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.

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.

JR47: "Knowledge" Versus "Truth"

A: Tell me how you would explain the difference between "knowledge" and "truth." There seem to be a lot of different theories floating around. 

J: Here's one of the problems with relying too heavily on words. One person's "knowledge" is another person's "truth." One person's "knowledge" is another person's "wisdom." One person's "knowledge" is another person's "fact." Words can be very messy, very sloppy. It's important for individuals to be clear about their use of abstract words like these.  

A: Okay. How do you, as a soul-in-angel-form and speaker of the English language, use the word "knowledge"?  

J: I use the word "knowledge" to mean an accumulation of facts. Lots of raw facts. These facts may or may not be connected to each other. But there are lots of them. Lots of different facts that can be accessed from memory or from sources such as books or computers to answer specific questions of fact. 

A: Like the question and answer pairs on Jeopardy. 

J: Exactly. These question and answer pairs rely on logic and reason. But there's usually little emotional content. And there's no need for "insight" or "understanding" or "truth." The facts speak for themselves. Of course, as human Jeopardy contenders recently discovered, a honkin' big computer can access raw facts -- "knowledge" -- faster than most human brains can.

 

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear(respect) the Lord, and turn away from evil. It will be a healing for your flesh and a refreshment for your body" (Proverbs 3:5-8). If you really want to heal your relationship with God, try humbly accepting you probably have a lot of old beliefs that are messing up the way your brain works. Certain beliefs about God can "freeze up" your neural networks and prevent your brain from being able to process Divine guidance. Without easy access to your Divine guidance, you're limited to the ideas inside your own brain. And let's face it, some of those ideas are probably pretty stupid (like Young Earth Creationism). The Truth about you and God (a wonderful Truth!) is already deep within you, but first you have to melt the ice that's keeping you from feeling your Soul pathways. Photo credit JAT 2022.

J (Cont): Having said that, I want to make it clear that I'm not dissing the importance of "knowledge." It's important to be able to remember and access facts. Facts give information about things that are already known, already certain -- things that are "a done deal." Facts help ground the learning process. In fact, learning can't take place at all in the absence of facts. This is true even in fields such as philosophy and theology. The universe isn't reinventing itself every few seconds like some big relativistic, existential "symbol" in the sky (as some religious philosophers would have you believe). There are fixed facts, fixed historical realities that guide all choices made by God and God's angels. The universe has a history -- a factual history -- that can't be changed. The universe's past has a measurable effect on its present. The past matters. And the past is fact -- not fiction. The past can't be altered. Time is linear. Even for God.  

A: This will come as a great disappointment to fans of time travel stories. And to theologians who insist that All Time has been known to God since the very beginning. God's foreknowledge of all that will happen in the future is the basis of Christian "predestination" -- the doctrine that says God already knows ahead of time who will be saved in the End Times.  

J: Another example of old lies begetting new lies, as you put it. The first lie, of course, was the lie that souls desperately need to be saved from hell and judgment and damnation. But souls don't need to be saved. Why would God create billions of defective souls that need to be saved by . . . televangelists? Salvation-of-the-soul is a goofy idea from start to finish. 

A: But a very profitable one.

J: It's an interesting fact of neurophysiology that certain forms of serious psychological dysfunction in human beings are accompanied by damage to the parietal lobes of the brain -- parts of the brain which are crucial to a person's ability to relate to time and space. When the volume of the parietal lobes is reduced, and when the density of glial cells is diminished in the parietal-temporal regions, an individual will experience problems understanding boundaries (i.e. his or her location in space) and problems with empathy (i.e his or her location in both time and space -- also called boundary issues). These are the individuals who can't learn from their own mistakes, who can't empathize with other people's feelings, who constantly invade other people's "time and space."  

A: The narcissists. 

J: Yes. A narcissist is someone who's become inwardly focussed to the point of selfishness and self-absorption because he or she has no "brain health" in the areas of time and space -- no ability to accurately identify the factual boundaries that surround each soul. She literally can't see where she ends and another person begins. She can't see that she's a separate entity -- a separate consciousness -- from her neighbour. The boundaries between her and her neighbour exist and are real and are factual. But she can't see them. It's all blurry to her. The boundaries exist, but she behaves as if they don't exist. She behaves as if she and her neighbour "are all one," as if the neighbour is merely an extension of her own core consciousness. The neighbour, of course, is expected to "behave" -- to obey her needs and wishes without question and to reinforce her image of herself as a wonderful person. There's a perfect analogy for this mindset in the realm of science fiction: Star Trek's hive queen of the Borg.  

A: See, I knew there was good reason for me to be watching the Space Channel.  

J: The great thing about the way the Borg Queen character is written is her calm, serene, elevated disposition. She believes her own propaganda about making life better for all the individuals she incorporates into her collective. She goes around telling everyone "we're all one, we're all equal." But what she actually means is, "I'm the only one who really exists, and all you drones are merely inferior beings who were put here to serve me" . . . which brings us to the question of "truth." 

