The Greatest Cop-out in the World

The Devil made me do it.
God made me do it.
I was guided to do it.
In hoc signo vinces. (In this sign you will conquer)
Ich hab' es nicht gewusst. (I didn't know it.)
I was just following orders.

To which my answer always is that my mother was always certain that she was channeling the Lord Almighty directly when she was telling me to eat my spinach. The ego has more ways of recruiting God to its cause than you can shake a stick at. But these are the dynamics of guilt, manipulation and intimidation.

The Devil made me do it, is the easiest cop-out in the world, and it is in fact a way of objectivizing the ego thought of separation into an external force, personalized as the Devil, which can make me do anything at all. This is entirely part of the paranoid-schizophrenic mode of operating which is the basis of all ego psychology. It projects the cause for my behavior outside of me, so that I have somebody else to blame for my actions. As Ken Wapnick always says, the first scream of a child really means: "I didn't do it!" It's my parents' fault, they made love and caused me to get born. So from day one we set it up so we appear to be the guiltless victim of the world, no wonder then that we use such a principle in our defense whenever convenient.

God made me do it. This one is the same thing in reverse. This time it is about something that has some social merit, for which I like to claim credit, but I show my magnanimity by praising God, and staying on his good side in the process. I also give myself more authority in the process.

I was guided to do it. The answer to that one is in Ken Wapnick's repeated saying that we're always channeling someone, either the ego or the Holy Spirit. And the rest of it is: you'll only know which by seeing how peaceful you are. By the same token, mentioning to your interlocutor that you "feel guided" is only a subtle intimidation attempt, like my mother about the spinach, by appealing to a higher authority, which is supposed to impress them. It's guilt and manipulation at work.

In hoc signo vinces. That was the famous message which the Emperor Constantine saw in his dream, frequently cited by Christians as a symbol of the success of Christianity, when it was of course only the complete inversion of the teachings of Jesus.

Ich hab' es nicht gewusst. That is the famous pleading of the Nazi war criminals at Neurenberg, and it is the perfect corollary to every form of accusing some cause outside of us, and taking no responsibility personally. It is countered by the well understood principle that ignorance of the law is no excuse. It goes hand in hand with the next one.

I was just following orders. Even under military law a soldier remains responsible if his orders are a violation of the law. The same goes in the corporate world. Nice try, but try telling it to the judge. The problem is the same: "To thine own self be true!" The question is which self?

The bottom line is these are all different forms of the same basic cop-out, and we are responsible for our actions, and more importantly for our thoughts, which lead to the actions.

God, as he is seen in the Course, as our Source, like also Jesus' teachings say in their original form, is only our loving Father, who created us as spirit, as the extension of his oneness, still always part of him. We then dreamed up a world and a body as the expression of the ego thought of separation, an imaginary dream life outside of the Oneness of Heaven. Then we make up a God who we accuse of making the world, so again we're off the hook. And we have him throw us out of paradise, making him the heavy in that story too. All of this serves the purpose of escaping responsibility for our thoughts, and covering over the power of our mind. The teachings of the Kingdom as something that is within us, and everywhere around us, except we don't see it, is exactly about that power of the mind, and responsibility for our thoughts, as is the notion of the faith that moves mountains. Our belief in the world of time and space is only the reflection of our belief in separation, and when that belief is healed completely there is no world. Only our belief in the separation upholds it.

There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein lies your ultimate release. Change but your mind on what you want to see, and all the world must change accordingly. Ideas leave not their source. This central theme is often stated in the text, and must be borne in mind if you would understand the lesson for today. It is not pride which tells you that you made the world you see, and that it changes as you change your mind.
But it is pride that argues you have come into a world quite separate from yourself, impervious to what you think, and quite apart from what you chance to think it is. 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:W-132.5-6)

Seen from this point of view, taking responsibility for our mind includes taking responsibility for the world we chose to see, chose to see by our belief in the ego thought system where we believe ourselves to be separate from God. And so we see a world of murder and mayhem, because we believe in a thought system of murder, of separation from our Source. The correction is the thought system of the Holy Spirit, and Jesus' teaching of forgiveness is the bridge from one to the other.

Thomas one of Five? Ask the Jesus Seminar.

 This has to be one of my favorite editions of the Gospels currently on the market in English. This book is thorough and complete, and it really empowers you to study, ask your own questions, and it is not beholden to church positions which force other authors to assume later dating of Thomas, ultimately so as not to upset the applecart of Christian orthodoxy.

The book starts with a thorough exposé on the historical position of the Thomas Gospel as a precursor to the narrative gospels (synoptics), relying on the common sense insight that the sayings gospels were a type that preceded the more elaborate and interpretative narratives of later authors, all of which seem to date two or more generations after Jesus. The Q and Thomas traditions which just collected sayings seem to go back to the first generation, immediately following Jesus' death, roughly the years 35-55 AD. They lay out the time line very carefully, showing both Q and Thomas as originally oral traditions that flowed gradually into the written traditions and provided raw material for the later writers.

