{"id":15,"date":"2010-02-14T13:06:07","date_gmt":"2010-02-14T13:06:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/realisticliving.org\/blog\/from-jesus-and-paul-to-you-and-me-a-religious-history\/"},"modified":"2016-01-15T17:23:48","modified_gmt":"2016-01-15T17:23:48","slug":"from-jesus-and-paul-to-you-and-me-a-religious-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/realisticliving.org\/blog\/from-jesus-and-paul-to-you-and-me-a-religious-history\/","title":{"rendered":"From Jesus and Paul to You and Me – A Religious History"},"content":{"rendered":"

A sketch of the Christian story
\n<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Jesus did not establish a religion; he was and remained a Jew for his whole life.\u00a0 We know this from the earliest New Testament writings.\u00a0 For Jesus there was no New Testament, no Christian religious practice, and no intimation that there ever would\u00a0 be.\u00a0 Rather, in his own being he felt the dawn of a new day for humanity as a whole.\u00a0 He proclaimed the advent of a New Adam, a New Humanity, the coming of a \u201cKingdom\u201d on Earth characterized by a direct experience of the Eternal here and how.\u00a0 This down-to-Earth yet Eternal dawning meant the advent of a humanity that Trusted \u201cMysterious Reality\u201d as a loving father; that Loved Mysterious Reality, self, and others unconditionally; that experienced a Freedom that gave immediate authority rooted in our true personal depths (our authenticity) rather than in the traditions and laws of scribes and moral teachers.\u00a0\u00a0 He saw in his own ministry the dawning of this Eternal Kingdom among those whose lives were being healed.\u00a0 He signaled the coming of an Eternally initiated restoration of authenticity for all humanity, not just for that part that would call themselves \u201cChristians.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Similarly, Paul did not establish a religion; he was and remained a Jew for his whole life.\u00a0 We know this from his own writings.\u00a0 For Paul there was no New Testament, no Christian religious practice, and no intimation that there ever would be.\u00a0 He did not distance himself from Jews.\u00a0 He shared his profound awakening in Synagogues with Jews and with Gentiles who were attracted to the rich heritage of Judaism.\u00a0 Paul viewed himself as a true descendent of Abraham, whom he viewed as an example of the Trust in Mysterious Reality that he, Paul, was experiencing.\u00a0 Like Jesus, Paul saw in himself, and in those healed by his message, the dawning of an Eternal Transformation for all humanity.\u00a0 He spoke of a second Adam, a New Humanity which he also identified with being \u201cIn Christ.\u201d\u00a0 He believed that everyone was soon to participate in this Eternal dawning of New Life on Earth.<\/p>\n

With this dawning of a down-to-Earth experience of a New Humanity came a companion dawning of how far humanity had fallen from the Eternity-related Humanity that is our birthright, our essence, our authenticity.\u00a0 The deeper we see into the truth of our authenticity, the deeper we see into the truth of our loss of that authenticity.\u00a0 And this loss, this sorrow, this tragedy, this depravity of our authentic humanity was seen by Paul and by Jesus as profound.\u00a0 \u201cThis is an evil generation.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cAll have fallen short.\u201d\u00a0 In modern times most people have recoiled from this profound view of human depravity.<\/p>\n

Further, many ancient Greeks and many contemporary Christians have misunderstood the nature of this depravity.\u00a0 They have twisted the New Testament view to mean a depreciation of nature, of our bodily flesh, of our birthing and dying biology.\u00a0 But this was not what the fall meant within the Jewish context of Jesus and Paul.\u00a0 In their heritage, God, the Holy Mysterious Ultimate Reality, was Present in the material world \u2013 in birth, in death, in limitation, in possibility.\u00a0 The very Word \u201cGod\u201d pointed to the EVERY-THING-NESS that is present in each and every thing, to the NO-THING-NESS out of which all things come and into which all things return.\u00a0 In this heritage \u201cGod\u201d did not mean something good by human standards, but THE\u00a0 FINALITY \u201cwhose historical doings\u201d define what is good.\u00a0 Final Reality is good because it is Real, not because it conforms to humanly invented purposes or\u00a0 the desires of a human psyche.\u00a0 The fall was a fall from finding joy in our created goodness.\u00a0 Fulfilled Life meant living openly within the everyday experience of that Eternal Mysteriousness that is manifest within our ordinary, temporal lives.<\/p>\n

