JR45: Lien or No Lien on Your Soul?

A: Last week, I bought a 2007 Pontiac to replace my 1998 Nissan, which was close to death. The Carproof report found a lien against the Pontiac -- a financing lien held by Chrysler. At first I wasn't worried. I figured the paperwork for the clearance of the lien hadn't yet made it into the computer system at the proper government ministry. But being a thorough person, I decided to phone the ministry yesterday morning to make sure the lien had been cleared. Imagine my surprise when I discovered the lien was still attached to my car! I quickly got the problem straightened out with the dealer I bought the car from. But in the meantime I had a chance to reflect on my feelings about the lien. In Ontario, as in many other jurisdictions, a person who unwittingly buys a car or house that has a lien against it can lose the property they bought. It can be legally seized by the lien holder if the debt hasn't been paid by the original debtor. The car you think you own outright can be towed away in the blink of an eye by the original lender. It's a scary thought. 

“His disciples said to him: When will the resurrection of the dead take place and when will the new world come? He said to them: What you look for has come, but you do not know it” (Gospel of Thomas 51). In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus talks often about “life” and “beginnings,” yet his sayings involving “death” are not what we typically find in eschatological or apocalyptic teachings. Rather, the sayings about “life” and “death” in Thomas seem closely related to parts of the first century CE text known as The Didache, in which “the way of life” and “the way of death” are used as metaphors for how to live a moral life in full relationship with God. In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus spends quite a bit of time and energy trying to persuade the disciples to let go of the eschatological doctrines held by the Pharisees and the Essenes at that time.  Photo of my red car. Photo credit JAT 2015.

Anyway, I was thinking about my feelings around the lien on my car. I was noticing how upset I was at the thought that somebody could -- theoretically -- swoop down on my little Pontiac and take it away with no say on my part. I was thinking how I'd paid for the car in full, how I could lose all the money I'd invested (unless I were inclined to sue, which would cost me even more money). I was thinking how unfair it would be for such a thing to happen. I'd bought the car in good faith. Why should I be punished for somebody else's mistake? Or somebody else's willful fraud?

So I'm standing in the bathroom and I'm drying my hair so I can get ready for work and it suddenly dawns on me that the feelings I'm expressing to myself about the lien on the car are the same feelings I have about orthodox Western Christianity's teachings on the soul. The Church teaches us there's a lien on our souls!

J (grinning): Yes. Not a nice feeling, is it?

A: No! It totally sucks. I never noticed till yesterday how deeply, deeply unfair the church's claims are. I knew their claims about the soul were based on the writings of Paul, Tertullian, Augustine, and so on. I knew their claims were self-serving. I knew their claims were just plain wrong in light of God's loving and forgiving nature. But I never felt the unfairness of it before at such a deep level -- at a gut level, a visceral level. It's just wrong to tell people their soul can be taken away from them by lien-holders. It's so . . . so . . . unfair. And cruel. It's cruel to tell people they have to invest themselves wholly in their faith while at any time the great big tow truck in the sky could show up to haul them or their loved ones away to the fiery pits of hell. Not to pay their own debts, but to pay somebody else's debts! Namely Adam and Eve's debts!

J: Ah, the wages of sin.

A: Very funny. This God-and-Devil-as-lien-holders thing means that devout Christians are always looking over their shoulder, waiting for the cosmic tow truck they can't do anything about. It makes people feel helpless. It makes them feel like slaves-in-waiting. Their soul isn't their own. Their time isn't their own. Their life and their choices and their free will aren't really their own. They're always on tenterhooks because they think they don't fully own their own soul. This is abusive.

J: That's why it works. From the perspective of certain members of the church hierarchy -- stretching all the way back to the time of Paul and his backers -- it's an excellent strategy for gaining control of the populace. People who feel helpless and hopeless tend to cause less trouble. They ask fewer questions. They tend to do what they're told because they're frightened. Frightened people turn to strong leaders -- in this case, church leaders. The Church is using a psychological control strategy that other groups in other cultures have used to similar effect. Paul's teachings have been particularly successful in this regard. 

The teachings of myself and other like-minded spiritual teachers are useless for this kind of psychological strategy. Totally useless. You can't frighten people into submission if you're actually giving them real hope. Real hope doesn't come from words. Real hope comes from actions -- from people's ongoing choices to help their neighbours. Real hope comes from healing and relationship and dignity and change. If the early church had wanted to teach real hope, it wouldn't have chosen the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed and the Chalcedon Creed as its operative statements of faith.

A: Ah. You mean they might have mentioned the themes of divine love, forgiveness, healing, redemption (as opposed to salvation), and egalitarianism?

J: If the bishops in the first few centuries of Christianity had spent one tenth the time on compassion that they spent on their endless arguments over the "substance" of the Trinity, medieval Europe would have been a much nicer place to live in.

