An End to Sin?

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son… -John 3:16

Through his death on the cross, Jesus saves mankind from their sin. How is this to be understood? If empathy is putting ourselves in another’s place, what might be the ultimate act of empathy? Could it be experiencing the death of the other? Every human being has to die, and in Jesus God enters into this inevitable human fate, experiencing death Himself. Preston Harold says that with total empathy comes an end to sin:

When through experience all mankind has evolved complete empathy, sin will no longer be possible, for man’s empathy will cause him to instinctively withdraw his mind and hand from abuse of another – his understanding will not permit him to err, for he will pay sin’s wage in his own being before he commits it.

Just as Jesus payed sin’s wage in his own being, we are called to do the same. We must experience the sorrow we would bring to another in our own being before we offend against them.

Empathy in man brings its joy or sorrow – enriches or takes its toll of him now, as now flowers into the present and plants the field of the future in reaping the harvest of past planting. Love’s eternal reward and punishment is given before it is grasped – now. Upon that infinitely small point between the past and the future that cannot be captured or measured eternity rests, for both now and eternity are beyond the grasp of consciousness. Eternal punishment of sin rests with empathy, which makes a man recoil with horror at the evil he has done when he comes to an understand it in his being, and thereafter he forever recoils with the pain at the prospect of repeating this evil, recoils now as it arises in the mind to do this evil again.

And here we grasp the meaning of “eternal punishment,” the “now” moment we truly realize and experience through empathy the hell of the horror of realizing the evil that we do to one another. Yet empathy has another face:

Empathy is saving grace to man – it frees his past, frees his future. It is acting now in his midst. Homo sapiens is an empathetic “animal.” He is no mistake on the part of evolution. Jesus’ words say to the belabored man of the twentieth century who has come to doubt nature’s wisdom in evolving his species: there is the living voice of truth, life and love within you, and as you begin to express its power, glory, and empathy, it will say unto you, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”

Until next time, peace.

Learning Experiences

Why does our knowledge of love’s fullness have to be so painful to obtain? Why doesn’t God completely reveal to us our full nature?

By giving His power, the power of the word, to man, God destroyed His absolute power to reveal Himself and the secrets of creation. But before man appeared on the scene, the secrets had been told in mammon – in the temporal – which reflects them oppositely and truly, as though in a mirror, itself material, a form that is real is seen, albeit its “mirror-image” is not its reality in being. Thus, truth-bearer must make unto himself a friend of mammon, “unrighteous” as mammon is, and he must reveal the working of the flesh, offensive and error-provoking though his words may be.

Being part of the material realm limits us in coming to full knowledge of the reality and fullness of God. If we want LIFE, we must deal with the limitations and consequences thereof. The Apostle Paul says as much in his letter to the Romans:

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits in eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. (Rom. 8:18-21) 

According to Paul here, we were not created by God already perfect, then fell, and now are in the process of regaining paradise. Rather, we have been subjected to futility from the beginning by our creator! Why? In hope that we will come to know the freedom of being children of God (being set free from slavery to mere mammon). It is the only way we can know love for ourselves. In other words, the Eden story isn’t a time-based story; it is rather an eternal happening, goading and guiding us into a better future. The story is a “trap” God sets for us, striving for the “beginning,” which in eternity is also our “completion.”

And here Preston Harold sounds like a modern day Paul:

Mammon is the mirror, and perforce the mirror lies – for it, itself, is not what it reflects in its being or as its being. God, First Cause, love, life itself, is not matter as revealed in mammon; God…is revealed through mammon’s examination to be “spirit,” or a type of “energy” unknown and unknowable in physical terms…. The reality underlying the world of appearances cannot be reduced to physical terms, it is only indirectly knowable as reflected in mammon’s mirror, and as it is intuitively experienced by man…. But in mammon’s mirror, in evil, or in pure matter, or in life’s temporal history with all its evil-doing, the image of good and its working may be beheld. This is to say, there is evidence that life is building into man a factor that will in time deliver him from evil without robbing him of its desirable aspects, and that this factor is in truth the saving grace of life.

