JR21: Saying 67 in the Gospel of Thomas

A: Okay. Here's another pretty big question for you. Stevan Davies translates Saying 67 of the Gospel of Thomas as "Jesus said: One who knows everything else but who does not know himself knows nothing." Was this saying central to your teachings? Was it an important theme for you?
 
J: Yes. I tried very hard to express this idea. I tried to express it in many different ways.
 
A: Similar ideas have been taught by many spiritual leaders over the centuries. In fact, it's almost a spiritual cliche. It's so easy to say, "One who knows everything else but who does not know himself knows nothing." But what exactly does it mean?
 
J: It means you have to know who you actually are as a soul -- "the core you" that's left after you strip away all the false, damaging prejudices and religious doctrines and abusive teachings of your family and culture. It means you have to love, honour, and respect the person you are when you remove all the weeds from the garden of your biological brain. It means you have to trust that when you pull out all the weeds, there's still going to be something left in there. You have to trust that when you pull out all the weeds, you won't be left with a barren patch of lifeless dirt. Instead you'll be able to see the flowers of your soul -- the lilies of the field -- for the first time.

"Happy are those who make the Lord their trust, who do not turn to the proud, to those who go astray after false gods. You have multiplied, O Lord my God, your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us; none can compare with you. Were I to proclaim and tell of them, they would be more than can be counted. Sacrifice and offering you do not desire, but you have given me an open ear. Burnt offering and sin offering you have not required. Then I said, 'Here I am; in the scroll of the book it is written of me. I delight to do your will, O God; your law is within my heart'" (Psalm 40:4-8). Photo credit JAT 2014.

 

 

 

A: I take it you're not too fond of the image of Creation in Genesis 2:7: the Lord God forming Adam from dust and then breathing the breath of life into his nostrils so he'd become a living being.
 
J: I don't like the Christian interpretation of this verse. The Bible has many references to human beings as dirt or clay or potters' vessels. Clay is nothing more than a kind of dirt that can be shaped, moulded according to the creator's will. The message that's repeated again and again is that human beings are malleable in the way that wet clay is malleable. Wet clay starts out as a lump. It can be turned into any shape imaginable (as long as the laws of physics and chemistry aren't broken). You can make a plate. You can make a bowl. You can make a large urn. You can make a small storage container. A complex sculpture. A string of beads. Clay is like that. You can make whatever you want. Many people -- pious Pauline Christians especially -- believe that God intends human beings to be like clay. They believe that each person is basically a lump of malleable clay. Based on this belief, they assume that God can reshape each individual in any way God chooses. It's the idea of neuroplasticity taken to absurd extremes: "I can be anything God wants me to be if only I try hard enough to surrender to God's will!!!" How often have you heard a sanctimonious preacher say that?
 
A: It's a popular Christian idea.
 
J: It was a popular idea with many Essene and Hellenistic philosophers in my time, too. It's an idea that makes it very easy for religious leaders to blame people in their flock for "not trying hard enough." It makes it very easy to accuse regular people of being "weak". To accuse them of falling short of true faith. To make them feel guilty for "letting God down." To point fingers at them and say they're filled with sin. These teachings are spiritually abusive.
 
A: You're talking about the bread & butter of fundamentalist and evangelical Christians.
 
J: And fundamentalists of other faiths, too.
 
A: You're saying, then, that the doctrine of malleable clay is factually incorrect. That Genesis 2:7 is wrong in its portrayal of human beings.
 
J: I'm saying the Second Creation story (Genesis 2-3) has been completely misread. In fact, both Creation stories in Genesis have been misunderstood. Obviously (without apologies to any Creationists who might read this) there is no literal truth to Genesis 1 or Genesis 2-3. On top of that, the metaphorical truth doesn't say what Christians believe it says. Human beings are not malleable lumps of clay. They can't be shaped by God or by anyone else into something they're not. You can't force a woman to become a man (though some people would like to try). You can't force a gay man to become straight (though some Christians would like them to try). You can't force a musician to become an engineer (though sadly many parents have tried. And tried and tried and tried.) God the Mother and God the Father don't make souls this way. Souls aren't malleable. Each soul has a unique identity, a unique blueprint, a unique set of talents and traits and strengths and absences of strengths. Souls are like snowflakes -- no two are alike. You can't take what God the Mother and God the Father made and "fix it." You can't turn a bowl into a plate. You can't turn a sculpture into a wind chime. You are who you are. It's true that you may not know who you are. It's true that you may not know whether you're a bowl or a plate or a sculpture or a wind chime. But your soul knows. And God knows. Between you -- between you and God -- you can uncover your own true soul identity.
 