JR38: The Peace Sequence

The Peace Sequence: First Education, Second Mentorship, Third Personal Responsibility, and finally Peace. Like shovelling after a heavy snowfall, it’s hard work and you can only take it one shovelful at a time. But in the end, the pathway is cleared, and you can move forward. Photo credit JAT 2015.

A: Back in August 2005, before I'd set foot in graduate school, or even considered doing so, you wrote a piece about "the peace sequence." At the time, you flagged what John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan Reed had written at the beginning of their book In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2004). Crossan and Reed wrote this:

"Paul's essential challenge is how to embody communally that radical vision of a new creation in a way far beyond even our present best hopes for freedom, democracy, and human rights. The Roman Empire was based on the common principle of peace through victory or, more fully, on a faith in the sequence of piety, war, victory, and peace. Paul was a Jewish visionary following in Jesus' footsteps, and they both claimed that the Kingdom of God was already present and operative in this world. He opposed the mantras of Roman normalcy with a vision of peace through justice or, more fully, with a faith in the sequence of covenant, nonviolence, justice, and peace. A subtext of In Search of Paul is, therefore: To what extent can America be Christian? (page xi)"

I can still remember your reaction when I read this paragraph back in 2005. At the top of the page, I wrote down your response: "Jesus: peace through personal responsibility in the sequence of education, mentorship, personal responsibility, then peace." It's taken me years of research and ongoing discussion with you to more fully understand what you meant that day.

J: As I said then, I don't disagree with Crossan and Reed's formulation of Paul's peace sequence. Paul did, in fact, teach his followers to reject the Roman ideal of peace through victory -- the Pax Romana -- and to choose peace through divine justice or justification. But this isn't what I taught. So they're wrong to state that Paul was following in my footsteps. Paul wasn't following me or my teachings. If anything, he was going along with a straw broom trying to erase all evidence of my footsteps.

A: Last week on the Vision Channel, I watched an episode of The Naked Archaeologist where Simcha Jacobovcivi looked at the idea that Paul was actually an agent of the Romans. Biblical scholar Robert Eisenman has been saying this for years -- and in fact Eisenman was interviewed by Simcha on last week's episode. If Paul actually was an agent of the Romans, why would he have taught his followers to reject the Roman version of the peace sequence and accept his own Christ-based peace sequence? It doesn't make any sense.

J: It doesn't make sense if you view Paul as being an agent of the emperor in Rome. However, it makes a ton of sense of you view Paul as being an agent of other powerful Roman figures -- members of the Roman elite who wanted to seize power for themselves. It would have been in their best interests to set up a religion to compete head-on with the Roman Emperor Cult.

A: Oh. Why haven't I read that anywhere else?

J: Because it sounds like a low-down, dirty rotten, scandalous political ploy. A cold, calculating, ruthless attempt by one party to seize power from another party. With Paul as the chief spin doctor for the down-and-out party. Who wants to say that out loud?

A: Maybe the producers and writers of the Rome TV series? That series certainly pulled back the curtain on the behaviour of the Roman aristocracy -- the things they did to try to get power.

J: The truth about Paul isn't pretty. He was no saint. On the other hand, he believed in what he was doing. He believed he was doing the right thing. He felt totally justified in trying to convert the Diaspora Jews and the Gentile God-Fearers to "the cause."

A: And what cause was that?

J: Deposing the evil, corrupt Julio-Claudian dynasty and restoring the One True Religion and the One True Emperor.

A: You've got to be kidding.

J: Nope. I'm not kidding. There was a huge group of disaffected Romans still living in Alexandria, Egypt, and they believed that their divine right to rule over all lands had been usurped from them by the upstart Julius Caesar and his family. They were convinced that Alexandria, not Rome, was meant to be the centre of the world, and that one of their own bloodline was destined to be Emperor. When Augustus manoeuvred to have Rome declared a Principate -- until then it was officially a Republic -- the Alexandrians went beserk. The situation was not improved by the institution of the Emperor Cult -- meaning worship of the man who sat on the throne in Rome. The Alexandrians believed this was sacrilege. Furthermore, the Emperor Cult was undermining the Alexandrians' ongoing efforts to gain popular support for a shift in power from the West to the East. They knew they needed a strong religious structure in place before they could gain that popular support.

A: So they needed a new religion -- one tailored to their needs.

J: Some of the greatest religio-political thinkers that ever lived found their way to Alexandria.

A: Because the Great Library was there?

J: In part. But powerful mystery cults had their roots there, too. The importance of mystery cults in the history of ancient politics can't be overstated. Official rulers couldn't rule without the support of the local religious priests -- a reality that still exists in many parts of the world today.

