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It strikes me as pointless to make a big thing out of the premise that God created the world, or that the world is good so therefore God must be good. If God had decided not to create the world we would not be here to bemoan or celebrate the fact. Likewise it is pointless to highlight the goodness of creation; if things had been otherwise, how would we know the difference? The point the Bible makes in saying that God created the world is to distinguish between the magic spirits of the Greeks, Babylonians and others, and a God of real significance in the lives of men. This is not some remote potentate or meddler in the world but “the ground of our being”, the cause of our existence and our medium, we are related to God as language is to a word or as a particular joke is to humour. God is not an Englishman, God is not a person.
The other gods were magical entities invented for the purpose of explaining unknown events. Literally gods of the gaps they managed the weather and to some extent determined mens fates, but so long as they were bought off in accordance with the rules they had no direct effect on one's personal life.
The Jews were given the realisation of something much more penetrating, a spirit unlimited by space and time. To emphasise this independence from the world it was said that God made it. To argue about whether it was made by evolution or in six days or whatever is quite trite and completely misses the point. The point is to describe a relationship and to emphasise that this God is quite unlike the others as reality is to rationalisation or beauty is to burglary.
To take the Bible as a documentation of the process of creation (among other things) is I believe to fail totally to comprehend the extent of the revelation to the Jews.
The extent of the revelation to the Christians stands comparably to that of the Jews, as the latter stands to the stone age spirit worship from which it emerged. The Jews were freed from the notions of victimising and selfish gods demanding tithes and punishing slow payers; from priests to be feared and who required good seasons or success to be generously paid for. They found the true God who demanded only of men “to do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8).
In turn the Christians were to learn that the same God will hold no guilt on any man who truly believes. This is no tit for tat arrangement, the creator needs no trade with men. Truth is not bound to time; it is not as though the old man in the sky (a stone age god if ever I met one) got sick of waiting for his other lurks to yield fruit, so he changed his mind and tried a new trick. This state of affairs did not come into existence on Easter Sunday AD 32 or at any other moment of our terrestrial time, it has always been the case. It was the case before Adam and Eve, it is not a function of time, it just is. I AM does not change; has not and will not.
What came with Christ was not the mechanics of deliverance, but the revelation to man that this indeed was true. We are most truly delivered from our sins but only when we learn what only Christ has taught (many might disagree).
The Jewish revelation had a code of behaviour; this is alright that is wrong, and so on. If you did something that was wrong you had sinned and were guilty under the law. You remained liable to be judged for your guilt and duly punished, there is no escape from the law. Justice and kindness notwithstanding, the law is still the law.
In Christ the law is fulfilled (Matt 5:17 Rom 13:8-10). What this means is that the life code that Christ taught is the basis of the law, as water is to the sea or life is to a person. Paul framed it most succinctly in his letter to the Galations (Gal 5:22-23 The fruit of the Spirit...). If we will believe in the Christian truth we are most truly delivered, not from judgement but from the law, and free from the law we are free from judgement. Christ may have delivered me from condemnation to some eternal furnace commencing the minute I die, I don't know, though I guess Ill find out soon enough, what matters now is that I am freed from the law.
I do not need to study the book in fear lest I be found transgressing, I don't need to execute this that or the other religious observance for fear I might otherwise be condemned, I don't have to swear my allegiance to a particular set of words and fear for my salvation lest I should be caught doubting, Christ has freed me from this, not after I die but now.
Christ has shown us that we need only believe the gospel and we are saved – delivered from fear and from judgement because we are delivered from the law. If only we can understand the gospel we cannot be judged.
What then is this gospel all about? It is time to look at what the church is teaching and what Christ taught and to see how they compare.
The first and third commandments (Exodus 20) form a clear statement of the fundamental requirements for worship among the Jews. The first is acknowledged by Christ (Matt 4:10) not as law but as the fundamental of the faith. The second is law and Christ's comment appears many times (notably Mark 2:27).
The letter of James makes a very definite comment on religious observance (Jas 1:27) which appears to me to be a lot closer to the gospel than a lot of current thinking. I am quite unable to find any reference to the appropriate time place or form of worship in the New Testament. I consider this omission to be very significant in discussing the proper approach to Christianity today. Rather what I do find is illustrated by Collossians 2:16-19 and Matthew 6:1-18, that religious observance is not demanded of the followers of Christ, and is not an integral part of the faith. It is certainly not forbidden – religious observance may serve many important functions in the devout community (collection an distribution of alms, opportunity to learn and teach the good news, fellowship with other believers) but Jesus makes no requirement of religion in the new faith.
