the only way to find healing.

A: The 10-year anniversary of 9/11 is coming up. Some people haven't got over the shock. They're still looking for someone to blame.

J: If they're looking for someone to blame, then they should be looking at the unassailable laws of neurophysiology, not at religion. Only a seriously, seriously dysfunctional individual thinks it's okay to blow up buildings "in the name of God." This applies across the board to all religions and all cultures. Christianity has had its fair share of psychopaths in martyrs' clothing, too. Psychopathy is a social, medical, and educational issue. Psychopathy is about as far from genuine relationship with God as it's possible to get.

The vast majority of Muslims and Christians and those of other faiths are doing their best to get closer to God -- not farther away from God and faith -- even though they make mistakes along the way. People of all faiths are constantly learning, changing, growing. Traditions change. Religious teachings change. The one core truth that doesn't change is the reality of the good soul, and the potential of all human beings to help each other understand this reality. If you allow yourself to be open to this truth, amazing things can happen in your community. Whatever community you happen to live in.

A: There are some psychopaths in positions of religious authority.

J: Yes. But there are also psychopaths in positions of political and economic and educational authority. Psychopathy is an entirely separate issue from the question of faith. Inherent to the definition of psychopathy is a total lack of conscience and empathy -- in other words, a disconnection from all that enables true faith, true relationship with God. A psychopath seeks status, not faith, when he or she chooses to blow up buildings. It's entirely a question of status addiction. Can we say this status addiction is true of "all Muslims"? Well, OF COURSE NOT. This would be the same as saying that every person who lives in Boston must be a status-addicted psychopath simply because he or she happens to live in Boston. It isn't right or fair to make such a claim.

A: Claims such as this have been fairly common over the course of history, though.

J: True. These claims fall under the umbrella of the HDM Myths that you posted about on Concinnate Christianity. (http://concinnatechristianity.blogspot.com/2010/11/it-takes-village-non-hdm-village-that.html ). Group myths of Hierarchy, Dualism, and Monism. Again, these are human myths, human choices, that have nothing to do with the faith of the soul. Challenge the myths and heal the soul, remembering always that the soul is not the aspect of the self that's perpetuating these myths. It's certain parts of the biological brain that have gone off the rails, so to speak, and now enjoy the addictive high of schadenfreude. For a person suffering from status addiction, there's just nothing better than a good hit of mental revenge and religious hatred to get you through the day. It's cheaper than buying whiskey and cigarettes.

A: That's a pretty tough statement.

J: Addiction is a pretty tough reality. Addiction destroys lives. Better to be honest about its effects.

A: Because, as you often say, healing follows insight.

J: My hat's off to the My Fellow American participants because they're doing their best to help others in their community be their best selves. And they're working together as a team to teach and share and communicate in relationship with each other. As an angel, I can't ask for more than that.

_______________________________________________

Addendum, October 16, 2023: It's been 12 years since I wrote this post with the soul who lived as Jesus.

The world has changed greatly during this time. One of the unfortunate changes has been an ideological shift towards monism within many educational institutions and humanitarian organizations in Western nations. This shift has taken society further away from the idea that people hold individual responsibility for their own choices. In place of the long-held Judeo-Christian value system built on free will, personal responsibility, and accountability to your own inner wisdom (what we call "conscience"), there has been a push to impose a value system based on "group banners" behind which individuals can hide.

No one can be his or her best self if "group banners" (especially religious "group banners") are used as an excuse for hanging onto harmful traditions, hateful actions, or justification for revenge.

Mother Father God and your angels don't care what your religious teachers say. What matters to God is how you choose to use your free will as a human being during your time on Planet Earth. If you decide it's a great idea to hate other people on the basis of their religion, that's not okay with God. The recent resurgence of anti-Semitism is therefore not okay with your own soul or your angels.

Anti-Semitism isn't the only example of extreme hatred in today's world, but right now it's a cauldron of suffering, especially for those who are doing the hating.

It's your job as a human being -- as a soul in human form -- to learn how to look past the "group banners" that breed hatred and divisiveness. Seek the best in others and stand your ground as a child of God. Treat each person you meet as an individual who is responsible for his or her own choices towards others and towards God. This probably means you'll have to reject some of the destructive religious doctrines that are causing problems in the world today. But if that's what you have to do so you can hear your own conscience, that's what you have to do.