A: The way you've just described the Borg Queen reminds me -- none too pleasantly -- of the modern apocalyptic prophet I spent too much time with a few years ago: Grace. She was always speaking "the truth" that "we're all one, we're all equal." She had the same calm, serene detachment as the Borg Queen. It gave her such an air of believability -- even wisdom. She seemed to have let go of all her worries about the past. Very appealing to somebody like me who was dogged by feelings of guilt and shame.  

She seemed so believable -- until you challenged her. When you challenged Grace's superiority, her infallibility, it was like a switch went off in her brain. She switched instantly from calm, affable charm to vicious, vengeful violence. The smallest thing could set her off. I still remember the murderous look in her eye one day when I told her that she herself had caused an electrical short in a lighting fixture by twisting the fan/light combo while it was still attached on one side to the ceiling. I could see that she wanted to throw me down the stairs because I'd pointed out her obvious error. The mistake was entirely hers. But she didn't want to hear about it. She couldn't handle responsibility for her own mistakes.  

J: Good example -- though painful. Grace was a person with significant impairment of her biological brain function, as you know. She was able to process "knowledge" -- facts -- well enough to function in society. She could remember that gas needed to be put in the car, that food had to be bought and prepared. But as for "truth" . . . "truth" was beyond her capacity to grasp because of damage to her biological brain from early, unhealed, profound childhood abuse. Physical, emotional, sexual, and psychological abuse. As a result of the abuse, and the biological damage caused by it, Grace couldn't read "intent." She couldn't understand or be honest about her own inner intent. Her intent was to prove to other people that she was better than they were. That's the honest truth. The truth is that everything Grace did -- all her choices -- were shaped by her narcissistic intent. Her words about "oneness" and "equality" meant nothing because her actual intent said something different.  

A: So you're drawing a strong link between "intent" and "truth."  

J: Very much so. Facts by themselves are not "truth," though "truth" is not "truth" without a foundation of facts. Truth -- as I'm defining it -- is an observation or insight about the way in which seemingly random facts are linked together by underlying strands of intent. The intent is like the subfloor of the factual foundation. The facts lie on top of the intent. The truth builds on both the intent and the facts. For something to be "true" in a philosophical way, it must objectively assess both a collection of facts AND the underlying intent underneath those facts.

A: Are you saying that a person's "intent" and his/her "starting assumptions" are the same thing? 

J (shaking his head): No. A person's inner intent is more like his inner "purpose" or "goal." Your intent speaks to the principle of time -- where you were in the past, where you are now, and where you want to go. It's more like conscious motivation. It's the motivation that gets you out of bed in the morning and keeps you going, even when things aren't going well. 

A: So it's teleology? 

J: Again, no. Teleology implies there's a finite, definable end goal or a purpose shaped by the Law of Cause and Effect. "Intent" is not as simple as teleological purpose. "Intent" goes to the very heart of consciousness -- what it means to exist as a living consciousness who is separate from (though connected to) other living consciousnesses. Intent can be thought of as a cohesive set of interconnected choices -- a series of small choices that, when put together, create one big "meta-choice." That "meta-choice" is your intent. At a quantum level, "meta-choices" shape the way in which certain energies can and will flow.  

A: Can you give us an analogy for that?  

J: Sure. I'll use an analogy I've used before -- the sower of seeds. 

A: I think I see where this is headed . . .  

J: In the parable of the sower [Thomas 9; Mark 4], the person -- the soul -- is the sower of seeds. The seeds represent the person's potential, the person's ability to learn, grow, change, and create. But the sower doesn't create out of thin air. He must plant the seeds -- the seeds of potential -- in the right place if he wants them to grow. His decision on where to sow the seeds is his intent -- his "meta-choice." The meta-choice is what determines which seeds can and will grow. The seeds don't grow equally well in all intents. Where seeds fall on a "ground" or "subfloor" of rock, they fail to root and they produce no harvest. Where seeds fall on patches of thorny weeds, they don't grow and they're eaten by grubs and caterpillars. There's nothing wrong with the seeds themselves. The problem lies in the choice of where to plant them. The problem lies with the intent. 

A: So a narcissist's true intent is like the choice to sow seeds on rocky ground or in thorny patches.  

J: Or in a bed of fire, as the church likes to recommend.

Seeds don’t grow easily on this rocky ground. “Jesus said: Look, there was a man who came out to sow seed. He filled his hand with seed and threw it about. Some fell onto the road, and birds ate it. Some fell onto rocks and could not root and produced no grain. Some fell into patches of thorny weeds that kept it from growing, and grubs ate it. Some seed fell upon good soil and grew and produced good grain. It was 60 units per measure and 120 units per measure (Gospel of Thomas 9).” Photo credit JAT 2023.