Amen! Until next time, peace.

Dilemma of the Group-ego

Jesus said, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26) Preston Harlod explains:

…the more lost man’s consciousness becomes in the sands of humanity’s ego-groups and Group-egos, the more his Authority-Ego leads him to hate his life in this world and any concept of himself or another that makes him a group-component or appendix or product even of his own family – thus, he must renounce any tie that binds him to Group-ego before he can become One, himself, truth to his own being.

Jesus said, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the House of Israel.” (Matt. 15:24) Preston Harold again:

“Israel,” the consciousness outgrown from that which was born in Eden, carried on in the ark, is a multitude of selves to which the Authority-Ego comes as saving grace – and “Israel’s” salvation depends upon being freed of the bonds of Group-ego.

In what ways does Group-ego hold us back from becoming fully human? Harold ruminates in depth:

…Group-ego is found in all nationalities and races, expressing itself most vehemently in those most anti-semitic. Group-ego was merely elaborated in Christianity, and was further elaborated in Nietzche’s concept of super-race, coming finally to rest in Karl Marx’s mass-ego ideal wherein man in classless society must sacrifice his individuality to the State, to the Super-ideology, rather than to the idea of the Chosen-race, super-religion, or super-race complex.

The Greeks and Romans suffered Group-ego. The Athenian was first a creature of the State, Athenian democracy his god, and the Roman followed in his footsteps. Therefore, both embraced ziggurat concepts, towers of Babel, the structure of their society replacing God. But in the first and “almost perfect democracy” there was no part “for women, foreigners or slaves…” Euripides, the poet, had condemned slavery, calling it “that thing of evil,” and “the Stoics denounced it.” But something other than slavery also worked to undermine Athenian civilization. The need of Athens was that each of her citizens take full responsibility; but in “the end, more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security, a comfortable life, and they lost all – security and comfort and freedom.”

Group-ego and responsibility are incompatible. Group-ego leads to the expression of parasitic consciousness.

I have no doubt that you, reader, will find many parallels with Athens in today’s United States. Ben Franklin once stated, “Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.” History is on his side.

We are almost finished with Chapter 4!  Our next post will be the last of the chapter, exploring what helps to set us free from the constraints of Group-ego. Until then, peace…

Beginning to Break the Messianic Mold

Continuing with Chapter 2, how does a human being become free?  How does one realize the divine order within him/herself?  What steps must be taken?

According to Harold, Jesus understood that as long as mankind looked for the advent of some one or a series of Messiahs to solve his problems, he could not realize his own potential.  So how was Jesus to destroy this idea of the Messiah that mankind longed after and hoped for?  Here is Harold’s view…

Jesus seized the opportunity to complete the Judaic Scriptures.  This was his mission – and in fulfilling it He also lead men toward a high moral ethic vested in love.  Why did he do it?  In completing the Scriptures, He could destroy the Messianic tradition… Jesus broke it.  This study concludes that He knew what He was doing, knew that He was breaking the Messianic mold, and that to break it through completing the Scriptures, thus freeing mankind from the curse of Messianic expectation and Messianic delusion, was His mission.

Among the prevailing Messianic concepts and even the Greek intellectualism of Jesus’ day, unfortunately nothing could destroy humankind’s innate compulsion to search beyond their own consciousness for saving grace…

[Jesus] saw that because Messianic hope was universal, springing eternally in man’s heart, it must be a valid hope, but misdirected when man holds the concept that governing-truth or God’s Messiah is foreign to his own individual being.  Jesus discovered its residence in man, found the key to unlock His own unconscious, and said that man must seek this inner kingdom if he hopes to find God’s saving grace and the sufficiency in life he craves; He then made Himself a symbol of the Authority within it, the Christ of God in man. His own words support this concept…

…And it is these words we will look at in our next post. Until then, peace…