In Search of the Historical Jesus

In Search Of
The Historical Jesus

By RICHARD HEINBERG

As you want people to treat you, do the same to them. If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even tax collectors love those who love them, do they not? And if you embrace only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Doesn’t everybody do that? If you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even wrongdoers lend to their kind because they expect to be repaid. Instead, love your enemies, do good, and lend without expecting anything in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of God.
— The Book of Q

[Jesus'] ecstatic vision and social program sought to rebuild a society upward from its grass roots but on principles of religious and economic egalitarianism, with free healing brought directly to the peasant homes and free sharing of whatever they had in return. The deliberate conjunction of magic and meal, miracle and table, free compassion and open commensurality, was a challenge launched not just at Judaism’s strictest purity regulations, or even at the Mediterranean’s patriarchal combination of honor and shame, patronage and clientage, but at civilization’s eternal inclination to draw lines, invoke boundaries, establish hierarchies, and maintain discriminations. It did not invite a political revolution but envisaged a social one at the imagination’s most dangerous depths. No importance was given to distinctions of Gentile and Jew, female and male, slave and free, poor and rich. Those distinctions were hardly even attacked in theory; they were simply ignored in practice.
— John Dominick Crossan, The Historical Jesus

In this essay I intend to convey some thoughts about the origins of Christianity and the historical Jesus. But before doing so I should first confess that for me this subject carries no slight emotional charge. I grew up in a Midwestern Protestant household and attended church throughout my youth (though at about age twelve I began to question the religious teachings with which I was being indoctrinated); meanwhile, the rest of my family was beginning a slow drift toward evangelical fundamentalism. For years afterward I was torn between the desire to escape the tight-lipped Puritan ethic and unreasoning faith of my parents, and the need to validate at least a fragment of their beliefs in order to maintain a thread of connection with them and to feel that there was something right about the spiritual context in which I had been raised.

This latter need led me to embrace, for many years, a New Age version of Christianity that regarded Jesus not as the only son of God, but as the spiritual point of focus for our particular planet, a significant member of a cosmic hierarchy of god beings. Increasingly, however, I’ve felt compelled to examine even these liberalized beliefs in the light of reason and experience: before I regard Jesus as the spiritual point of focus for myself and for the world, should I not put forth some effort to learn whatever facts exist concerning his teachings, his life, and how various beliefs about him originated?

At the same time, my ongoing study of the history of civilization has led me to conclude that in very many cases Christianity has exerted a force in the direction of intolerance, the concentration of power, and the suppression of free thought. This is certainly the case in America today, where the Christian Right is villainising gays, feminists, environmentalists, and “godless humanists,” while working to protect and expand the rights of powerful corporations to undermine traditional cultures and to pillage ecosystems. The fundamentalists plead for “family values” while promoting ideas and institutions that are actively destroying the cultural medium in which healthy communities and families thrive. What is worse, I see my own relations enthusiastically contributing (by way of the evangelical ministries of Pat Robertson and his brethren of the TV pulpit) not only to hatred and atrocities in the world today, but to what will almost surely be a biological catastrophe of unprecedented scope in the century ahead. For me, this painful personal circumstance only intensifies the importance of determining, to whatever extent is possible, the truth of Jesus.

Decoding the Gospels

The search for the historical Jesus has been going on for more than a century now, and anyone who embarks on even a cursory study of the findings of New Testament scholars quickly discovers a glaring disparity: while the scholars have been making important discoveries about the gospels, their sources, and the history of first-century Palestine, the average church-going layman knows virtually nothing at all about these findings. It is easy enough to find parties to blame for this situation — the clergy, for wishing to spare their parishioners the possibility of confusion or loss of faith; the flock themselves, for preferring comfortable beliefs over unfamiliar new information; and the scholars themselves, for maintaining an aloof position that says to the layman, “You have no right to an opinion about the historical Jesus because you have not acquired the necessary intellectual tools; only specialists are entitled to pass judgment in this matter.” And so we have two groups growing ever further apart as time goes on: on one hand, millions of faithful Christians for whom evidence is irrelevant and faith is everything, of whom many regard every word of the Bible as historically accurate; and on the other, a small coterie of academics, and their readers, who are intent on following the evidence wherever it leads regardless of its agreement or disagreement with received teachings.

The scholars (who include historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, linguists, and literary experts) have approached the New Testament the same way they would any other piece of ancient writing, directing their efforts simultaneously along two lines: first, the literary analysis of the gospels and of related texts, including the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi scrolls (What do they have in common? In what ways are they different? When were they written and by whom? What sources did the authors draw upon?); and second, historical studies of events and characters and anthropological research into their cultural context (What religious ideas, philosophies, and myths were current in the Near East during the first century? What was the political and social situation in Palestine? What were the cultural backgrounds of the people mentioned in the narratives?).