A: So Paul's Christ-Saviour religion was invented as a way to secure a widespread religious power base for the Alexandrian group. By the way, did this group have a name?

J: Not one you'd recognize today. For the purposes of our discussion, we'll call them Seekers of the Rock. There's a reason for this name -- a reason based on their occult beliefs.

A: Okay. Seekers of the Rock. Why did this group conscript Paul to do its work?

J: Paul was an angry man -- a man looking for a way to undermine my teachings. You could say that Paul and the Seekers had many interests in common. Paul had no love of the Emperor Cult, and he had no love of me. The Seekers of the Rock offered him a deal he couldn't refuse. Over a number of years he developed a religious formula he thought would work in the new religious climate of the Empire. Then he went on the road to preach it and gauge the response. He had to fine-tune it as he went along. This is why you see changes in his theological claims over the course of his "ministry."

A: Well, whatever he did, it turned out to be spectacularly successful.

J: He didn't do it by himself. The Seekers were powerful and wealthy, and they did everything they could to back him up. They footed the bill for his "Amazing Race" around the Eastern Mediterranean, kept him in hiding when the Romans were getting too close, arranged to have his scrolls copied and distributed. It was very much a team effort.

A: Sounds a lot like the federal election we just had here in Canada.

J: It's a good analogy. Except they weren't trying to win an election -- they were trying to establish a theocracy with their own man as divinely-appointed emperor.

A: Who was "their man"? Was it Paul himself?

J: No. Paul's job was to lay the theological groundwork for the coming "return of the king." The original plan was to build on Jewish apocalyptic and prophetic texts so people would be expecting the imminent return of the Saviour. The Saviour was given a new and distinctive name -- Jesus Christ, Jesus the Anointed One. Once enough people were "on board" with the idea of the return of the Saviour, and once the necessary political and military and economic measures were in place, the idea was to "reveal" the newly returned divine Saviour. They planned to secretly train a prince from their own bloodline and present him publicly as Jesus-Christ-returned-in-the-flesh when the time was right. They would claim he was the divine son of God and therefore the rightful claimant to the religious and political power of Rome.  This is why they needed a religious power base in Rome. The Seekers believed that pious Christians would roll out the welcome mat for the man they claimed was the Messiah. All they needed was enough time, patience, and money to bring their plan to fruition.

A: Obviously it didn't work out the way they planned. What happened?

J: God made sure that an obscure scholar in Judea got his hands on Paul's key doctrinal statement: the letter now called First Corinthians.

A: Your great-nephew. The man we know as Mark.

J: Mark saw right away what they were doing. And he answered it word for word with his own non-covenantal, non-pious testament to the power of education, mentorship, and personal responsibility in achieving peace and relationship with God.

A: I love a good conspiracy theory!

JR29: Eucharist: The Temple Sacrifice

A: One thing I've noticed over and over in my studies is the idyllic portrait that's been painted of the apostle Paul. "Paul was such a good man." "Paul was such a brave missionary." "Paul teaches us how to be imitators of Christ." "Paul was a selfless servant of God." "Paul was a man I can relate to." "Jesus is my saviour, but Paul is my hero. I want to be like Paul when I grow up." I wonder sometimes if the Christians who are saying these things have ever read what Paul's letters actually say. Paul's own letters -- Romans, First & Second Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, First Thessalonians, Philemon, and probably Colossians -- reveal clearly that Paul was every bit as interested in "pagan" occult magic and mysticism as the "pagans" were at this time. This wasn't a "modern" or "progressive" religious movement at all.

“His disciples said to him: Show us the place you are, for it is essential for us to seek it. He responded: He who has ears, let him hear. There is light within a man of light, and it lights up all the world. If it does not shine, it is dark” (Gospel of Thomas 24). This saying can be understood as a central thesis statement in guiding your understanding of Jesus’ original teachings. Among those who believe in dualistic traditions about light versus dark that include good versus evil, purity versus sin, and mind versus body, a quick glance at Thomas 24 suggests that Jesus is talking about the light of divine knowledge and salvation. But only those who haven’t been paying attention to Jesus’ teachings on love, forgiveness, and healing could conclude that, for Jesus, the inner light sought by the disciples is gnosis (occult understanding, illumination, pure wisdom). For Jesus, the highest state of human experience was not gnosis but Divine Love — how to feel it, how to share it, how to be healed by it. You can choose to accept a life of relationship with God, in which case you’ll begin to live a life of wholeness, expansiveness, empathy, and healing -- entering the Kingdom that can’t be “seen” but can be “heard,” or, more properly, emotionally sensed. Or you can choose to block God’s love and forgiveness in your life by allowing ancient occult rituals and beliefs to get in the way of your daily relationship with God -- that is, choosing Paul’s movable Temple with its occult feast of body and blood). The photo shows a marble head and torso of Dionysos, God of Wine, Roman copy after a Praxitelean work of the 4th century BCE, on display at the Royal Ontario Museum. Photo credit JAT 2017.

