The words of the teacher of righteousness, some people call him "Jesus", are probably best and least distorted preserved in the gospel of Thomas. The question remains if "Jesus" is not merely a metaphor of the Logos, the conscience or the inner voice, and if the personification "Jesus" has been used merely as a vehicle to carry the message. Ultimately, it does not matter because it is the message and not the messenger that counts. After having been passed on orally over time the words have been written down by disciples, who clearly did not understand the essence, which has lead to some strange and incomprehensible changes. It must have been a very simple message and yet scientists have studied the texts for decades without being able to decode the message.They devote their attention, so to speak, to the treasuremap, and fail to sett of for the search of the treasure. Only someone who has freed himself of the world of shadows too can understand the message of the statements. Could it then be that you do not have to be educated but wise to understand it? Stripped of the mystical and gnostic distortions and with only the signposts on the road remaining the maxims are indeed very simple. The words preach a radical and non-violent revolution through a return to the origin, back to basics, where the end will be like the beginning again. Did he realise that the effect would be a collapse of the whole society, of all structures of power and that eventually no stone would remain on the other? Although the message uses the terminology of that time indeed, the contents are timeless and concern mankind. Briefly summarised it comes down to: "Do NOT do unto others what you do NOT want them to do unto you". It is new that the others include children too because that no longer justifies our way of educating them. The second elucidation is that creation is put on a par with the Father who flows through the whole creation. Therefore, creation includes the other too. That deprives us of the justification to abuse creation and to destroy it. Spinoza wrote that God and Nature are one and the same and that it comes to the same thing. What the teacher envisaged was for every man to become like him, one world with only enlightened, blessed people, enjoying themselves, the others and creation. One true community of whole people. In the world he envisaged happiness, freedom and the paradise are unconditional and within reach for everybody. In today’s society all this is conditional and an utopia, unreachable for anybody. People still did not dare. Multatuli (Ideas) "They who hawk faith as an arcanum against moral evil would look down upon a simple-minded that ruled his behaviour strictly according to the bible and at the same time dared to neglect all things the bible does not speak about. It is the indisputable truth that today Jesus himself would almost certainly not be welcome in a society of people that name themselves after him and most likely, his followers would hurry to procure him a place in a Christian madhouse. "That man is not of our time" they would claim and immediately the good theologians would come up with some saying- preferably of himself- to teach Jesus how the "real Christian" and even more funny, Christ himself, should be of his time".
Posted on: Wed, 04 Sep 2013 07:45:39 +0000
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