JR57: Suffer the Little Children to Come Unto Me

A: When I came home from work on Monday, Oprah was rerunning an episode about two twin daughters who had been being sexually assaulted and raped by their father and two brothers until a neighbour called authorities. Towards the end of the episode, Oprah offered the definition of forgiveness that she's found most helpful. It was something to this effect: "Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been different." How do you respond to that?  

J: Well, I find this definition demeaning and discouraging. Forgiveness is not about "giving up hope." Forgiveness is about finding hope.  

A: Maybe the person who coined this definition was using the word "hope" in a different way than you and I use it. 

J: Hope is one of those slippery, hard-to-define spiritual terms. About as easy to explain as forgiveness. And about as complicated. Basically, though, angels use the word hope as a synonym for "trust in God." It's a powerfully positive, uplifting emotion. It's an emotion that expresses an element of uncertainty. Perhaps I could rephrase that. Hope -- trust in God -- is an experience of emotional continuity in the face of apparent discontinuity in the Materialist laws of Cause and Effect. In other words, you still believe in God's goodness even when you can't see an obvious link between actions and the results of those actions.  

A: A leap of faith, in other words.  

J: Yes, but not a blind leap of faith. Trust, surprising as it may seem, requires an element of brutal honesty. Brutal honesty about oneself. Trust requires you to know your own limits, your own abilities right down to a "t." This knowledge allows you to recognize situations where you've reached the limits of your own abilities and experience. At this point, you switch over to your knowledge about other people's abilities and experience. You switch over the decision-making process to somebody who has more knowledge about the topic at hand than you have. You hand over the reins, as it were. Angels do this without an instant of shame or jealousy or regret. They simply accept their limits and gratefully hand over the reins to other angels. This is what humbleness feels like. Not false humility, as the Church teaches it, but divine humbleness.  

A: You're making my head hurt with all these different terms -- forgiveness, hope, trust, humbleness.  

J: These are all complex divine emotions. Not the same as each other, but interwoven with each other. Holistically. Hopefully, people will like the idea that God the Mother and God the Father are capable of experiencing and expressing the most complex emotions of all. 

A: This switching-over thing you're talking about . . . is this related to the research you've been helping me collect about the "gears" in the biological human brain that are supposed to help people switch smoothly from one idea or emotion to another?  

J: You mean parts of the human brain such as the anterior cingulate gyrus? 

A: Yes. And related "switching centres."  

J: Definitely. Angels don't have an anterior cingulate gyrus, but souls-in-human-form do. Angels who incarnate as human beings need a biological "toolkit," and a number of tools in that toolkit relate to the human brain and central nervous system. When those tools aren't used the way they should be -- when, for example, a "hammer" is used when a "screwdriver" is called for, or when the blunt end of the adjustable wrench is used instead of the adjustable claws at the other end, you can't expect the result to be pretty. The human brain is designed with an entire set of "ball bearings" and "lubricants" to prevent the various gears of the brain from grinding against each other and causing excessive wear. Unfortunately, in many young human beings, the ball bearings and lubricants are the first thing to go. After that, you see the onset of DSM-IV psychiatric disorders such as bipolar disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, problems with impulse control, problems with anger control, possibly even psychopathy. 

A: All because their switching mechanisms aren't working properly?  

J: The human brain is an incredibly complex set of tools and machinery. It uses many different types of switching mechanisms to help it balance incoming data and outgoing choices -- outgoing thoughts, feelings, and actions. The operative word here, of course, is balance. The brain has to be able to identify, remember, understand, and fix many different sorts of problems. It has to switch constantly between different spheres of reality, between logical thought and positive emotions and practical actions, between the needs of the self and the needs of the other, between active learning and quiet processing, between past, present, and future. Believe me, human beings need every scrap of brain tissue they can muster for this job of Whole Brain Thinking.  

A: So when the switching mechanisms aren't working properly, people get "stuck." They get stuck in one or two spheres. For example, a person who gets stuck in the past.  

J: Yes. Or a person who gets stuck in logical thought. These are the people who lack empathy, who lack compassion for others. They make all their choices based on logic alone. The Church has had an overflowing cup of bishops who were incapable of feeling empathy.  

