The Blood, The Word, and the Reason

There are 2 passages of scripture that almost everyone has heard at one point in their life regardless of whether they are religious or not:

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Genesis 1:1

and

“For God so loved the world that he gave His one and only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish…” John 3:16

The first passage is clear. All things come from God. No other being. The ultimate sovereign of the universe is God and only God. And as Deuteronomy 6:4 states: “Hear O Israel the Lord our God is One”. There is only one God and there is not a multiplicity of this God nor is there any other being – good or evil – equal to God.

So why would the second passage be necessary? Why would the Creator of all things and Master of the Universe have to sacrifice his “son” for anything? I personally have a hard time with the concept that God would have to do anything to forgive me outside of let say… Forgiving me.

This is where context and an allegorical exegesis of scripture is needed. The kind of things mainstream preachers would denounce as heresy. Frankly, I’d rather interpret scripture for myself than let someone who’s paid to do it do it for me. Jewish tradition has always held to individual commentary of scripture because only the Decalogue (10 commandments) is “etched in stone”. The Talmud, Mishnah, and Zohar are examples of that continuous search for hidden meaning. Jesus himself used parables to provide his interpretation of the Torah and the Psalms and the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount are perhaps the best interpretation of Torah ever uttered.

We are in the midst of Passover, Good Friday, and Resurrection Sunday. I personally believe that there is a deeper allegorical meaning in all of these mythological events. However to keep this blog post under a thousand words, I am going to focus on the Passion of Jesus from a non-dogmatic and allegorical perspective.

The primary verse in all of Christian scripture is John 3:16. It is this verse that billions of Christians base their faith and belief in Jesus. What if there is an entirely different meaning than the one developed by the early church fathers? A tradition that was formed then that has snow-balled into a religion that worships Jesus instead of following him. Let’s take a look at another series of passages:

“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” – John 1:1

“and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us” – John 1:14

Now I am going to paste all of these passages together:
In the beginning the One and only God created the heavens and the earth. From God’s word all things were created and through God’s word all men can be one with Him for eternity. Man was created in the image of God and wanted to be God, so man rejected the Word. Man became a mortal being and God had compassion on him. Many times God had compassion on man and many times man rejected his Word. So God made the Word into flesh so that man could know God face to face and have a living example of the Word. Once again man rejected the Word and rejected the Word by shedding blood. Man can reject God’s Word but, that will never destroy it. So therefore God so loved the world that he gave us his Word and whoever believes in God and follows his Word will be one with God for all eternity.

I know what you are thinking. I used a lot more passages than I said I was going to do. To be completely honest every single word I just wrote came from somewhere in the Bible. (all are easy to find)

But wait, there’s more. I am obviously not going to leave you hanging without talking about the actual death of Jesus. The death of Jesus was a tragedy. The greatest of all Rabbis who wanted nothing more than to teach everyone the sum total of the Word:

“Love your neighbor as yourself”. The lesson was so important that Jesus even gave us an example of the most profound act of love a person can show anyone “that a man lay down his life for his friends”.

In a world so technologically advanced it is difficult for many people to believe the miracles attributed to Biblical characters. It is also very difficult to accept that some of the very violent forms of punishment in the Bible can be attributed to a merciful and loving God. Whether the characters in the Bible actually lived or whether the events recorded actually happened is irrelevant. What is so ever critical to remember is that it doesn’t really matter what the Bible says – it is the underlying meaning that matters the most.

The Bible is unique in that it can be interpreted in so many ways – good and bad. I personally believe that to truly understand it you need to keep reading it.

Life, Free Will, and Reason

Some of you may or may not know this but, I have read and studied the Bible, the Quran, the Book of Mormon, and various other ancient (aka sacred texts). Religion is something that absolutely fascinates me and it is also something that scares the heck out of me. The fascinating part is the various views on the nature of God and the scary part is the mindless dogma and violence that can result from an uneducated approach to those views. I have always believed that while it may not be necessary to go to the extent that I did with reading, everyone should at least know their own scriptures and the basic tenets of their religion. It is so common to see misquotes and uniformed ignorance with people on this topic. This is mainly because few people actual take the time to read for themselves and to me that makes them pretty bad followers of whatever religion they follow. How can someone be a good Jew if they have not read every single word of Torah at least once? How can someone be a good Christian if they have not read every word of the Bible at least once? How can someone be a good Muslim if they have not read every word of the Quran at least once? Especially since even reading them once is no where near enough.

Although I was raised a Christian (The Lutheran flavor) when I got older I became skeptical, almost slipping into the ignorance of atheism. I couldn’t make up my mind what to believe so I read any holy book I could find (some of them more than once) and after the last 5 years of studying, I find the peace and comfort that I’ve been looking for in Judaism. This awakening occured to me when I started studying Mystical Judaism (Kabbalah). Kabbalah (which is fascinating by the way) requires extensive knowledge of the Torah. So as I said in my last post, Torah is now what I spend most of my time studying.

The origin of humanity is a topic of much debate and multiple cosmogonies have been discovered and the Torah contains a blend of a few of them that have been masterfully woven into one. These cosmogonies are allegorical and have been interpreted throughout the centuries through various commentaries. It is my belief that the Christian view of them as being literally true is wrong but, I also realize that the core of that faith requires it. So my views may not sit well with them. Nevertheless, I base them on some very intense study of the texts themselves, various Rabbinic commentaries, the Talmud, and translational reference material.

It is my belief we were all created with 3 very special divine gifts:

• The Breath of Life
• Free Will
• Reason

The Breath of Life, as its name implies, gives us life, a soul and it is the very sustaining essence of God within each and every one of us.

Free Will is the freedom that God gave each of us to choose for ourselves what our actions are and what kind of person we are. All of us have both light and dark, good and evil, within us and it is the choices we make that define what path we take and who we are.

Reason enables us to understand the differences between good and bad. It encourages the mind to seek and understand the nature of God and to discern the order and operation of nature. When employed correctly it gives us a moral compass that governs our free will and when properly followed will always lead to God.

How did we get these gifts?

One of the ways to study Torah is allegorically and another is personal application. In studying the allegory of Creation (yes, I believe the beginning of Genesis to be all allegory) I used my personal allegorical interpretation to develop some thoughts as to how these gifts were given to us as relates to the tale of Eve and the serpent in the garden.

The garden is symbolic of the paradise that one has in a spiritual sense when they are close to God. The serpent is symbolic of free will, except free will without the gift of Reason caused poor judgement and the selfish desire to be “like God”. The act of biting into the fruit was the introduction of the gift of Reason. It was only after Reason was introduced did Eve’s eyes “open” and she realized that she was “naked”. Naked meaning now fully accountable for her own actions and not capable of hiding who she was.

How does God respond?

With disappointment and then very quickly with love and compassion. It was never God’s intent to have a bunch of puppets that were under divine control. Free will comes with the risk of making both good and bad decisions even with the use of Reason. God curses the serpent because the serpent symbolized the use of free will to serve oneself which we know as selfishness. Mankind is then imbued with the pains and burdens of life but, then God quickly provides them with clothes to cover their nakedness. This is emblematic of how mankind, now having free will, reason and the breath of life – all gifts that come from God and when used in the “image” of God will provide man all that is needed to come close to Him. How do we act in God’s image? Those 10 little rules we have spoken of before.

And God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them. JPS

© Nelson Rose, The Quest for Light