The Quakers seem to me to best express the truth of this. They have only a nominal time of assembly, no seating priorities, no central figure, no order or duration of service, no holy objects except the bible and no holy places. The assembly is for quiet meditation, sharing of experiences and the gospel and for meeting each other.
I feel that a useful distinction may be made between these words. For the purposes of this paper I will define religion as meaning those physical and conscious acts with which a person affirms and expresses his faith; and faith as meaning the condition of believing in the ultimate intrinsic value of some idea. Thus I may have faith that the teachings of Christ are salvation, or that by observance of the religious law I will be spared hell, or that the state of nirvana is attainable by following the Buddha, or that there is inly one truth and to seek it with all my energy is the demand truth places upon me.
Various forms of organised religion have existed and presently exist in all societies. I don't propose to discuss the social phenomenon but I think a careful look must be taken at Jesus’ intention.
I have noted earlier that Jesus established no religious forms (except the Eucharist) according to our Bible. This is remarkable because the Jews had a very strict structure of religious observance, and other peoples in the region had religious practices which were equally well defined but of totally different orientation (eg Egyptian sun worship and the Greek traditions). Jesus’ intention was clear – the good news was as applicable to the Jews as to the Romans the Egyptians or anyone. How then did he expect his followers to manage their religious observance? Clearly it was not in the manner of the Jews (Matt 9:16-17 23:13-15). Even Paul, himself a strict Jew could see the error of allowing religious observance to be confused with faith – indeed a great part of his writings (Gal 3:1-5 for a concise expression) is devoted to the insistence that Christ demands not obedience to the law, even less to the religious practices prevalent in some of these communities. Christ demands only faith. Faith in what?
Christ knew it is impossible to make a statement or definition of God in which we should have faith. Further any message which he was to transmit to his disciples and followers was necessarily confined to the forms of verbal expression and the concepts available. It is important that the good news was told in a form so simple it could be perceived by illiterate fishermen in a rather primitive society – otherwise it would have been long since lost to the world. It is equally important to remember that some of the ideas of which Christ made use have been greatly refined as we have come to understand our world better, and likewise today we make use of many ideas which simply were not available to the Galilean fishermen.
It is therefore necessary to discard our paraphernalia of scientific and linguistic tradition when we read the Bible. Jesus taught about the creator (ultimate truth, ground of our being, or whatever you wish to call it) by means of parables. Reading and reflecting on these will create in the reader an understanding of the salvation of Jesus and the way to be followed.
Several of these parables employ the notion of the forces of evil – devils, the place where men weep and gnash their teeth, the enemy, Satan, and so on. The Jewish tradition contains a great dependence on the notion of Satan. At the time of Jesus it was widely believed that illness and misfortune were a consequence of sinful behaviour. A man admitted the devil by denying God – if he was seen to have less than full control of his faculties he was said to be possessed by devils. He had done wrong and was paying the price for his evil doing. Today we use different expressions, we say he is psychotic (or something much more complicated and even less informative), and we are more likely to see the effect as the manifestation of an illness of our society rather than the individual.
I don't believe it is appropriate today to try to use the same concepts as did Jesus when discussing the relationship between our faith and our physical experiences. In order to support that I need to put sin and Satan into perspective. In a society which has no knowledge of chemistry, physics, biochemistry, physiology or psychology there are myriads of unexplained events which are most simply attributed to unseen spirits. These are commonly named and worshipped in order to solicit the desired seasons, events or outcomes. The Jews refined their beliefs to two such forces – the one responsible for creation and all good things, the other responsible for evil. The book of Job shows that the Jews believed Satan to be a significant power, but generally the nature of Satan's influence remains vague and the source of power is unspecified.
The idea of a cosmic conflict of the forces of creation and good with those of evil appears to have been quite well developed by the time of Jesus. However, it strikes me that the acceptance or otherwise of this conflict is quite superfluous to the Christian way. If it is accepted that there is a force of evil (call it Satan) and that it is a supernatural power, then it like the creator stand utterly beyond our conception. How are we to distinguish between two sets of forces when we can properly comprehend neither? There seems no point in pursuing this much further, there is a created universe and in it we experience love and good things; we find also that we experience vengeance, hate and other sentiments in conflict with love. Perhaps we are pawns in a cosmic battle, does it matter provided that we distinguish correctly which side we are fighting for? Does it become easier to perceive hate if you believe in Satan, and am I less able to love if I do not fear eternal hell?