J: In the first century of the Roman Empire, the idea of gods and goddesses and cult rituals and visions and prophecies and sacrifices and divine fools and chosen oracles and sacred pools and sacred temples and sacred stones and sacred forests was -- by far -- the dominant understanding of humanity's relationship with the divine. This way of thinking has become foreign to the modern mind. But it was the context in which I was teaching. It was also the context in which Paul was teaching. In my time as a teacher and healer, I was not only trying to undermine the authority of the Jerusalem Temple -- I was also trying to lessen the authority of occult magic in people's minds. I was trying to say that visions and prophecies and sacrifices get in the way of people's relationship with God. I wanted to make the experience of faith consistent with the experience of the human senses and the natural world. Some would call it a form of natural theology.  

A: If this is what you were trying to do, it doesn't come across well in the New Testament. 

J: No. It can only be seen clearly in the Gospel of Mark. There's also an indication of it in the Gospel of Thomas and in the parts of the Letter of James I myself wrote. The Kingdom parables that Matthew and Luke cut and pasted from earlier written sources also give an indication of my lack of support for ritual, magic, prophecy, and the like. The images I used in my teaching parables were all very practical, very normal. You won't find any mystical flying chariots in my teachings.  

A: Or any trips to the third heaven (2 Corinthians 12:2). On the other hand, there are lots of references to healing miracles in Mark, and many people today would want to lump healing stories into the same category as other first century superstitions. 

J: Well, the honest truth is that healing miracles do take place, and always have, because healing miracles aren't a form of magic. They're a form of science. Healing miracles, when they take place, are the result of conscious choices made by God or by God's healing angels. At a scientific level, God is collapsing probability wave functions and shifting quantum energies by means of non-locality (quantum entanglement) to effect changes at the macroscopic level. In other words, if God decides to give you a "miracle healing" -- and only God is in charge of this decision -- then God uses perfectly acceptable scientific tools to bring about the healing. This is just a more sophisticated form of what today's medical researchers are doing with targeted therapies and surgeries performed with computer-aided magnification. Really, it's just goofy to claim that healing miracles aren't scientifically possible. Just because the human mind can't grasp the scientific principles God uses doesn't mean those principles don't exist. Modern science gives people more grounds for believing in healing miracles, not fewer.  

A: What does a human being have to "do" in order to receive one of these healing miracles? What sort of religious observance will lead to a healing miracle? 

J: What I was trying to get at 2,000 years ago was the idea that occult magic gets in the way of the relationship between each person and God. It's the relationship that's central to the healing process. It's the choices that people make around their relationships -- all their relationships, not just their relationship with God -- that affect the functioning of the body's built-in healing abilities. Human DNA comes with some pretty amazing built-in "healing subroutines." If those subroutines are functioning properly, the body can bounce back quite quickly from all sorts of injuries and illnesses. I'm not saying there won't be scars, and I'm not saying there won't be psychological and emotional adjustments. Human beings can't escape occasional illness or eventual death. (Though to listen to Paul, you might think you can.) On the other hand, you can make the most of your DNA package. You can make the most of your human biology. You can work with God rather than against God towards a state of healing.  

A: I continue to be amazed that Paul's silence on the question of healing and healing miracles doesn't bother today's orthodox Christians.  

J: The author of Luke-Acts did a brilliant job of making it seem that Paul's spiritual concerns were the same as my spiritual concerns. Acts makes it seem that Paul cared about healing the disadvantaged in society. Paul's own words say otherwise. 

A: In 1 Corinthians 11:23-30, we see Paul instituting the Eucharist. In his own words, Paul says he received a revelation from the Lord in which you supposedly commanded your faithful followers to eat bread in remembrance of you and to drink the cup which is "the new covenant in [his] blood." How do your respond to that?  

J: The same way I respond to all Temple sacrifices: they gotta go.  

A: You're implying that Paul's Eucharist is a Temple sacrifice? 

J: I'm saying it right out loud. I'm saying that Rabbiniic Judaism freed itself from the horror of Temple sacrifices more than 1,900 years ago, and now it's time for Christianity to follow suit. Paul's mystical Eucharist is nothing more than an extension of Paul's Temple theology. First he tells people that if they have blind faith in Christ, the Temple will come to them. Then he institutes a classic Temple sacrifice -- in this case the sacred Messianic bread and wine of the Essenes (1QS 6 and 1QSa). This would have made perfect sense to a first century audience steeped in occult magic -- you go to a Temple to offer a sacrifice. Logically, however, you can't take an external sacrifice to the Temple of the Spirit if the Temple is already inside of you. So to keep the Temple clean and make it habitable for the Spirit (so that the Spirit can come in and bring you lots of special spiritual goodies) you have to ingest the sacrifice. You have to drink holy blood and eat holy flesh because nothing else in the corrupt material world is powerful enough to purify your inner Temple.  