Humanity, then and today, is far removed from this understanding of Fulfilled Life, even though it is our birthright, our authenticity, our essence.\u00a0 Even among those in whom this Fulfilled Life is active, the fall remains.\u00a0 Paul did not see this New Humanity as complete within himself.\u00a0 He spoke of pressing on toward the full stature of Christ.\u00a0 And in our best scholarship the historical Jesus does not speak of himself as perfect.\u00a0 It was his followers who fictionalized him into a portrait of perfect authenticity. We see this portrait developing in Mark, Matthew, Luke, and especially John.\u00a0 \u201cJesus,\u201d like \u201cBuddha\u201d and other exemplars, became a symbol for perfected authenticity.\u00a0 We do not\u00a0 know the extent to which these exemplars were perfect in their own Trust, Love, and Freedom.\u00a0 Like us they meditated and prayed to resist the \u201cdevil\u201d and to be open to the fullness of Spirit.\u00a0 Jesus spoke of perfection as an opening in our sick souls toward an impending future created not by us but by the Reality worshiped by Moses and the prophets.\u00a0\u00a0 Whatever was true for the historical Jesus, we are certainly all sick and in need of healing.\u00a0 We are all fallen beings that participate universally in an ongoing and profound fall from realism.<\/p>\n

Fall and Redemption<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Rationalism, moralism, and sentimentalism are ways to describe the fall from our true being of trust, freedom, and love.<\/p>\n

Rationalism is a substitute for our deep Trust in Reality (faith) and a cover for our despair over our actual lives.\u00a0 We are all rationalists, for we are neither fully open to Mystery, nor curious about the Unknown but are content with our own inherited or self-constructed meanings.\u00a0 We are uncomfortable with not knowing and with knowing that we will never know the meaning of life with our fragile minds.\u00a0 Making meaning is a healthy function of our minds, but our minds are finite and our meanings limited.\u00a0 By our human standards Reality is absurd,\u00a0 and we are loath to fault our own unrealistic views.\u00a0 We prefer to blame Reality for not being \u201cmeaningful\u201d by our criteria.\u00a0 This is our fall \u2013 eating from the tree of self-constructed meaning and thereby losing the good taste of authenticity.\u00a0 Conservative Christians tend to reduce Trust in the Mystery to belief in doctrinal assertions.\u00a0 We all have beliefs, like we all have toenails, but our beliefs are humanly created and open to change.\u00a0 Clinging to any set of beliefs, religious or secular, is a sign of having fallen into rationalism.\u00a0 There are no final Christian beliefs.\u00a0 Faith means Trust, not belief.\u00a0 And our thinking about the meaning of Trust is an ever-evolving theology.\u00a0 Liberal Christians tend to reduce Trust in the Mystery to a humanly created worldview they find comforting.\u00a0 The word \u201cGod\u201d (if they use it at all) is a human idea rather than an Awesome, Un-understandable Experience.\u00a0 They play meaning-making games rather than explore the call of Jesus and Paul to make the transrational Leap of Trust in a Mysterious Reality.\u00a0 Rather than leaping into the deep Peace of radical openness to the Mystery-of-What-is-Actually-So, they opt for security\u00a0 in products of their meaning-making minds .<\/p>\n

Moralism is a substitute for our deep Freedom of Spirit and a cover for our slavery to established opinion or to the idolizing of our own self-righteousness.\u00a0 We are all moralists; we are not Free from our self-image and our habits of personality \u2013 not Free from our limiting views of good and evil \u2013 not Free from our false expectations.\u00a0 We do not wish to hear the story of Adam and Eve as a story about our fall from realism into our own self-constructed standards of good and evil.\u00a0 Adam and Eve ate a lie.\u00a0 They ate the lie that we humans can know what is good and what is evil.\u00a0 Such final knowledge is forbidden the human species.\u00a0 We actually live in uncertainty about the right things to do.\u00a0 We retreat into moralism when we lack the courage to face the ambiguities that characterize our actual choices.\u00a0\u00a0 We prefer to judge everything by known criteria and deny Reality the right to judge our standards.\u00a0 We opt for a moralism that squeezes our souls into a tight box and twists our good intentions into slavery rather than enjoying the Blessing of Freedom.<\/p>\n