I cannot know if Satan is a real force or a figment of our mortal imaginations; nor can I know if all evil can be ‘explained’ in terms of physical and psychological phenomena (especially including good old fashioned fear and ignorance). Personally I don't think it matters, it makes no difference at all to the truth I must pursue nor to the actions I must avoid. In view of the philosophical impossibility of ever completely explaining anything, the existence and role of Satan might as well be considered like the purpose of creation, and acknowledged as incomprehensible.
Where does that leave us?
The world has for most of us been stripped of myriad demons and evil spirits with which Jesus’ listeners had to contend; we must not be tempted to believe that the message is thus rendered irrelevant to our present condition, nor to imagining that things have not changed in the last 2000 years. Our first task is to find and comprehend the way in which our understanding has changed, and then to discover how the good news is seen to apply to contemporary life.
Christ calls his followers to value certain qualities. Of these the most conspicuous is the unqualified respect we should have for others – usually translated as love. Christians are called to be constantly watchful, and through prayer to seek the necessary strength. The yoke is easy and the burden is light for I believe that it is easier to live with love, truth and forgiveness than with fear, deceit and resentment. Perhaps the most important aspect of understanding Jesus today is to acknowledge that ultimately the way depends on an act of faith, on a commitment without reservation. Without that commitment there is no trust and we are not delivered from the law.
There are many who have approached the good news and come away with the idea that Jesus performed demonstrations of sufficient power to contradict the processes of the ‘natural law', and that if we have faith, we too can manage similar stunts.
In challenging this belief I would like to make two separate arguments – one, that contradiction of nature is unnecessary, and the other that those who believe in contradiction are imputing to the gospel writers distinctions of which they were not capable.
To take the second first – the man observes some event and describes the event in simple words. I believe that had the fishermen as good an understanding of the world as we have today they might well have written rather differently. However they lived in a world in which spirits and gods were constantly doing magical things and so to express their observations in magical terms is surely to be expected. They would not be expected to write that the water appeared to taste like wine, nor to clinically describe the nature of the leprosy or the restored flesh. There remains great scope for believing that the healings were cases of psychosomatic disorder (and there is good evidence that these still constitute a large proportion of human disorders) while physical miracles may have been simply a naïve perception or even a mis-perception of a normal event.
Whether you accept that or not doesn't matter. If it could be proven that all the miracles were not so would that undermine Jesus’ teaching, would you lose faith? What sort of creator is it that needs to resort to stunts to show the true way? The creator stands beyond time and to suggest that there might suddenly arise the need to reverse or stop or otherwise modify the tenets of the created universe is as much amusing as presumptuous. If your faith depends on your god having to change his mind you have a very small god. The god preached by Jesus stands beyond the need for tricks – a very mortal ambition. It is interesting to further reflect on the temptations of Jesus (Matt 4, Luke 4) which are filled with much to learn. It seems significant that these describe the express rejection of the use of magic tricks. In particular the rejection of the temptation to leap from the temple – a great crowd pleaser in a crowded public place – certain to attract attention and to win many followers. Jesus did not wish to impress his followers with tricks, he came to show them life in its fullness.
I don't care whether or not your god can adjust the natural law, mine doesn't need to, and I don't find any persuasive evidence that this has occurred. The misinterpretation of the miracles of Jesus has been combined with the declaration reported in Mark 11:23 (also Matt 17:20, 21:21, Luke 17:6, Mark 9:23 and others) and has been used by the church as evidence that the followers of Jesus may ask and will be granted any requests if these are made in faith. So, in our churches we find them praying for the condition of the world – requesting that god will save various people from suffering or will grant them wisdom, power or whatever.
What sort of god is it that needs your advice? Anyone at all familiar with the behavioural sciences will understand the truth of Mark 11:23 but the wording is slightly different in the other quotations and this difference becomes very significant. The crux is the last six words “it will be done for him” (RSV). That which I believe and do not doubt will happen, will most undoubtably be seen by me to happen if I wish it. Whether or not an independent observer would see it to happen is immaterial – for me it has happened and that is all that matters. The rather briefer wording of the other quotations is somewhat open to the interpretation that an independent observer would also see it to happen. As there are no instances to my knowledge of such an occurrence involving a contradiction of the natural law I am tempted to conclude that only the quotation on Mark is quite accurate.
It is difficult to comment on ideas which have evolved in times of profoundly different understanding of the world, as these usually incorporate, if only remotely, the notion of the three decker universe; with a god as a sort of king of heaven above who manages visitations to earth in the middle and who wars with Satan from hell beneath (all very anthropomorphic). The idea of the use of physical power is intimately related to the three decker universe – god is male, above, glorious, etc. The non-notion of an incomprehensible creator is quite unrelated to these properties and in interpreting th bible to understand the role of prayer some considerable allowance must be made for the fact that there were probably very few contemporaries of Jesus who did not believe in the three decker universe and so the avoidance of three decker notions in the bible could not be expected of its writers.
