Knocking Over the Sacred Cow of Biblolatry

"And he said, "Whoever finds the meaning of these sayings will not taste death." Jesus said, "Those who seek should not stop seeking until they find. When they find, they will be disturbed. When they are disturbed, they will marvel, and will reign over all." Gospel of Thomas 2,3

I remember meditating on saying 3 a year or so back and really asking myself what we should be seeking and finding.  God?  God within?  Last night exhausted from the day's activities I was reading and contemplating sayings 2 and 3 together and had a small epiphany..(a piff if you will).  I am sure minds greater than my own have made the connection between the two sayings long before I, but it is a new realization to me.  Saying 2 suggests any who find the meaning of these sayings will have eternal life.  Then the saying 3 says to seek until you find.  So what we are to find is the meaning of these sayings. Easy right? No.

At the beginning of the Gospel of Thomas we read that these are the secret saying of Jesus.  What this means is not that they are hidden or kept from people, for only the elite to understand.  Rather these words are not easily understood.  These are not verses to memorize and be done with.  They require contemplation.  They require one to meditate and think on them.  It is not the words themselves that are reverenced.  Rather it is their meaning...the words within the words.

Suddenly the Gospel of Thomas becomes the finger pointing at the moon.  Even the text itself tells you this in these sayings.  But what good is the finger pointing at the moon?  It is a tool to get you to see or look at something else.

I live in the Bible Belt.  There are many, many fantastic and deeply spiritual Christian people here.  The culture where I live is culturally Christian for the most part.  One of the sacred cows of the culture I live in is to reverence the Bible.  In many people's homes there is a family Bible, often on a stand on the coffee table or shelf.  The Bible becomes a idol.  For some people they use it to beat others over the head based on their own prejudice.  Some it is found on that shelf, their spiritual understanding still going back to Sunday School when they were a kid..perhaps one of the last times they had attended church.  But for both of these people, the Bible is an idol.

I believe that God is truth, and truth can be found in any scripture, including the scripture of nature and life.  But each one of us must find its meaning, and its interpretation ourselves.  It is only through internal realization that change happens.  Part of what must happen is laying aside our many mindless "Biblolatries."

Hope In the Time of Sorrow

I received the call yesterday.  My father is dying - please come home.  As I drove the five hour drive home, I reflected on my father's life.  The ways he has been there for me not only at big events, but as a day to day stable force in our home.  Actually he is my step-father, who entered our lives at age 6.  Thirty-Two years later, he is "Pops" as my sister and I call him.  It was he, who attended my college graduation.  He was the force that took my family from the abject poverty we were living in, to a comfortable stable family.  If he had not been there, I honestly think I would not be where I am today or the person I am today.   It is by the grace of God shown by the light of my father on earth, that I can now allow my Divine Parent's light into the lives of the inner city kids I work with.

My niece is a fundamentalist Christian.  She was worried about Pop's salvation.  I was not however.  The God I know and believe in, made us in "His" image, that we have the spark of God's Divine fire within us.  I see God in my Pop's even though he was never a church-goer.  I can celebrate his life, and sadly impending passing from cancer, trusting that God will never cast any one of us out.

This is the Hope the Gospel of Thomas gives me.

The Voice of Hope

I read a lot of the goings on in the religious and political world.  Sadly some of the loudest voices are the most intolerant.  Especially in this season of folks lining up for the Republican nomination.  Each one tries to best the others on their conservatism.

I see some of the same thing in the religious sphere.  While there are voices of tolerance, there are often louder and more controversial (thus more newsworthy to the media) voices that are intolerant, sarcastic and hateful.  Hateful to women, hateful to gay, lesbian, bisexual, questioning and transgender people, hateful to other religions, and hateful to the environment.

When I had my spiritual awakening, my rebirth experience as a teen, I learned the 4 spiritual laws...these are verses that someone picked and chose from creating a system and theology of conversion.  The first one is realize and admit you are a sinner.  In theological circles, this is called utter depravity.  I find this teaching absolutely sickening.  It teaches that that there is nothing good in us, that even for the smallest failing we deserve hell.. a place of eternal torture.

My question is, why would anyone worship a God whose system of salvation required a human sacrifice, would only save a very small amount of people and those it did not would be tortured forever.  I cannot buy it. Such a God is not worth my worship.  That kind of God is more like a demon...or better yet more like the Demiurge spoken of in several Gnostic writings.