Today most textual analysts agree that the earliest stratum in the Jesus literature is comprised of the genuine sayings of the master. The Jesus Seminar — an ongoing collaboration of eminent New Testament scholars seeking to determine the most probably authentic teachings of Jesus — has helped somewhat to clarify the conclusion that most independent investigators had already reached: that the authors of the canonical gospels (which were written several decades after the events they describe, and almost certainly not by the individuals to whom they are attributed) each drew upon a lost so-called sayings gospel. Known by the scholars as “Q” (for Quelle, German for “source”), this text was recently reconstructed and published by Burton Mack of Claremont College in his popular book The Lost Gospel: The Book of Q and Christian Origins. Scholars may still dispute the authenticity of individual sayings, but the gist of Jesus' original message, which we will explore below, seems clear enough.

The narrative biography of Jesus contained in the gospels is another matter, however. Clearly, some elements were derived from mythical sources. We know, for instance, that Mithras (a Syrian hero-god whose cult was popular throughout the Roman Empire during the first century) was believed to have been born in the company of shepherds and to have shared a last supper with his followers, later commemorated by them in a communion of bread and wine. Mithraism also taught the immortality of the soul and a future judgment and resurrection of the dead. The idea of a god who dies in order to save, redeem, or give life to the world had antecedents not only in the mythic biography of Mithras, but those of Osiris, Attis, Adonis, and Tammuz as well. Even the ascension story easily fits a mythic type well known during this period: all admired Roman emperors were said to have ascended to heaven after their deaths; as Morton Smith (author of The Secret Gospel and Jesus the Magician) tells us, “By the early second century there was a regular ritual to assure the ascension. Augustus’s ascension was attested to the senate by the sworn witness of a Roman Praetorian.”

But there is disagreement over just how much of the biography is history and how much is myth. Burton Mack argues that we must assume that everything but the sayings is myth; he writes: “The first followers of Jesus did not know about or imagine any of the dramatic events upon which the narrative gospels hinge. These include the baptism of Jesus; his conflict with the Jewish authorities and their plot to kill him; Jesus’ instruction to the disciples; Jesus’ transfiguration, march to Jerusalem, last supper, trial, and crucifixion as king of the Jews; and finally, his resurrection from the dead and the stories of an empty tomb. All of these events must and can be accounted for as mythmaking in the [early] Jesus movements....” On the other hand, Morton Smith and John Dominick Crossan (author of The Historical Jesus and Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography) accept at least some of the narrative material as factual; Smith contends, for instance, that the miracle stories resemble reports of the works of itinerant magicians known to have flourished throughout the Near East during the time in question, and proposes that Jesus was merely an example of the type.

Who Was Jesus?

Which brings us to the question, Who uttered these sayings on which so great a religion was built?

One of the most radical interpreters of the evidence, G.A. Wells of the University of London, argues that Jesus did not exist as a historical person, but was invented by a group of first-century proto-Christians who merely expanded upon certain passages in 2 Isaiah and the Wisdom of Solomon describing a supernatural entity sent by God into the world as a man. However, most scholars dispute this interpretation, concluding instead that the number and character of early references to Jesus establish his historicity beyond doubt. And most agree that the evidence portrays him as a remarkable, charismatic individual.O

But to grasp, to any significant degree, how Jesus' contemporaries viewed him, we must first try to understand the context of the place and times in which he lived. During the first few decades of the first century, Palestine was a centre of religious and political ferment. The Hellenistic culture that had come to dominate the eastern Mediterranean region during the previous three hundred years had also profoundly affected Jewish society, and foreign myths, cults, and philosophies were current in the land. Politically, Palestine was under Roman domination, and the Jews were a repressed and exploited people whose aspirations for independence would erupt in the war of 66-73 c.e.

Anthropologists and historians agree that revelatory world-views tend predictably to spring from situations of intense social conflict and crisis. Such revelations take forms appropriate to the unique circumstances of time and place. In the case in point, according to Mack, “One important phenomenon of the Greco-Roman age was the appearance of the religious and philosophical entrepreneur, sometimes called the divine man, sometimes the sophist or sage. The entrepreneur stepped into the void left vacant by the demise of traditional priestly functions at the ancient temple sites and addressed the confusion, concern, and curiosity of people confronted with a complex world that was felt to be at the mercy of the fates.” In addition to freelance visionaries and prophets, the eastern Mediterranean during the first century was also home to magicians, protesters, bandits, messiahs, and revolution-aries. Jesus seems to have fit well into this milieu.

