Original material of Jesus warns that the world is not too interested in his real teaching. In the Thomas material it is Logion 13 in particular, where Jesus warns the disciple Thomas to expect no ready acceptance of his real teaching, and in fact tells him to shut up about it, even to his fellow apostles, for they are not ready to hear it. The same theme comes up in A Course in Miracles in a variety of ways, and of course there is the famous story of Helen Schucman who was the scribe of the Course, and who thought that maybe a handful of people would ever get it. She clearly understood the enormous resistance against the teaching. Here is one of the key passages from the Course which gives form to this issue:
There is no world! This is the central thought the course attempts to
teach. Not everyone is ready to accept it, and each one must go as far
as he can let himself be led along the road to truth. He will return
and go still farther, or perhaps step back a while and then return
again. (ACIM:W132-6:2-5)
Obviously Jesus is being cute with
"not everyone is ready to accept it," you might just as well say:
"Nearly nobody is ready to accept it," but his way of wording it
represents an open invitation, because it implies that it can be
understood if you really want to, while also making you aware of the
tremendous resistance that the world has against it. And of course the
world is "too much with us," a lot of the time, so we cling to it, and
shut Jesus and his message out. So what is the world to do? Clearly
Jesus's completely unconditional love was an attraction to many during
his ministry, even if his teaching wasn't always well understood, and
several instances of his warning people not to blab to the neighbors
about his healings etc., even made it into the canonical literature. To
the established powers, Jewish and Roman alike, his teaching was a
threat, for he taught (and teaches) of a Kingdom not of this world. So what is the world to do to counter this? I wrote recently about the fun book Operation Messiah by Thijs Voskuilen, which on one level, literally, I don't take seriously, but in a symbolic level it makes a lot of sense, namely that Paul would have been a secret agent for the Romans, sent out to corrupt the Jesus movement, and teach them proper subservience to Rome, so that it would have been an accidental success that a Roman Emperor subsequently adopted the religion himself, and eventually it would become the official religion of the empire. Thus a religion founded in the name of Jesus, who taught give to the Emperor what is the Emperor's ( a few shekels), and give to God what is God's (your heart and mind), turns it around completely by having the state co-opt the religion, and so to win the hearts and minds of a potentially too independent movement. That process of turning things completely upside down really begins with Paul, who cleverly implies that he speaks on Jesus's behalf, and obliterates all distinction between his interpretation of Jesus and the things Jesus actually said and did. Naturally this only could happen after Jesus was dead, for it would not have been convenient if he could talk back and speak for himself, as their is no evidence that he ever intended to found a religion of any kind. Paul's pretend humility by leaving the impression that he was only saying what Jesus said is a classic literary device, similar to what Plato used with Socrates, and which was very common in the classical world. From a marketing persepective it is brilliant, for it ensures that Paul himself does not become the issue. Jesus however advocated essentially "when in Rome do like the Romans, except don't take it seriously, as in Logion 6 (which in the Pursah version is a contraction of 6 &14 in the Nag Hammadi version).
The tour de force really was to reinterpret Jesus so as to imply that he validated the world, and this is accomplished through reinterpreting his teachings which were all about the mind and our spiritual life, and refocus them into worldly concerns. The central feat was to undo Jesus's teaching of the Kingdom as something immediate, and something of our inner reality, our spiritual life, as you will find it in his original words in the Thomas Gospel, as in Logion 3, et al. and turn it into something external, which however would arrive at a later date, so that it became an event in time, again validating the experiential world of space and time. The clincher then was to create the teaching franchise, called the church, based on the nonsensical logic of the apostolic succession, the logic of which is in direct contradiction to the teachings of Jesus, if you look e.g. at Logion 99, where Jesus poohpoohs family relations and blood relationships as an irrelevancy, saying that his brothers and sisters are those who are doing the will of the father, for that is the only thing that brings us together. Lastly, the closing stone of the arch is to interpret the resurrection and the second coming as something of the body, so that instead of us joining Jesus in the resurrection by accepting the atonement for ourselves, now the story is turned around to where he will physically come back to get us in his second coming into the world (which all the time he was telling us to leave, so why would he bother to come back?).
Voilà, here you have the creation of one of the most powerful business concepts and marketing brands in the world. While the teacher is absent, the church claimed a monopoly on teaching his message or at least their version of it, and the buy in was that by joining with them you basically bought yourself a ticket to the second coming and all the good stuff that would come afterwards. In this process all personal responsibility for changing our mind as Jesus has advocated, is now wiped out, and replaced by a passive process of waiting for him. The church of course has a vested interest in his not coming back, so this is how the ego puts itself in charge as the vicarious spiritual authority, borrowing the authority by claiming a unique right to it, and maintaining its sway over the ego which lives on borrowed time anyway, in short the church becomes very much a worldly authority, not a spiritual one. Hence all the conflicts between church and state over the long history of Christianity. Now in turn the church can serve the Emperor instead of Jesus, performing various civil functions from blessing marriages, to meting out punishment and or validating it by its teachings of sin, guilt and fear, and in a worldly high point to the Emperor Constantine and his "In Hoc Signo Vinces" which is always mischaracterized as a triumph of Christianity, though it was certainly the most abysmal betrayal of everything Jesus ever taught. The phrase continues to be proudly sported by Catholic buildings such as St. Helena's Church close to my house, (named after Constantine's mother, Helena). So there you have it, the most spectacular marketing story in the world. Procter and Gamble, Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs may be masters of branding, they are mere pikers by comparison.
None of the above is to deny the many good things that have also been done by churches. This is not about that at all. What it is about is to separate the church as a worldly institution from the teachings of Jesus, which are purely about our inner life, not about our worldly pursuits. Following him means to shift the anchor of our life from our worldly persona, which likes to believe it came first, to the primacy of God, our source, as expressed by Jesus in Logion 99, but also in the famous first commandment that has been retained in the New Testament,
36"Teacher,
which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" 37Jesus replied: " 'Love
the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with
all your mind.'[a] 38This is the first and greatest commandment. 39And
the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'[b] 40All the
Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments." (NIV, Matthew
22:36-40)
The crux of the matter is of course that the
world invariably puts the second one of these always first, because we
substitute the special relationship to ease God out. What Jesus meant
however was what is expressed in the language of the Course as "I choose
the second place to gain the first." (ACIM:W-328): 1. What seems to be the second place is first, for all things we perceive are upside down until we listen to the Voice for God. 2 It seems that we will gain autonomy but by our striving to be separate, and that our independence from the rest of God's creation is the way in which salvation is obtained. 3 Yet all we find is sickness, suffering and loss and death. 4 This is not what our Father wills for us, nor is there any second to His Will. 5 To join with His is but to find our own. 6 And since our will is His, it is to Him that we must go to recognize our will.
2. There is no will but Yours. 2 And I am glad that nothing I imagine contradicts what You would have me be. 3 It is Your Will that I be wholly safe, eternally at peace. 4 And happily I share that Will which You, my Father, gave as part of me.
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