A: But this inner Temple isn't really "you." It's something that originated outside of you -- something that God gives and God can take away. It's like a surgical implant, a pacemaker or a stent or a pin in a broken hip. Right?  

J: Exactly. It's a Gnostic idea. An occult idea. Paul's Eucharist is a pagan ritual. A cult ritual. A vampiric ritual. It has nothing to with "remembrance" and everything to do with occult power over evil forces. The very idea of drinking blood would have offended and horrified mainstream Jews, including me and my followers. Even John the Baptist doesn't speak of the Eucharist in his gospel. Paul's Eucharist crossed a big line. 

 A: And I suppose Mark confronted this very issue in his gospel? 

J: Oh yes. Most definitely. 

 A: Good. Then I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts on that topic.

JR8: Mystical Bloodlines, Mystical Castes

J: I'd like to start out today's discussion by emphasizing a very important point. I want to emphasize that it's wrong to make sweeping generalizations about any particular religion or religious tradition. Just as it's wrong to "hate" somebody on their basis of their religion, it's just as wrong to "love" somebody on the basis of their religion. Religious beliefs form a framework for people, a place to start on the journey of faith. But in the end, the only thing that matters as far as God is concerned is what choices you make as an individual. No religion has all the answers. No religion is even asking all the right questions. So when I come out swinging against a revered figure from the past such as John the Baptist, I'm not trying to attack huge groups of people. I have specific complaints about the choices made 2,000 years ago by John the Baptist while he was incarnated as a human being. I also have specific complaints about specific choices made by a number of individuals who were close to John at the time. However . . . and this is a big however . . . the choices made by John the Baptist 2,000 years ago have nothing to do with the choices open to individual people today. There is no "loss of honour" for readers today because of choices that were made by somebody else centuries ago. No real "loss of honour," anyway. If individuals today believe I'm undermining their own personal sense of honour by exposing the reality -- the harsh and painful truth -- about ancient religious teachings, then they've got bigger problems than they realize. 

“Jesus said: There was a rich man who had a great deal of money. He said, ‘I shall invest my money so that I may sow, reap, plant, and fill my storehouses with produce, that I may lack nothing.’ These were the things he was thinking in his head, but that very night he died. Whoever has ears should hear” (Gospel of Thomas 63). Even psychopaths have a personal code of morality — a set of internal laws to live by — despite their lack of conscience. Competitiveness, dominance, perfectionism, obsessiveness, chosenness, and eradication of weakness are among the key markers of moral success for a psychopath. Needless to say, a psychopath has no use for traits such as love, tolerance, forgiveness, ambiguity, or individuation, despite what he or she may say out loud. Shown here is the entrance to the Chapel of John the Baptist, Westminster Abbey, England. Notice all the sharp, spiky, metal forks on the door -- all the better to stab your heart as you try to open the door to relationship with God. Photo credit JAT 2023.

A: Yes, but a lot of people still believe very deeply in ancient ideas such as the mystical power of bloodline. For these individuals, there's such a thing as honour in the blood. Honour carried from generation to generation through the bloodline. Power carred from generation to generation. Divine rights carried from generation to generation. It's one of the underpinnings of their modern day lives. So they'll take enormous offense at what you're saying. Gargantuan offense. 

J: I'm sorry to have to say this, but a conviction in the innate mystical power of bloodlines is a fantasy superstition that belongs only in novels and films. God does not favour any one clan or family group over another. It should be clear to everyone by now what happens in the wider world when particular clans, tribes, or nations give themselves the label of "Chosen by God." Nothing good comes of it. Nothing.  

A: Yet it's a myth-dream that's found in most cultures and most places in the world. Not to mention most major world religions. Why is this myth-dream so universal?  

J: It goes again to the issue we've been discussing -- major mental illness.  

A: Ooooh. I can hear the gasps already.  

J: Well, I won't apologize for saying what needs to be said. Individuals will have to deal with it. It's the reality. It's time the blunt reality was brought into the open. Other forms of violence and abuse have been brought forward, brought into the open in recent decades. It's painful and awkward at first, but it's only when people openly discuss their suffering that change begins.  

A: As you've said many times to me, healing follows insight. Healing follows self-honesty and public transparency.  

J: Abusers will keep their secrets for as long as they can. They won't volunteer to tell people their dark secrets. Even when they're caught, they typically deny they did anything wrong. Other people have to step forward, point the light of truth at the abusers, collect evidence of their wrongdoing, and demonstrate their guilt through a public, transparent, non-corrupt legal system. It's the only way to change a society's perception of what's moral and what's immoral.   

