JR63: Jesus Redux: The Forward

The first will be last, and the last will be first.

On the island of Mykonos. Photo credit JAT 2001.

Sorry. Couldn't resist a biblical pun there. If you're visiting this blog for the first time, this page -- the final page in a lengthy conversation between Jesus and me -- will be the first thing you'll see. So it only makes sense for us to write this "afterword" as if it were a "forward."

If you've been following this blog as we've been writing it (we have readers in Canada, the U.S., Singapore, Germany, and few other places), you've probably figured out that we've been writing a book bit by bit. And now we've come to the end of this particular body of thought.

There's a great deal more that can be said about the topics we've introduced here, topics such as the nature of the soul, the nature of the soul-body connection, the need for healing, the need to recognize and treat major mental illness (especially as it relates to religious prophecy), and the need for the church to be honest about its doctrines if it wants to find its way back to a full relationship with God the Mother and God the Father in the third millennium. But there's only so much the human brain can absorb at one time. There's enough here to make anyone's head hurt (at least in the beginning).

Our chief goal has always been to spark discussion and encourage people to think for themselves. So if you feel from time to time that we could have given more background information or more references or more detailed explanations, you've probably stumbled into one of many spots in the book where we've intentionally given you the benefit of the doubt. We assume you're a rational, capable, tenacious person capable of doing some independent research. There has to be room in a book like this for you to find your own courage and trust. There has to room for you to build your own relationship with God.

This book can be used in a straightforward academic manner (which is why we're now going back and adding labels so it's easier for you to find the topics that interest you). But it can also be used in an intuitive manner. I highly recommend this approach if you're interested in slowly developing the intuitive circuitry of your own brain. 

In walking the Spiral Path, there's always the easy way and the hard way. Several years ago, when I was beginning my own journey, I did everything the hard way. I believed (because I allowed myself to be browbeaten by various gurus) that you can only learn to tap into your natural intuition or "spiritual quotient," as I've called it elsewhere, by using ancient divining tools such as tarot cards or lectio divina. If you've ever tried to read a tarot spread, you know there's a lot of wiggle room in the interpretation. And you're never quite sure . . .

On the other hand, you can take a book like this, and ask God to guide you to the page you most need to understand (a centering exercise first would help with this), and then let your hand click on the mouse while you're sort of looking at the archive of posts, but not looking too, too closely at the archive of posts. If you look too closely at the list, you'll get in the way of your own intuitive process and start second-guessing yourself. So just let the mouse hover somewhere over the archive list, then look away and click before you have too much time to think about it.

It's no big deal, really. You're just letting yourself be open to the idea that God knows what you understand least, and what will help you most today. It's quite possible you'll end up clicking on the same link several days in a row. If this happens, just accept God's wisdom. I learned long ago never to argue with God when the book opens up again and again to the same section.

Most of all, don't expect the journey to be linear. It's not gonna be. Love isn't linear. Love lurches along with its own extraordinary surprises and puzzling patterns, but it always gets you there in the end. God's love is the bedrock of everything you are. That's why, as Jesus and I love to say to our divine parents . . .

Mother and Father God, you both totally rock! We dedicate this book to you!

Love Jesus and Jen

Jesus as the author sees him

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."

JR57: Suffer the Little Children to Come Unto Me

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

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

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

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

A: A leap of faith, in other words. 

“Jesus said: From Adam to John the Baptizer, among those born of women, there is no one greater than John the Baptizer, so that his eyes should be averted. But I have said that whoever among you becomes a child will know the kingdom and will become greater than John” (Gospel of Thomas 46 a-b). Photo credit JAT 2023.

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

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

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

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

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

A: Yes. And related "switching centres."  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

J: I rest my case.

JR34: Chaining God to the Rock

A: I'd like to return to an idea that was endorsed in Karen Armstrong's book (The Spiral Staircase), the idea that "when speaking of the reality of God we are at the end of what words or thoughts can usefully do (page 292). I find this idea self-serving and smug. I also find it very demeaning. In fact, I find most religious ideas about God to be self-serving, smug, and demeaning. Demeaning to human beings and demeaning to God. Since this is Holy Week, it seems like a good time to talk to you about your thoughts on the reality of God and what this reality can mean for our lives.