A: I like the garden metaphor better. I'd rather discover what kind of "flower" I am. I'm not sure I really want to "see" myself as a set of dishes in the kitchen cupboard.
 
J: I hear ya. Nature metaphors are much more natural, much more helpful. That's why I used so many images from nature in my teachings. There's a natural resonance, a natural harmony between the images of nature and the soul's own language. The soul "gets" nature imagery. The soul doesn't mind being likened to trees or flowers or fruits. Or the totems of Indigenous North American tradition. It helps human beings to have a nature metaphor of their own soul. An image to help them "see" themselves as God sees them.
 
A: If I were a tree, what kind of tree do you think I'd be? (Not that I'm saying I'm literally a tree . . .)
 
J: You'd be a yew. A tough, gnarly yew. That reminds me a lot of you.
 
A: Yeah? Okay, well that makes sense to me. I even really like yews. Always have. Nobody's gonna believe this when I say this, but to me, you're most definitely a magnolia. A big, showy magnolia. And damn but you wear it well! Of course, if the shrivelled up hearts of the pious Pauline Christians had their way, you'd be a bleeding, suffering, miserable, ugly thorn bush.
 
J: What? No burning bush? No branch of Jesse? No grafted grapevine? No olive tree? I think I'd make a particularly fine Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Don't you?
 
A: You're such a cynic.

JR20: Persecution of the Heirs of the Kingdom

A: Another important theme you included alongside the idea that the poor were "heirs of the kingdom" was the idea that the faithful would be hated, excluded, reviled, defamed, and persecuted [Luke 6:22 and Thomas 68]. Stevan Davies, in his commentary on the Gospel of Thomas, is puzzled by this. He says, "It is puzzling why so much very early Christian literature assumes that persecution is an inherent part of being a Christian. The ancient world was by no means a place where well-defined doctrinal parameters defined orthodoxy and heresy so that dissenters would regularly be persecuted for their beliefs. The violent suppression of religious ideas became characteristic of Western religions only in later centuries (p. 74)." Why did you place so much emphasis on the idea that the heirs to the kingdom would be reviled?

J: Davies makes a lot of assumptions here that need to be challenged. Like many commentators, he's making dualistic assumptions. He's assuming that I was primarily teaching about "mysticism" -- something separate from everyday realities, something elevated or special or hidden. He assumes a Gnostic interpretation of my early sayings. He assumes that persecution arose when others became envious or angry because they didn't know "my secret." But this isn't at all what I meant. I was telling people the honest truth about what would happen to them if they followed my teachings about God and status. I was telling them to be prepared to be vilified, attacked, abused, and scorned for daring to provoke the psychopaths and narcissists around them. I was telling people to be honest and realistic about other people's reactions.

A: Whoa. That's a pretty big statement you just made. That's a statement with a lot of implications. Can you explain in more detail?

J: Yes. Put bluntly, "Hell hath no fury like a narcissist scorned."

A: Ooooh. Nice image.

J: This is the psychological context that all people should be aware of, not just the people who've chosen a spiritual life. This is the psychological context that lurks behind corruption and crime and abuse. If there's one good thing I can say about TV dramas like Law & Order and Criminal Minds it's this: these TV shows are doing more to teach regular people about psychopathy and narcissism than Christianity ever has. It's a valuable public service.

A: It goes without saying that you didn't have TV shows or films to use as teaching aids.

J: True. But we had something almost as good. We had Greco-Roman mythology. We had a complete psychological "language" available to us, a complete collection of cautionary tales that graphically described all the best and all the worst choices a human being can make. There were -- are -- myths about jealousy. Myths about rape. Myths about prophecy. Myths about hubris. Myths about suffering. Myths about trickery. Myths about bravery. Myths about romance. Myths about empathy. The characters in these myths are archetypes for different psychological states. These archetypes are still quite useful for talking about psychological choices, psychological states. They're much more memorable than long-winded academic articles full of jargon.

A: And they make better action films, too. I'm thinking of the recent remake of Clash of the Titans.

J: The archetype of psychopathy that worked best for me was the image of Medusa. Not the snake chick from Clash of the Titans -- that's not the version of the myth I knew best -- but the version that described Medusa as so hideous to look upon that she had the power to turn you to stone. That's what the power of psychopaths is like -- they're so frightening, so unrepentant in their pursuit of power and status, that the people around them feel paralyzed, "turned to stone," unable to move or think, let alone react in self-defense. This is how psychopaths end up running major institutions, corporations, and countries. They just keep on turning people into stone until they get what they want.