A further important consideration must be made in respect of prayer. I have already indicated that I believe prayers of intercession to be improper and misguided. It is worthwhile to consider what Jesus taught in the matter of prayer (Matt 6:9 and Luke 11:2), that we pray for ourselves, for strength and courage. He did not suggest we pray for events. I believe that prayer strengthens the believer, and that kind of prayer is always answered.
Finally, consider the behaviour of Jesus when confronted with men in need of help. Is it recorded that he interceded with the creator on their behalf? Not in my Bible. Jesus’ example is surely the one he would have us follow, not to fervently pray for others but to get up and do something about it.
The behaviourists have some interesting observations on the extinction of beliefs under partial reinforcement, which say a great deal about the maintenance of some current religious practices and beliefs, in particular the efficacy of intercessory prayer.
The disciples of Jesus could accept the declaration of faith in the creator and acknowledged that the good news was brought by a man alive in their presence. The notions of gods prevalent in the society were animalistic and the difficult they experienced in perceiving that although Jesus was crucified the good news remains is evident from the account (Matt 16:23 etc and John 14). In order to help their comprehension Jesus pointed out that god is more than creator plus Jesus but exists in spiritual form accessible to all who believe at any time (Matt 18:20). This is surely a necessary property of the creator. To propose or conjecture upon the relationships between the creator and Jesus is to attempt to express in the limited scope of our language a relationship entirely beyond our comprehension. Is it not sufficient to acknowledge that in Jesus we find true freedom and life.
Throughout this treatise I have endeavoured to avoid using the word God as a title for that ultimate focus of my life – my creator. This is a conscious statement of incomprehension and it bears no further qualification. In my experience (and I believe this to be true for most people in our society) the name God conjures up a vast array of notion of an enthroned king of glory, pearly gates, streets paved with gold, a bottomless pit full of fire and horror, and complete compatibility with all the religious ideas I have been taught. But it just ain't right. I may be charged with depersonalising god and with generating a comfortably distant abstraction, but I am not afraid of making an error. If I sought a comfortably distant abstraction I would be silly not to go the whole way and join the atheists. A particular individual's choice of words in reference to the ultimate meaning is surely something peculiar to that individual. I think it is necessary to recognise the danger of worshipping ideas of our own conception, and that anybody's conception or words to embody that which is declared to be entirely beyond our comprehension may mean something quite different to somebody else. Thus a house may be viewed from the south or the east, the views are quite different as neither is complete, but it remains the same house.
The good news is not the substitution of one religion with another. Jesus did not bring the world religion, he brought freedom from religion, freedom from rules and from fear. Jesus asks his followers to get their values right – to value only those things which the world cannot take away from you. Fear and anxiety depend upon me having something to lose. A true follower of Jesus has nothing to lose (Luke 12:15-21) and thus cannot be hurt by the worlds denial and misfortune – in such a condition fear and anxiety become powerless phenomena. Such a person has great personal strength and stands in harmony with his creator in a relationship of confidence or ‘love'.
It is long overdue that we should take a fresh look at ourselves, at the world and at the gospel. The vast bulk of what is currently taught in sunday schools scripture classes and missions around the world as Christianity is not just misguided – it is simply unchristian. It is time to read the Bible to see what is in there. We have any number of people who read the Bible because it is part of their religious devotion, but none of them are Christian because of it. It is time we considered the requirements Jesus made of those who would follow him and not be blinded by the requirements and expectations of the established church.
It is my very firm conviction that the established church is the greatest single obstacle to the spread of Christianity in western society today.
27th February 1975
These pages represent an attempt to crystallise a very broad field of often-changing ideas. I have attempted to integrate them to a degree, but the diversity and instability makes this very difficult and as a consequence has taken several attempts. This has resulted in a few discrepancies and a lack of uniformity, but time at present does not permit a further review.
I have seriously attempted to express what I believe to be the truth, if the reader is stimulated to think by what I have written, I have achieved my whole objective. The ideas are not original, the script is not copyright and I should be pleased to hear the responses of any mind it might intercept.
The last two paragraphs (after the date) were included in the first typed copy produced in 1974. The text was also edited slightly and retyped to an electronic format in 1986
Original: July ‘74
This page is part of “Living in the Light”
found at: http://www.geocities.com/phoban2000/
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