As we have already noted, Morton Smith sees Jesus primarily as a magician or miracle worker. Smith cites magical texts of the period, in which not only the major elements but even many minor details in the gospel stories find parallels. For example, he sees the Eucharist as “a variant form of an attested magical rite for binding the celebrant and the recipient together in love; a number of other forms are found in magical papyri; the verbal parallels are unmistakable.”

In The Messianic Legacy, authors Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln argue that Jesus was in fact the rightful heir to the throne of David — hence his triumphal entry into Jerusalem and Pilate’s insistence on having the inscription “King of the Jews” affixed to the cross. They also emphasize Jesus' role as a political agitator: Why, after all, would Pilate have dispatched (according to the Vulgate translation) a cohort of five or six hundred soldiers to the garden of Gethsemane to arrest Jesus, unless he anticipated a civil disturbance? Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and driving of the moneychangers from the Temple can likewise be seen as acts of an insurrectionist.

Burton Mack, who puts more weight on Jesus' sayings and less on the details of his biographies, tends to view him as a wandering wisdom teacher in the tradition of Diogenes the Cynic. The Cynics taught the renunciation of desires and appetites imposed by civilization, equality among people, and the virtue of a natural life free from social conventions and possessions. In modern parlance, the term cynical is fraught with negative connotations; these, however, can be traced to an unfair caricature of a school of courageous philosophers known, in Mack’s words, for “voluntary poverty, renunciation of needs, severance of family ties, fearless and carefree attitudes, and troublesome public behavior.” Cynicism, according to Crossan, “involved practice and not just theory, life-style and not just mind-set in opposition to the cultural heart of Mediterranean civilization, a way of looking and dressing, of eating, living, and relating that announced its contempt for honor and shame, for patronage and clientage.” Jesus' sayings closely parallel Cynic teachings; and, in the Hellenistic era, the philosophy of Diogenes would likely have been well known in Galilee. But Jesus, as a Jewish peasant Cynic, seems to have added a unique and significant twist to the established tradition: unlike the urban Greek Cynics, he advocated the formation of a rural social movement.

So, whence comes the image of Jesus as the only Son of God, the second Person of the Trinity, forgiver of sins, hearer of prayers? Was this how Jesus thought of himself? Was it how his first followers viewed him? The historical and textual evidence gives us no reason for thinking that it was, and offers instead an account of how and why these ideas came into currency decades or centuries after the period in question.

But what of millions of people’s dreams, visions, and NDE encounters with Jesus; what of miraculous conversions and healings, of prayers answered and lives changed? Perhaps these should be accorded precisely as much legitimacy and significance as, for example, an Australian native shaman’s experience of totemic ancestral spirit-beings; an early Egyptian’s experience of Osiris; or a West African peasant’s experience of Legba. Which is to say: the experience is no doubt real, and in many cases the healings and miracles may also be real — all products of the human mind’s extraordinary need for symbols of transcendence, and of its ability both to generate meaningful and internally consistent world views, and to alter its own perceptions and the physical body’s abilities and state of health and vigour in order to fit those views.

The Teachings of Jesus

Now we arrive at a central question: What was the message that Jesus sought to convey? Burton Mack summarizes some of the significant themes in the reconstructed sayings gospel:

 Voluntary poverty

 Lending without expectation of return

 Critique of riches

 Etiquette for begging

 Etiquette for troublesome encounters in public

 No retaliation

 Rejoicing in the face of reproach

 Severance of family ties

 Renunciation of needs

 Call for authenticity

 Critique of hypocrisy

 Fearless and carefree attitude

 Confidence in God’s care

 Single-mindedness in the pursuit of God’s kingdom

Again and again, Jesus exhorts his followers to seek the kingdom of God — a metaphor for an alternative social order in which people live according to nature, free and equal. The idea of God in the earliest core of sayings is of a universal power — or “father” — that “makes his sun rise on the evil and the good,” that “sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” “Be merciful even as your Father is merciful”; “If God puts beautiful clothes on the grass ... won’t he put clothes on you? Your father knows that you need these things.” Jesus was, according to Crossan, “neither broker nor mediator but, somewhat paradoxically, the announcer that neither should exist between humanity and divinity or between humanity and itself. Miracle and parable, healing and eating were calculated to force individuals into unmediated physical and spiritual contact with God and unmediated physical and spiritual contact with one another. He announced, in other words, the broker less kingdom of God.” Most scholars agree that some of the sayings attributed to Jesus are later additions; these include apocalyptic warnings about the Final Judgment, pronouncements against the Pharisees, pronouncements against towns that reject the movement, congratulations to those that accept the movement, the lament over Jerusalem, and the story of the temptations in the wilderness.

