JR61: Sixth Step in Healing the Church: Be Honest About the Bible

A: I've been reflecting for the past few days on the suffering inflicted by Anders Breivik on everybody everywhere who's capable of loving their God and loving their neighbours as themselves.

Several news reports have referred to a 1,500 page manifesto that Breivik posted on the Internet shortly before the Norway attacks. Apparently Breivik copied a number of sections almost word from word from the writings of several well-known far-right ideologues. (Which just goes to show, once again, that psychopaths are very good at "cutting and pasting" other people's ideas, but not capable of coming up with original insights of their own.) Breivik's manifesto has been compared to the writings of Ted Kaczynski, the U.S. Unabomber. But when I look at excerpts from Breivik's diary and manifesto, and compare his actions to his beliefs, I don't see a modern day European political movement. I see a very old ideological movement, one that fills up many pages in the Bible. I see the Book of Jeremiah. I see the Book of Revelation. I see the Book of Numbers.

J: These are all biblical books that give permission to psychopaths to carry out "Just Wars."

A: I've noticed in news reports about Breivik that he readily admits he carried out the Oslo bombing and the camp shootings, but he says he didn't break the law in doing so because he's at war with the Norway government.

J: Inside our man Breivik's head, it all makes perfect sense. Of course, the reason it makes sense to him is that he's only using certain parts of his biological brain. He's not using the parts of his brain that deal with empathy or relationship or common sense or compassionate humour or trust or creativity. If he were using those parts, he wouldn't be capable of planning such a cold, ruthless, legalistic act of violence against others.

A: On the other hand, interviews with some of the camp survivors suggest these young people embody all the best of human potential -- empathy and relationship and trust and so on. There was a really good article in Saturday's Toronto Star: "Norway Tragedy: Inside the nightmare on Utoya" by Michelle Shephard (Toronto Star, Saturday, July 30, 2011). One 20 year old woman, Karoline Bank, is quoted as saying, "Yes, he took many people away from us, and every life lost is a tragedy. But we have gotten so much stronger over this. There's not much more to say."

J: Couldn't have said it better myself.

A: People of faith will wonder why God allowed this to happen.

J: People of faith have to stop listening to people of religious humility. People of faith -- by that I mean people who want to be in relationship with God now, TODAY, not at some vague time of future judgment -- have to start being more honest, more realistic, about the motivations that drove the authors of many revered religious texts. They have to stop wearing rose-coloured lenses when they read the Bible. They have to stop making excuses for the psychopaths who wrote so many parts of the Old and New Testaments. They have to stop making excuses for the parts of the Bible that were clearly written by those suffering from major mental illness.

A: Like the Book of Revelation.

Christian theologians have long been desperate to endorse the violent imagery of the Book of Revelation as a central justification for orthodox Christian teachings about the End Times. But from the point of view of God's angels, the prophetic visions recorded in Revelation feel like a psychopathic attack on God and also on the soul who lived as Jesus, an attack no different in intent than Anders Breivik's systematic rampage against campers trapped on a small island. Like Breivik, who disguised himself as a police officer so he could ensnare more victims, the prophet who penned Revelation pretended to be a faithful follower of Jesus as he took direct aim at Jesus' teachings about a loving and forgiving God. Shown here are the head and wings of a large 9th century BCE Assyrian human-headed bull found in the North-West palace at Nimrud (on display at the British Museum). Photo credit JAT 2023.

 
J: This is an issue of trust. People have to decide for themselves whether they're going to trust what John says about humanity's relationship with God, or whether they're going to trust their own hearts, their own heads, and their own experiences about humanity's relationship with God. Would a loving and forgiving God put a gun in Anders Breivik's hands and tell him to go out and shoot people to "ensure that the warriors fighting for the preservation of European Christendom [will] prevail"?*

A: God didn't stop him, though.

J: Really? You're sure about that? Because from where I'm standing, God did a great deal to stop him.