A: I've also known some people -- mostly women -- who seem stuck in their emotional circuitry and can't make a decision that's tough. They don't forgive other people so much as put blinders on. They try to sweep great harms under the carpet so they don't have to deal with the fallout of taking a firm stance. 

J: Forgiveness is very much about taking a firm stance. The first step in forgiving somebody -- whether it's yourself or someone else -- is honesty. There must be an honest assessment of harm. This means you have to take a stance on the question of right and wrong. For the soul -- for all souls in Creation, including God the Mother and God the Father -- some choices are clearly right and other choices are clearly wrong. The soul knows the difference. The soul feels confident and clear when right choices are made. The soul feels abused when wrong choices are made. This is what many people call . . . conscience. 

A: There's been a trend among some New Age gurus and some Progressive Christians to claim there are no moral absolutes. Hence there is no need for forgiveness. According to these thinkers, all choices are equally acceptable to God because each person is really just a spark of God trying to express itself. Neale Donald Walsch has built a lucrative empire on this idea.  

J: Only a person who doesn't want to face his own life choices would find this theory acceptable.  

A: It does leave a lot of wiggle room for people who want to excuse their own behaviour . . .  

J: Forgiveness is a clear and conscious decision to call forth and believe in the best that a person can be and the best a person can do. Forgiveness is a refusal to accept excuses. At the same time, it's a gift of love that has no strings attached. Divine love goes beyond anything a Materialist philosophy of Cause and Effect can imagine. Divine love is an up-front gift, a conscious decision to offer the recipient (whether the self or an another person) a vote of confidence in his or her best self. It's a leap of faith. It's a boost-up. A helping hand. A sense of purpose for a person to hang onto. It does not require you to prove yourself before you get the gift of love. If you had to prove yourself first, one proof at a time, as many theologians have taught, you'd be looking at the vertical path of spiritual ascent -- anagogic mysticism. Anagogic mysticism is a form of Materialist belief. God the Mother and God the Father are not required to obey Materialist philosophy. They love us because they choose to love us, not because they "owe" us anything for our "obedience" and "piety." They believe in us, their children, so much that we simply cannot and will not let them down. They inspire us to be our best selves. But they don't force us to be our best selves -- we, as angels, choose to be our best selves. It's as natural as breathing for all angels. 

A: Including the angels who have incarnated on Planet Earth.  

J: Yes. Including the angels who have incarnated on Planet Earth. There are no exceptions among God's children. All angels are filled with trust and devotion and gratitude and courage BECAUSE God the Mother and God the Father believe in our best selves. They have faith in us. 

A: So in the case of a father who has raped his own daughters, how would God look at that?  

“Jesus said: From Adam to John the Baptizer, among those born of women, there is no one greater than John the Baptizer, so that his eyes should be averted. But I have said that whoever among you becomes a child will know the kingdom and will become greater than John” (Gospel of Thomas 46 a-b). This Roman marble sculpture of Cupid, the God of Desire, asleep on a lion skin, dates from 100-200 CE. It was based on a Hellenistic bronze from about 150 BCE. Predators who abuse children usually portray themselves as innocent, beautiful, and divine guardians of the children they intend to seduce. (This sculpture is on display at the Royal Ontario Museum. Photo credit JAT 2017.)

J: God the Mother and God the Father would recognize instantly the selfish, uncourageous intent of the father. They would identify the problem -- the father's dysfunctional brain circuitry -- and they would remember this as they worked to help him and those around him recognize the great harm he's been choosing to create. They would not condone or accept this behaviour as acceptable. They would identify the behaviour as "wrong." Nonetheless, they would blanket him in divine love. They would whisper to his soul, "We believe in you. We know this isn't the best you can be. We know you can make loving choices. We won't abandon you. We'll stick right with you and show you why your choices have been wrong. You won't understand at first, and you're going to be angry and confused and resentful for a while, but that's okay, because we know that more than anything in the world you want to be able to give love. We believe in you."  

A: And then God sends you through the human court system that'll cart you off to jail for "X" number of years. 

J: Somehow you have to get it through your thick human skull that you made an abusive choice that was very, very wrong. You have to accept that you made a mistake, you have to accept that you can learn from your own mistakes, and you have to accept that you can be a better person who makes right choices. If you receive the right kind of help.  

A: Locking up a person and throwing away the key isn't the right kind of help.  