It is possible to trace, via shifts in discourse in the added material, just how the early Jesus community developed. At the earliest layer, according to Mack, “the discourse ... was playful and the behavior public. Individuals were challenging one another to behave with integrity despite the social consequences. ... If we ask about the character of the speaker of this kind of material, it has its nearest analogy in contemporary profiles of the Cynic-sage.” Then, in the next layer of sayings, “selected imperatives were elaborated as community rules ... Jesus’ voice was now that of a founder-teacher giving instructions for the manner of life that should characterize his school.” We see the beginnings of social conflict surrounding the movement. By degrees, the voice of Jesus is made to utter things that only the wisdom of God could have known. The last layer of sayings dates from immediately after the Roman-Jewish war. According to Mack, “A retreat took place from the vigor with which these people had engaged their social environment to a kind of resignation, an acceptance of the fact that the rule of God was a matter of personal and ethical integrity. An amazing accommodation seems to have been made with a Jewish piety against which earlier battles had been fought. And Jesus was heard quoting the scriptures even though he was now imagined as the son of God whose kingdom would only be revealed at the end of time.”

In the earliest level of sayings we hear Jesus preaching, “How fortunate are the poor; they have the kingdom”; “Everyone who glorifies himself will be humiliated, and the one who humbles himself will be praised.” He is proposing a social experiment — a classless society in which all are equal in the sight of God. It is a society governed not by power and wealth, nor by rigid laws, but by charity and kindness.

An Unholy Alliance

Jesus' egalitarian social philosophy has special relevance for us now, living as we do in one of the most polarized and stratified societies in history. Indeed, today’s multinational corporate-dominated industrial system owes much to institutions and practices pioneered by the Roman empire. Like twentieth-century America and Europe, first-century Rome was at a pinnacle of economic and technological “progress.” It was a colonial power, the centre of a far-flung trade network. It was also an urban centre in which extremes of wealth and poverty coexisted. Like the European colonists of the past five centuries, the Romans were destroyers of indigenous cultures and voracious consumers of natural “raw materials” (such as forests); and like us, they relied upon unsustainable, soil-killing farming practices. While the earliest reconstructed collection of Jesus' sayings does not mention Satan, it does suggest the idea that the pursuit of power and glory is at the heart of social evils. And in later additions to the sayings gospel, in which the devil (literally, “the accuser”) makes his first appearance, he clearly serves as the personification of institutionalized social dominance.

The new scholarship portrays the historical Jesus as an anti-authoritarian, a primitivist, and an anarchist. According to Crossan, the earliest Jesus people were the equivalent of “hippies among the Augustinian yuppies.” Jesus' message was a challenge to social power in all its manifestations. Yet within only a few generations that message had been twisted and co-opted almost beyond recognition. Through a gradual process of subversion, Christian teachings were first mythologized and then appropriated by the ruling elite of the Empire. As a result, Christianity has become a kind of time capsule in which are preserved fragments of Greek, Roman, and Near Eastern myths and philosophies, the theologies of Paul, Constantine, and Augustine, and the imperialist social program of ancient Rome. It is surely fair to say that most of this is virtually the opposite of what Jesus originally had in mind.

Of course, through it all the words of the Galilean sage have continued to shine: “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. Isn’t life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” And, where individuals or groups have drawn inspiration from this earliest layer of teachings, a St. Francis or a St. Clair has come forward to propose the sort of “liberation” or “creation” theology that Jesus himself might have embraced. But as an institution, Christianity eventually became the handmaiden of the capitalist industrial state, supplying the theological justification for colonialism and a work ethic for the factory system. Today, “fundamentalists” claiming to represent the true teachings of the Galilean promote an anti-environmental, anti-feminist, anti-gay, pro-corporate, pro-technology agenda utterly opposed to the message of modern-day prophets of social justice and voluntary simplicity. Surely this constitutes one of the bitterest ironies in all of history.

A New Church?

At the end of the twentieth century we stand on the brink of a global civilization whose might and sophistication would have delighted a Roman emperor to no end. The wealthiest one percent of the world’s population live in unimaginable opulence while hundreds of millions exist near the point of starvation. If we are to understand the devil as being not an otherworldly malevolent being, but as the tendency toward the accumulation of political and economic power, then it appears that in our generation virtually the whole world is coming to be possessed by the devil.