The translation is fresh and new and thought-provoking. They provide a reasoned accounting for their assessment of the authenticity of the Thomas sayings, which makes a fascinating read if you're in to that. By providing thorough cross-referencing they offer plenty of food for thought and opportunity to make your own assessments of the likely flow of ideas. One inspiring notion is their translation of 'Kingdom' as 'Heaven's Imperial Rule.' To my personal taste that seems a case of 'close but no cigar' because of the awkwardness of the 'imperial' moniker, given how Jesus uses Caesar as a symbol of the ego, and the ruler of the world. However in Pursah's version she chooses in some places the expression 'God's Heavenly Rule,' and that seems to be a next step along the same line of thinking, which does make sense, and so clearly Pursah is concerned to convey a more practical sense of the meaning of the somewhat forbidding term 'Kingdom,' though she uses it as well, as does the Course.

Besides the Marvin Meyer translation, this is probably the Thomas version I use the most. It is remarkably free of prejudice overall, because it does recognize that Thomas is from an early date. The one thing we might ask is, why do they make the editorial choice of putting the synoptics in chronological order (Mark first), rather than in the accepted (orthodox) theological order (Matthew first), but yet they still put Thomas last? Purely chronologically Thomas should come first. However this raises the next question, and that is why indeed stop at five? Just because Thomas is the most complete? This is still an indication that the book belongs to a Christian world view. I believe the independent world view at the present state of our knowledge would simply recognize that the canonical tradition has nothing to recommend it, other than that they won out, with a little help from their friend, the Emperor Constantine, solidifying the intellectual supremacy of a Christian orthodoxy which relied on Paul, Peter, bishops Irenaeus, and Athanasius, congealing first in the Nicene Creed at 325, and later Athanasius' list of the NT Canon in 367. So, in putting Thomas last, this edition still is deferential to the canon. I would argue so are some of its conclusions about the authenticity of Jesus' statements, except that by providing the full accounting they do, the reader can really draw his own conclusions.

In short, if we let go more and more of the limiting framework of later orthodoxy (post Nicea), we would simply read the literature from those years in a spirit that evidently nobody completely understood Jesus, some succeeded in making a world religion out of him, arriving at the opposite relationship to the Roman Empire of what Jesus had foreseen ('Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, give to God what is God's.'). Others followed quite their own path in a variety of contemplative paths, gnostic philosophies and religions, mystery religions, faiths and practices, all of which highlight very different aspects of his teaching, and the sheer variety of which practically defies the imagination. Ever more we would find ourselves in a fix, having to decide that we are really on our own, and need to follow our intuition as to what Jesus really said. For me, the only real answer in the end comes not from the rubble of history, no matter how brilliant the treatment, but from the statement at in the preface of A Course in Miracles, saying that "Its only purpose is o provide a way in which some people will be able to find their own Internal Teacher," or in fact in the oft repeated injunctions from Jesus in the old literature: "Seek and ye shall find," as well as "Follow me, and I'll make you fishers of men." Without our own relationship with him, which is questioning and based on the acceptance that we have not understood, but we're willing to learn, so that we now come to him as a student, as a disciple, and no longer as a theologian who already knows, and really ends up telling Jesus what he means to say, which is what Christianity has mostly done.

Besides a general collection of the Nag Hammadi writings, this book is probably the single most helpful source for someone raised to some degree in  a supposedly Christian world, to begin to develop a broader view of what the historical impact of Jesus might have been, what his authentic meaning might have been, before he was bombarded into being a proto-Christian after the fact by the 'winning' clan of Bishops gathered at Nicea.

An Alternate View of Nicea?

The evident message of Gary Renard's work clearly lies in his own struggles on the path, including falling down and getting up. This pertains both to what's in the books, and to his fairly public life since the books appeared. He has been willing to make his mistakes and learn from them, and then share them with us in the process. Quite a feat for a shy person! Secondarily, the underlying theme that the apostles needed numerous more lifetimes before they "got it" is equally an important part of the message, for it makes the whole thing more approachable, and teaches us to be patient with ourselves. For only infinite patience yields immediate results...

Seen in this light the Gospels are not absolute truths but the grappling of people who felt themselves attracted to Jesus, trying to describe a phenomenon which appealed to them but which in most cases they were very far from understanding. The implications of such a view is among other things that the apocryphal materials are quickly seen to be equally as important as the canonical materials, since what made the canon the canon was a completely arbitrary process, which had nothing to do with the content of Jesus' teachings, but everything with the political needs of the Emperor Constantine. From that point of view the Council of Nicea was not a triumph, but a tomb for the burial of Jesus' message, in which he was forever made subservient to the Emperor. Nicea gave to the Emperor that which is God's, and ensured that Jesus served at the pleasure of the Emperor, an early version of employment at will (whose will?!). So Nicea really is the clincher, which furthermore buries Jesus's teachings under the veneer of Christianity, soon to be suitably decked out with marble and gold, so we won't look any further. Behind the facade however, the momentary unity began to slowly crumble again, almost as soon as it was established.

This view is in line with Prof. G.J. Heering's thesis in The Fall of Chrisitianity, and I think it is a more productive way to look at those first four centuries after Jesus, for it is the natural resistance of the ego to the teachings of Jesus or the Holy Spirit, which compels us to deny them and mold them into something else, including using them as a justifications for the ego's fear, hatred, and murder, which is what really happened.