“Jesus said, Blessed are you when they hate and persecute you. No place will be found where they persecuted you (Gospel of Thomas 68).” Statue of Perseus by Antonio Canova (Vatican City), photo by Tetraktys (from Wikimedia Commons)

A: Which is usually money, power, status, fame.

J: And sexual gratification.

A: Yuck.

J: Respectful, tender, devoted, consensual sexuality between two committed adults is not on the menu for psychopaths. They can pretend for a while, but they get bored. Eventually they go looking for "side dishes" if they think they can get away with it.

A: What happens when you confront a psychopath directly, challenge his or her actions?

J: That's when the fireworks begin. Psychopaths are often easy to get along with on a day to day basis as long as they believe they're in full control, as long as they believe they're receiving the status they "deserve." They're especially affable and agreeable at work or at home if people tell them how nice they are. One of the most misunderstood qualities of a psychopath is his or her desperate need to believe that he/she is "a nice person." It's their main coping mechanism, believe it or not.

A: Ahead of habits like lying, manipulation, substance abuse, and abusive sexuality?

J: The need to find "proof" that they're nice is the psychopath's Number One psychological defense against the truth of his or her unconscionable behaviour.

A: So Hitler believed he was "a nice person."

J: Oh, absolutely. Same with his close buddies. As a group, they told themselves comfy little lies about what nice people they were and what an important job they were doing for the German people -- the German people they loved.

A: Throwing themselves on their swords for the good of the people, eh?

J: That's how they explained it to themselves. That's how they managed to keep functioning, despite the severe damage to their biological brains.

A: Hitler had a violent temper and he made irrational military decisions that revolved around "honour." His honour.

J: That's what I meant when I said that hell hath no fury like a narcissist scorned. When you impugn the "honour" -- by that I actually mean the status -- of a psychopath or a severe narcissist, you can expect to be on the receiving end of a narcissistic rage reaction. Such a person will not rest until he or she has exacted revenge. The revenge may be physical. It may be psychological. It may be financial or social. Or some combination of these. But you can count on one thing: it'll hurt like stink, and you'll probably be deeply traumatized for a long time afterwards. Only occasionally will such person decide to "let it go" and walk away from the "deservee."

A: They want to turn you to stone, in other words.

J: This is the reality. It seemed appropriate to me to caution my students about this reality. You could say it was a question of "informed consent." Is it right to give students a new understanding of how to be in relationship with God and not warn them about the practical consequences of standing up to the bullies, the tyrants, and the religious status seekers? It didn't seem right to me not to warn them.

A: The version of the Medusa myth I liked best when I was growing up was the version where Perseus cut off Medusa's head and released the beautiful winged horse Pegasus who was trapped inside. There are other versions of the Pegasus myth, but somehow I liked the idea of the noble creature trapped inside the monster. It made sense to me. Not that I'm endorsing the Gnostic idea of good-soul-trapped-inside-evil-body. I don't mean it that way. It's just that so many people misuse their bodies and brains. They choose to ignore their true self -- their Pegasus, if you will. They choose to identify with this horrible snake-covered outer mask that enjoys hurting other people, enjoys turning other people into stone. They're in a complete state of denial about the choices they're making.

J: Part of the journey of forgiving the Hitlers of the world is the choice to trust that behind every snake-covered Medusan mask of hatred lies the true self -- the brave and beautiful Pegasus. A.k.a. the soul. The core consciousness that isn't being listened to.

A: Ah. But we haven't got to those teachings yet. Those are the most challenging ones of all.

J: One step at a time. That's the best anyone can do.

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 . . .

JR18: The "Trilemma"

A: This morning it seemed like a good idea for me to post part of the cognate paper I wrote for my Master's degree. I've included the abstract, the information from the Schematic Model that underlies my argument, and an introduction to the argument itself. This paper has not been published, but, like all original writing, is covered by copyright laws.

This research paper was the product of years of combined academic and mystical research. I got a lot of help from Jesus (though I couldn't put that in the bibliography!), and I got little help from my supervising professor, who was somewhat bewildered by the paper. The paper was read and marked by a second professor -- P.H., a theologian of Pentecostal stripe -- who hated the paper and who, strangely enough, accused me of wasting 20 pages in the middle on "nothing" and then in the next breath accused me of not backing up my stated theory about Jesus' teachings. She literally could not see, with her fundamentalist background, that the "wasted pages" constituted an analysis of radical claims about Jesus made by the author of the Gospel of Mark. People see what they want to see, even in academia.