"Jesus said: If they ask you, 'Where are you from?' reply to them, 'We have come from the place where light is produced from itself. It came and revealed itself in their image.' If they ask you, 'Are you it?' reply to them, 'We are his children. We are the first fruits of the living Father.' If they ask you, 'What is the sign within you of your Father?' reply to them, 'It is movement. It is rest.' (Gospel of Thomas 50 a-c)." Photo credit JAT 2021.

J: I see you're still upset about the way people are talking about God.

A: I'm upset about the fact that theologians and mystics are not being honest with themselves and with others. I'm upset about their "closed-shop" attitude. I'm upset about their tiny, closed, pessimistic view of God and Creation. I'm upset about their narcissistic refusal to open wide the doors of theological inquiry. I'm upset about the pettiness. I'm upset about the way religion teaches people to be in relationship with God. I'm especially upset about the religious rituals that get in the way of the relationships.

J: The crucial problem here is worship.

A: Worship?

J: People of faith all over the world are trying to be in relationship with God. Their souls long to know God, to feel the Presence of God in their daily lives. They long for the comfort, the solace of that love. But among those millions of people, how many of them do you think have actually felt that Presence?

A: Not many. You can tell by the look in a person's eye when you put the words "trust" and "God" in the same sentence. People of faith are disillusioned and very, very hurt.

J: There are three great obstacles to the experience of relationship with God in the daily life of regular human beings. The first obstacle we've talked about a fair bit -- the role of status addiction in creating suffering and abuse in the lives of humans and other creatures on Planet Earth. Status addiction is deeply imbedded in all major world religions, even the non-theistic ones. Status addiction in a religious setting becomes a self-reinforcing cycle that ruins lives.* The toxic effects of status addiction have not yet been recognized. Indeed, it's hard to imagine how the Vatican could continue to uphold its teachings on sin, separation from God, sacraments, and salvation in the absence of status addiction. Status addiction is one of the three main glues that hold together the Vatican house of cards.

A: Being named Pope is quite the status symbol. Right now the History Channel is showing "The Borgias," the mini-series about the corrupt family that owned the Papacy at the turn of the 16th century.

J: The second of the three glues holding orthodoxy together is a tenacious belief in the Law of Cause and Effect -- the Materialist philosophy you and I have been discussing. What's astonishing about this belief system is its arrogance. It's completely oriented towards the supremacy of human beings. The term "anthropocentric" hardly begins to capture it. The Law of Cause and Effect, whatever its particular religious manifestation, teaches people that the Law is more important, more effective, and more divine than God. They say the Law is merely a manifestation of God's wishes, but what they really mean is that God is utterly bound by all the provisions of the contract law -- sort of like Prometheus chained to the rock. This is the source of human religious authority, the foundation on which they claim all their status, power, money, fame, and sexual gratification. This is also the source of human psychological authority -- the need to assuage one's own suffering by claiming there really isn't a personal God who intervenes in people's lives. The need for narcissists to obtain psychological authority has never been adequately examined or addressed in the church. The last thing a status-addicted narcissist wants to hear about is a personal God who isn't chained at a safe distance and who can generate consequences for the narcissist's smug self-idolization. Today.

A: Okay. What's the third glue of orthodoxy?

J: The third is worship. I'm defining worship as any spiritual practice that centres around the goal of escape.

A: I've never heard that definition of worship before. I tend to think of "liturgy" and "worship" as being more or less the same thing. You go to "worship" on Sundays, and the exact form of this worship is the liturgy -- the specific prayers and hymns and sermon content for that particular day.