A: Sixty-nine people at the camp are dead, plus several more at the site of the Oslo bombing. They're dead and they're not coming back.

J: No, they're not coming back. And their families and friends will grieve because they -- the human survivors -- have loving hearts. Their grief is unavoidable and is a measure of their wholeness. Yet one day their family and friends will cross to the Other Side, as all creatures of Planet Earth must do, and they'll be reunited with their loved ones. So from God's point of view, the relationships haven't ceased. The relationships still exist, despite the death of the physical body, because love never dies. The form of the relationships has changed, but not the substance. The substance is real. The love can't be taken away from any of these souls. Love continues beyond anything the physical body knows. Love is greater than anything the physical body knows. Love is the great mystery. It's what guides God the Mother and God the Father in their decisions about when people are coming Home. But make no mistake -- everyone eventually dies. God has never promised otherwise. This is the natural order of the universe.

A: You wouldn't know it to listen to an apocalyptic prophet who promises bodily resurrection of the dead.

J: It's a funny thing about psychopaths. A psychopath has a distinctive pattern to his logic and choices and behaviours, and one of the most distinctive features of psychopathy is the peculiar attitude towards death. They're unable to trust anyone, of course -- since trust is closely related to empathy and love and forgiveness -- and this means they're completely unable to trust in the idea that physical death is a natural, loving part of the soul's relationship with God. Death without future punishment isn't logical to a psychopath, just as life with present forgiveness isn't logical to him. He's incapable of feeling love, so he's unable to conceive of a loving death. He's also incapable of believing that God is smarter than he is, so he'll spend a great deal of time and energy looking for "escape clauses" in the contract laws about death in the Abrahamic religions. If the clauses he wants aren't there, he'll claim to be a divinely-inspired prophet and add them himself. Egyptian attitudes towards death in the pre-Hellenistic period epitomize the psychopath's fear of death.

A: You're saying a psychopath's attitude towards death isn't unique to a specific religion or culture, but is instead universal because it's biological. You're saying that "escape clauses" come out the same way in different cultures because all human beings share the same basic DNA.

J (nodding): A psychopath is, by definition, a person who is cut off from the input of his own brain's Soul Circuitry. This "cutting off" may have resulted, in rare circumstances, from a head injury or infection or poisoning or oxygen deprivation. But the vast majority of psychopaths are "self made." High functioning psychopaths such as Anders Breivik are individuals who've turned themselves into psychopaths one bad choice at a time. This is why psychopathy doesn't usually emerge in full-fledged form until adolescence. It takes a long time for a person to consciously undo the healthy connections God builds into the human brain.

A: It's still amazing to me that human beings have that kind of control over the wiring of their own brains. But history bears out the truth of what you're saying.

J: You'll probably be shocked to learn, then, that within the annals of religious history there have been select groups who've intentionally incorporated the blueprint for "how to build a psychopath" into their religious doctrines.

A: You mean . . . these groups wanted to create psychopaths? On purpose?

J: It can be very useful, from a utilitarian point of view, to have a man like Anders Breivik on your side if you're trying to acquire wealth, power, status, and "immortality."

A: This immortality thing . . . this need to leave behind a human legacy of power and status for future generations to admire and imitate -- is this a normal state of mind for a person who feels whole and healed and humble? Because it seems awfully narcissistic to me.

J: It's normal and natural for a soul-in-human-form to want to create and build and improve the quality of life for his or her community. Persons-of-soul -- angels -- have a strong sense of purpose and mission and service. So you expect to see a community of Whole Brain Thinkers busily at work devising new ways to dig wells for clean water or improving ways to eliminate toxins from the environment or building new schools and medical clinics in underserved areas. Human beings are at their best when they come together in teams to bring healing to others in the face of suffering.

A: Healing instead of revenge.

J: A large number of people around the world have responded to the Norway tragedy by offering their hope, faith, and love instead of judgment, piety, and revenge. Some have found, for the first time in their lives, the courage of their own faith. The courage of their own trust in God. The courage of their own trust in each other.