If you're interested in reading the paper in its entirety, it's posted on my website on the Doctrines of the Soul page.


ABSTRACT:
This paper compares different theological claims that were made about the soul in Hellenistic philosophy, Second Temple Judaism, and early Christianity, and shows through the use of a new theoretical model that these claims cannot be grouped by religion. Doctrinal claims about the soul can instead be grouped into one of three main fields of theological inquiry: the physis versus nomos debate; the nomos versus the Divine debate; or the physis versus the Divine debate. These three debates have operated in parallel within Christianity since its inception. The Gospel of Mark provides evidence that Jesus’ own teachings on the soul may have been part of a novel solution to the physis-Divine debate. By contrast, Tertullian’s detailed doctrine of the soul, presented in The Soul’s Testimony and A Treatise on the Soul, draws on the traditions of the nomos-Divine debate, and yields very different claims than those presented in Mark. Tertullian’s doctrine of the soul, and his related doctrine of original sin, have exerted great influence on the orthodox Christian understanding of the soul. The church today has the option of reexamining the history of early Christian soul doctrines and assessing the three parallel strands of thought to uncover a previously overlooked biblically-based understanding of the soul that can meet today’s pastoral needs.


Schematic Model for the Theological "Trilemma":

(c) Jennifer Thomas 2010

1. The Rift Between PHYSIS and NOMOS The Problem: How can we reconcile the necessities of nature with the themes of justice and judgment derived from human laws? The Solution: Elevation of human authority and human status (arete). IN TENSION WITH 2 AND 3.
2. The Rift Between NOMOS and the DIVINE The Problem: How can we reconcile the themes of justice and judgment derived from human laws with the puzzling long-term relationship we have with God. The Solution: Elevation of prophetic authority, and lack of accountability to the necessities of nature. IN TENSION WITH 1 AND 3.
3. The Rift Between PHYSIS and the DIVINE The Problem: How can we reconcile the necessities of nature with the puzzling long-term relationship we have with God? The Solution: Elevation of secret knowledge, mysticism, and cult rituals. IN TENSION WITH 1 AND 2.

The model I propose is shown in diagrammatic format in figure 1, Schematic Model for the Theological "Trilemma." This figure is elaborated on in tables 1, 2, and 3. Although a much longer paper would be needed to examine this model in detail, in the current paper I will use this model to examine three major streams of theological thought that have all, in their own way, used doctrines of the soul to resolve issues of religious and political authority. By placing the different doctrines of the soul mentioned above into this framework, it is easier to see in what way Tertullian’s theology differs markedly from that of Jesus in the Synoptics. The contrast between these two demonstrates clearly that doctrines of the soul do not line up neatly according to the respective religious tradition from which each emerged. In other words, there is not a soul doctrine that is unique to Judaism, a different soul doctrine that is unique to Hellenism, and a third one found only in Christianity. Instead, a distinctive three-fold pattern exists, a pattern that is shared among Judaism, Greek religion/ philosophy, and early Christianity, and this three-fold pattern is the basis of the model I am proposing. This three-fold pattern, or "trilemma" as I have chosen to call it, partly explains the "why" of fierce theological debate. It also helps explain why we are so confused today about the nature of the soul.

The pattern I am proposing as a theological framework to help us analyse our current confusion arose in response to observations made by Walter Burkert in his book Greek Religion. Towards the end of this important book, Burkert discusses the religious and philosophical crisis that erupted in the fifth century BCE when sophists and atheists undermined Greek religious certainty with their observations about nomos and physis:

Nomos, meaning both custom and law, becomes a central concept of sophistic thought. Laws are made by men and can be altered arbitrarily. And what is tradition if not the sum of such ordinances? Horizons are extended through travel and the reports of travel: with growing interest men became aware of foreign peoples among whom everything is different, witness the ethnographic digressions of Herodotus. In this way the unquestioned assumptions of custom can easily be shaken. The discovery of the changeability of custom becomes particularly dangerous when nomos is set in opposition to physis, a concept provided by the philosophy of nature where it is used to denote the growing of the cosmos and of all things contained in it from their own laws. Archelaos, a pupil of Anaxagoras, is supposed to have been the first to formulate this antithesis about 440 BC: the just and the unjust, the ugly and the beautiful are not defined by physis but by nomos, by arbitrarily changing human convention.