A: Can you give some examples?  

J: Sure. Not so long ago, it was considered acceptable by many North Americans to treat women as inferior "possessions" of men. It was considered acceptable to turn a blind eye to incest and child sexual abuse and child pornography. It was considered acceptable to dump vast quantities of highly toxic pollutants into the water, air, and earth.  

A: These things are still going on.  

J: Yes. But these choices are no longer considered acceptable by the majority of North Americans. There's been a cultural shift. The harmful actions of the abusers -- the narcissists and psychopaths -- are no longer being condoned by wider public opinion. There are legal and social implications for the abusers now. The legal and social implications didn't use to exist. They only exist today because a lot of decent people got on board with the idea that these particular choices -- the choice to abuse women, the choice to abuse children, the choice to abuse the environment -- are wrong. Immoral. Not acceptable in a compassionate community.  

A: It's a work in progress.  

J: Yes. It's astounding and beautiful and amazing because it shows the truth. It shows that if you boldly and honestly expose the reality of abuse, a lot of people will recognize the wrongness of the abusers' choices. They'll feel it deep in their bones. 

A: Deep in their souls.  

J: The soul is consciousness with a conscience. The soul knows the difference between right and wrong, between moral choices and immoral choices. The soul is not stupid. Everybody has a soul, and everybody comes "prewired," so to speak, with a "right and wrong" package in their DNA. It's why mentally mature, emotionally mature people instinctively recoil from certain actions, certain choices. They just feel in their gut that it's wrong.  

A: Except for the people with psychopathy. The psychopaths have lost access to the "right and wrong" package. They know it exists, because they can see it operating in the world around them, but they don't care. They don't recoil from horror and abuse the way other people do. Brain scans confirm that certain parts of their brains are underactive, other parts are overactive.  

J: As I said, it's a major mental illness.  

A: One that isn't in the DSM-IV, the bible of psychiatry.  

J: Psychopathy is a touchy, touchy topic. It should come as no surprise that a lot of "successful" people in politics, business, religion, and entertainment have little regard for the nuances of "right and wrong."  

A: That's a polite way of saying that many successful people are psychopaths.

J: Again, no surprise. But these people have tremendous power, tremendous resources. It's risky to piss off a psychopath. They think nothing of getting revenge. In fact, revenge is a favourite pastime. Even worse, psychopaths lose their ability to feel empathy for others, but at the same time, they show an eerily heightened grip on logic and a creepy ability to spot other people's vulnerabilities. It's scary how manipulative they can be in a purely cold, hard, logical way. 

A: Almost as if they're compensating for the loss of empathy and emotion by putting extra biological resources into their logic circuitry. 

J: That's exactly what psychopathy is. They're trying to find a way to cope with life. They're trying to find a workable system. They have no capacity for love, forgiveness, or trust. They're so empty inside that they're always looking for ways to fill the void. It's a literal void, not just a metaphorical void. They can't access certain functions of their brains. They can't access the emotional circuitry they were born with. So they actually do feel empty, as if something's constantly missing. They're so narcissistic, however, that they believe everybody else on the planet feels as empty as they do. They think other people are faking it when they talk about love, redemption, forgiveness, and trust. In the world of the psychopath, love -- mature, respectful love -- is pure fantasy. It can't be real. A psychopath feels nothing but contempt for the ideals of love, redemption, forgiveness, and trust.  

A: A contempt that's notably present in the orthodox doctrines of the Western Christian church. 

J: True. But Christianity isn't the only faith tradition that's riddled with contempt for these compassionate ideals. I was dealing with the same contempt 2,000 years ago in Palestine. Lots of people were. Women, children, slaves, foreigners -- all these people had to deal with the fallout of a religious tradition that had steadily erased all the empathy from the earlier spiritual traditions --  

A: Like the Covenant Code in Exodus.  

J: Like the all too brief Covenant Code. Bit by bit they replaced the Covenant Code's early focus on human dignity with mystical authority for a few select men and their families. What scholars today call Second Temple Judaism bears so little resemblance to the Rabbinic Judaism practised today that I hesitate to even call the ancient religion "Judaism." It was a bizarre caste system, really. It placed incalculable power in the hands of the High Priests and the Levites, who happily abused the "lesser tribes" of Israel -- the lower Jewish castes. Meanwhile, the priests derived all their power, authority, and wealth from the "sacred books" they themselves wrote. A bit of a conflict of interest, don't you think?  

A: Yeah. I notice that after a while they decreed there could be no more prophecy. No more troublesome prophets standing up on soapboxes and speaking the truth.  

J: The priests were always willing to endorse new prophetic voices off the record as long as those new voices reinforced the idea among the general population that Jews were the chosen people and Jerusalem's priests were "the best of the best."  