J: Nor is revenge the right kind of help. Usually it takes a whole team to provide the right kind of help to a man who has raped his own daughters. A whole team of well trained professionals. Of course, if the professionals themselves don't believe in the soul or the power of forgiveness or the mystery of God's divine love, they're ill-equipped to provide the kind of mentorship the abuser needs if he's to have any chance of living up to his best self.  

A: In which case the abuser isn't likely to be healed.  

J: Healing follows insight for both the victim and the perpetrator of a crime. Forgiveness, as we've said, is a catalyst that speeds and facilitates the healing process. Healing is the path towards Wholeness. Not the path towards Oneness but the path towards Wholeness. Wholeness is the place -- the Kingdom, the experience of self -- where you know yourself and all your limits and all your strengths and all your quirks and you can be humbly proud of yourself anyway because you're being the best person you can be.  

A: Young children are like this. They have the ability to throw themselves into new relationships and new experiences to the best of their ability without any concern for status or "face."  

J: Yup. That's what I meant when I said that to enter the Kingdom you must become again like a little child. Humble and guileless, yet full of infectious enthusiasm and intelligence. Many three-year-olds are smarter than the adults around them because they haven't yet forgotten how to learn.  

A: And they still know how to forgive. Young children are born with an amazing ability to forgive.  

J: I rest my case.

JR56: Forgiveness As a Present Reality

A: Tell me more about forgiveness. The other day you said, "Divine forgiveness is not settlement of a debt. Debt doesn't enter into the equation. Education, mentorship, and personal responsibility enter into the equation, but not debt." (http://jesusredux.blogspot.com/2011/07/meaning-of-son-of-man.html ) You and I have talked a lot about forgiveness, but you've never linked it to the Peace Sequence before. Can you explain in more detail what you meant?  

J: I'm going to introduce a comparison between forgiveness and catalysts (as catalysts are understood by a chemist). At a quantum level, forgiveness acts as an important "biochemical" catalyst for learning.  

A: Okay, you're gonna have to back up the divine truck on this one. 

J: In everyday speech, people use the word "catalyst" to mean a person, thing, or event that prompts sudden change. In Western culture it's often an unexpected tragedy that serves as a catalyst for change. For instance, if a child is killed because a newly designed toy isn't safe, the people around the child are shocked into action. Chances are good that an inquiry will be held, and healthy and safety regulations will be amended to remove this particular threat. The catalyst for change was a tragic event that jarred people out of their complacency and forced them to be more honest about a quantifiable, measurable threat to children's safety.  

The factual reality of the toy's dangerous design existed before the tragic death. The threat itself wasn't new. What was new was the realization of the threat, the objective recognition of the threat, the memory of the threat. In other words, human beings had to learn about the threat. They had to identify the problem, remember the problem, understand the problem, then fix the problem. These are the stages of learning. As it happens, these are also the stages of emotional healing and spiritual transformation. They're all hopelessly intertwined with each other.  

A: Identify, remember, understand, and fix. That's a pretty logical sequence. What happens if a person tries to skip one of those steps? I'm thinking in particular of the "remember" stage. I've met quite a few people who seem to have really bad memories. Important information goes right in one hear and out the other. And these are fairly young people I'm talking about, not elderly people with dementia!  

J: Those who can't remember their own history are doomed to repeat it.  

A: I remember a fellow we were corresponding with a few years ago about the spiritual journey. He was quite incensed because you and I had suggested that an understanding of science was important to spiritual growth and transformation. He wrote somewhat angrily, "Do I have to have a degree in physics?" And your reply was, "No, you have to have a degree in history." He probably thought you were being facetious. 

“Jesus said, ‘ I shall give you what no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, what no hand has touched, what has not arisen in the human heart'” (Gospel of Thomas 17). The mysterious gift Jesus is talking about here is Divine Forgiveness, a gift freely given by God to all people at all times without any restrictions or covenants placed upon the gift. Shown here is an example of an inuksuk, which reminds me of what forgiveness is actually like (simple, memorable, beautiful, accessible by all, able to be built by all). Inuksuit have long served to aid full remembrance in Canada’s Far North. They’re now found widely throughout Canada. This one sits among flowers and metal artwork at an Ontario public school. Photo credit JAT 2015.

