Thoughts on the Disciples Prior to the Cross

 The thing which is often overlooked or glossed over is that Jesus' disciples were in fact His disciples, followers of the Way, prior to the cross. They had already been baptized, and were not re-baptized after the resurrection. The same was true of John's disciples, as it is recorded that those who only knew the baptism of John were also considered followers of the Way.  If following the Way was only about believing that Jesus Christ was a substitutionary sacrifice as payment for sins committed, this would make no sense whatsoever. And in fact, among Evangelical Christian commentaries in particular, there is a great deal of theological gymnastics given in order to force their pre-cross discipleship to fit their definition, but it just doesn't fit.
     Every time Jesus talked about His death and resurrection, His disciples tried to pretend He hadn't because it upset them, or they argued with Him about it. When He was arrested and crucified, they were scared, depressed, upset, angry, and didn't consider His torture and death a necessary part of their discipleship. Clearly, it wasn't the basis of their discipleship at the time. When He rose from the dead and appeared to them, they were also terrified, but in a good way. They were overjoyed, they were beside themselves, but it still wasn't the basis of their discipleship at that point. The basis of their discipleship was living as He taught and walking as He walked. His death and resurrection was the final proof of who He was in their minds, but their discipleship, the practice of imitating Him was rooted in what He taught and how He lived.
     His death and resurrection were the ultimate examples of what He taught and how they were to live just as He lived, dying to themselves so that they might live conjoined with Him. After the cross and resurrection, to be baptized meant to die with Him that one might be raised with Him, to be free from one's own malfunctioning flesh's responses and to commit to enslaving oneself to the Spirit of Christ with whom they were one. If one was dead, one was free from their malfunction. Their malfunction had no more Ownership of them because what was malfunctioning was dead. And so the Christian was to put their own flesh based responses, their "old man" to death, to live as though dead that He might live through them.
     But the Way itself hadn't changed, neither had what it meant to be a disciple.

Everything is Allowed for Me, but Not Everything is Assistive

 "Everything is allowed for me, but not everything is assistive. Everything is allowed for me, but I will not be brought under the authority of anything." - 1 Corinthians 6:12

This is a difficult verse to understand for those who believe being a Christian is about following rules and commandments. How can everything be allowed when there are so many things commanded against? One interpretation which I've heard is Paul quoting something the Corinthians were telling themselves based on Epicurean philosophy and then countering it, but I really don't think so.
     Everything is allowed because the actual practicing Christian isn't operating from his own responses, but it is the Spirit of Christ acting, speaking, and responding through him. As Paul wrote, "against such there is no law." As he also wrote, the law is not meant for the person who is functioning correctly, but for the person who is functioning incorrectly, the deranged, murderers, and so on. But if it is the Spirit of Christ acting and speaking through you, it is God Himself doing so. Would God do something which is not right? Would God murder, steal, commit adultery, and so on? Everything is allowed so long as it is God in control of your words and actions, and conversely, if it is you operating from your own malfunctioning resources, you cannot help but make mistakes and malfunction and trying to keep commandments only makes it worse, not better.
     Everything is permitted for me, but I will not be brought under the authority of anything. That is, I will not become the slave of anything other than the Spirit of Christ. I will not be brought under the authority of my cravings for alcohol, sweets, narcotics, sex, and so on to obey their commands. I will not be brought under the authority of my fear and panic to obey its commands. I will not be brought under the authority of my anger to obey its commands. I will not be brought under the authority of my relationships or fear of losing them to obey their commands. I will not be brought under the authority of my self-identity to obey its commands. Everything is permitted for me, but I will not be that thing's slave to obey its commands.
     And so food is for the stomach and the stomach is for food, but God will render both useless in time. The same is true of sexual activity in its proper context, but I will not be brought under its authority to be its slave, and this is what happens with sexual promiscuity, pornography, prostitution, and so on. One becomes a slave to those physical cravings to obey their commands. I have one Master, one Owner, and my bodily cravings, fear, and aggression are not Him. One can either obey the Spirit of Christ, or one can obey these other things, but not both, and so while everything is permitted, not everything assists us. It is not a matter of commands, law, or following rules, it's a matter of who you want your Owner to be.

