(Here we go again, climbing the steeple of faith. It's always such a shock when your handholds begin to crumble.)The Gospels may have been canonized, but they are not static; they allow multiple interpretations. Today, we are still discovering “new” gospels, which are variously legitimate and which may or may not add anything to our interpretation of the canonical texts. People are always looking for new ways to interpret Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John so that their words – the words of Jesus – will fit their lives, the society in which they live, and become compatible with new advances in knowledge such as science. When I heard Witherington speak last Friday, I was impressed with the enormous amount of research, science, and contemporary scholastic theory he was able to incorporate into his reading of the Bible. His arguments for God’s existence were at least pseudo-scientific and he used scientific validity tests to give credence to his beliefs. His Christianity is different (if only slightly) from the Christianity of any other Christian and certainly the Christianity of centuries and millennia past. Indeed, he challenged fundamentalist Christians to “wake up and smell the coffee” because we are no longer living in a pre-scientific world. If Christianity is to remain viable in America, it will have to keep up with the times. (Reading D’Souza has made me wonder whether this is really true, especially for Islam. Based on American values and seeing as most Americans are not first and foremost religious as many Muslims are, it seems as though American religion must stay up to date less it risk falling by the wayside.)
Last semester I read Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan. Hobbes was one of the forerunners of the Enlightenment and he tried to reconcile Christianity with developing Enlightenment worldviews. He analytically dissected Biblical texts, attempting to treat them rationally as one might treat any other item of literature – or in his case politics – under examination. Contemporary authors are still rewriting the Gospels. I read to such examples last semester: Tolstoy’s The Gospel in Brief and Norman Mailer’s The Gospel According to the Son. From these books I adopted the argument, Why must Jesus be divine, why can’t he have been an incredibly compassionate human being, virtuous and wise, even a visionary? Aren’t his revolutionary beliefs and human actions enough? Since then, I have learned that, of course, this is not enough for most Christians. A core teaching of Christianity is that Jesus is the Savior, that he will return for a final day of judgment and that it is through faith in him that we “shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst” (John 6:35, p 87). My attempts at interpreting the Gospels intuitively in a way that aligned with my own spiritual beliefs were foiled by most others. And that’s totally fine. It’s difficult to concede that faith is a matter of faith, but at its core it truly is.
(Why must Christ's resurrection be interpreted literally? Are his teachings, his proclamations of divine awareness not enough? I cannot believe the mythic interpretation of his literal ascendence or Moses' literal parting of the Red Sea.)I guess the point I’m getting at is that interpretation and belief are in some ways inextricable. Which gives rise to other I cannot say. Interpret the Bible with my own belief system, but certainly my beliefs come from they manner in which I interpret the world around me. The following are some of the lines from John that really grabbed my attention, ones that might easily appear in a Hindu or Buddhist text. “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30, p 95). Jesus is proclaiming his union with the divine. Many Kosmic realizers have made similar claims. They perceive a sense of unity with, they in fact become, what cannot be described as other than God, the Ultimate. They practice compassion and contemplation just as Jesus does, and their teachings in many ways resemble his. “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8: 58, p 92). Jesus’ statement expresses the eternal nature of the Divine. The divine, ultimate consciousness is outside of time. As Bump put it, we are “conduits” for this magnificent power. It is not us personally that is eternal, but something that shines through us, is us and much more. “I am” is a name for God, Atman commonly invoked by sages to try to express that divine identity, the Always Already, that we may each find within ourselves. “He spake of the temple of his body” (John 2:21, p 79). Mother Theresa used the same analogy to express levels of consciousness or energy centers in her body. It is analogous to the seven chakras. Higher levels in the temple correspond to higher more subtle energy centers. Mother Theresa even divided the temple up into seven very similar stages. “And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that come down from heaven” (John 3:13, p 80). This conveys the Eastern idea of involution and evolution, agape and eros. The cycle of death and rebirth; the way that we are brought down into the gross dimension upon conception and steadily evolve throughout life back towards more subtle, causal, or even nondual awareness. Each day and night we go through this cycle. During the day we are awake; we are in the waking state and supported by the gross body. When we “go to sleep,” we pass into the dream state, supported by the subtle body. From there we pass into deep dreamless sleep, a state supported by the causal body. We go through the same process in reverse as we awake. Involution and evolution, many say, is happening in every moment, with every inhalation and exhalation. I do admit, it is easy to read nearly anything into a text if you set your mind to it. I was disappointed by my lack of interest in reading John yesterday because I know how rich it is. I suppose it will just take another cycle of disillusionment and enchantment for me to see the light in it once again.
(These might be the hands of anyone. Devotion, prayer, realization is not limited to Christ or his disciples.)I am a very spiritual person. This phrase alone means nothing. But I am what I would call spiritually oriented. I do believe that something more than colliding atoms animates our consciousness. I do believe that there are mystical levels of consciousness achieved by sages and devotees and on occasion, by chance encounter, the unsuspecting person without a spiritual practice. And I think it likely that Jesus was one such mystical realizer; but not the only one. This is belief. But it is not merely belief. I feel it – conviction, like a rock or a concrete rod running through my abdomen. This does not make my belief any different from many others who hold a similar conviction. After all, even rocks evolve, erode, and grow with time.
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