But it was on tradition, nomos, that religion primarily rested, as the Greeks knew well. Its foundations were seen to be threatened, at least in theory, as a result of the questioning of nomos.[1]

Burkert then goes on to outline how pre-Socratic thinkers such as Heraclitus, Empedocles, Sophocles, and Diogenes of Apollonia "delivered" the pious from this crisis of uncertainty by asserting that "[t]here are laws of eusebeia which are rooted in heaven, removed from human caprice, and eternal like the cosmos itself."[2] Thus, concludes Burkert, "nature speculation provides a starting-point from which to close the rift between physis and nomos, and so to give a new, unshakeable foundation for piety."[3]

"The rift between physis and nomos" is a phrase so powerful, so meaningful, that it seems almost paradigmatic, and Burkert’s recognition of the pattern opened the door to a pursuit by this author of other such paradigmatic rifts. This line of enquiry led to the observation that there seem to be two other major rifts: the rift between nomos and the Divine, and the rift between physis and the Divine. Each of these rifts is not a simple duality but rather a complex philosophical/theological tension that encompasses perennial questions about what it means to be human, and what it means to be a human in relationship with God.

The three-fold pattern I suggest here can be represented by the triangle shown in figure 1. Each point of the triangle represents one of the three rifts. Although other writers have proposed three-point triangles to highlight both doctrinal and scholarly incongruities[4], what distinguishes the "trilemma" from other three-point models is the fact that each point in the proposed triangular scheme represents not a single concept but a complex tension between two difficult-to-reconcile concepts that seem to be separated by a rift. Each of these rifts, on its own, represents a valid question. For instance, it is perfectly valid for religious seekers to ask in what way human laws and traditions should (or could) align with the laws of nature (nomos in tension with physis; table 1); or in what way religious laws are (or could be) made in the image of our relationship with God (nomos in tension with the Divine; table 2)[5]; or in what way the actual laws of nature reflect our relationship with a God who allows death and suffering (physis in tension with the Divine; table 3). These are all straightforward and important themes of theology. What is not straightforward is the way in which the answers to these questions gradually resulted in three divergent theological solutions, as shown on tables 1, 2, and 3. Each of these three theological solutions presents a different view of who God is, and how we can be in relationship with God. These solutions are mutually incompatible. For instance, if you "cut and paste" the three different versions of how God is perceived in these three different solutions (that is, if you try to put them all together on one point in the centre of the triangle), you arrive at a God who is simultaneously distant and transcendent, fully immanent, unchanging, emotionally detached, interventionist, emotionally involved, in conditional relationship with us, in unconditional relationship with us, and proleptically in relationship with us. This simply cannot be, unless one resorts to the time-honoured tradition of explaining away overt contradictions as mysterion.[6]

What emerges upon examination of the "trilemma" is the extent to which these three theological solutions are mutually incompatible. The questions that underlie the three points are not incompatible; but the solutions that have arisen and been accepted as dogma over many centuries are very much incompatible. A person who attempts to hold all three solutions together as a unified whole is likely to end up confused at the very least. Yet for centuries Christians have been trying to do this very thing. Before that, the people of Judah/Israel and the people of classical Greece wrestled with the same confusion. This is not a new problem. But until we recognize it as a reality that is causing us problems, and until we look for new ways to de-complicate our Protestant theology, we will continue to be confused about our relationship with God.

This same confusion manifests in our current understanding of the soul, which, as I will show in the next two chapters, presents a theological solution based on only one point of the trilemma – the nomos-Divine rift – while using a confusing blend of vocabulary that seems to point to the other two points as well. Thus we will see the emergence of a soul doctrine that means one thing while ostensibly saying another. The intent of this soul doctrine is to entrench the inviolability of divine contract laws (the nomos-Divine rift), but it refers often to the language of free will (physis-nomos rift) and of mystery (physis-Divine rift). In this context, it is little wonder that today’s church is so reticent about the soul – at present, the orthodox understanding of the soul makes no sense!