In such circumstances, one cannot help but yearn for a new Christianity that would pay attention to the discoveries of the scholars and focus its interest on the lifestyle and social program that Jesus taught and exemplified, rather than the theology his later followers adopted. Such a denomination or church could serve as a foil for the fundamentalists and as a haven for critics of the power system who are increasingly vulnerable to attacks from the neo-fascist Right.

And yet, seeing how easily ideologies and organizations are subverted, perhaps a new church is precisely what we do not need. It’s probably safe to say that Jesus did not wish to create a church of any kind. He seems to have envisioned instead a community of spirit. But when even well-intentioned attempts to form such a community result in the building of any sort of formal organization, then the corrosive, hierarchical influence of civilization seems nearly always to intrude. Moreover, a new Christian denomination could not help but focus much of its attention on the past, and on the person of Jesus. Again, this is probably not what he had in mind: it was only the later generations of his followers who insisted on his unique divinity. And hero worship, even given the best of heroes, tends to demean the worshipper. Jesus has not been the only individual in history to teach love, tolerance, equality, simplicity, voluntary poverty, generosity, and freedom from social conventions, and there are plenty of advocates of these ideals alive today who could benefit from our respect and support.

No, it is not a new church or denomination that we need. I suspect that one of the ideas that Jesus was seeking to convey was that true spirituality is not represented by a book or a hero or even a teaching. It may be expressed by means of a community of support, but it is not the community itself. It is a way of being. Those with some experience of that way of being may find it helpful to know that one of the most revered individuals in history taught and exemplified it. And the existence of people following that path today may somewhat vindicate that pivotal individual’s actual message (rather than the theology that conceals it). But the path itself is the point.

The Path itself is the Point !

Richard Heinberg is the author of Memories and Visions of Paradise: Exploring the Universal Myth of a Lost Golden Age (Quest Books: 1995), Celebrate the Solstice: Honoring the Earth’s Seasonal Rhythms Through Festival and Ceremony (Quest Books: 1994), and A New Covenant With Nature. He also publishes Museletter, an excellent monthly newsletter exploring issues in cultural renewal. Subscriptions are US$18 per year. Send to: 1433 Olivet Rd, Santa Rosa, CA 95401, USA. The above is from A New Covenant With Nature (available from Sydney Esoteric Bookshop, 408 Elizabeth St, Surry Hills, NSW 2010, Tel: 02 92122225 for $40) and originally appeared in Museletter No. 34 (October 1994).

Six Simple Words
By Mark Glenn
......They seem so harmless,
so non-menacing, and yet
they are the root of so much
of the present evil that
mankind is facing today.
Just six simple words that
carry the weight of the world
upon them, six simple words
that act as the engine for so
much turmoil and unrest...

Jesus Christ was a Dirty Hippy

In Search of the Historical Jesus
and His Gnostic Message.

The Gospel of Thomas,
The entire Coptic and Greek translations

REAL FAITH
Not the fake stuff they dispense
in churches, mosques and synagogues
By John Kaminsk

Jesus the Christ

He Is The Alpha and Omega - The God-Man Manifesting The Possibilities

Of Our Infinite Potential As Children Of The True God.

We Believe That He Died For Us, On The Cross, to Save Us, Not For Instant

Attainment Of "God's Kingdom," But To Demonstrate To Us What This World

And Its Establishment Powers Of State, Government And Religion Are All

About, And Thus Teach Us Not To Surrender Our Faith, Mind And Spiritual

Possibilities To These Truly Temporal "Authorities" Of Cosmic Evil In Order

To Gain "Worldly" Acclaim, Money and Power.

Thus His Disciples, His Inner Circle Of Followers, Was Made Up Of "The Stones

That The Builders Had Rejected,"

Of "Outcasts" From The Establishment Society.

He, Jesus, Taught With Authority And By Example. Never Claiming Special

Privileges For Himself, Nor Ever Promising Worldly Rewards

To His Disciples. He Lived, As They Lived, In Abject Poverty, Despised By

The Rich And Powerful, The Judges, Politicians And "Religious" Authorities,

The Priests And Acolytes Of The god Of This World, Who Had Sold-Out

To Evil And Exploitation Since The Beginning Of Man.

He Was A Thorn In Their Eyes, A Reminder Of

What They Had Done And Of What

They Had Lost In Their "Deal" With The Forces Of Cosmic Evil.