A: Hence they could tolerate the Essenes, who required obedience to the caste system, but they couldn't tolerate you, because you rejected the caste system in its entirety. And said so publicly.  

J: The idea that Jews had allowed themselves to become enslaved to the priests may have entered my teachings more than once. 

A: Yeah, I'll bet.

JR7: John the Baptist and Jesus

A: Tell me more about John. Why do you say that John the Baptist and John the Evangelist are one and the same person? Is there any proof for that in the Bible?  

Theologians and biblical researchers have tended to overlook the significance of this passage from Mark 3: 13 – 19, in which Jesus names the twelve apostles: “. . .James son of Zebedee and John the brother of James (to whom he gave the name Boanerges, that is, Sons of Thunder)”. The Gospel writer Mark isn’t telling his audience that James and John were powerful preachers (as Christian writers would like to believe); Mark is telling his audience that James and John were claiming for themselves a powerful pedigree. Among the Dead Sea Scrolls, in the charter for the Yahad is a reference to two prophesied Messiahs — a priestly Messiah and a Messiah of Israel (a royal commander for the armies) — who will serve together in the Last Days at the Messianic Banquet. Once it’s clear that the Yahad was waiting for a pair of Messiahs rather than a single Messiah, the reference in Mark to the Sons of Thunder takes on much greater significance. Mark is saying that James and John were claiming divine heritage, just like the long parade of gentile heroes who insisted they were the sons of Zeus, Jupiter, and other Thunder Gods. (And I don’t think Mark thought much of this particular claim.) Shown here is the mosaic above the entrance to the Chapel of St. John and the Grotto of the Revelation on the island of Patmos. Photo credit JAT 2001.

J: You have to know what to look for. Mark's account of John's beheading is much more than it seems. But Mark is like that throughout his gospel. You really have to know your sources -- important early texts -- to understand Mark. Mark was highly intelligent and very well read. He riffed off well known symbolism and motifs to tell his tale of intrigue. And intrigue it was.  

A: The Gospel of John mentions John the Baptist's early ministry several times, but then he sort of fades out of the picture. The Fourth Gospel doesn't say what happened to the Baptist.  

J: That's because John the Baptist was still alive and still teaching long after I died. A: Tell me about him as a person.  

J: How much time do you have?  

A: The Gospel of John is considered by many Christians to be the clearest expression, the clearest depiction, of the ministry and divinity of Jesus. Theologians love John's "high Christology." Many people feel that when they're listening to the voice of John, they're listening to divine truth. The prologue -- John 1:1-18 -- is poetic, elegant, mystical. It helps people feel they're getting closer to God.  

J: John was a gifted communicator, a skilled rhetorician and poet. If he hadn't been, I wouldn't have been drawn into his movement in the beginning. He was truly charismatic when he spoke. His writings definitely reflect that. Even his last writing -- the book of Revelation. Even when he was profoundly psychotic, as he was in the later years of his life, the poetry and metre of the texts he'd read again and again in his childhood infused all his thinking. In a way you could say that the poetry and metre of those early texts -- the logos -- acted for him to lessen the pain, fear, and confusion that comes with psychosis. The logos was a soothing mantra. Olanzapine in word form, you might say.  

A: Olanzapine being a highly effective atypical anti-psychotic medication.  

J: Yes. Before the advent in recent years of tailored psychiatric medications, those who were suffering from major mental illness -- including the flattened affect and hallucinations that accompany schizophrenia and related forms of psychotic illness -- suffered more than most people can imagine. The suffering is internal but intense. Sometimes it feels to them as if their head is on fire. Or that ants are crawling everywhere inside them. It's a horrible feeling. They have to find relief wherever they can. The majority turn to addictive substances -- substances that trigger the dopamine circuitry in the brain, the pleasure circuitry. Others turn to religion. It's sad to say, but extreme religiosity -- rigid piety, fideism, blind faith, obsessive observance of ritual -- all these careful, minutely observed rituals can bring relief to a suffering individual, depending on what parts of their brain have been ravaged by the effects of the disease process.  

A: When I was working in the mental health field, I saw firsthand that one of the hallmarks of psychotic illness is paranoia. A fear that people are out to "get them." When they're floridly psychotic they're often afraid of their own family members and medical caregivers. They're sure they're being watched, spied on. They're afraid somebody will put poison in their medications. They think they're perfectly sane and everybody else is sick. They have no objective understanding that they're ill when they're ill. 