J: I wasn't. I was speaking the honest truth. Memory -- history -- is crucial to the core self. Memory is a huge part of learning. By that I don't mean simple rote memory, such as your multiplication tables. I mean soul memory, which is a combination of several different forms of memory. It's emotional memory plus factual memory plus habit memory plus talent memory.  

A: That's a lot to keep track of at one time. Sounds like too much work. 

J: Soul memory evolves quite naturally when a child is raised in a mature, responsible, loving home. It becomes a natural way of remembering things. You don't consciously think about the different aspects of your memory. You just . . . live. You live with empathy and laughter and confidence. It's your soul memory that helps you do that.  

A: So you're linking empathy with memory.  

J: Yes. It's your memory skills that allow you to remember the names of your neighbour's children so you can ask how the family is doing. 

A: Ooooooh. I suddenly can think of a gajillion different ways that memory can help with empathy and relationships. Things like remembering your friend's favourite music or your mother's favourite flower. Or the anniversary of a loved one's death. Or remembering to pick up a carton of milk on the way home, as promised. Or remembering to say "I love you." And on and on and on.  

J: What's interesting about people with severe narcissism and psychopathy is the way they use memory. They use memory and history in bizarre, abusive ways. They often have excellent memories when it comes to the mistakes that other people have made (though they rarely admit to their own). They remember all the "crimes" that have been committed against them, and they keep detailed lists of rightful punishments that still need to be meted out.  

A: They hold grudges.  

J: With a capital "G." They live for the "high" of revenge. Inside their own heads, they'll return to the scene of another person's "crime" and relive the unfairness and unjustness of it all. Then they'll imagine the scene of their revenge. They'll gloat about it. They'll gloat about the glory of their future -- and rightful -- vengeance. There's no concern at all about collateral damage -- about the people and places that will be damaged when vengeance is pursued. The only thing that's important to a psychopath is the chance to "even the scales."  

A: Sounds like a Mel Gibson movie.  

J: Forgiveness, on the other hand, is not about buying back one's status or paying a debt or "balancing the scales of time" so the past can be forgotten. Forgiveness absolutely requires a memory of the harm that's being forgiven.  

A: You said above that forgiveness is a catalyst. How does this idea relate to what we've been discussing about memory and learning and empathy?  

J: In chemistry, a catalyst is a substance that's an essential ingredient in a chemical reaction without itself being changed and without itself being part of the final product or products.  

A: Inorganic chemists use elements such as palladium and rhodium as catalysts so they can synthesize complex molecules out of simpler ones.  

J: In chemistry, a catalyst works the way a crane works on a large building site. The crane is essential for transporting loads of basic materials to their proper location on the much larger building that's being constructed. But once the building is completed, the crane is removed from the site. It's no longer needed. It can be "recycled" -- used on another building site because it isn't part of the final product. Its role is essential but temporary. This is what forgiveness is like.  

A: Still not following you. Especially because you've said in the past that forgiveness is a permanent choice -- a permanent choice to wrap harmful choices within a layer of love.  

J: Forgiveness, like the construction crane, is a permanent "substance," if you will. But like a crane, it moves around. It isn't glued to one site or one event or one person. It goes in, does its transformative thing, then lets go. Forgiveness allows you to identify, remember, understand, and fix the past without actually having to live in the past. It frees you from the tyranny of rumination on the past. It doesn't ask you to forget. It asks you to transform. It asks you to take the pain and turn it into something new. Forgiveness isn't the final product of the transformative process, despite what some theologians have claimed. Forgiveness is the tool -- the catalyst -- that's needed so you can take painful experiences and painful choices and turn them into something brand new.  

A: The way orthodox Western Christian theologians often describe forgiveness makes it sound like the end goal, the final result of being saved by God. 

J: God the Mother and God the Father are always moving the crane of forgiveness. They're always actively and consciously choosing to forgive their human children for the suffering people create. Forgiveness is a present act -- always a present act, not a future one. Just as the Kingdom of the Heavens is supposed to be a present condition, not a future one. 

A: I've read so many books where teachers of spirituality insist that we "live in the moment." Is this what you're getting at? Letting go of the past and the future and focussing only on the present moment?  