A Reflection on the Greco-Roman Roots of the New Testament

     For most raised in Protestant churches, especially Evangelical churches, it's always reinforced how Jewish the Gospels are. We're taught the basics of 1st century Judaism alongside whatever Christianity is supposed to be because that's supposedly the only important cultural context for the events and writings of the New Testament.
     Except it's not. The older I get, the more I study about 1st century Greco-Roman Hellenistic culture, the more of a Greco-Roman context I see all over the pages of the N.T. Inasmuch as Jesus came as Messiah for the Jews, for the Greeks He was the Logos incarnate, something totally unknown in Jewish thought outside of Greco-Roman Stoic influence (Philo was a Jewish author and philosopher who discussed the Logos, but was clearly influenced by Stoic thought). The miracles He did spoke directly to His divinity, but they were all each of them demonstrating His authority over the particular jurisdictions of the various Olympians, from Dionysius to Apollo, from Poseidon to Zeus himself. Even his very teachings and the letters of Paul and John echoed the ethical teachings of the Stoic philosophy which was ubiquitous throughout Hellenistic society. Further, the Greeks and Romans would have recognized the conceptions of the Logos and the Pneuma as being identified with the God and Father far more readily than their strictly Jewish counterparts as this kind of a "Trinity" already existed in Stoic philosophy.
     The more I look at this, the more I realize there was no real wonder why Paul used the Greeks' own poets when preaching to the Areopagus and not once mentioned the Hebrew Scriptures, not even the Psalms. Why? He didn't have to. He could have preached the entire Gospel from the Greek philosophers in order to back up everything he said about Jesus, and they would have understood and accepted it far more readily than the "foreign" Hebrew writings.
     By ignoring the Greco-Roman cultural roots of the New Testament in favor of an entirely Jewish one, and by ignoring that Jesus was clearly broadcasting to the Greeks and Romans who He was by what He did and what He said even as He spoke more directly to the Judeans and Galileans, we seriously hobble our understanding of the Gospels and the New Testament as a whole.

Nero and The Upcoming Elections

      It may surprise some people, but the first five years of Nero's reign as Roman emperor were considered some of the best governance Rome had seen up to that point and afterwards. Why is this? Because the actual governance wasn't being done by Nero, but by Burrus, who handled the military affairs, Seneca, who handled most of the day to day running of the Empire, and at times, Aggripina, Nero's mother who had a large influence over him up to a certain point. Seneca, a Stoic philosopher, in particular had been Nero's tutor when the emperor was a boy and a young man, and when he ascended the throne, Seneca along with Burrus became his right and left hands while Nero indulged his fancies, and while they didn't hold any official rank or title, for all intents and purposes, they were the de facto co-emperors while Nero did what he wanted otherwise. It was only after Nero was persuaded by ambitious and jealous men, and disinformation had been spread about them, that Nero turned on all three, starting with his mother, and freed himself from the restraints of their good governance. Anyone who's heard the name Nero pretty much knows what happened after that.
     Many people remember the first couple of years of Trump's administration as being reasonably good governance in accordance with conservative principles. I don't believe it's a coincidence that those first few years he was mostly surrounded by men who had been recommended to him for his cabinet who were, regardless of their political beliefs, patriots with a deep commitment to the United States first. Men like General Mattis, General Kelly, even William Barr who had served in past administrations, as well as others. These men would later, to a man, testify that they increasingly had to keep the restraints on Trump, and as his term wore on, this became increasingly difficult, if not next to impossible. By the end of his term, most of his original cabinet members had resigned or left, and as they did, his behavior became more and more focused on who was loyal to Trump himself rather than who was loyal to the United States and its interests.
      This election season, we are facing the prospect of a Trump presidency without the restraints of the good men who had first advised and served him, much like Nero without Seneca. This Trump presidency will be surrounded by men and women who are only concerned about how their own ambitions might be advanced through connection with Trump, much like Nero's latter reign. We know how that emperor's reign ended. I don't think we want history to repeat itself with our modern Nero.