Sentimentalism is a substitute for our deep Love of self, others, and the Ground of our Being.\u00a0 It is also a cover for our malicious attitudes toward self and everyone.\u00a0\u00a0 We are all sentimentalists who seek escape from the horrors of our real situations into fantasies of our own creation.\u00a0 We whitewash ourselves.\u00a0 We whitewash humanity.\u00a0 We avoid realizing the depth of humanity\u2019s flight from Reality and humanity\u2019s fight with Reality.\u00a0 We praise this fight and flight rather then view it as our depravity.\u00a0\u00a0 Seeking a pleasant and peaceful mind we avoid lucidity about our own depravity and our own lack of dedication to realizing our full potential in realistic living.\u00a0 Our sentimentality extends to creating God in our own image, to inventing a Supreme Someone who holds our values and assists us to realize them.\u00a0 We are loath to notice that this opposes a devotion to that terrifying yet glorious Actual Reality, the worship recommended in the Bible.\u00a0 Instead, we worship illusions.\u00a0 And Reality, being Reality, will soon smash our illusions, leaving us in despair.\u00a0 Some dismiss sentimentality as harmless, but it is deadly.\u00a0 When we take pride in our sentimentality, we are willing to cheat, lie, and murder (if need be) to defend our false sense of things from the Truth.\u00a0 Sentimentality is a flight from or a fight with a Reality that we cannot stand and cannot escape — in other words, sentimentality is hell.\u00a0 Our sentimental souls are in hell because we are not enjoying the true sweetness of our essential strength, our out-flowing compassion, and our enchantment with the wonder of Being.<\/p>\n

The horrific depth of our rationalism, moralism, and sentimentality is called \u201csin\u201d in the letters of Paul.\u00a0 Humanity is being delivered from this \u201csin\u201d by the redemption that dawned in Jesus.\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cRedemption,\u201d is a much misused word.\u00a0 We can recover this word from piousness and confusion if we see that it merely means being restored to the actual, Reality-based authentic humanity from which we have fallen.\u00a0 Three words can hold the core qualities of the ever-deepening experience of our ordinary yet profound humanity: (1) Trust of the Absolute Mysteriousness of Reality and Reality\u2019s welcome Home to that Mystery rather than a rationalism that seeks to shave Mystery down to our own meager orderings, (2) Freedom rather than a moralism with which we can prove ourselves right by our own efforts to obey our own standards, and (3) Love of the actual, directly experienced Eternal Reality which supports and includes self and others, rather than a sentimentality that glories in our own fantasies.<\/p>\n

Our rationalism, moralism, and sentimentality constitute a many-faceted flight from Reality and a many-faceted fight with Reality.\u00a0 This is a fight we are destined to lose.\u00a0 It is a flight from a Reality we cannot escape.\u00a0 This flight or fight can only end badly \u2013 in a despair that kills all joy.<\/p>\n

All of us, not some of us, have fallen into this tragic condition of sin.\u00a0 And all of us, not some of us, are potential saints.\u00a0 In our essential beings we are already saints of Trust, Love, and Freedom.\u00a0 Sainthood is our true life in spite of the fact that only a few of us are clearly identified with this Sainthood and are willing to give up \u201cthe pattern of sin\u201d and let Sainthood flourish.<\/p>\n

Both Jesus and Paul proclaimed a fast-arriving dawn for the whole of humanity in which this widespread sin would be wiped away and redemption would be enjoyed by all humans.\u00a0 Paul expected this future to happen soon, just as soon as enough Gentiles had been grafted into this amazing unfoldment and both Jews and Gentiles could be shamed into opening to this final transformation of our humanity.
\nBut what was \u201csoon\u201d for Paul and what was \u201csoon\u201d for God turned out to be different. Here we are, over 1900 years after Paul expected sin to be defeated and redemption to engulf us all, and sin is still widespread \u2013 perhaps more complicated and horrific than ever.\u00a0 The Eternal Life of Trust, Love, and Freedom is still rare and incomplete, even among those of us who have tasted it.<\/p>\n

This is sobering.\u00a0 It must have also been sobering to 1st, 2nd, and 3rd century followers of Jesus and Paul.\u00a0 They had to notice that this universal redemption was unfolding slowly.\u00a0 The \u201csoon\u201d of the original proclamation was a \u201csoon\u201d that was going to be later, apparently much later.\u00a0 But they trusted Reality, trusted that \u201cGod\u2019s delay\u201d was part of God\u2019s mysterious wisdom.\u00a0 Yes, it was a learning experience.\u00a0 Trust requires that we, the Trusting ones, be open to living the delay of the final coming of universal redemption.\u00a0 Trust requires that \u201cfor the time being\u201d we live in patience for the final coming of redemption.<\/p>\n