A: That's a powerful insight, to know you have the courage to choose hope, faith, and love.

"Jesus said: One person cannot ride two horses at once, nor stretch two bows; nor can a servant serve two masters, as he will respect one and despise the other. No one drinks vintage wine and immediately wants to drink fresh wine; fresh wine is not put into old wineskins because they might burst. Vintage wine is not put into new wineskins because it might be spoiled” (Gospel of Thomas 47a-d). You can choose the path of redemption or you can choose the path of revenge. Pick one because you can’t have both. Photo credit JAT 2014.

J: To find that courage is to know redemption. I send my love to all who are open to the wondrous idea that humans -- not just God -- are filled to overflowing in their own souls with divine courage and trust and gratitude and devotion.

This courage is yours. It's not God's. It's not your neighbour's. It's not your parents'. It's not your priest's. It's yours. It's part of who you are as a soul.

Claim it and live it. Be the person God knows you really are. Don't be a bully and coward like Anders Breivik, who hasn't the courage to love. (Though I forgive him.) Be open to a loving relationship with God, no matter what your religious background. Your neighbour is loved by God as much as you are. All your neighbours.

No other truth is acceptable.


* On July 24, 2011, The Globe and Mail published a Reuter's article, "Excerpts from Norway attacker's diary." An entry from June 11, 2011 said, "I prayed for the first time in a very long time today. I explained to God that unless he wanted the Marxist-Islamic alliance and the certain Islamic takeover of Europe to completely annihilate European Christendom within the next hundred years he must ensure that the warriors fighting for the preservation of European Christendom prevail."

JR46: First Step in Healing the Church: Restore the Soul

“Jesus said: If your leaders say to you ‘Look! The Kingdom is in the sky!’ then the birds will be there before you are. If they say that the Kingdom is in the sea, then the fish will be there before you are. Rather the Kingdom is within you and it is outside of you. When you understand yourselves you will be understood. And you will realize that you are Children of the living Father. If you do not know yourselves, then you exist in poverty and you are that poverty” (Gospel of Thomas 3a and 3b). Photo credit JAT.

A: Jesus, what would you say to those who are asking how we can heal the church of the third millennium?

J: That's an easy one. First you have to rescue the soul. Not save it. Rescue it. Restore it to the place of sanity it deserves. Give it some credit. Give it some trust. Be kind to it. Rescue it the way you'd rescue a dog who's been shut out of the house without food or water. Bring it in from the cold.

A: Or in from the fiery pits of hell.

J: There's a trend at the moment among Progressive Christians who want to try to rescue me. They want to rescue me from the clutches of the evangelical, charismatic, and fundamentalist Christians. While I appreciate the effort, the Progressive movement won't solve anything by trying to rescue me. I'm not the problem. And I'm not the solution.

A: In the Christology course I took, we studied a book by Wayne Meeks called Christ Is the Question (Louisville KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006). At the beginning of the book, Meeks identifies this issue. He says, "As a brand of shampoo promises the answer to frizzy hair, a detergent brand the answer to unbright laundry, a new model car the answer to loneliness and (by innuendo) sexual longing, so Jesus is the answer to -- what? Whatever you wish. Indeed [mainly in the context of American Protestantism] Jesus has become whatever you wish, an all-purpose brand, the answer to all needs, desires, fantasies, and speculations" (page 2).

J: It's true. But it's not really a new development in Christianity. It's exactly the outcome the apostle Paul desired. From the beginning, Paul's intention was to convert me -- a real flesh and blood person -- into the new face of the well-known Saviour brand. Sort of like redoing the label on a familiar brand of soap. You want your target audience to believe your "new and improved" brand of soap can clean away absolutely anything. You know you're lying, but you hope your audience won't catch on -- at least not until you have their money in your pocket.

A: Old lies beget new lies.