J: There's the source of the confusion right there. There's nothing wrong with liturgy. There's nothing wrong at all with the idea of people getting together once a week to say some prayers and sing some hymns and hear an uplifting, encouraging, inspiring sermon and maybe even sit together in safe, companionable silence. It's a healthy practice, one I totally endorse. The idea of setting aside one day per week -- the Sabbath -- for mutual uplifting and compassionate spiritual reflection is crucial to the health of all human beings. There are lots of different ways to express your love and trust in God on the Sabbath. You can go to church or synagogue. You can visit someone who's sick in hospital. You and a friend can go outside with a garbage bag and clean up your local parks and streets. You can have a family games afternoon -- playing old fashioned board games like Monopoly or Scrabble. The single uniting factor in all these expressions of spirituality is relationship. You're building positive relationships. You're connecting to other people and to Nature. In creating these connections, you're also creating a stronger connection with God the Mother and God the Father. You're saying "yes" to life, love, service, and laughter. The last thing you're trying to do is escape.

A: You're trying to fully engage with life.

J: Yes. I taught engagement, not escape. This is why you see me in the Gospel of Mark as a man who doesn't retreat into the wilderness, who rarely prays, who never worships in the Jerusalem Temple, and has no use for righteousness in the Law.

A: Yet Mark shows you living a life filled with faith, forgiveness, healing, and redemption. A life filled with relationships. Messy, complicated, frustrating relationships. But that's what it means to be human, eh?

J: Worship and liturgy are two completely different things. Worship and faith are two completely different things. Worship is the "work" of pious people. Worship is the set of actions they undertake to achieve their long-term goal of escape. Orthodox Western Christians call this escape "salvation." Buddhists call this escape "nirvana." Atheists call this escape "saving lives." At the core of these belief systems lies the intersection of status addiction, Materialism, and worship -- the complete abandonment of God by human beings. I want to make it clear that I don't mean God is doing the abandoning. I mean that human beings are doing the abandoning. I mean that every time a pious Christian devotes an hour or more each day to intercessory prayer, he or she is abandoning God. The more time a person spends in worshipful prayer each day, the farther he or she is getting from God. God doesn't need your prayers or anyone else's prayers in order to act. God is not bound by bizarre religious claims about Cause and Effect. God the Mother and God the Father have free will. They're not chained to the rock. This means that you, as a human being, aren't that important prayer-wise in the grand cosmological scheme of things. Contrary to the claims of many religious leaders, the sky will not fall down if the "chosen" nuns, monks, and mystics stop praying the Divine Office each day. (The theory here is that God needs to hear the recitation of the Mass and the Divine Office every day to help empower God in his great battle against the Devil to save human souls). Prayers of worship tell the God you're trying to connect with that you don't trust God. It's like shooting yourself in the foot over and over again and then demanding to know why you're lame.

A: Our prayers of worship may not be needed, but I know one thing for sure -- our ability to love and forgive is sure needed.

J (nodding and smiling): God the Mother and God the Father don't need or want our prayers of worship. AT ALL. On the other hand, they very much need our love. They want and need to be in relationship with us. We're their children, and they're just heartbroken, to be honest, when their own beloved children turn away from their divine family -- their divine parents and their divine brothers and sisters. It's very painful for God when human beings choose logic over love, mind over heart, and law over miracles and forgiveness. Some logic is needed, some mind is needed, and some law is needed. This should go without saying. But there has to be balance. And there has to be trust -- trust in a loving, forgiving, amazingly brilliant but very humble God. This is what I was trying to teach.

A: It's what I feel every day -- a comforting sense of God's loving presence, a comforting sense that I'm never alone. I get confused and upset about daily events like everyone else, but I know that at the end of each day God will be there to help me figure it out. I also know that when I screw up, God will help me recognize my mistakes, just as you'd expect mature, loving parents to do. They forgive me when I make a mistake, and they don't hold any grudges. Their forgiveness helps me find the courage to learn from my mistakes, correct my mistakes, and move forward. Their forgiveness means I'm not caught in that horrible hamster wheel of shame, blame, regret, revenge, and self-loathing that I remember all too well from my earlier years. Their forgiveness has freed me to live.

J: Who needs escape on a future day when the miracle of forgiveness can free you today?