[1] Walter Burkert, Greek Religion, trans. John Raffan (1977; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), 312-313.
[2] Ibid., 318.
[3] Ibid.
[4]Dr. W. M. pointed out to his Winter 2009 class the triangular models of Mattitiahu Tsevat and James Barr respectively. Tsevat’s model shows the doctrinal dilemma of the Book of Job, which can be summarized as "just Creator, just persons, just rewards: pick two." Mattitiahu Tsevat, "The Meaning of the Book of Job," Hebrew Union College Annual 37 (1966), 73-106. James Barr presents a threefold process for studying the Bible – referential, intentional, and poetic – in The Bible in the Modern World (London: S.C.M. Press, 1973), 61. James Rives, however, comes closest to the model I’m suggesting when he describes the three kinds of advantage offered by religion in the Greco-Roman period: (1) traditional benefits, (2) intensification, and (3) salvation. James. B. Rives, Religion in the Roman Empire (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 168-179.
[5]As the entry on nomos in the New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology points out, "[t]he legal, ethical and religious meanings of nomos are inseparable in antiquity, for all goods were believed to come from the gods, who upheld order in the universe and in relations between men . . . . Philosophy (even that of the Sophists), kept alive the awareness that, since human laws are so fallible, man cannot exist unless he conforms to cosmic, universal law . . . . Whereas the Sophists criticized the idea of absolute validity attaching to nomos, Plato and Aristotle each in his own way connected it with the nous, the human spirit, and thereby once again with the divine." Hans-Helmut Esser, "Law, Custom, Elements," in The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, vol. 2, rev. ed., ed. Colin Brown (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1986),439.
[6]Although I am a practising mystic, I would not want to fall back on the excuse of mysterion to try to force these different images onto a single page. Mystery as a concept can be dangerous when used as a catchall to smooth over doctrinal inconveniences or to uphold church authority at the expense of the oppressed. The church needs mystery – but it does not need the kind that has been used to justify longstanding abuses in the church towards women and the disadvantaged.

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.

JR16: Riddles in the Gospel of Thomas

A: This morning I was looking through my somewhat dusty copy of The Gospel of Thomas*. In the notes by translator Stevan Davies, I found this statement about the 113 original sayings: "The correct interpretation of the sayings is not the final goal but the means to the goal, the discovery of the Kingdom of Heaven. Thomas's Gospel is an exercise book, a list of riddles for decoding. The secret lies not in the final answers but in the effort to find the answers (page 2)." How would you respond to that? 

“Jesus said: The Kingdom of the Father is like a merchant with goods to sell who found a pearl. The merchant was thoughtful. He sold the merchandise and bought himself the pearl [Gospel of Thomas 76A].” Jesus’ sayings about pearls are difficult for us to understand today because pearls are fairly common and inexpensive. In Jesus’ time, however, pearls were exceedingly rare and couldn’t be faked or counterfeited by clever human beings. Finding a pearl in the Mediterranean was no easy task, either, as most shells brought up through the risky diving process contained no pearls at all. So to randomly find a miraculous pearl was a sign of God’s blessing and truth, a far more valuable gift than the usual man-made goods. From a theological perspective, the merchant decides to set aside his “earthly treasures” and buy into God’s economy, where the benefits are sure and lasting and unrivalled in their beauty. It’s also important to note the merchant makes his choice voluntarily. No one forces him into it. (Shown here is a 17th century pomander made of gold, enamel, and pearls. It's on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK. Photo credit JAT 2023.)

J: Well, the way these sayings have come down to modern readers certainly makes them seem like a list of riddles for initiates to decode. There's no doubt that most Christians today are confused by the sayings found in the Gospel of Thomas. Many earnest attempts have been made to interpret the sayings. The problem for today's commentators is that they -- the commentators -- lack context. They don't understand the context in which I spoke the sayings, or the context in which John the Baptist wrote down the sayings. Most Christian commentators are also desperately trying to make the Gospel of Thomas fit comfortably within the traditional orthodox Christian framework. Since the traditional orthodox Western framework is based on the teachings of Paul, rather than on my teachings, it's a tall order to try to force the Gospel of Thomas into an orthodox understanding of God.  

A: Yes. I know what you mean. People seem to want to read the Kingdom of Heaven sayings in a traditional eschatological way. They want the Kingdom to be about a future time, a future place. They want the Kingdom to be the special heaven that's close to God, the place where God's specially chosen people will end up on Judgment Day.  

J: An idea that's very old, in fact. And not restricted to orthodox Christianity, either. The Essenes of my day believed deeply in both eschatology and apocalyptic visions of the future End of Days. 

A: How widespread were those Essene ideas?  

J: The people I was teaching seemed to know a lot about the Essene prophecies for the coming End Times. Of course, that's not surprising, since John the Baptist was part of our teaching circle.  

A: You say that John the Baptist wrote down the sayings found in the Gospel of Thomas. Yet biblical scholars have remarked on the fact that there's no congruence between the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of John. The sayings found in Thomas appear frequently in the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke. But not in John. If John wrote down the sayings collected in the Gospel of Thomas, why don't any of those sayings appear in his later writings? 

J: As I mentioned a few days ago, John and I had a complicated relationship spread over several years. When I first sought out John, I was the student and he was the teacher.  

A: Even though he was only 18 at the time? 