Living the Long Haul<\/strong><\/h3>\n

So, these first fruits of a \u201cnew humanity\u201d (as they called themselves) began to adapt their strategies to living in an ongoing sinful world\u00a0 for the long haul.\u00a0 They created religious institutions of Christ-way Judaism.\u00a0 They created new forms of religious leadership, wrote books, had intense discussions, mastered schools of thought, canonized the \u201cbest\u201d writings, and excluded other writings.\u00a0 All this was done in order to remain clear and committed to true redemption.\u00a0 A huge movement came into being.\u00a0 Outsiders called them \u201cChristians.\u201d\u00a0 The name stuck.\u00a0 But God, they claimed, was still working to redeem all humanity, not just those few who practiced the new religious inventions.<\/p>\n

When Constantine provided the opportunity, this fast expanding \u201cChristian\u201d movement assumed responsibility for the political system of the entire Roman Empire.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 No matter what we now think about much of what they did, we can still stand amazed at their energy and achievements.\u00a0 They built a massive church organization with priests and monks and nuns in almost every village of Europe.\u00a0 They established bishops to minister to kings and other aristocrats.\u00a0 The Western Church established a Pope to stand in creative relation to the emperor. Eastern Orthodoxy also built hierarchical leadership patterns nation by nation. These strong organizations fought against heresies of Hebraic moralism, heresies of Greek rationalism, and heresies of sentimentalism, old and new.\u00a0 They organized intense monastic movements, one after another, to compensate for the laxity and delusions that came from working with the masses of civilization.<\/p>\n

They built Christendom!\u00a0 Glory Hallelujah, they built Christendom!\u00a0 It was indeed a glorious achievement.\u00a0 And it was a tragic achievement.\u00a0 These socially powerful institutions of religion tempted the greedy and the power-crazed\u00a0 (of whom there are always many) to use that assembled power for their own rationalistic, moralistic, and sentimental escapes from Reality.\u00a0 The once Spirit-inspiring ministries warped into\u00a0 cultural, political, and economic oppression that called forth \u201cThe Protestant Reformation\u201d and the \u201cRoman Catholic Counter Reformation.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Both reforms were more radical than those of the religious orders and did combat with the established hierarchy of Christendom.\u00a0 Luther identified the Pope of his day with Satan and risked his life to challenge the sin of decayed Christendom.\u00a0 Breaking with that hierarchy, he established a new one.\u00a0 The Counter Reformation attempted to reform the old hierarchy and reestablish unity among its salvageable elements.
\nChristendom split into many reform experiments but that did not end the pattern of Christendom. Christendom proceeded forward in a multiplicity of competing fingers of religious invention that endure to this day.\u00a0 They carry a\u00a0 grand heritage.\u00a0 They also carry horrific perversions of the initial impetus of the Christian heritage, and they are all dying.\u00a0 Christendom is passing away.\u00a0 We face the need for a religious transformation \u2013 a new sociological wineskin for the wine of Trust, Love, and Freedom.<\/p>\n

The Next Christianity<\/strong><\/h3>\n

It is not, however, the end of the redemptive mission.\u00a0 We live in the early days of a new vital form of Christian community, a new wineskin for Eternal Spirit.\u00a0 There are still those who are living in Spirit (in Trust, Love, and Freedom) \u2013 the very same Spirit that was manifest in Jesus and Paul and in that ever-enlarging host of mighty witnesses.\u00a0 But the sociological shape of Christian practice and mission is undergoing a transformation as huge as the construction of Christendom, perhaps as huge as the Jesus-inspired dawning itself, perhaps as huge as the Moses-led impetus 34 centuries ago.\u00a0\u00a0 We live in a time of Spirit resurgence and religious invention comparable to the time of the great prophets of Israel, the Buddha, the Upanishads, Lao Tzu, Zarathustra, and others.
\nFor those of us who carry in our beings the primal impetus of Jesus and Paul as well as Mark, Matthew, Luke, John, and others, we might date the beginning of our current ferment of renewal and reconstruction to a droll yet comical Dane, S\u00f8ren Kierkegaard.\u00a0 Kierkegaard initiated Christian witness into a period of existential reinterpretation — theology was related to life experience.\u00a0 This was carried forward by others like: Karl Barth, Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, H. Richard Niebuhr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Rudolf Bultmann, Suzanne de Dietrich, Simone Weil, Thomas Merton, Bede Griffiths, – – -.\u00a0 This list of breakthrough men and women is still unfolding \u2013 Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox \u2013 European, North American, Latin American, African, Asian.\u00a0 An ecumenical and planet-wide Christian reconstruction is taking place.\u00a0 It will be diverse, but we can also expect a deep synthesis.\u00a0 We can expect these witnesses to reveal the oneness of our essential humanity of Trust, Love, and Freedom.\u00a0 We can expect from them a fresh grasp of the Oneness of the Triune experience: (1) The Awesome Final Eternal Reality directly experienced, (2) The Awed portion of humanity, a New View of the Body of Christ,\u00a0 and (3) The flow of Awe that is our essential humanness, our Trust, Love, and Freedom.<\/p>\n

