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Essay #30
The Greatest Crime
On Sunday, December 7, 1997
a strange account appeared in the Montreal Gazette. In an interview
with Rev. Bill Phipps, the moderator of the United Church of
Canada, a question was raised: "Was Jesus God?" It
transpired that the titular head of a Christian denomination
did not think so. He did not think that Jesus was God. I can
see the shock-waves spreading across Christianity like the ripples
from an enormous meteorite striking an ocean of believers. The
ripples which might well change our Christian climate for a long
time to come. Perhaps forever.
Does it matter?
In my essay The Message
and the Messenger 170 ,
I stressed the importance of not confusing the one with the other.
The greatest crime is to deify the messenger while ignoring his
message. God, a universally accepted symbol of infinity, cannot
be assumed to find Its total expression through that which is
finite. No matter how great, how wonderful the messenger. There
are those who might say that Mozart is music, that Einstein is
astrophysics, that Renoir is Impressionism. But these are terms
of affection, having their origin in our emotions, springing
from our hearts. So be it. There are moments when Jesus denotes
an embodiment of divinity. There are moments when Buddha assumes
this function. Sometimes I see God in the beauty of a flower,
or hear Him in the voice of a nightingale, or even in the music
of Mozart.
But God is not sometimes.
God is always. And God cannot be chopped up, decimated, quantified.
To me God is All in All. It is That which finds Its expression
through Its creation. But He, IT, is also all That which has
not been expressed as yet, perhaps never will be. Though never
is such a long time....
Was Jesus God?
I am reminded of the Christ's
question: "Why callest thou me good? There is none good
but one, that is God..." 171. Doesn't sound like God talking.
"And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is
your Father, which is in heaven."172 We are all created in the image of
that which is perfect, in the image of our Father. Image. All
of us. What we do with this image later... but that's quite another
story.
"The servant is not greater
than his lord; neither he that is sent greater than he that sent
him"173. Neither greater nor equal. Nor is
the Messenger greater than the Message.
"I can do nothing on
my own...."
Our identification with the
object of our contemplation is limited by our mind. The Spirit
is above the mind. We regard It as That which has no limitations.
For as long as we are imprisoned in our physical bodies, we cannot
reach out beyond them. Not completely. And even then, when we
do free our spirit, we might, if we so desire, be able to merge
with that which IS. Become integral with IT. To lose our personality
is to merge into Buddha's Nothingness.174 Not to
become IT to the exclusion of all other. That would be to limit
That (I am That I am) which is beyond limitations.
I have never met a Christian
who did justice to the teaching of Christ. [Perhaps I've been
unlucky]. And I've never heard one to affirm the nature of his
or her own being using the words: I and my Father are one. Not
I am my Father. A drop in an ocean is one with the water therein.
It is not the ocean itself. Whether some Christians recognize
Jesus as their God is of no consequence. The question is: have
they heard his message? Because those who dismiss Jesus as a
prophet might be excused from following his teachings, but those
who deem him God and still ignore him, commit the greatest of
crimes.
Since the purpose of prayer
is to become one with the object of one's contemplation, Jesus
became one with that which he taught. The Way. The Method. The
System. Surely his purpose was to show us how to proceed, how
to realize life in its fullness. Not by our own power, nor by
his, but by hooking up onto the current of Infinite Potential.
"The Son can do nothing of himself,"175 he repeated. A god who can do nothing
of himself? We all are but channels for the creative spirit.
All of us. Some more perfect than others. And what have the Christians
done to their acclaimed leader? Against all his statements, lessons,
instructions, admonishments, they... deified him. It must have
felt good to have one's feet washed, vicariously, by God!176
The greatest of all crimes...
By creating an insurmountable
barrier of divinity between us and the Christ, the Christian
churches have shut the gates of heaven in our faces. Surely,
no man can do what the Christ has done. After all, was he not
God? Ask any Christian!
Did Jesus ever lay claim to
divinity? Has he even averred his own, let alone divine, power?
The son can do nothing of himself.... Yet whoever believes
in the Way, in the Method: greater works than these shall
he do.177 Greater than God?
No man is greater than his
master.
The greatest of all crimes
was perpetrated by the collusion of the so-called Christian churches
in order to usurp power in the name of the man who showed us
consummate humility. A million churches, a thousand Vaticans,
an army of Popes resplendent in their snowy attire amid a sea
of crimson robes, could never do justice to the message which
Jesus showed us. A billion candles burning to his glory would
not cast a wisp of a shadow compared to a single ray of the light
which he shone upon us.
Was Jesus God? Not according
to his own testimony. Was he the son of God? I'll let the psalmist
answer: "Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the
most High. But ye shall die like man, and fall like one of the
princes."178
Even the greatest of princes.
170. BEYOND RELIGION, VOLUME
I. [Inhousepress, Montreal 1997]
171. Matthew 19:17
172. Matthew 23:9
173. John 13:16
174. Personality is a characteristic of the ego, individuality
of the soul. It is my contention that the loss of personality
does not entail loss of identity. We retain an individual awareness
which is an inherent, indestructible attribute of Soul.
175. John 5:19 et al.
176. John 13:5...
177. John 14:12
178. Psalm 82: 6-7, compare John 10:34
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