J: There's nothing to stop people from taking Paul's imaginary Saviour figure and adding their own imagination to the story. Who's to say they're wrong? It happens all the time in story-telling traditions. Somebody comes up with a captivating (but purely fictional) hero or heroine. The character and the plot catch on. Other people start dreaming up their own chapters in the hero's saga. Some of these catch on, too, and enter the myth. King Arthur is a good example of this. People are still writing their own versions of this story. Five hundred years from now the fanzine additions to favourite comic book heroes will blur together and create one giant new myth about Superman. Traditions evolve. Stories evolve. But story-telling traditions aren't selling fact. They're selling story. Fantasy. Speculation.

A: You're saying that there's too much story in Christianity and not enough fact. 

J: Yes. There's too much story. On the other hand, there's not nearly enough mystery. When I say mystery, I mean there's not enough room for individuals to have a transformative experience of redemption. Redemption and divine love and divine forgiveness are emotional experiences that lie well outside the boundaries of pure logic. Words like "wonder" and "gratitude" and "humbleness" spring to mind. But redemption doesn't just change your thinking. It changes everything -- everything in your whole being. It changes the way your physical body works. It changes the way you see colours. It changes the way you see patterns. It changes the way you learn. It changes the way you remember. The way you smell things. The way you feel rain on your skin. The way you eat your food. The way you sleep. The way you dream at night. The way you dream while you're awake. It changes absolutely everything about your relationship with yourself and with all Creation. Where once you crawled and chewed endlessly as a caterpillar, now you fly with beauty and grace as a winged butterfly and sip from the nectar of flowers. It may sound cliched, but it's true. The experience of transformation is that profound. You were "you" when you were a caterpillar, and you're still "you" as a butterfly. But the way in which you relate to the world has been completely altered. Your whole life is completely changed. The change is so sweet. So kind. So mysterious. It takes your breath away.

A (nodding): Even while you're still living here as a somewhat confused and baffled human being. You don't have to die to feel the mystery. You have to live.

J: The process of redemption -- the experience of mystery -- begins for a human being with the soul. The soul is not fictional. The soul is real. The soul -- the true core self of each consciousness within Creation -- is your laughter. Your empathy. Your conscience. Your curiosity. Your sense of wonder. In other words, all the least explainable, most mysterious parts of being human.

The soul is not one substance, but many substances -- many substances of a quantum nature. Its complexity and sophistication at a quantum level lie outside the bounds of current scientific investigation. But this has no bearing one way or the other on the soul's scientific reality. Scientific researchers have failed to detect many things in nature: the soul is just one of many things on a long list of "undiscovered countries."

A: How would a renewed understanding of the soul help heal the church today?

J: At the moment the Progressive movement has concluded -- based on erroneous starting assumptions -- that the past errors of the church include a belief in the eternal soul, a belief in miracles, and (for some) a belief that a guy named Jesus ever existed. They assume that if these "errors" are swept out of the church, and replaced with teachings based on pure logic and pure praxis, or, on the other end of the scale, replaced with teachings based on pure symbolism and hidden truth, then the church can be restored to a state of health and balance. This is not so.

A: They're throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

J: Yes. They've failed to realize that the problem with the church is that church leaders long ago put a lien on people's souls, as you and I discussed last time.

A: I was pretty indignant, wasn't I?

J: For good reason. The problem for Christianity is not a belief in the existence of the soul. The problem for Christianity (or rather, one of the problems) is the body of lies being taught about the soul. Over the centuries, Christian orthodoxy has done everything in its power to preserve the lien on the soul so it can preserve its power. The lien has to go. Church leaders are going to have to stand up and be honest about the fact that their teachings on the soul have damaged people's confidence and trust in God. They need to start from square one on the question of the soul -- no resorting to "tradition," no rooting around in the writings of early Church Fathers for justification. This will be a terrifying prospect for most theologians. But it must be done. The answers to their questions are already there -- not in the pages of the Bible, and not in the pages of Plato and Aristotle and Augustine and Aquinas and Wesley, but in the pages of God's scientific reality. Theological inquiry must stop clinging to tradition. You're in the third millennium now. Start acting like it.

