Spiritual/Political/Philosophical Blog on the Nature of Truth and Falsehood and Heaven
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| Sunny Days in Heaven Spiritual/Political/Philosophical Blog on the Nature of Truth and Falsehood and Heaven |
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Wednesday, May 08, 2002 Thought for a Sunny Day (from my book, Contentions) 76 How is it possible for a man to be tempted to sin, but never sin? A man may have the thought but not the action. This is purity of heart. Is it possible for God to become a man and have the thought of sinning? I think the greater the love (prayer and self-control) a man has, the inclination to sin, even to think of sinning, diminishes greatly - perhaps even enough to vanish entirely. The Temptation in the desert is a perfect example of what awakening to Godhood (for a man) entails. Many such prophets succumbed to those three temptations. Jesus did not. Jesus did not hear that he was God's only beloved Son, but that he was a beloved child of God (as all people may hear if they listen closely). Jesus' message was love - the kingdom of heaven and how to enter it. He had no particular mission to accomplish, no messianic quest as the Suffering Servant. (he would not have characterized himself in the third person as a Somebody.) He merely wanted to talk to people about life and love, peace and wisdom, faith and heaven. He went to Jerusalem because he had toured the countryside with limited results. He was ready to try his teaching in a larger forum before many more ears. He was also ready for whatever his critics might throw at him to discredit his wisdom and humiliate his intelligence. He did not go to the Gentiles because they did not accept monotheism, a personal God, which makes it difficult to get to step two - God's reign. The Jews already accepted God, so his conceptions had a foundation for discussion. The human capacity for self-delusion even among the most intelligent, devoted, and studious of religious people is incredible. Add to that the delusions of religious people who think goodness means never drawing boundaries against sin or being obliged to moral behavior. I constantly encounter both camps - the dogmatic and the morally uncommitted. We have done to Jesus what the Jews did to Moses - making an inhuman icon of him beyond human reach or comprehension - reducing Truth to vain formulas of creed and symbolism. If Jesus was a special man who became God, then no one can become that or equal him. Since God cannot expect people to become the impossible - go ahead and claim salvation and a place in heaven without much effort, and leave prayer, virtue, and communion alone. There had to be spiritual crises in Jesus' life - testing and waiting which he found unbearable and agonizing - which is why he went to John the Baptist. To learn something meaningful, something critical; or to see for himself what being a prophet was all about. He rejected John's message of anger and wrath. That message became attached to him, though, and found its way into the Gospels. The good man has such little personality that he becomes a kind of tabula rasa for others to project features of their own upon. Thus every man who cares to, writes their own Jesus. Do we ever get a purer Jesus in portrait? I believe so. The more selfless and one in God we become, the more resemblance the disciple makes to Jesus as a man on earth - the more correspondence there is. The purer the link, the purer the works and fruit, the man and manner. I could be wrong (and most people certainly think so), but Jesus' primary focus on the kingdom of heaven demonstrates to me that Jesus had a vision of what heaven and heaven on earth was like - a realm of perfect love and loving - and that this is what he wanted people to know about and keep their hope alive for. Jesus is alive and risen. He is God, but this is meaningless unless we follow him and allow him to murder our selfhood, prejudices, and cherished notions. Most people never get far on this road in life. Even those committed to a life of love rarely get past self, dogma, and prejudicial opinions about faith and truth. Hell, like Heaven, is a real but primarily speculative place. It is indeed a place where the gnawing worm of self and self-hatred never dies. But the idea of Judgment Day and various pictures are not valid as actualities but metaphors since Jesus never saw hell or heaven as a man. It was beyond his power to visit. It was part of his limitation as all men are limited - except faith and insight ever grows to make the real known within - not as pictures but as certain knowings - revelations, if you like - but that's too loaded a term. It's a kind of gnosis but not Gnosticism (or varieties of dualistic cosmology). posted by Mark Butterworth | 4:55 PM | |
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