J: Lifespans were much shorter then for most people. It wasn't unusual for young adults to take on great responsibilities. If they waited too long to get on with life, they might be dead. So yes -- there were teachers who were quite young. What mattered in John's case was his education, his mastery of the material. It was clear he was highly trained in Jewish religious texts. Who was going to argue with a guy who had memorized big scrolls like Isaiah and could recite them verse by verse?  

A: How old were you when you first met John?  

J: I was older. About twenty-three, twenty-four. By that time I'd been married, divorced, had lost my daughter to illness, and had spent about a year at a Hellenistic "medical school." I was so old in heart and spirit that I felt about 50. I was also half bald by then. Probably from all the family stress I was under.  

A: I can see how it would have been appealing to sit under a tree and talk about God with other like-minded people.  

J: Yes. I was an emotional wreck. And, like so many other people whose lives have been torn apart by tragedy, I needed answers. That's why, when I heard about John's amazing new teachings, I sought him out.  

A: What was your initial impression of him? 

J: He had this serene, otherworldly quality about him, as if he was above all the turmoil and tragedy of the world around him. When you asked him a question about current life, current realities, he always answered with a religious verse. He was so confident that all the answers could be found in the holy texts. 

A: What did he look like?  

J: He was a big man. Very tall, very robust in stature. I'd use the word "hearty." Hearty as in big, friendly, strong, salt of the earth. Not polished. Not sophisticated. Homespun and down to earth. I thought he was wonderfully natural in comparison to the elegant Hellenistic Jews I'd grown up with.  

A: Again, I can see the appeal.  

J: His voice was a rich baritone. He'd been trained in the arts of speaking and rhetoric, that was for sure. He understood cadence, rhyme, repetition -- all the tricks of persuasive speech. He was always throwing in bits and pieces of wisdom -- small, apt phrases and wisdom sayings. It made him sound very wise. Until I started to notice he had no original thoughts of his own. He could recite ancient wisdom sayings, but he couldn't process new ideas, new insights. That was part of the mental illness that was slowly simmering on the back burner of his mind.  

A: He kept saying the same things over and over.  

J: Yes. Also, he couldn't seem to learn from his own mistakes. Or from the mistakes of others. That was his narcissism. His narcissism got in the way of his ability to admit he'd made mistakes. 

A: Eventually you overtook him in the role of teacher in your group. Is that right? 

J: The group started to fracture. He had his own loyal followers, who insisted he was still the leader, the long-prophesied Jewish Messiah. Some of the group began to listen to some of the new things I was saying about God. I was actually saying something new about God. John was not. People split down the lines of "belief in tradition" versus "belief in change." Those who believed in change payed less and less attention to John. He hated that.  

A: Describe his reaction to your teachings and in particular to your healing ministry. 

J: When I first started doing some teaching, John didn't mind. He believed at first that I was mimicking his own wisdom, that I was "copying" him. I was tentative at first. I stuck to fairly traditional teaching methods, such as short wisdom sayings. I created some new sayings -- nothing too radical at first -- and John liked these. He wrote them down when they appealed to him.  

A: Did he claim these sayings as his own?  

J: He was having trouble separating his own thoughts and feelings from other people's thoughts and feelings. There was a blurring of boundaries. When he heard me speaking these things, he believed I was somehow transmitting his own thoughts. Broadcasting them. This is a typical symptom of schizophrenia, although these days people with delusions more often believe the TV or radio or Internet are broadcasting their thoughts.  

A: So he identified with those sayings?  

J: Yes. If you pay careful attention to the tone of the Thomasine sayings, you'll see that he picked all the sayings that are vague and somewhat cliched.  

A: Like traditional wisdom sayings that were widespread in the Ancient Near East.  

J: Yes. He picked the short, pithy phrases that resonated with his early training, his early education. Phrases that sound wonderful at first, but say nothing specific. No names, no dates, no places. Lots of metaphors. More poetry than anything. Feelings without facts. Sort of . . . dissociated. Otherworldly. Detached. Serene. But not very helpful when you have difficult questions you want answers for.  

A: There's a marked lack of context in the sayings from the Gospel of Thomas. They could have been written almost anywhere by anyone. There's a quality of "timelessness" to the book. And I don't mean that in a good way. I mean the tone is kind of spacey, kind of "out of it." Not fully engaged with reality or with life. 

J: That's how John came across. It was a sign of his major mental illness, and shouldn't be mistaken by others as wisdom. No one who's suffering from schizophrenia should be placed on a religious pedestal and labelled "wise." People suffering from schizophrenia need firm, compassionate care, not reinforcement of their delusions. 

A: Mental illness was not understood 2,000 years ago. 