JR17: Interpreting Jesus' Parables: Some Guidelines

A: Tell me about your parables. Why did you switch from short wisdom sayings to narrative parables as a method of teaching?  

J: I switched because wisdom sayings are the easiest thing to pervert if you're a leader. They're a convenient source of mind control or brainwashing, if you will. A clever leader can always find a wisdom saying or a biblical law to back up his or her desired position. Such leaders know that regular people will feel guilty and ashamed if they believe they've broken an important moral law. Regular people back down quickly when they think they've broken moral codes, moral imperatives. That's a good thing, by the way.  

A: Explain who you mean by "regular people."  

J: Balanced individuals. Emotionally mature individuals. People who respect both themselves and the needs of the wider community. Compassionate people. People who reject libertarian values. 

A: You once wrote some scathing comments about the Ten Commandments to show how even these supposedly unbreakable laws are interpreted differently by those who are in power and those who don't have any power.  

J: As many political revolutionaries over the centuries have pointed out.  

A: And more recently, liberation theologians. 

J: The problem with these short wisdom sayings is that they can be given any context that's convenient. Interpreters of wisdom sayings can claim the sayings must be interpreted literally, if that suits their purpose. More commonly, interpreters claim the sayings are symbolic -- filled with hidden esoteric meanings that only the most advanced religious initiates can fully understand. Needless to say, this leads to no end of abuse. If wisdom sayings can be moulded like putty to suit any need, then they have no meaning. There's a reason that most major world religions are centred around only a few small books of sacred teachings plus vast libraries of commentary and interpretation that run into the thousands and millions of pages. Each new generation of theologians wants to prove how clever they are at "reinterpreting" or "revealing" the hidden message of the short sayings. It's a cottage industry. 

This rock sample on display at the Natural History Museum, London, UK is a perfect visual metaphor for the parables written and taught by Jesus. As you begin to study the parables, you'll likely see them as a whole and durable stepping stone that combines traditional teachings such as moral obedience with new strands of thought such as forgiveness. Eventually, if you persist in your efforts to know God, the older themes of purity, piety, and perfection wash away and leave only the enduring networks of love, healing, and forgiveness in your heart. When Jesus' parables start to "pop" like this for you, you know you've found the pathway of your own soul. Photo credit JAT 2024.

   

A: I noticed a while back that if you try to read the whole book of Sirach at one time (the apocryphal book of Wisdom of Jesus, Son of Sirach in the Oxford NRSV Bible) your head feels as if it's going to explode.  

J: That particular scroll was quite popular in Judea and Galilee at the time I was teaching.  

A: The author of Sirach just goes on and on and on with endless lists of pithy little wisdom sayings. "Don't do this." "Don't do that." It's impossible. Impossible to live up to. They ought to call this book "An Instruction Manual on How to Feel Guilty For Daring to Breathe." 

J: Yes. My mother was fond of quoting from it. 

A: I can see how it would appeal to parents trying to govern their children with a firm moral hand. There's something for every occasion. 

J: Yes. Every time you got caught doing something wrong, you could count on getting a lecture, a beating, depending on the severity of the crime, and righteous repetitions of Sirach's easy-to-remember moral laws.  

A: They do stick in one's head, don't they? Sort of like "earworms" -- those catchy but annoying songs we so often can't get out of our heads. 

J: One of my mother's favourite moral imperatives was the importance of polite speech. The NRSV translates this favourite of hers as "Pleasant speech multiplies friends, and a gracious tongue multiplies courtesies (Sirach 6:5)." All my life I could hear her voice reciting that phrase whenever people around me started to get rude.  

A: I think we all have memories of our parents' favourite quotations. One of my father's favourite sayings is, "When all else fails, read the instructions." I think of this every time I get stuck on a task that would have been a lot easier if I'd read the directions before I started.  