And He Was "Dangerous," Because He Gathered People, The Poor And

Disenfranchised, About Him, Teaching Them To "Laugh-At" The Worldly

Power Structure Of The Establishment And Awaken From Their Slavery

To The Rich And Powerful In Whatever Disguise They Might Appear,

Be It As Priests Of "Religion," Or As Judges, Lawyers, Rulers And Kings,

Jesus Was A True Anarchist And Revolutionary,

An Awakener And Agitator Of The Human Spirit, A "Magician," Who,

Just By His Presence, Could Radiate So Much Love And Compassion,

That, Suddenly, Ordinary People Could Transcend The Imagined Limitations

Of Insufficient "Education" And Sordid Existence

To Find Themselves In A State

Of "Mystical" Enlightenment, Which, Like A Flash Of Lightning, Opened,

The Previously Closed Doors Of Their Spirit And Soul

To The Orgasmic Bliss Of Conscious Oneness With The Infinite Truth

Which Is God.

Jesus The Christ Overcame This World And Its Hierarchies Of Evil

On The Cross.

Not To Save All Mankind Instantly And Automatically, because

The True Law, The Universal Law, Which Is Spiritual, Does Not Work

That Way At All.

The God Of Jesus, The True God Who IS Love,

Does Not Ask For "Blood-Sacrifice". Only The False Gods Of This World

Crave Blood, Murder, Sacrifices And Blind Fanaticism.

No, Jesus Overcame This World On The Cross Of Golgotha Because

He Did Not Surrender His Spiritual Integrity,

By Trying To Save His Life Through A Plea For Mercy To The "Authorities"

And Functionaries Of The Establishment, Which, Perhaps, Would Have

Saved His Earthly Life, But Betrayed His Very Soul And The Future

Of All Mankind.

He Saved All Who Are Ready To Be Saved Because

He Didn't "Sell Out" To The Temporary Powers Of This World!

He Saved All Who "Have Eyes To See And Ears To Hear," Who Are Drawn

To Him, By His Spirit, His Example, And Who Are Willing To Surrender

Completely To His Spiritual Guidance And, Thus,

Follow Him No Matter What The

Consequences Here On Earth Might Be.

The Story Of Jesus Is So Much More Than Could Possibly Be Told By Man.

It Is A Mystery Of Cosmic Proportions Which, Of Necessity, Can Only

Be EXPERIENCED In Each Person's Own Heart and Soul.

And This Is Well So,

As It Must Gradually Nurture And Evolve In All Of Us At The Right Time

And Moment, If Our Quest Is Serious.

Thus, It Should Only Be Right For Ourselves To Define Our Relationship

With This God-Man, Jesus, As A Love-Relationship, -A Supernatural

Love Affair, Which Can Only Come From Our The Heart And Soul.

Why Then Do We Love Jesus As Christ And Do Not Feel The Same Way

About Krishna, Or Buddha, Or Muhammad, Or Others Who Have Attained

Spiritual Renown Within Our Human Consciousness?

Why Is It This "JESUS," Who "Moves Us So"?

Perhaps It Is Because Of Our Ability To Identify With Him.

For Who Can Help It,

But To Be "Moved" When Reading The Gospel Stories With An Un-Biased State

Of Mind? Is It Not His Poverty, His "Life-Style" As A Rebel Against

The Establishment, His Love, Compassion And Simplicity Of Language?

Does He, Through His Message, Touch Something, Buried So Deep Within Us

Which, Psychologically, Reveals Something So Secret And Protected

Which Transcends All Concepts Of Life We Had Held-On To So Desperately

And Which Kept Us Prisoners In Our Own Minds?

Did The Wholeness Of Jesus, Conceived By Our Heart, Mind And Spirit

Touch Us So Powerfully Because, Unknown To Us, Our Heart, Mind And Spirit

Cried Out For Help In Desperation, From The Prison Of Our Body and Soul,

And ONLY Jesus Would Hear It And Answer?

Undoubtedly There Are Many Masters And Truly Illuminated Teachers,

But None Is Like Jesus The Christ.

Let The "Bible-Thumbing" Fundamentalists And The Religious Scholars

Analyze And Twist Every Word Of Jesus And Squabble Over Cultural,

Racial And Historical Interpretations!

As Jesus Would Probably Have Said, "Fools They Are All, Empty Shells,

Who Profit None".

You Can Interpret "Scripture" All You Want, If You Are Not Truly

Moved By The Spirit And Understand Jesus The Christ From Your

Heart And Spirit, In His Mystical Completeness,

You End Up Either A Hypocritical And Frustrated "Fundamentalist,"

Or A Dried-Up, Sold-Out Theologian, Drifting Towards Nihilism.