J: Well, as with all things, that depended on the person. Not all people then believed that psychotic behaviour was a sign of demon possession, just as not all people believed that physical infirmities were a sign of divine judgment from God. Cultural ideas about mental illness usually dictate how a mentally ill person is treated by the majority. But there's always a minority who understand mental illness to be just that -- an illness. You can't blame everything on cultural ideas. Just because the majority of people in my culture believed in demon possession was no excuse for them to go with the "status quo" on these illnesses. There was plenty of solid science, solid scientific research at the time. In fact, there was more interest in solid scientific research then than there would be in Europe for many years. So I have no sympathy for the attempts made by Christian theologians to excuse the cruel treatment of the mentally ill that appears in the Bible. It wasn't acceptable then, and it isn't acceptable now. The author of Mark tries to make that point very clear. 

A: You know what's weird? I remember that when I first looked at the sayings in the Gospel of Thomas -- some years before I set out on my path of becoming a mystic -- I felt very stupid because I couldn't make hide nor hair of the wisdom that seemed to be hidden in the sayings. They felt like riddles I couldn't solve. Just as Stevan Davies says in his notes.  

J: And now?  

A: Now most of the sayings make perfect sense to me -- but only because I fully understand the religious and social and medical context in which they were spoken. You know, there's actually some pretty good stuff in there if you know what to look for.  

J: Thank you.  

A: Hey. No worries. You can spend the next umpteen years fleshing out those sayings and explaining in more detail what you meant way-back-when.  

J: I look forward to it.

 

* Stevan Davies, Translator. The Gospel of Thomas. Boston & London: Shambhala, 2004.

JR15: Parable of the Candlesticks

A: This morning I got up, and was talking to Jesus, as usual, and he said, "It feels like a parable day. Time to write a parable." So here's the parable he put together this morning. Once a parable writer, always a parable writer.

 

Candlesticks on Oak (c) JAT 2015

Parable of the Candlesticks

Once upon a time there was a prayerful mother who had two little children, a boy and a girl. The mother owned two beautiful brass candlesticks that had belonged to her mother and to her grandmother and to her great-grandmother before that. The candlesticks were her pride and joy.

Every day the mother got out the jar of specially made brass cleaner and the specially woven cloth so she could polish the beautiful brass candlesticks. As she laboured over the candlesticks, she would quietly hum the prayers of devotion she’d been taught. Then she would place two pure white candles into the candlesticks and light them. The candles were made of the finest beeswax. God had told her once in a dream to follow the light of the purest candles he had ever made. So each day she followed his instructions. She knew God would hear her prayers when she knelt before the table that held the beautiful brass candlesticks.

One day, as she was polishing and praying, her son came running into the room. "Mommy, mommy," he called. "I’ve found the most wonderful treasures outside. Please come and see them with me."

"What have you found, my son?" she asked as she picked up her buffing cloth to polish the brass base with all the devotion she could muster.

"There’s a half moon hanging in the sky and the robins are building a new nest near the roof of the front porch and blue and white flower buds are opening in the garden. It’s quite exciting. Won’t you come and see?"

"My child, I am polishing the candlesticks, and I’m sure you understand how important this task is for all our family. If I fail to polish the candlesticks perfectly, and if I fail to light the candles properly, then God will not be able to hear our prayers and answer them. It is more important that I ensure God’s blessing upon our family. Our family is so lucky to know the secret. We must honour the blessing God has given us. Otherwise he will take it away."

The boy’s smile faded, and he nodded obediently. "Yes, mother. You are very kind and loving to look after us in this way. I am very grateful. Thank you for your prayers, Mother."

"You’re most welcome, my son."

A short while later, her daughter came running into the room. "Mommy, mommy," she called. "I’ve found the most wonderful place in our neighbourhood. It’s filled with books. Beautiful, wonderful books. With pictures! Mommy, will you come and read me a story?"

"My child, you know how important it is that I finish work on the candlesticks so I may properly offer prayers on your behalf to God. You must be protected, child. I cannot ask God to protect you until the light shines perfectly from the mirror of the polished brass. See, my daughter? If you look into the polished brass, you can see your reflection there. Is it not wondrous?"

"Yes, mother. You are very wise. Perhaps one day, if you think I am worthy, you will teach me to light the candles as your mother taught you."

"And her mother taught her before that."

"We’re lucky, aren’t we, Mother, that our ancestors were so blessed by God?"

"Very lucky, my daughter," said the mother, gazing with pride upon the candlesticks she polished every day with the purest devotion to God that anyone could imagine. "We’re the luckiest family there could ever be. Thanks be to God."