*For an introductory discussion of the role of status addiction in the orthodox Western Church see http://concinnatechristianity.blogspot.com/2010/07/The Corruption of Free Will Through Addiction and http://concinnatechristianity.blogspot.com/2010/07/Jesus: The Anti-Status Teacher

JR19: The Beatitudes of Luke

A: People are often confused about the meaning of your statements on wealth and poverty. There's a long history of Christians deciding to "imitate you" by giving up all their possessions and taking vows of poverty (among other vows). How do you respond to this interpretation of your teachings?  

J: It's an incorrect interpretation. 

A: In what way?  

J: Psychologically and spiritually, it's an incorrect interpretation. There's no truth to the widespread belief that asceticism is the correct path to knowing God. Asceticism, including the modified form of asceticism preached by the monastic founder Benedict, is an ancient spiritual practice, to be sure, but it's a dangerous one. It's dangerous to the human body and the human brain. Therefore it gets in the way of connection with God. I don't recommend asceticism today. I didn't recommend asceticism 2,000 years ago. 

Then he looked up at his disciples and said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in the Kingdom within; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets. But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.” (Luke 6:22-26, translation from The New Oxford Annotated NRSV, 3rd Ed.) Photo credit JAT 2022.

A: The Beatitudes and Woes in Luke (Luke 6:20-26) seem to suggest otherwise. The footnotes in the New Oxford Annotated NRSV state that "the focus [in the beatitudes] is on economic and social conditions, not spiritual states" (p. 107 NT).  

J: Commentators interpret the Lukan beatitudes this way because the commentators themselves have a dualistic understanding of humanity. There's a common belief that economic and social conditions can be separated from spiritual states. But they can't. They've always been intertwined. There's no such thing as a spiritual state that's separate and distinct from economic and social realities. It's one of the great myths of religion -- the idea that people can dissociate themselves from their own thoughts, needs, feelings, and relationships in order to get closer to God. It's pure crap. Abusive, damaging crap.  

A: Explain. 

J: The only path to connecting with God while living as a human being is to become a Whole Brain Thinker. A Whole Brain Thinker is a person who makes balanced choices, holistic choices each day. A Whole Brain Thinker engages all parts of the brain God gave him. He uses his emotions in a balanced, compassionate way. He uses his logic and memory to balance his heart. He honours and respects the needs of his physical body, neither denying himself food nor overindulging at the expense of his physical health. He incorporates his spiritual life into his regular daily life, rather than setting aside just one or two hours per week to attend religious services. He struggles each day to find the balance among all these competing aspects of his true self, but he tries his best because that's the only path open to a self-realized person. To a person who has found the Kingdom.  

A: Are there any measurable benefits to such a path? Any positive outcomes? Any source of spiritual hope?  

J: There are many measurable benefits. Too many to count, in fact. I can't give a precise list, because each person is different, each soul is different, so there's variation from person to person. But there are some overall patterns that can be described. There are overall improvements to physical health, mental health, family relationships, and community relationships that develop automatically when individuals start to take control of their own choices, their own thoughts and feelings. Thousands of researchers in hundreds of different fields would back me up on this one.  

A: I love it when scientific research backs up the Divine Truth! 

J: One area that gets very little research attention is the role of brain health in facilitating the experience of trust. One of the first emotions to get "blocked" in the angry brain, in the addicted brain, is trust. Trust is a complex soul emotion. It's interwoven with relationships in the soul and in the childhood brain. It's also interwoven with the physical body through ongoing touch -- respectful touch, appropriate touch, sentimental touch. There's a reason that folk wisdom recommends daily hugs. Hugs are important. Respectful hugs -- by that I mean non-sexualized hugs -- are hugely important to people's health. On the other hand, abusive contact, abusive touch has the opposite effect on people's biology. It damages brain cells. Stress hormones released in the body damage the brain cells of both the abuser and the abusee. A survivor of childhood abuse is likely to grow up unable to trust. Without the emotion of trust, there's no basis for mature relationship. There's no basis for mature relationship with yourself or with anybody else. It means you have no foundation for a relationship with God.  