J: No. Most definitely not. The phrase "living in the moment" all too often means "living in a state of dissociation." Living in a state of psychological dissociation from one's emotions, memories, and personal responsibilities. Obviously this doesn't help individuals or families or communities create peace. To create peace, you have to be willing to learn from the past. You have to be willing to identify the problems of the past, and then marshal all your courage and will power and love to get to the point where you can remember the pain without being overwhelmed and numbed by the pain. In other words, you have to learn from your mistakes.  

A: Learning from your own mistakes is very hard. Self forgiveness is very hard. 

 J: In the ancient Greek myth of Sisyphus, the man Sisyphus is condemned by the gods to spend all eternity rolling a large stone to the top of a hill, only to watch it roll back down again each day. This aptly describes what it feels like to live without forgiveness. Each day feels like an eternity of repetitive struggle, an endless cycle of guilt and pain you can't seem to escape from. Forgiveness, on the other hand, is the crane you bring in to build a series of small level shelves or steps on the side of the hill so you can gradually get the stone to the top of the hill and keep it there, where it will no longer torture you. With the boulder of the past safely stowed at the top of the hill, you can get on with the business of planting a nice garden at the base of the hill and inviting all your friends over to share in the beauty. The stone at the top is there to remind you of the mistakes you once made so you 're less likely to make them again. The stone isn't gone. But it's in a safer place.  

A: So in the Kingdom of the Heavens, the past isn't gone, but it's in a safer place. This allows you to bring more of your daily energy to the task of living as fully as possible today. 

J: You'd be amazed how much energy many people use each day by dwelling in the past, ruminating on past injuries, focussing on revenge, and not paying attention (literally) to the tasks and relationships of today. When I say "energy," I don't mean that metaphorically. I mean that people quite literally expend precious biological resources every day when they choose to focus on the past. They use up proteins and fats and carbs in their bodies. They force their brain cells to hang on to cell-to-cell connections that aren't productive. They refuse to let their brains empty the "recycle bin," and as a result, dangerous levels of old proteins and other biological materials can build up inside the brain. Causing medical syndromes such as various forms of dementia.  

A: So forgiveness isn't just a metaphysical aspiration: it's also a biological reality.  

J: As you'd expect it to be in the good Creation of a loving God.

JR55: Healing: The Easy Way and the Hard Way

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

J: It's who I am.

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

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

A: Say what?

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

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

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

A: This goes back to what you were saying a few days ago about Saying 22 in the Gospel of Thomas. (http://jesusredux.blogspot.com/2011/06/saying-22-in-gospel-of-thomas.html ) One thing I love about your teachings on wholeness -- on Whole Brain Thinking -- is the fairness of it. These teachings apply to all people in all places in all cultures. It's radically egalitarian. Everyone gets the same basic toolkit for building a garden of peace. But each person's garden will look different because each soul is different. I just love that part!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A: No.

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

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

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

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

A: You'll get a "light beating" (Luke 12:48).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

JR54: The Meaning of "the Son of Man"

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

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

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

J: No. Forgiveness.  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Jesus said: Adam came into being from enormous power and wealth, but he was never worthy of you, for had he been worthy of you he would not have died” (Gospel of Thomas 85). This saying doesn’t make much sense unless you stop to consider what Genesis 2-3 says about the allegorical relationship between humankind (Adam) and God. In the Garden of Eden, there are two trees that embody the deepest and most mystical elements of God, Creation, and faith: (1) the tree of life and (2) the tree of knowledge of good and evil. These two trees are supposed to be in balance, and while they are, Adam and Eve live a life of trusting relationship with God. At some point, however, Eve, followed quickly by Adam, decide they’re more interested in having knowledge than in having a trusting relationship with God. So they eat of the metaphorical fruit from the tree of knowledge and find themselves aligned with the many ancient philosopher kings who also chose knowledge over relationship with God. In Jesus’ teachings, choosing a life that places knowledge far above trust, love, and relationship with God is really no life at all. For Jesus, the mind is important, but not more important than the heart. So the metaphorical example of Adam and Eve — who lost the balance between mind and heart and as a result struggled for the rest of their lives with “death” instead of “life” — is not the example we should be following. Seek instead the path of peace that’s based on relationship with God. In the photo, Canada geese, like us, are always looking for a safe place to rest. Photo credit JAT 2015.

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

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

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

A: People being their best selves. On purpose.  

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

A: How so?  

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

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