A Ramble About Enslavement

 You are a slave to whatever can command you. If your fear, your anger, or your craving for food or sex can command you, then you are the slave of your own flesh. If your attachment to a possession, a person, an idea, or your own self-dentity can command you, then you are a slave to that attachment. You are not free but have by choice enslaved yourself to these things. As Paul wrote, you are a slave to whatever you choose to obey. To whatever you present the members, the parts of your body as a slave to obey, you are that thing's slave to obey whether you admit that or not, whether that is a comfortable fact or not.
     The practice of the Way is a recognition that you choose to be either a slave to your malfunctioning mind, dominated as it is by a malfunctioning survival response system which treats everything as either a survival need (craving and attachment) or a survival threat (aversion), or you choose to be a slave to the Spirit of Christ with whom you are joined as one thing. The practice of the Way is the choice to submit to the Spirit of Christ instead of your own malfunctioning mind, to enslave yourself to the very nature and presence of the God who is love instead of enslaving yourself to a mistake in your brain's circuitry, a flaw which, instead of serving its original purpose of protecting the body, pushes a human being into suffering and towards their own self-destruction and death if it is obeyed. The malfunctioning flesh, as good as its own intentions might be to keep you safe, healthy, and happy, cannot accomplish any of these things any more than a malfunctioning machine can accomplish its original purpose. It can only cause mistakes because it is not working right.
     Enslaving oneself to the Spirit of Christ means freedom from all of these other things. It means operating, not from your fear, anger, or your body screaming at you to eat or have sex, but from the love, joy, peace, patience, trust, kindness, courtesy, and self-control that are inherent to the very nature of God Himself. It ultimately means losing one's attachments and experiencing what genuine love and happiness are, not rooted in temporary things you can lose, but in permanent things you cannot lose.
      To what or whom have you enslaved yourself to?

The Afterlife and Salvation Through Jesus Christ are About Two Different Things

       One’s afterlife is entirely dependent on whether or not they do not reject love and thus God. Everything else is immediately forgivable, including ignorance, washed away in His love, Light, and Charity towards us. If one rejects love and is entirely self-centered operating from his own malfunctioning flesh’s responses of fear, aggression, and bodily cravings or aversions, then they close themselves off from the God who literally forms the Foundation of their very being and surrounds them. This is not His doing, this is their doing, their choice to remain in the darkness they have created until they come to their senses and cry out to Him. Otherwise He welcomes everyone to His “wedding feast” regardless of belief system. How we manifest love, how we manifest Him whether we know it or not is what is key.
     One’s “salvation” or “deliverance” through Jesus Christ as actually taught by the New Testament however, while it can and should directly affect this afterlife, in practice has nothing to do with one’s afterlife, but everything to do with how a person operates in the here and now, in this life. It is the deliberate disengagement from one’s malfunctioning survival responses, one’s fear in particular, and engagement with the Spirit of Christ so that one operates and responds, not from his own flesh, but from the Spirit of Christ, and thus God Himself. One ceases to enslave themselves to their own flesh, and chooses to enslave themselves to the Spirit of Christ as they are a slave to whichever they choose to obey. But by enslaving oneself to the Spirit of Christ, that person channels Christ, manifests Christ, and because they manifest Christ, they manifest the God who is love Himself.
     Such people as choose to manifest this God who is love, of course they will not reject Him or shut their eyes to Him, or cut themselves off from the very foundation of their own existence. Yet those who, in ignorance of any of this, yet choose to love and choose to not be ruled by their fear but by this love, are whether they know it or not, still choosing God because He is love. They are still choosing to keep their eyes open and not be a slave to their own flesh’s responses, especially their fear because fear and love cannot coexist. Attachment and sexual desire can easily coexist with fear and even produce and magnify it, but love itself cannot.
      The Way which Jesus taught His disciples to follow was total submission to this God and Father who is love, and to let that love permeate and instruct everything which they did, letting go of their attachments which led to the fear and panic which blinded them to love, and thus blinded them to God. It was to come to their senses and go home to the Father who would not just accept them, but run to meet them with tears in His eyes.