A: Because you need to feel trust in order to feel faith. Genuine faith. 

J (nodding): Genuine faith is founded on a person's ability to trust that God actually knows what they're doing! If you aren't able to trust God, then you're always going to be second-guessing God, getting angry with God. You're always going to be judging God. People don't like to admit that they're judging God, but many Christians do it. Every single day they draw up lists of God's "crimes" of omission and commission. You wouldn't believe the number of angry prayers God gets every day. 

A: So how does all this relate to the message of the Lukan beatitudes? 

J: The issue here is the interconnection between trust and faith on the one hand, and anger and addiction on the other hand. The brain isn't wired -- nor should it be -- to allow human beings to live a life of trust and faith AND anger and addiction. People have to make a choice. They have to make a choice between living a life of trust and faith -- a life where they feel alive every day instead of dead inside, empty inside -- OR living a life of anger and addiction. It's an unfortunate fact that once people become addicted to status, physiologically addicted to the dopamine release of "status hits," they tend to want to stick with their "drug of choice." They won't give it up until they decide their addiction is causing harm. They have to stop denying the harm created by the addiction. So let me ask you . . . how many people do you know who've voluntarily given up their status for the sake of inner life, inner freedom, inner joy? 

A: I know several people who've lost their status involuntarily -- not through choice, but through circumstance. Stock market losses. Divorce. Illness. Long-term disability. That sort of thing.  

J: You know a number of people with money, status, privilege, possessions. How would you say they're doing on the "inner joy" scale?  

A: Many aren't doing well. They're getting clinically depressed. They're developing chronic health problems -- a lot of autoimmune stuff. Sleep disorders. Chronic pain. Unrelenting stress.  

J: Right. These responses to stress and status addiction aren't new. They've been around for as long as homo sapiens have been biologically susceptible to status addiction.  

A: The Lukan Woes -- Luke 6:24-26 -- look different when read in the context you've just described. The "consolation" and the "hunger" and the "mourning and weeping" sound a lot like clinical depression.  

J: Clinical depression has a genetic component, but it's also intertwined with internal stresses and external stresses. Sometimes you can't do anything about the external stresses -- things like the Dow Jones average. But the internal stresses have an effect on clinical depression, too. People can really stress themselves out by making choices that harm themselves and harm others. There's a reason that people with clinical depression respond best to a treatment course that involves both appropriate antidepressant medication AND certain kinds of effective psychotherapy. The medication helps your brain build new "wiring," which is necessary for the healing process, while the psychotherapy can help you recognize your harmful choices and learn to make more loving choices.  

A: Nothing new there as far as an empathetic psychiatrist is concerned.  

J: Exactly. And Christianity should jump onto the same page with the empathetic psychiatrists. It's not money that's the root of all evil. Money builds schools, hospitals, roads, etc., etc., etc.  

A: Whereas status addiction builds huge monuments, huge reputations, huge armies, and professional sports teams. 

J: Jared Diamond thinks that civilizations collapse when they harm their own environment and starve themselves to death. But people who are using their brains in holistic, balanced ways have too much common sense to destroy their own environment. Only serious status addicts are stupid enough to destroy their own sustenance for the sake of building a bigger, better Temple.  

A: The history of collapse in a nutshell. 

J: God won't back up status-addicted choices. God would rather bring people Home to heal them and release them from the pain of status addiction than leave them in a morass of profound abuse. And make no mistake -- religion based on status addiction is profoundly abusive. 

A: Including Pauline Christianity. Its doctrines, its teachings.  

J: If the shoe fits . . .

JR9: Jesus Explains "The Kingdom"

A: You told me several years ago that you wrote parts of the Letter of James yourself -- specifically James 1:2-27, James 2:1-8, and James 3:1-18 -- and that after your death your older brother James added the remaining verses to blunt the effect of your writings and make them more "pious." Yesterday I was checking something in the Letter of James, and I couldn't help smiling. What you wrote 2,000 years ago sounds an awful lot like what you said for the record last Wednesday. Do you mind if I put in a quote from James?

