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.

JR28: Paul's Easy Salvation

A: You've said that Paul's Temple teachings were very different from your own Kingdom teachings -- so much so that when your great-nephew "Mark" read what Paul had written in the letter called First Corinthians, he blew a gasket and started work on his own version of your teachings. Why was Mark so upset about Paul's Temple teachings?  

J: Mark knew that one of my basic teachings had been about the Jerusalem Temple and the stranglehold the Temple and its priests exerted on regular Jewish people. It was much the same equation as Martin Luther faced when he decided to go public with his rejection of Papal and Vatican corruption in the early 1500's. Luther didn't reject the idea of faith in God -- far from it. But he rejected a number of official claims made by the Church. He thought the Church was no longer representing the ideals of true Christian faith. So he protested. 

A: This was part of the beginning of the Protestant Reformation.  

J: Yes. But Luther was protesting from within the Church, not from outside it. He was an Augustinian monk and priest, highly educated and highly devout. He held a doctorate in theology. So he wasn't easily dissuaded from the idea -- once he saw it -- that the Church wasn't "practising what it preached." I had the same problem with the Jerusalem Temple and the priestly hierarchy in my time. Once I saw the problem, I wasn't easily dissuaded. Much to the chagrin of my aristocratic family. 

A: You've said your mother was descended from the priestly bloodline. That must have given your family a lot of status, a lot of authority. 

J: My family was somewhat on the fringes of the power and authority that priestly families were entitled to. This was partly due to the fact that my mother's line wasn't descended from the "first son of the first son." We were related to the "junior sons," so to speak -- pretty good as far as pedigrees go, but not "the best of the best." Another factor was our geographical location. I wasn't born and raised in Jerusalem -- one of the hotbeds of Jewish political intrigue. I was born and raised in the city of Philadelphia, on the other side of the River Jordan. It was a Hellenized city, but also quite Jewish in its cultural norms, so I was raised with a strange mix of values and religious teachings. That's what allowed me, when I reached adulthood, to be more objective about trends in Jewish thought -- by that I mean the blend of religious, political, cultural, and social ideas that were intertwined in people's hearts and minds. I was far enough away from the Temple -- physically and geographically -- to be sceptical about the grandiose claims being made by the Temple priests.  

A: In the Gospel of Mark, it's quite apparent what the author thinks of the Temple. Mark shows you visiting all sorts of Jewish and Gentile locations to teach and heal, but the one place you don't visit till the end is Jerusalem. Things start to go badly for you as soon as you get to David's city. This is a strange claim to make if you're trying to promote the idea that Jesus is the prophesied Saviour of the Jewish people.  

J: Well, my great-nephew did think I was an important teacher, a rabbi who could help the Jewish people become free from oppression, but his understanding of my role was not the traditional Jewish understanding of who -- or what -- the Messiah would be. Mark was a very spiritual fellow -- a free thinking Jewish scholar who made his own observations and his own decisions. He got a little carried away, I think, with the idea that I was an important teacher, but on the whole he embraced my ideas about the Kingdom and did his best to live them. 

A: Mark wrote his gospel before the Roman destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE. 

“Jesus said: Grapes are not harvested from thornbushes, nor are figs gathered from thistles, for they yield no fruit. A good person brings forth good from his treasury; a bad person brings forth evil things from his mind’s corrupt treasury, and he speaks evil things. For out of the excesses of his mind he brings forth evil things” (Gospel of Thomas 45 a-b). The photo shows a marble Mithraic relief, (restored), from Rome 100-200 CE on display at the Royal Ontario Museum. The Mithraic Mysteries, in so far as we know what they entailed, showed uncanny similarities to the teachings of Paul. The teachings of Jesus, meanwhile, explicitly rejected the occult practices and secret rituals of mystery cults. Photo credit JAT 2017.

J: Yes. And this is an important detail to bear in mind. Paul and Mark both wrote their comments about the Temple before the Temple was physically destroyed. This fact is important to bear in mind, especially when you're trying to understand what Mark is saying. Mark was seriously -- and I mean seriously -- pissed off about Paul's "moveable Temple." For Mark, as for me, the only way to free the Jewish people to know God and be in full relationship with God was for us to confront the harm and the hypocrisy of the Jewish Temple -- a huge, bloated, phenomenally expensive physical structure that had robbed people of their livelihood through high taxes and ongoing dues, payments, sacrifices, and obligatory pilgrimages. Herod the Great spent a fortune -- a literal fortune -- on his building projects. His children continued his habit of profligate spending on status symbols to impress the rest of the Roman Empire. Meanwhile, the widows and orphans and foreigners we were supposed to look after -- according to Exodus -- were going hungry and selling themselves into slavery because of their poverty. This was unacceptable to me and to many others. I certainly wasn't alone in being outraged at the unfairness, the hypocrisy, the status addiction, and the corruption. 

A: Chapter 13 of Mark has long puzzled Christian scholars. It's viewed by reputable scholars such as Bart Ehrman as a "little apocalypse" because it seems to prophesy the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. They use this chapter as part of their proof that you yourself claimed to be an apocalyptic prophet. How do you respond to that?  

J: Without wishing to be harsh, I'd say these biblical scholars need to refresh their memory on what the earlier Jewish prophetic books and Jewish apocalypses actually said about the role of the Temple in the prophesied End Times. It's clear that highly revered earlier writers such as First Isaiah and Second Isaiah and Zechariah believed the physical Temple on Mount Zion (i.e. Jerusalem) would be absolutely central to the ideal future restoration of Judah in the End Times. Yet Mark uses imagery from apocalyptic texts like Daniel to turn these predictions on their head. Mark 13 shouldn't be called the "little apocalypse": it should be called the "anti-apocalypse" because of the way it intentionally subverts and repudiates the prophecies of Zechariah. Mark may be attacking Paul's theology throughout his own gospel, but he uses well-known Hebrew prophecies to do it. Mark's own Jewish audience would have understood these references. They would have understood that Mark was openly attacking traditional Jewish teachings about the future End Times when God would one day return and "fix everything."  

A: Traditional teachings that Paul continued to endorse in his letters (1 Corinthians 15).  

J: Yes. Paul enthusiastically taught his followers about the coming End Times -- a traditional Jewish teaching in itself -- and on top of that he added a wonderful new theological guarantee. He promised people that if they gave themselves over fully to a belief in Christ, then God's Spirit would be able to live inside of them in the "Temple" (1 Corinthians 3:16-17; 6:19-20). Paul took the sacredness of the Jerusalem Temple and made it "moveable," an inner sanctuary of purity for the Spirit, just as the Essenes had already done in their Charter (1QS 3 and 1QS 8). He didn't try to undermine the importance and authority of the Jerusalem Temple. He actually added to it (as the Essenes had done) by elevating it to an inner mystical state that could only be known to true believers who followed Paul's teachings. This is a simplified version of Paul's Temple theology, but you get the picture. He's offering his followers the ultimate in "easy salvation." "You no longer have to go to the Temple; the Temple will come to you." 

A: And once you have the Temple, you can access all those spiritual goodies that Paul promises (1 Corinthians Chapters 2, 12, and 14).  

J: It's a theology that's very appealing to people who want all the benefits without doing the hard work.  

A: I've said it before and I'll say it again -- your teachings are much harder to stick to than Paul's are. It's impossible to follow your recommendations for connection with God without making spiritual commitment a regular part of everyday life. Once a week on Sundays -- or twice a year at Christmas and Easter -- won't do it. You ask a lot of regular people.  

J: Only because I have faith in you. Only because I have faith.