If You Don't Open Your Total Being To Jesus, If You Don't Let Him

Transform Your Heart, Soul and Spirit, -Your Whole Being-ness,

And, Instead, Hide Your-Self From Him Behind Old-Testament Legalism

And Endless Scripture Analysis Until You Are Right Back In The Evil Realm,

Of "Religion" And Establishment Slavery Against Which Jesus The Christ

Fought So Diligently. He Died For You, On The Cross, So That You Might See,

Hear And Understand That "Religion" And The Worldly Establishment Are

Forces, Which You Must OVERCOME In Order To Attain HIS Kingdom,

Which Is NOT of This World, But A State Of Consciousness.

If You Co-Operate, With the Establishment Powers, Even Through Your Silence,

You Are NOT A "Christian," -A LOVER of Jesus, But A Fraud On A Cosmic Scale,

As You Have "Missed The Mark," And Sinned Against

Your-Self And The True God.

Jesus Said: "Let The Dead Bury Their Dead," Are You, Then,

Not One Of The "Dead"?

The New-Testament Gospels Are Called Also: The "Living Word."

How Can The "Dead" Comprehend The "Living" Word?

How Many Fundamentalists And Orthodox Christians Can Be Counted

As "Alive" In The Spirit? Alive Enough To Be Truly Touched By The Whole,

Living Jesus?

How Many Fundamentalists And Orthodox Christians Are An Active Part

Of The World? Meaning, Of Course, The Establishment.

How Many Of These "Christians" Have Self-Righteously Closed Their Eyes

To The Injustices, Hypocrisies And Evils Of The Establishment?

The Very Same Establishment Which Jesus Condemned And Taught Against.

How Many So Called "Christians" Embrace "Family Values," Patriotism, "Just"

Wars And Subservience To The State?

Did Jesus Ever Even Hint At Such Things As Part Of His Teachings?

Instead, Did Not Jesus Condemn These Concepts As Part And Parcel

Of Establishment Manipulation And Power over the INDIVIDUAL?

How Can You Be A "Christian," A Follower, And LOVER, Of Jesus Christ

And Close Your Eyes To The Evils Of Racism, Bigotry, Exploitation, Slavery,

War and Murder Sanctioned By The "Government" AND CORPORATE GREED?

More so, How Could Anyone, Calling Himself A Christian,

Actively, Be Part Of The Powers And Principalities Of This World?

Perhaps It Is Good For Business, Social Acclaim, Advancement And

Acceptance By Society, To Go To Church On Sunday And Make A Good Show

Of One's "Character" And "Piety," But Where Is The Real Jesus

In This Charade?

Congregations Dressed In Sunday Suits, "Worshipping" What?

A False god, Old-Testament Legalistic Judaism, And A Son Of This "god"

Whom They Call "Jesus," But Who Must Be "A Case Of Mistaken Identity".

It Is Most Certainly NOT The Jesus Who Was An Outcast And Anarchist

Who Rebuked The Very Government, Its "Functionaries, And The " The Whole

Government Apparatus Of Oppression," So Passionately And Consistently.

In Deed, The Very Jesus, Who Was Flogged With Glee By The Soldiers

And Then Nailed To The Cross, Like Not Even A "Common" Criminal Should Be,

By These Functionaries Of The Power-Structure, Is Definitely NOT

The Jesus "Worshipped" By These Hypocrites Of The Establishment

Who Call Themselves "Christians."

JESUS THE CHRIST WAS AN ANARCHIST AND REVOLUTIONARY

TO THE POWER-STRUCTURE OF THIS WORLD!

HE NEITHER COMPROMISED WITH THE "ESTABLISHMENT," NOR "ENDORSED"

ANY OF IT'S MANY FORMS OR "PHILOSOPHIES."

HE TAUGHT HIS LOVERS HOW TO OVERCOME THE WORLD AND NOT

HOW TO BE SUCCESSFUL IN IT!

IN FACT, HE SAID, IN SO MANY WORDS, THAT THOSE WHO ARE

SUCCESSFUL IN THIS WORLD HAVE NO PLACE IN HIS KINGDOM

WHICH IS NOT OF THIS WORLD.

Is It Not All So Simple To Understand? Jesus Taught LIBERATION from the Bondage

To this World. Do You Want To Be TRULY LIBERATED, or Just "Feel Good" And Admire

Your-Self for Your "Piety" And "Righteousness"?

LIBERATION Means That You Want FREEDOM From The Evils Of This World!