This emerging Christian reconstruction is different from the everyone-a-Christian approach of the Middle Ages.\u00a0 It seems certain that those who practice this revived Christianity will be limited in number, compared to the past.\u00a0 The Next Christianity appears to be taking on a more monastic quality \u2013 less withdrawn than classical monasticism but still small, disciplined cells of people yoked in planetary networks.\u00a0 Though such Christians will be fewer in number, these networks of Next Christianity promise to be more disciplined, intense, and challenging to the world.\u00a0 In the United States, for example, we might expect these reconstructed Christian practitioners to be no more than one percent of the population \u2013 three million people in a disciplined network of nurture and mission.\u00a0 But if they drink from the deep well of Christian origins and minister to the whole body of contemporary humanity, we can expect this disciplined network to have more constructive impact upon the course of planetary history than all the decaying congregations of Christendom.\u00a0 They may be few in number, but they will be mighty in inward and social impact.<\/p>\n

And who will these people be?\u00a0 We can expect them to be men and women, straight and gay, every race, every fragment of religious upbringing. They will take the ever-deepening journey into their true humanity and will be willing to pay attention to the actual course of history and to take initiatives that are relevant.\u00a0 They will study,\u00a0 know how to study, and teach others to study.\u00a0 They will be able and willing to master the core of the Christian heritage, yet open to all religious wisdom from whatever source.\u00a0 They will have the resources to learn leadership skills and will be willing to live among and assist the poorest and least privileged, as well as willing to live among and assist the most wealthy and talented.<\/p>\n

We who are this new formation of Christian practice must not revert to the old ideal of everyone-a-Christian.\u00a0 In the future there can be no Christian nations, no Christian empires.\u00a0 Not only are such ideals oppressive in this interreligious era, but they dilute the intensity of what it means to be members of a\u00a0 Christian community.\u00a0\u00a0 We need to\u00a0 inspire and enrich a small number of disciplined \u201csaints.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 If we think that having great numbers is important, we are still trapped in the hangover of Christendom.\u00a0 Quality, not quantity, must be our focus.<\/p>\n

Yet, this does not mean being a closed circle.\u00a0 A post-Christendom Christian practice must be as open to welcoming more people as it is \u201crealistic\u201d to do so.\u00a0 Indeed, we must\u00a0 overcome any fear we may have of larger numbers.\u00a0 And these are real fears: our fear of dilution; our fear of strangers; our fear of responsibility for more people; our fear of the creativity it will take to organize large numbers of people, to nurture them, and to prepare them for mission to this troubled age.<\/p>\n

We confront a paradox: Jesus and Paul taught us intensity and small-group enthusiasm, but they also taught us that this redemption is for the whole of humanity.\u00a0 We who join this redemption will be few in number, but we will be joining a mission that envisions a universal redemption.<\/p>\n

So, let us be grateful for deep qualities of soul, however small this renders our assembly.\u00a0 And let us be grateful for any increase in the numbers of great souls that our reconstruction of Christianity attracts to the Christian branch of the Universal Body of Christ.\u00a0 And let us never forget that there are other-than-Christian branches of the humanity we call \u201cthe Body of Christ.\u201d\u00a0 In John\u2019s gospel we hear Jesus say, \u201cI have sheep who are not of this fold.\u201d<\/p>\n

But some of us who remember Jesus, and who understand the revolution in inner being that he initiated, need to rebuild the fold of those who remember him and honor him as their portrait of human authenticity.\u00a0 Some of us need to do this for our times.\u00a0 Perhaps it is me.\u00a0 Perhaps it is you.<\/p>\n