The God portrayed in the Gospel of Thomas is different.  This God is loving. The metaphors of God being Father and Mother are consistent in the Gospel of Thomas, not the split personality God who loves yet tortures people for all eternity for not getting it exactly right and believing correctly.  See God in the Gospel of Thomas is Love.  Period.   God is seen as the Creator in the beginning.  We came from the light.  We came from Love. We are children of God.  This God did not give a list of religious regulations or rituals that must be followed.  This God is more akin to the God of Rumi, of the mystics, of the lovers.  This God is beyond any metaphors and yet can be seen in any metaphor as well.  Our commandment?  Protect your brother/sister like you would protect something coming at your eye.. protect, guard them like the pupil of your eye.  Keep your brother and sister safe.   Watch out for your little brother!  Watch out for your sister!

Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas is our big brother.  He watches out for us.  He points the way.  He is so God-Filled that we can see the fullness of God in him.  He calls us to be the same thing.  And throughout history there have been those who have let that light that is in ALL people (regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, or religion)...those who have let God's light shine through them.  Folks like Gandhi, MLK jr., Mother Theresa, Rumi etc.  Religion does not matter.  Knowing who you are in God, and watching out for your brothers and sisters is what matters.

The Death of Jesus

The Gospel of Thomas does not deal with the death of Jesus.  It is hinted at in one of his sayings where he tells his students to take up their crosses.

Beginning Again

I have been challenged through conversations with folks in my denomination to see Jesus in a fresh new way.  I love those conversations, don't you?  There is a saying in the Bible that says something like "As iron sharpens iron so one friend sharpens another."

The past several months I have to admit I have been struggling.  I had an experience that kinda blew my theology apart.  I am not going into details, but I have been pondering what I believe or where I stand with my relationship with Jesus.  Something the Bishop and another in our church pointed out really made sense.  In a paraphrase nutshell it was something to the effect that there are times when the old Jesus is killed in us so that a fresh understanding, a broader revelation of Jesus can be born or resurrected in us.

I think this is true.  The past few months I have been stuck in the birth canal, but I sense something happening.  I have had to let go of my old ways of knowing Christ, ways that came with a god I could not love.  A god who condemns people eternally to hell.  A god who treated women and gay people as second class.  A god with no connection to nature.  A god who demanded a human sacrifice of his own son to be able to forgive.  This was the god I laid down years ago.

But traces still remained.  Traces of mistrust of the Bible.  Having a love/hate relationship with the beauty in much of Christianity such as the liturgy, the music, the traditions, the joy of the charismatics, the quiet of the Quakers, and the love of spiritual study of the Baptists.  I have flirted at the margins these past few years, never falling on one side or another.

This spiritual experience blew apart my experience of God.  God was not only personal but had an impersonal side as well. Reality was swept away in a see of the Divine Presence.  Every tree, flower and rock hid the face of the Divine.  And Jesus was not there nor any part of this experience.  Thus my several months of floundering.

My theology, my practice and study was based on his words.  How could I have such a profound experience of the divine, and yet Jesus was no where to be seen.  I have been mostly silent trying to figure this out.  Trying to recover what was changed by the experience.  Then my Bishop said, perhaps I became Jesus in that experience.  It was then that it hit me.  I have been thinking on these words.

Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas as well as the other Gospels calls us to be like him, to be him, to be one with him.  My union with God was also a union with Christ.  I saw through his eyes and did not even realize it.  My high from the experience has long since faded in these months, yet the inner knowing is still there.  A God who is a part of nature, as if nature were contained within the Divine.  A God who is not a controller but more a presence within, a flow that we can align with or not.  It does not affect the flow...we are still a part of it.  To be a child of God as the Gospel of Thomas hints at, is to realize that this is a metaphor to sharing the divine nature with God.  That we are within God the whole time.  Jesus realized this.  I hope I can too.

The Message of Gnosticism

The message of Gnosticism is that the message of Jesus is more important than beliefs about him.  That his words bring revelation and life through rhema revelation knowledge of God and who we are in God. This does not require a rejection of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Apocrypha, the New Testament, nor the Nag Hammadi writings.  However it may lead to new understandings and interpretations.

The funny thing is that in the Gnostic Community there is not much we do agree on, but I think the common link is the belief that it is the living knowledge of God and who we are in God is the most important thing.