You Want To ESCAPE from This Material Prison Because You Are "Fed-Up" With Just

About EVERYTHING In This Material World!

It Means, That You Have Had ENOUGH of this

Experience Here On Earth And That You Can NOT find Much "Redeeming Value" In Your

Life On the Earth-Plane.

It Means, That You Have Tasted Just About Everything Here

And Find It ALL Bitter and Repulsive!

Have You Truly Experienced the DUALITY in Everything?

Have You Already Attained A State Of Awareness Where You Really SEE The Illusion

And The Bondage Inherent In ALL Your Experiences On Earth?

Have You Truly Realized That Even the "Good" And Your "Happiness" Here On Earth

Must By Necessity Come At the Expense Of Somebody Else?

Do You Want To STOP The Endless Cycle Of Re-Incarnations Into This Material Hell?

Then You Must Realize, That In Order To Stop This Cycle, This Bondage To

Cosmic And Earthly Powers And Principalities, Requires More Than "Piety" And

lukewarm "Faith."

You Must Be COMPLETELY COMMITTED To Jesus The Christ. You Must Be His

LOVER and BELOVED And Drink The Bitter-Sweet Wine Of His LIFE To The Last Drop.

Which Means That Jesus The Christ Must Live IN YOU and THROUGH YOU

AS YOU MUST LIVE IN HIM AND THROUGH HIM!

And That You Must Never Even Take A Breath Without This State Of Consciousness.

Jesus Was Not An "Armchair" Guru Or "Master," Giving Philosophical Discourses

To Make You Feel Good About Your-Self And About Your Place In This World.

Jesus Was, And STILL IS, An AWAKENER And GUIDE Who "Tells It AS IT IS."

ARE YOU WILLING TO COMPLETELY SURRENDER YOUR SELF

TO HIM?

Are You Willing To Be A "Fool" and "Outcast" In the Eyes Of The World As You

Follow HIM No Matter Where He Leads You?

Perhaps It Sounds Noble and Rewarding To You To Say: "Yes," In the Spirit Of

The Moment? But Are You Really IN LOVE With Jesus For No Other Reason Than

"BEING IN LOVE"?

Do You Hear, See, Feel and Experience HIM In All That Is, No Matter How "Ugly,"

Repulsive Or Disturbing The Picture APPEARS To Be In Terms Of the World?

Are You Able To See The Spark Of God In ALL THAT IS?

Can You SEE WITH THE EYES OF JESUS, BEYOND THE MATERIAL APPEARANCE,

INTO THE SOUL OF EVERY LIVING BEING WITH COMPASSION AND LOVE?

Jesus Was A Revolutionary And "Anarchist," And He Requires You To Be The Same,

But He Loves People, Even Those Who Are Part Of The Establishment And Power-Structure

Of This World. His Compassion And Love Reaches Out To ALL!

Even More Though As He Knows Their Delusion And Eventual Fate! He Wants Nothing

More Than To Rescue Them From Their Inevitable Suffering And Pain In The Iron

Clutches Of Cosmic Justice And BONDAGE.

Did He Not, Full Of Compassion, Say: "...For They Know Not What They Are Doing,"

Even While They Nailed Him To The Cross?

Can You Do The Same, No Matter What The Situation Might Be?

Can You Look BEYOND Appearances, Beyond Your Own Bondage to Race,

Color, Nationality, Family, Position And "Faith," AND BEYOND Those Same

Illusions Of Identity IN OTHERS AND SEE THE REAL PERSON

WITH THE NON-JUDGMENTAL EYES OF CHRIST?

For It Is Only THEN, when You Have TRANSCENDED The Illusions

Of This World, And Thus, The Illusions Of Matter As Reality, That You

Are Even Ready To Be A Disciple And LOVER Of Jesus the Christ And

Call Your Self A "CHRISTIAN," WITHOUT MOCKING JESUS

AND HIS HOLY SPIRIT!

AND THAT SHALL BE THE BEGINNING OF YOUR JOURNEY

FROM BONDAGE AND SLAVERY TO COMPLETE LIBERATION!

Where Do YOU Stand At THIS VERY MOMENT?

Are YOU Still In Love With This World And It's Tempting Illusions?

Or Has YOUR OWN SUFFERING Opened Your Mind, Soul and Spirit

To The SUFFERING OF ALL SENTIENT LIFE In This World?

"The First Shall Be the Last," Are NOT Idle Words Spoken By Jesus

To Pacify The Suffering Masses, But Hard FACTS OF COSMIC LAW!!!

Written by Thomas

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