To Crucify or not to Crucify that is the Question

Slowly I'm working my way through Ian Kershaw's massive biography of Hitler. And in spite of all the reading I've done on WW2, plus listened to endless stories of what life was like under the German occupation in Holland, and then later the liberation of course, I am learning new things. Remarkable is it to me to realize for instance how in politics there is always a flip flop that says if you can't hack it at home, start a war - find an external enemy and go for it. It should be great for popularity, provided you win, which always seems easier when you start, then once the conflict is fully under way. The reverse also applies, and it is noteworthy to realize how the Nazi regime, which was based on cheap emotions of nationalism, victimhood, and hatred of anything "foreign," including unvarnished racial hatred, turned up the volume on the persecution of the Jews in direct response to the failures in the Russian campaign in 1941/42. Thus was an easy scapegoat found, and the attention diverted from the failures of the regime. This is just one more demonstration of how the ego thought system works, at any cost the guilt (ultimately always over the murder of God), needs to be placed outside of me. As long as I can blame anyone else for all that's wrong with the world, particularly my loss of peace, we can fool ourselves into believing our own innocence. As Ken Wapnick always points out, the first cry of a baby, really means "I didn't do it," and secondarily of course that implies my parents are to blame for this.

Now the theme of the crucifixion does not show up in the Thomas Gospel, however some relevant circumstantial notions do show up. In Logion 1 there is mention of "not tasting death" if we understand what Jesus teaches, and e.g. in Logion 13, there is the notion that the apostle Thomas represents to the other apostles that if he told them what Jesus taught him one on one, they'd stone him. So there is the notion that the world (including the apostles) really do not want to hear what Jesus teaches. Hence it is no wonder that he would end up being crucified. And it is no wonder that we want to blame someone else for that also. Anyone, really, but the Jews were just convenient, though there was no historical basis for blaming them, as it was evidently the work of the Romans. This way, Jesus' evident unconcern with religious traditions and teachings in his emphasis on the teaching of love and forgiveness which he represented, was made by those who came after him into a break with Judaism in a way which he never seems to have advocated, he merely did not take man-made rules very seriously, and invited his disciples to a path of inner freedom, and a Kingdom not of this World. That message was immediately destroyed, and made into a message of hate and divisiveness, where the distinction between Jews and Christians, which Jesus had never made, came to be emphasized more and more, and a formal religion was made of a simple teaching of truth. And so a teaching of love became a religion of hate.

Now Nazism was merely a very good example of what hate leads to, and the way it was acted out was an example for all time. And hate is the basis of the crucifixion - my brother is different from me, thus the sonship is many and not one. And so, ultimately, as long as we believe Jesus is different from us, we are once again committing ourselves to the crucifixion. Hatred is the division of the sonship into anything other than oneness, and any judgment or grievance we hold against anyone will do. Nazism, as the poster child for the evils of judgment, sets the gruesome example by actually acting it out on an unprecedented scale, but so does every war, every murder, and every thought of condemnation, even if it is not acted out. Forgiveness as the core teaching of Jesus is merely the daily practice which can serve to undo the thought of murder, and as we do so we can join Jesus in the resurrection.

The First Coming of Christ is merely another name for the creation, for Christ is the Son of God. The Second Coming of Christ means nothing more than the end of the ego's rule and the healing of the mind. I was created like you in the First, and I have called you to join with me in the Second. I am in charge of the Second Coming, and my judgment, which is used only for protection, cannot be wrong because it never attacks. Yours may be so distorted that you believe I was mistaken in choosing you. I assure you this is a mistake of your ego. Do not mistake it for humility. Your ego is trying to convince you that it is real and I am not, because if I am real, I am no more real than you are. That knowledge, and I assure you that it is knowledge, means that Christ has come into your mind and healed it. (ACIM:T-4.IV.10)

To want to choose Jesus, we need to really understand that the ego is that thought of murder, as gruesome as the worst regimes that ever were, and worse. For the only way we are motivated to give it up, is because we finally "get" what it's up to, and we just won't play anymore, but as long as it holds one grain of attraction for us, we continue the thought system. One of the most insightful books in that respect just after the war, was a booklet by a Catholic priest and psychotherapist, titled Hitler within (Max Picard, Hitler in uns Selbst, 1946). He was one of the first to point out that the problem was not the Hitler of history, but the Hitler within, who keeps on making the choice for hatred. Next to that, there was a fascinating little book by Wilhelm Reich, The Murder of Christ, which despite the strange contortion of focusing on bodily functions, is really powerful in its understanding that the crucifixion is not a one time event, but is a continual choice, which we constantly reinforce, until we are ready to make a choice for the essence of who and what we are. Fortunately there is an alternative, of making the choice for love, one forgiveness lesson at a time. It may take a while, but the outcome is as certain as God.