J: The problem with a book like Sirach -- and it wasn't the only book in my time to drone on and on about righteousness and obedience -- is that it provides no guidance whatsoever, no practical advice at all on how to hear the inner wisdom of your own heart and soul. It's a "top-down" list of laws, not a "bottom-up" search for meaning, life, purpose, and love. A computer could be programmed to follow all these laws, and would follow them successfully where they don't contradict each other (as they often do.) But that's not life. That's not love. And it's sure not divine wisdom. It's just . . . obedience. Blind obedience. There's no need to draw on your deepest reserves of courage and faith and devotion if all you're doing is blindly following the laws. And there's no need for forgiveness. There's no room in there anywhere for insight. Insight -- what writers in the past have called divine wisdom -- is a complex blending, a complex interaction of positive emotions plus clear, logical thought plus mature, respectful behaviour. It's holistic understanding. It's something more than facts, more than knowledge. Insight is deeply intuitive while at the same time deeply objective. Insight is that hard-to-describe "aha!" moment when understanding suddenly "clicks." Insight helps you feel more grounded, more connected to reality and to life, not less connected. Insight is the opposite of dissociation.  

A: So you were trying to teach people how to find insight, not obedience.  

J: Yes. And you can't teach what insight is by reciting long lists of wisdom sayings. Insight involves the emotions of courage, trust, gratitude, and devotion, so if you're going to give people practical tools for finding their own talent for insight, you have to speak to those emotions within them. You can't just speak to the logical mind of the student. You have to speak to the whole of the student's core self. You have to give them the opportunity to practise hearing. Really hearing. Hearing with their whole being, not just with their logical minds. You have to make them sweat a bit as they struggle to hear the meaning inside their own hearts. If they're reading or listening to a parable using only the logic circuitry of their brains, they won't understand the message of the parable. The message isn't hidden. Nor is it intended to be hidden. But it is intended to make students stretch, to work their "heart" muscles as well as their "intellectual" muscles. It's intended to encourage them to look at a difficult question from more than one angle. It's intended to encourage honesty. A parable is meant to be painful, it's intended to hurt. It doesn't gloss over the painful truth. It highlights the painful truth, and asks the student to struggle with love and forgiveness despite the pain. That's what a parable is meant to do.  

A: It's interesting that a person who's dissociated from his or her core emotions will read your parables in very concrete, literal ways. They won't get the emotional subtext at all.  

J: That's because they're using their logic circuitry in unbalanced ways. They look at the "facts." For them, it's all they can see or hear. They assume that because there are facts and logic in the parables, the parables can be fully understood in purely logical terms. But they can't. People get very angry, very hostile, when you tell them they're being superficial in their reading of the parables. If they can't feel loving emotions themselves, they want to deny that such emotions exist. They don't want to admit to themselves or to anybody else that they're mentally, emotionally, and spiritually imbalanced. 

A: They don't want to admit that they can't love -- that they don't understand what love is. 

J: Yes. And they'll do everything in their power to avoid facing the issue.  

A: Is their inability to love related in any way to their souls? Do they have defective souls that somehow missed out on the whole "love" thing when God was creating their souls?  

J: No. Definitely not. Each and every soul in all of Creation knows how to love and forgive. Human beings can blame their upbringing and their own choices -- combined in many cases with biological dysfunction in the central nervous system -- for their inability to love as adults. People who've chosen to be dissociated from their loving emotions shouldn't be proud of this choice.  

A: Usually they have some pretty powerful excuses for their refusal to accept and heal their core emotions.  

J: Nobody said it would be easy. That's a point I tried to make again and again -- the healing journey isn't easy, but it's worth it.  