J: Knock yourself out. 

A: Okay. Here's the NRSV translation of James 2:1-8a, with a couple of changes in emphasis. Here goes:

• "My brothers, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in God? For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, 'Have a seat here, please,' while to the one who is poor you say, 'Stand there,' or 'Sit at my feet,' have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and becomes judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court? Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you? You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'"

J: You give them one little inviolable spiritual law to follow, and they argue with you until you're blue in the face and dead in the ground. It's 2,000 years since I said that, and a huge number of Christians still don't get it -- you can't love your neighbour and keep your status addiction, too. You have to make a choice. 

A: There are almost no Christians who believe you wrote these verses yourself. Few theologians pay attention to the Letter of James. It doesn't have any real "Christology" in it. To them, it's little more than a typical 1st century wisdom sermon. Martin Luther hated this letter because it seems to deny Paul's doctrine of "justification by faith." Luther called it "an epistle of straw," and would have had it removed from the Protestant canon if he could have. 

J: There you go. More proof for the theory that Paul and I had very different things to say about God.

"Jesus said: 'Why do you wash the outside of the cup? Do you not understand that the one who made the inside is also the one who made the outside?'" (Gospel of Thomas 89). "Jesus said: 'Come to me. My yoke is easy. My mastery is gentle, and you will find peace for yourselves'" (Gospel of Thomas 90). St. Brendan's Catholic Church, Rockport ON. Photo credit JAT 2020.

A: Tell me what you meant when you described the poor as "heirs of the kingdom."  

J: That goes to the heart of my teachings.  

A: I know.  

J (grinning): No point beating around the bush, eh?  

A: Exactly my thought.  

J: Well, I guess you could say that I was trying to be a good teacher. By that I mean I was doing my best to explain complex ideas in a useful, usable way. Good teaching often involves finding the right image, the right metaphor for the group you're teaching. The right metaphor can open up doors in a student's mind, help her find the connection between what she already knows and what she's learning. You can try to invent new terms, new words for a complex idea. Scholars often do this. Or you can try to work with existing vocabulary and use it in new ways. I opted for the latter. 

A: So you chose the word "kingdom" because of the symbolism attached to it at the time.  

J: Well, here's where it gets confusing. The word "kingdom" by itself was not the exact image I chose -- not that word by itself, anyway. But, like all people, I was sometimes guilty of shortening things for the sake of convenience. The actual phrase I chose was "basileia ton ouranon" -- Koine Greek for "kingdom of the heavens." Eventually, when I was speaking or writing for my own community, I called it "the kingdom" for short. But by then it was understood what I meant. 

A: Which was . . . ?  

J: I was trying to express the idea that each individual person should think of themselves as a whole and complete entity, lacking nothing as far as God is concerned. A tiny kingdom of "selfhood" unto themselves. An inviolable kingdom. A worthy kingdom. A very small kingdom, to be sure, but one they have full rights over as its "sovereign." It's about boundary issues, really. Today's teachers and psychologists use the phrase "boundary issues." I used the phrase "kingdom of the heavens." But it's the same idea exactly. It's the idea that your body and your mind and your heart belong to nobody but you. Therefore, it's wrong to transgress those boundaries. It's wrong for you to invade somebody else's body, mind, and heart, just as it's wrong for them to invade yours. It's about human dignity, human worth. It's about seeing each individual as, well, as . . . 

A: As an individual?  

J: Yes. It's about seeing each individual as an individual, instead of seeing them as property or as a means to an end.  

A: Status addicts. Psychopaths. Narcissists. People suffering from these disorders can't see other people as they really are -- as other people. They tend to see them as objects to be used. 

J: That ideal -- if you can call it that -- was ingrained in the culture of my time. People were so used to hearing about "the chosen" and "the judged" in society that they weren't questioning the wrongness of it. They had little mental framework, little understanding of the idea that slavery was a violation of the soul. Most of the people I worked with in my ministry felt like the proverbial dog who's been kicked. The dog is at the bottom of a long list of people kicking each other according to rank. The dog has the least rank, so he gets kicked the hardest. That's the mentality I was facing in Galilee.  

