The Task
The task for Jesus, as what he taught, is to make of your life a transcendent value. Do not get caught in life itself, the mother, the instincts. Life is the flesh, but not only flesh. Life is instincts, a good sex life, at least at times, good food, a healthy life, bringing children into the world and nurturing them.But life is not just instincts, living safely in life, having the good life, being well insured against the coming difficulties, and so on. Life itself is to be transcended so that you put your best creative efforts into making conscious your life and not just choosing to be safe, well fed and sexually satisfied. There is so much that needs healing and new consciousness in this life that you should try to only spend half your time on the things of nature, biology, family, sexual relationships, work to earn a living.
Why not spend the other half of your day for actualizing the greatest values that you can be effective with, whether it is helping others be centered and healed, or helping create a new, more healing environment, or challenging the status quo for demanding too much from people and limiting their need to individuate and live from individual values. Look at Jesus as an example of his own teaching. He loved good food and wine, apparently, which was out of character at the time for a Jewish seer. He did what he wanted, yet he seems to have worked harder than anybody teaching and helping people heal themselves.
Back to God. We have suggested that Jesus never defined God, may not even have used the term. We have suggested also that the first Christians, feeling this vacuum in their experience of Jesus, and in the Jews of the time, then had to attribute to Jesus that he was God, which the son of God term has to mean. Thus Jesus became so of God to the Christians. For Christians it was not enough that Jesus called God Father, Fish, Seed, Lord, Master, and so on. As a central proof that Christianity is not the religion Jesus taught or lived, the Christians call Jesus God, a title he never claimed for himself in the earliest authentic texts. We note that the gospel of John is a later writing that is metaphysical rather than clearly early and historical.
We see that Matthew changes "son of man" when he finds it in Mark to "son of God." This is of course direct evidence that Christians were making Jesus God, whereas Jesus never made himself God. Jesus expressed his personal relation to God by using the term, "Father." It seems he wanted his followers to do likewise. They instead, it also seems, chose to call Jesus "son of God" and "The Christ" instead of calling God "Father" and keeping Jesus out of the picture.
Those first Christians did not have to combine Jesus and Christ into Jesus Christ. Jesus did not do this or command that his followers do this when he was alive. Instead, Jesus taught to relate directly to God as "Lord," "Master," "seed," "leaven," and the like. We know the parables in which Jesus describes what it is like to have a personal relationship with that which is greater. The Prodigal Son parable is a good example.
Love Your Neighbor Jesus Teaching Explored
Another statement attributed to the historical Jesus is: Matt. 5:43-45 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor’ and ‘hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be like your Father in heaven, since he causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous."Why do you love your enemy, as Jesus teaches here? Because God does not discriminate between enemy and friend. Yet note Jesus' description of God, one of the few places he seems to talk directly about God and not use metaphor. Note that Matthew, as is his custom, keeps "Father" but adds "in heaven." Jesus here does not say "God in heaven" but "Father in heaven." Matthew elevates God to transcendence, as if there is a powerful giant up in the sky making the rains come. This is contrary to Jesus since using "Father" is a personalizing, closeness term.
What does the Father do here? He does not discriminate between the evil and the good. Why? Because he doesn't. We don't know why. Could it be that the Father does not discriminate because He can't? Do we get the point?
Implied is that in Jesus' thought God, the Father, is not a person as a human being and father is a person? This seems contradictory. While called a human being term, father, Jesus does not give God human attributes. God cannot discriminate, so why should we? God here does not judge Good and Bad. Judgments such as these are made by men and women with their laws, rules, mores and attitudes. Yes, Jesus uses the term, Father, for God. This seems to make God into a human being. Yet it is the archetypal function that fathers in their roles take on that is the God attribute indicated by father.
Fathers mate and produce children out of Nature, out of the mother. The spirit of a thing, of existence itself, of consciousness itself, infuses the animal person and transforms the existence in the flesh into the consciousness existence of a being not unconsciously submerged in flesh. Your identification with your animal nature can be transformed into consciousness through following the guidance of spirit.
Now John the Baptist is a different story. As reported in the Gospels, John the Baptist preaches that God is sending a Judge and Advenger soon to save the righteous and condemn the wicked. Is this why Jesus says that however great a prophet John was he is less than the least in the kingdom of God? In other words, John doesn't get it. His God image is that of projecting outside himself a good and all powerful God who will eliminate bad people because there should not be bad in life, though there are.
Jesus Parable The Two Sons And The Vineyard
The father asks two sons to go work in the vineyard. One says yes but doesn't go. The other says no, but repents of his choice and does go and work in the vineyard.The wonder of this story is that it is so simple, as if it reflect an essential essence of life. Note that here you cannot know the father, you cannot know God, unless you are in relationship with him. The son who finally acknowledged God was the one who acknowledge God as his father. Your father asks you to do a task and you trust that father because you know that this father knows what is best for you. Yet, you resist God as your father at first because, why?, you are in ego, you want to do your own way, the way of ego and not greater source, the father. Then you see how foolish it is to follow ego and you then say yes to working for the father, you respond, and thus God is real for you because you are in an effective and valuable relationship. You personally benefit because you are given the right and meaningful work to do, which is to tend to that which needs to grow and sustain you and others in life. The other son does not acknowledge God as his personal father. He does not know God as father and therefore he does not know God and only knows his own ego, if he knows that at all because he has fallen unconscious and therefore knows nothing!
Jesus Endures The Cross For God Because God Is Created Evil As Well As Created Good
Jesus was able to endure the cross and his betrayal by his disciples because he recognized that this was all the creation of God, or the way things are. Jesus recognized that he was crucified because he was crucified. This is the way things work. The same rain falls on everybody, whether they do good or do evil. Evil is as much part of this creation as good is. Therefore get your life into congruency with the way things are, says Jesus. Sure it hurts to lose things, to feel pain, to not have your way, to lose your existence, but this is the way things are. If you are a realist, and you should be so that things go better for you, then you will accept existence as it is and live purposefully within the scheme of things.Love Your Enemies Because There Are Always Enemies In Life
You love your enemies, as the Jesus teaching, because this increases your capacity to love, and also tests and proves that you have enough love capacity to love all the enemies who come your way, even if one of your enemies is yourself.Is this not radical? Jesus says accept, love your enemies, why?, because having enemies, people out to hurt and destroy you, is natural to this life. If you resist your enemies, the destructiveness in life, by opposing and trying to destroy those who try to destroy you, then you are not accepting part of the universe's creation.