J: It's the tragedy of the disease. They don't believe they're sick. If they get proper treatment, and become medically stabilized, they begin to develop insight. They begin to understand that the voices they'd been hearing in their heads weren't normal, weren't real. They can begin to trust their family members again. However, it's not possible to persuade a floridly psychotic person to trust you. You can't use logic to get through to them. As those working in the field of psychiatry know, sometimes you just have to lock the person up for a while and treat him against his will. Of course, by the time he's that psychotic, he doesn't really have free will -- not as you and I would understand it. He has lots of thoughts, but they're not balanced, they're not integrated. There's no functioning internal framework to hold his thoughts together, to help him process his thoughts and experiences, and learn from them. It's a big jumble in his head -- very frightening, very confusing. 

A: So if he can find an external framework that makes sense to him . . . 

J: Right. If he can find an external framework such as a strict religious code, then he can lean on that code. He no longer has to make sense of anything on his own. He's off the hook, so to speak. The code tells him what to do and when to do it. This means he doesn't have to decide these things for himself. For a person with schizophrenia (not really one disease, but a related cluster of illnesses) this is a huge relief. Life becomes liveable. Painful but liveable. The tradeoff is the fear. You can't get rid of the fear. You're constantly afraid of attack from "evil forces" such as the devil or demons or vampires or aliens. But at least you can blame the "evil forces" for your fear. You don't have to blame your family. So from that point of view, the strict religious code makes it easier for you to stay with your family and receive the care you need.  

A: Can you explain how all this relates to the man named John?  

J: The man I knew as John -- though his real name wasn't John -- would be diagnosed today under the category of schizophrenia. I first met him when he was about 18, and he already showed signs then of the illness.  

A: As I understand it, that's a common age for a diagnosis of schizophrenia to be made. The signs and symptoms often show up in late adolesence, early adulthood.  

J: Yes, except I didn't have a DSM-IV to refer to, and I didn't recognize his illness at first for what it was. I thought he was an inspired prophet.  

A: What was his background? Where did he come from?  

J: He was an Essene. He was born Essene and raised Essene. He wasn't a raw recruit, as some were -- including myself for a short time.  

A: You were an Essene?  

J: I never officially joined the yahad or "Unity," as they described themselves. In fact, I never made it past the "inquiry phase," as you might call it. I was curious about the yahad. Many Jews were. Like many spiritual inquirers, I thought the Essenes might have the answers I was looking for. So when I heard about the new prophet named John, I went to check him out. It took me a long time to understand that John didn't have the answers. He spoke endlessly and eloquently, but had no answers for me or anyone else. He was far too delusional to help anyone, including himself.  

A: You said his real name wasn't John. What was his real name?  

J: I never knew. Not during my lifetime as Jesus. Readers today may have a hard time understanding what I'm about to say, but when I was growing up, "name magic" was a big deal. If you believed in the mystical "truth" of name magic, you didn't lightly give out your real name. 

A: Why not? J: Your real name was said to be a source of great power. If an evil sorcerer or magician got hold of your name, he could gain power over you. 

A: Interesting. That idea is still floating around. I remember reading Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea novels when I was growing up. The power of true names was central to her stories.  

J: Kabbalah also embraces this idea.  

A: Not a big fan of Kabbalah myself.  

J: Kabbalah owes a lot to the ancient ideas of the Essenes. 

A: What goes around comes around.  

J: There aren't a lot of new mystical ideas under the sun. The human brain, when diseased and dysfunctional, tends to produce certain distinctive patterns of thought, mood, and behaviour -- what physicans call signs and symptoms. When patients start believing -- truly believing -- in occult magic, psychiatrists get worried. It's okay to believe in things you can't see if those things have a scientific origin -- because one day the science will catch up with the theory -- but there's a line. 

A: For instance, it's okay to believe in love, even though we can't see it. Though neuroscientists are now trying to capture it on brain scans.  

J: Right. But mature love makes the world a better place, a more compassionate place, a more logical place. Occult magic doesn't do any of these things. Belief in occult magic makes people less mature, less balanced, more grandiose, more controlling, and therefore less able to bring healing and compassion into the world around them.  

A: Belief in occult magic ties in with the signs and symptoms of major mental illness. 

J: Including psychopathy and severe narcissism.  

A: Only a profoundly narcissistic person would believe that God gives special magical powers to small groups of bullies and tyrants who abuse others in the name of God.  

J: There you go -- your description of John in a nutshell. Raised to believe he was one of the Essene's two prophesied Messiahs, hence profoundly narcissistic and dysfunctional by the time he was 18.  

A: I guess he didn't like you very much, then. 

J: The Essenes were taught to hate the Sons of Darkness and raise up the Sons of Light. As far as he was concerned, I proved myself beyond dispute to be an apostate to the yahad cause and a Son of Darkness worthy of death. By the time I was arrested, John hated my guts.  

A: So much for the theory that John himself was the Beloved Disciple. 

J: Yeah, but I forgave him anyway, even after he tried to kill me.