Dear Soul Arcanum:
It seems to me that spirituality has taken a turn for the worse and become very ego-centered. Who are we to question the Bible and what is true or not true in religion?
– R.
Dear R.:
Thanks for your brave and honest question. First, I would like you to take a moment and ask yourself who wrote the Bible, and when was it written. Many “Bible thumpers” have no idea. They seem to think it manifested from heaven fully formed while everyone was asleep one night long ago. Those who don’t bother to find out, or who are afraid to find out, tend to be the loudest proclaimers that everything in it is true. I personally believe in having good reasons for believing (and especially proclaiming) what I believe, which does involve some thought and study.
For those who don’t know, the Bible was written by men who never met Jesus. They had heard legends about his miracles and teachings, which had been passed around and passed down orally. Written records were not common at the time of Jesus, much less books. The Bible was written over many centuries by different men, many of whom disagreed with each other on just about everything. This is why the Bible contradicts itself right and left. You can argue for or against anything based on passages of the Bible. How do you know what is right if you don’t question?
I am NOT saying that the Bible is a bunch of baloney, but rather that we are fools if we accept everything in it without knowing who wrote it and what their motivations were. We can safely assume that a spiritual teacher named Jesus lived a couple millenia ago, and that his teachings and his life changed the world and is still deeply influencing humankind many centuries later. I am in total harmony with the true teachings of Jesus. Sadly, few people who call themselves “Christians” have bothered to try to sort those true teachings from the various, conflicted views of modern Christianity.
Would you accept anyone’s ideas about what Jesus or any other spiritual teacher was trying to teach us? What if you went to church, and the minister told you that Jesus said that clothing was evil, and anyone who didn’t go nude would go to hell. Would you do it? What if you visited another church and was told that nudity was a sin? Then what would you do?
If you would not blindly follow what these ministers said, then why would you blindly accept the writings of men you’ve never met who lived hundreds of years ago, and who never met Jesus themselves? Perhaps they were human and fallible just like us, and they were wrong on some points. Perhaps their words, which were written in either ancient Aramaic or Greek, have been mistranslated. Perhaps those words were purposefully edited/revised/deleted to create a version of the Bible designed to serve the political aims of someone in power. This DID happen. I encourage you to do some research on the Roman Emperor Constantine and the Council of Nicea. Just plug some of those terms along with “Bible” into a search engine, and you’ll learn that a man with entirely political aims was given the power to decide what would go into the Bible and what would be kept out. If this is news to you, it’s because writing about or even possessing any written record or account of what happened at Nicea was an offense punishable by DEATH.
Unless we want a greedy, power-hungry politician or some other person with a personal agenda to decide our spiritual beliefs for us, we’re going to have to question EVERY view we encounter in life. We do that with the divine tools we’ve all been given and are meant to use: our minds and our hearts.
This whole issue is a matter of ancient controversy: was Jesus a Gnostic or not? The early Jesus movement was divided into groups of followers. One such group was the Gnostics. Their teachings/writings didn’t make it into the Bible, for the most part. They were discovered in this century, buried in a cave in Egypt (research the “Nag Hammadi Library” for information on this). Nevertheless, I believe it’s clear from all that was included in the Bible that Jesus Himself was Gnostic. Gnostic comes from the word gnosis, which means inner knowing. Jesus looked for the truth in His own heart. He was also a social and religious critic who was constantly questioning everything and weighing it against that truth in His heart and then standing up for what He felt was true. According to the Bible, he said, “The kingdom of God will come not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:21)
We have to question and look within for answers to tap into divine truth and understanding. This is what Jesus Himself did. How can we go wrong if we are following in His footsteps?
You say that spirituality has taken a turn for the worse. To me, it’s gotten better and better. Spiritual is personal; a spiritual path is an individual, personal relationship with the Divine. Religion, by comparison, is not personal, it’s communal. If we can only truly know God within our own hearts, then we are far more likely to discover truth and Divine light on a personal spiritual path than a religious one. A personal spiritual path involves seeking truth and answers and understanding, which means questioning. It is in fact all about questioning what is right and wrong, what is important, what is highest and best and most true. It is about following in Jesus’ footsteps by connecting with our own “inner knowing,” by recognizing that it is within our own hearts that we can best connect with “God.”
This is not an intellectual pursuit, but a spiritual one. It’s the ancient path of the mystic. It transends dogma and rules and all that is written by other humans. It tunnels beneath the common teachings of religion for direct experience of the truth. Thus, spirituality is subversive by its very nature.
A true and devoted seeker is willing to do more work than the average person; she is willing to journey longer and harder and farther than those who simply ask for the rules and for others to absolve them when they fail to follow them. She is also willing to fully accept the consequences of her choices. To me, that is not selfish, but rather bold, courageous and ultimately more respectful of “God” than blindly following the rules as others interpret them to be.
In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus teaches us that the Kingdom of God is only found through self-awareness. “The kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty.” He went on to say, “[The kingdom of God] will not come by waiting for it. It will not be a matter of saying ‘Here it is’ or ‘There it is.’ Rather, the Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth and men do not see it.” To see it, we must find a new way of looking for it, which involves questioning the old or commonly accepted way.
– Soul Arcanum