Dump the Apocalypse Stuff

In the last few days, I have been devoting my "blog time" to more reading of Karen Armstrong's new book, The Great Transformation as she traces the history of the pre-axial and axial age developments in religion and philosophy in China, India, the Middle East and Greece. As such, I can see that it has been now 5 days since my last post, so I feel that I need to keep up with another post today to "keep the discipline going" as it were.

As a sidelight to the Armstrong reading, I decided to read again yesterday the Gospel of Mark. This is relevant on two levels. First, it is agreed that it is probably the earliest of our "Canonical" gospels, and secondly, it is the "Gospel of the Year" in our current lectionary cycle. I tried, as much as possible, to read it without trying to superimpose back a pre-conceived theology about Jesus and also a pre-conceived idea as to the teachings of Jesus. I also read it in the somewhat less familiar translation of the Scholars Version which was the work of the Fellows of the Jesus Seminar. They did a number of interesting things in their translation, the most fascinating of which was their desire to not "improve" the grammar of Mark nor to make all of his tenses agree with our modern English sensibilities. What struck me most was the use of the present tense as well as their creative way of conveying the "immediately" or "right then" or "right away" usages that are throughout the Gospel of Mark. More than before, this seemed to match up with the view of the "Apocalyptic" character of the first Christian message. God's Imperial Rule (to use the Jesus seminar term) was perceived as not a growing and gentle awareness of the "Kingdom within you" but rather the immanent sense that something is going to happen "really soon."

It rather makes me wonder if the early growth of the Church in the post-Jesus years was not due to an apocalyptic fervor? There have, of course, since that time been any number of apocalyptic movements, particularly among "evangelicals" in the US. One has only to think of the Oneida community dressed up and sitting in the trees for the parousia to get an idea of the extremes to which apocalypticism can drive people to to get an idea that a similar thing may have happened in the early church as well. They had, at least in the Jewish Middle East, some pretty good "signs" of it noting the destruction of the Temple in the ca CE 70 defeat of the Jewish revolt. We can see these events projected backwards onto the Jesus narratives of the Gospel where Jesus speaks "prophetically" of the destruction of the temple, and when he tells the women to "weep for themselves and for their children." It is significant, I think, that so much of the oldest NT book, the first letter of Paul to the Thessalonians, is dedicated to explaning what will happen at "the Lord's coming" regarding "we who are alive" as well as those who had died with a sense that "we who are alive" are going to see this miraculous event occur.

But, the Lord did not come quickly back. One wonders what were the thoughts of these "transitional" Christians as they realized that this return of the Lord in glory was not happening as they had expected. I suppose that there was more emphasis placed by some on the "keep ready" for "no one knows the day nor the hour" "not even the Son (of God)." Although a specific date was never predicted (as had been the case for so many of the more recent "events" that we knew of), it would still have required a "recalcluation" of the original mental chronology. I would suspect that this has already been done, but I would guess that, if we follow the writings of the NT and the post-NT period chronologically, we could find a progressive de-emphasis of the apocalyptic character of the message of the early Christians.

What then do we do with the early Christian message? What can we look back to and at least touch as a source of our own inspiration that allows us to give meaning to our existence today? It came to me yesterday that we might look even more closely back at the "greatest commandment" quotation as a central meaning for us. This story exists in the Gospel of Mark and is an "early" one, therefore and perhaps "authentic" as "close to" the message of Jesus. In it, of course, Jesus is asked a question by "one of the scholars" as the SV describes him as to which is the most important commandment. Jesus replies that the most important commandment is the "Hear, Israel, the Lord your God is one Lord, and you are to Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and with all your energy." He goes on to give the second part of it which is, "You are to love your neigbor as yourself." The questioner complements Jesus on his answer and appears to be sincere to Jesus who replies "You are not far from God's domain." The passage ends with a certain sense of finality when Mark writes that "From then on, no one dared to question him."

It occured to me that the "great commandment" could be perceived as a somewhat koan-like statement. First, one must "love the Lord" with the totality of one's being with all one's intellectual, emotional and spiritual resources. How then, do we "love our neighbor" or "love our selves" if all is given over to the love of God? Perhaps this would suggest that we find God in our neighbor and ourselves and our "God" is this total experience of love. This would mesh, perhaps, with a philosophical view that we are "all one," suggesting that, in the deepest and most meaningful way, there is no essential distinction or separation between ourselves and others. That loving others is like loving ourselves because others, in essence, are the same as ourselves. This essential commonality has a transcendent quality that might earn it the name of "God" perhaps when it is fully and completely realized. The "task" then for us is a dual one. First, it is an internal search for the "ground of being" or "spirit" or "essence" or "self" that is in each of us the same "self" that is in all of this. The "experience" of this self would then be the "point" of contemplation, meditation and prayer. Secondly, a growing awareness of this reality would be a source for acting charitably to others as we would be acting charitably to ourselves by doing so and thereby experiencing in a practical way the transendence that we achieve by our growing awareness of this unity of all people and individuals. We could find a commonality with other faith traditions as well such as the perception of the self or Atman as identical with Brahman or the enlightenment experience of Buddhist tradition where the "illusions" of separation and the small self drop away, and the birth of compassion for all living beings emerges.

The "God is Love" conception is not one that could necessarily be condemned even by traditional Christians as heretical. Furthermore, some of Paul's most excellent writings relate well to this. Witness his famous discourse in the Corinthian letter of the "I may speak with the tongues of men and angels, but if I have not Love..." speech. We also may find an answer to "moral" dilemmas as well by using the "Love is the fulfilling of the Law" principle with the corollary that "Love does no harm to a neighbor." This "Love" principle would, if carried to the fullest, be a way to lose all of the "dross" of prejudice and superstition that fills up the "moral codes" that appear throughout the Jewish and Christian scriptures. It would allow us to, from a first principle, apply a test to any question: "Does this do harm to a neighbor?....no....then it is either a loving or a morally neutral act."

Finally, this brings God both down to a human level as the "spirit of Love" within each of us as well as making the experience of that same "spirit of Love" a transcendent one. It is much more satisfying morally and intellectually than the "big guy in the sky" way of thinking. It also could form a nidus for even bringing back the "Kingdom of Heaven" concept. This time, it is not a cataclysmic event of a supernatural being who invades our reality but something that grows out of our own ability to be aware of the "oneness" of all people and our experience/practice of the "love your neighbor" ideal. Clearly, we can at least imagine a utopian sort of finality to this if it could be applied universally.

Well, I suppose that, like any other "way of thinking" this might be pulled apart in many ways, and it makes some assumptions that are hard to justify empirically such as the "essential oneness" of all persons, but even this might rationally and reasonably be done, and it is certainly not out of keeping with the kind of things that are said by those who have, over the ages, devoted themselves to prayer, meditation, etc.

This might be at least, a concept that would form a pretty firm foundation for a post-theistic Christianity.

Until next time....

Jeffrey Shy
(Nope, all I see up there is a cloud)
Mesa, Arizona