A: You were facing an uphill battle trying to persuade your students that they were worthy of God's love and forgiveness -- just as worthy as the priests in Jerusalem. 

J: It's not easy to overcome the conditioning of a lifetime. They weren't inclined to believe me. These were people of faith. They didn't want to anger God. They wanted to show God their obedience and faith. They were suspicious of me for a long time.  

A: What turned the tide? 

J: In the end, it was about trust and compassion, I guess you could say. I stuck to my guns. I did what I said I would do. I wasn't a hypocrite -- that alone earned me a lot of trust. I treated people fairly and respectfully the way I thought God wanted me to. Stuff happened.  

A: Stuff happened? Like what stuff? What happened?  

J: Oh, you know. Healings. Changes. Stuff like that.  

A: You mean like healing miracles? That kind of stuff?  

J: Well, yes, if you want to get right down to it, I suppose you could describe it that way. 

A: Healing miracles began to take place, and the people around you -- the poor and disadvantaged of Galilee -- began to notice. 

J (nodding yes without speaking). 

A: Were you the source of the healing miracles? Did you yourself heal them?  

J: Healing miracles, when they take place, come from God. From God and God's healing angels. I was a facilitator, if you will -- an intermediary. A human being people could see and touch with their own senses. My job was to reassure them, comfort them, encourage them to trust. The actual healing was God's work. And I said so. Loudly. As often as I could. I never claimed to be a chosen prophet, and I yelled at anybody who tried to call me the Messiah. I clearly understood that my role -- my task as a human being who'd been given many advantages during my youth -- was to help people feel okay about receiving God's love and comfort and healing. If I was helpful in my role as a physician -- suggesting teas and salves and other sorts of medical treatments -- it was only because God was guiding me in my work. I listened carefully to what God's healing angels were saying (that's where it's handy to be a practising mystic), and I did what they suggested to me. I wasn't being "forced" to listen to my angels. I wanted to listen to my angels, and I wanted to trust their advice. That was my choice -- my own free will. They're damned smart, and they had some wonderful healing suggestions.

A: Can you give any examples of their advice?  

J: Gosh. They had tons of medical insights. Things like, "Tell that woman she has to eat orange vegetables." Of course, they knew -- although I didn't -- that orange vegetables contain Vitamin A, important for normal vision. Two thousand years ago, that was a miracle. They warned me, as well, about the dangers of lead. Lead was used in those days in many practical ways because of its low melting point and malleability. "Stay away from food vessels or utensils made of lead or pewter," they said. Good advice, that.  

A: And pewtersmiths have stopped making pewter with lead. 

“A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, ‘If you choose, you can make me clean.’ Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I do choose. Be made clean!’ Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, saying to him, ‘See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.’ But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed in the country; and people came to him from every quarter” (Mark 1:40–45). Photo credit JAT 2016.

J: The most important thing my angels taught me, however, was to ignore the standard Temple teachings about illness and healing. To be honest, my angels had nothing nice to say about traditional purity laws. They told me it was okay -- by that I mean medically safe -- to ignore the "do not touch" laws about skin diseases, bodily fluids, and dietary restrictions. My angels said to me, "Touch, touch!" So I touched. I looked in people's eyes when they were sick. I held their hands. I told them their angels were with them. I told them God was with them. Any physician worth his or her salt will know what this means to a frightened patient. The relationship between physician and patient is integral to the healing process.  

A: So you took the healing process away from the designated Jerusalem priests and put it into the hands of God. You made the healing process both more scientific and more compassionate. Which somehow led to more miracles.  

J (nodding yes): Um hum.  

A: I can just imagine how furious the priests would have been that people were getting better from eating carrots instead of from giving sacrifices at the Temple.  

J: The fact that I was descended from priests on my mother's side didn't help the situation any.   

A: They must have been very upset when they started to hear rumours about your healing ministry -- a son of priests performing unsanctioned healings outside the Temple precincts.  

J: That would be an understatement.