The Judas Factor; Part IV

At this point in Harold’s assessment of Judas and his role in the gospels, he makes a startling interpretation of a well-known scripture that has always been attributed to Jesus:

Judas, the despised, rejected of all, the one lost that the Scriptures be fulfilled, that nature’s supreme law might be fulfilled to the last iota – Judas, an utter revulsion to the elect upon whom fell the task of building Christianity – is he not the stone that the builders rejected? Scripture says:

The stone that the builders rejected is the chief stone now of the corner: this is the doing of the Lord, and a wonder to our eyes?…

The stone that the builders rejected is the chief stone now of the corner. Everyone who falls on that stone will be shattered, and whoever falls upon it will be crushed.

Although the early church used this Psalm as a prophecy of Jesus’ resurrection, Preston Harold gives us good reason as to why we might interpret it as referring to Judas.

A stone is matter. Matter is head of the corner of the building – the temple of life, the body. Most precious to man, the inherent and first necessity of life, is matter of his own. Yet this “stone” – flesh and its demands – is seen to be evil. Money is mammon’s symbol, and mammon is seen as evil. With matter and money Judas is completely identified. Was it not Judas upon who the crushing stone fell – was not the Judas drama the doing of the Lord?

It’s hard for me to argue with this reasoning. Yet a lifetime of interpreting this scripture as referring to Jesus presses back onto me. Harold continues:

As one views the whole picture, it would appear to say that there is one among the elect of consciousness, the superego, who gathers and disperses matter. At the command of Authority-Ego, this factor moves to convert this experience in life into “hard coin.” This member of the household that betrays to death can find solace only in death, but through its action One’s mission in life is completed and he gives back the “mammon” he has taken unto himself. Jesus says:

And I tell you use mammon, dishonest as it is…

He who is faithful with a trifle is also faithful with a large trust, and he who is dishonest with a trifle is also dishonest with a large trust….So if you are not faithful with dishonest mammon, how can you ever be trusted with true riches? And if you are not faithful with what belongs to another, how can you ever be given what is your own?

Mammon is dishonest because matter is not what it appears to be – it is but a trifle of mass. Judas had been faithful with the “trifle” of keeping the purse; Jesus could depend upon him to be faithful in executing the large trust involved in His betrayal and its aftermath – essential to His work. This world’s wealth, or matter, is not actually man’s own, but God’s. In this stewardship man must prove himself capable of using wealth before he can be given true riches – matter of his own.

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.