A: This morning I was rummaging through the Gospel of Thomas, and felt drawn to two parables on pages 68 and 69 of Stevan Davies's book. When I read these two parables -- sayings 63 and 64a in the Gospel of Thomas -- I hear you talking about the excuses people make to avoid dealing with the pain of their emotions. I hear you talking about the fact that it's easier for a "successful" person -- a person obedient to logic and the law -- than for an impoverished person out on the street to make excuses about sitting down at the table with God in a full relationship of love and trust. I hear you talking about the choices people make. The one thing I do not hear is the explanation that Stevan Davies offers for Saying 64a: "The point of the parable," says Davies, "may be to hold up the host as an example of one who has failed to think things through (page 71)." To my way of thinking, Davies's interpretation is logical, but way too literal, way too concrete. He doesn't get this parable at all.

"Jesus said: Once there was a rich man who had lots of money, and he said, 'I will invest my money so that I can sow, reap, plant, and fill up my silos with crops so that I won`t lack anything.' So he thought, but that night he died. He who has ears, let him hear (Gospel of Thomas 63)." "Jesus said: A man entertained guests. When dinner was ready he sent a servant to invite his guests. The servant went to the first one and said, 'My master invites you,' but he replied, 'I have to collect money from some merchants, and they are due to arrive this evening. Therefore I have to do business with them, and I must be excused from the dinner.' The servant went to another said, 'My master invites you,' but he said, 'I have just bought a house, and I have to spend a day there, so I cannot come. I must be excused.' He went to the next and said, 'My master invites you.' This one replied, 'My friend is about to be married, and I must organize the dinner. I can`t come. I must be excused.' Again he went and said to another, 'My master invites you.' He replied, 'I have just bought a village, and I have to go collect the rent. I can`t come and must be excused.' The servant reported back to his master, 'those whom you invited to the dinner are unable to come.' The master said, 'Go to the roads outside and invite anybody you can find to the dinner' (Gospel of Thomas 64a, translated by Stevan Davies)."

J: John the Baptist hated my parables. He didn't understand them, and got very frustrated when some of my students understood something that he -- the chosen Messiah -- couldn't grasp.  

A: There are no teaching parables in the Gospel of John.  

J: He stopped accepting the legitimacy of my parables when he realized I was using them to teach a message that was for all intents and purposes the opposite of his own message. He was also envious and angry because he didn't understand the emotional meaning interwoven with the logical one.  

A: It's clear enough that in Saying 64a you're turning the imagery of the Essene Messianic Banquet on its head. 

J: That part John understood. He and I were constantly sparring on that issue. 

A: No Messianic Banquet for you? No bread and wine? No body and blood? No occult ritual for specially chosen initiates?  

J (grinning broadly): Hey. God invites everybody -- all people -- to the table of divine love, divine trust, divine forgiveness, and so on. If you're too busy to come . . . well, that's your problem. Healing and empathy take time. Relationship with God takes time. You want to know what God's love feels like? You gotta take the time.  

A: Obedience and righteousness can't replace the benefits of good old fashioned time spent with loved ones, time spent with God?  

J: Nope.  

A: Following all the wisdom sayings in Sirach can't replace the benefits of time spent in love with God?  

J: Nope.  

A: Logic alone can't lead you to God?  

J: Nope. 

 A: So fear of God probably isn't going to help much either, then?  

J: The one thing you'll never see in my parables is a man who fears God. You'll see a lot of pain, a lot of grief, but you won't see fear. In the Kingdom of the Heavens, the methods for dealing with the pain and the grief are forgiveness, honesty, compassion, healing, and equality. This is the feeling of redemption. Redemption is what you feel when you achieve the remarkable insight that forgiveness, not fear, not righteousness, is the only path to being in full relationship with God. Nobody can "give" you this insight from the outside. You have to find it within your own heart, mind, body, and soul. Other people can help you find it, can help you work towards it. However, nobody but you can give you the actual insight. It has to be up to you to accept God's invitation to come to the table.  

A: Where I assume blood and body aren't on the menu.  

J: The table of God's love is filled with so many wonders, so many joys! Everything that God touches -- not just the Eucharistic bread and wine -- is filled with divine love. There's no end to the mystery of redemption, the mystery of love and forgiveness.  

A: That sounds suspiciously like a mushy Hallmark card.  

J: Angels are incredibly mushy.