FROM THE BOUNDARY: Repentance to Resurrection
WE say that on the cross Jesus died for our sin as a sacrifice to the Divine – and thus the sin of the world was taken away. The doctrine assumes a lot despite its scriptural support (cf. John 1:29; 3:16). Yet Christianity became overarched not by love, but by sin; and so many so-called Christians – and even a bishop here and there – spend their time finding sin in the rest of us, not love. They see us as poor, broken, pitiful things who must be put down, lectured to, and licked into shape, remanufactured, if we’re ever to become remotely like Jesus at best, or themselves at worst, or otherwise acceptable to God. It’s an obsession. If that’s what it was all about, why would God have bothered?
Well, maybe they’re right. There are times when I can’t help wondering what God was about when he made us – whatever ‘making us’ means. The story of Adam and Eve and the wicked snake, and competing creation stories in Genesis, don’t really help very much do they? We do some pretty horrible things to each other, don’t we? And 2 000 years after Jesus, have things actually changed very much? The Adam and Eve story at least tells us that even the ‘Chosen’ had some understanding of the mess we sometimes make of it all though made in the “image and likeness” of the Divine.
But think. Wasn’t Jesus’ purpose to show us that there’s actually nothing of the world to take away because we all have goodness in our hearts, a goodness which will flower when, at last, we become awakened? Doesn’t he say the Kingdom’s within us? Why then do we look elsewhere?
In other words, Jesus didn’t come to take anything from us except the low self-esteem we’ve been conditioned to carry with us. He came to help us open our eyes to the persons we really are – not narrow, bigoted, religion guardsmen on the watch for the sins of others, but to the joys, beauty and goodness we each carry within us, with their offspring – tolerance, patience, forgiveness, compassion, warmth, love. He didn’t come to chain us to book texts and fixed, often very arbitrary and petty, rules. He taught us to be fully alive now, not stuck in yesterday’s cement nor wishfully tasting the titillations of tomorrow. Yes, he came to help us open our eyes to the limitless potential within us as we REALLY are, not the stereotyped ‘us’ we’re told we are.
Sure, we all have our weaknesses. We’re capable of pretty nasty stuff. We all have a dark side, some characteristic apt to haunt and seek to control us. We’ll need to stand back and identify it so we’ll know when it’s surfacing. But let no one write us off because of it. We’ve been conditioned to think it’s only the Church which can help us. It’s easier to believe that than believe in our inherent goodness. Well, Jesus came to help us discover that goodness. That’s why they – the big boys – hated him. Once our eye scales have fallen away, they can’t control us anymore, and then we’ll ask ‘Who are THEY really?’
So look people: don’t take anyone who talks down to you, who assumes an effortless superiority over you, who tempts you to feel second rate, seriously. As for priests, if they spend their time reminding you how sinful you are, how you’re letting the side down, how deeply God will be displeased with you, and this in shrieking voices from tall pulpits, tell them to go their way and look for the motes in their own eyes. We’ve been “wonderfully made”, and Jesus really does love us unconditionally. You don’t have to beg for love. Once we begin to believe in ourselves, in our inherent goodness, good things will inexorably flow from us. We’ll know what to expect of ourselves. We won’t need to be told. It will all come naturally, no longer skating on Life but breathing it.
There may be those who seem to want to destroy us, and that can make us very bitter. Our hearts may break. Well, let them. They’ll mend, even if scarred, and in the process we’ll discover compassion – for ourselves and everyone like us. And maybe we’ll notice our selfishness too, our delusions about ourselves and other people. But remember: those who would harm us also carry original goodness. Think of them as wayward children in need of love. Think of them as dying, fearful and hope-less, in need of love. And with them is YOU – a being with the potential for the most noble things, noble things because at last we’ve become conscious of our true selves, that inner voice which KNOWS.
That’s our repentance – our new way of looking at things. And when we begin to live it, that’s our resurrection from the moldering bones which for thousands of years we’ve been taught is US so other people can control us. Oh yes, Jesus died for us. His enemies really couldn’t cope with original goodness, with one who truly reflected that Life for us which has always been our birthright.
Go safely, then – until the next time.
Waking, from the boundary: “We wake not as separate streams but as countless currents in a single flow … the flow of God” (John Philip Newell).