A Ramble About Reasoned Logic

 I was doing my morning devotions this morning and these verses stood out from 1 Corinthians 4:19-20, "and I will know by experience not the reasoned logic (logos) of those having been inflated but the power; because the Kingdom of God isn't by means of reasoned logic but with power."
     "Reasoned logic" was how the Greek philosophers came to their conclusions about physics, logic, and ethics. That is, they intentionally studied syllogisms, or reasoned deductions to come to their conclusions largely based on the example of Socrates and his successors, though the different schools had widely different conclusions. This was how they operated, and in particular, this was how the school of Stoicism operated. "Because A, and because B, then C." This was neither a bad thing nor a good thing, instead, it was simply a part of their trying to discover, understand, and apply what "the good" was. For the Stoics, it was following "the God" and conforming to nature and what was natural for a human being as a child of "the God."
     Epictetus used reasoned logic to come to his conclusions, as does Marcus Aurelius, Musonius Rufus, and the others and he taught his students how to do the same. But one of the things he continuously mentions, trying to get his students attentions and warn them, is the danger of just trying to learn philosophy in order to seem like an important person. In his mind, there were far too many people who could speak well, use syllogisms well, knew the writings of the philosophers, yet for all their knowledge they seemed to know nothing as they did not put into practice the very philosophy they professed to know, being inflated by their own egos and self-importance.
     It is these latter people who are representative of to whom Paul is speaking in these verses. Those who, like Epictetus' well educated but poorly executed students, had come to their conclusions based on their own well spoken, reasoned logic. I am also reminded of some atheists I recently debated with, who also came to their conclusions based on their own reasoned logic, and more broadly many if not most religious or ethical people for whom religion, a belief in God, or just simply ethical practice is a matter of "reasoned logic," conclusions one comes to based on one's own deductive reasoning.
     While there is certainly a place and a purpose for it, the experience of the Kingdom of God,the experience of manifesting God through cooperation with and submission to the Spirit of Christ, doesn't come by means of reasoned logic. It's not simply one valid opinion among many, because it's not an opinion at all, it is a state of being. It is something one experiences, not something one mentally assents to. There are "teeth" behind it, so to speak. There is real, enabling power and energy driven by the God who is love flowing through the person. Paul here in these verses isn't talking about demonstrating how much better at debate he is than these people, but demonstrating the manifestation of Jesus Christ within and through himself, and through Christ, God the Father.
     When Jesus came, he could have been any one of hundreds of false prophets, messiahs, or philosophers. What set Him apart to begin with was the power which backed up what He said. No one would have paid attention to Him without it. The same is true of the apostles. No one would have paid attention to them if it wasn't for the power and presence of God Himself manifesting through them. Paul knew and understood that.
      When Paul talks about these things, when Jesus talks about these things, when John, when Peter, when any of them talk about these things they're not using reasoned logic to come to their conclusions, they're talking about what they themselves experienced and practiced; what they saw with their own eyes, heard with their own ears, handled with their own hands. When the Logos, the Spirit of Christ, speaks and acts through them, it isn't merely reasoned argument and pretty words, something Paul steadfastly avoided by his own admission, but it is the very power and presence of the God Himself experienced by all those present.
     I think this is what drives me the most insane about modern Christianity, atheism, and everything in between. The emphasis is placed on being able to out-argue one's opponent in an debate. Whose reasoning and logic is better, and based on what evidence that I can dismiss or not? We treat it today like the philosophers in Greece and Rome treated it, not realizing that this is not the Kingdom of God at all. If we were actually practicing the submission to and cooperation with the Spirit of Christ which He taught, and which the New Testament teaches, then others would know, because they would be experiencing the power and presence of God, and all the reasoned logic in the world cannot compete with that reality.

On Atheism

 I confess, I don't understand atheism. From my own experiences, it's akin to insanity which only leads to a further downward spiral. It's heartbreaking for me to watch it happen, to be honest. Especially since, the truth is, it is not a true "atheism" as much as it is being so angry at God that you were hurt that you do the most hurtful thing you can think of to Him and pretend He doesn't exist. Does it hurt Him? No, because His focus is entirely on you and not Himself. His concern for you outweighs any pain anyone attempts to cause Him.
      How does it hurt you? Because you are literally formed from Him. He is the foundation, the substance of everything which exists either matter or energy. Your very nature apart from the body, the "Breath of God" first breathed into human beings is literally born from Him. You blind yourself to Him, pretend He doesn't exist, and you have only your malfunctioning flesh to operate from as you respond from your misfiring panic, aggression, feeding, and reproductive cravings. Understand this if nothing else, this fear which drives the flesh's responses cannot exist where love is, and likewise, if you choose the flesh, you are choosing to operate from fear, aggression, and the body's cravings and rejecting any responses based on love. You will create attachments and mistake them for love. You will feel sexual desire, and mistake it for love. Why? Because the flesh can only operate oriented to its cravings and perceived threats. But you will cut off all access to love itself because Love is born from God, as the Scripture says, "God is love."
     What state will you ultimately find yourself in as you cut yourself off from the Source of love? Fearful, angry, combative, avaricious, lustful, and above all only able to respond based on how something makes you feel. By shutting yourself off from the Light, you plunge yourself into darkness both in this life and in the next. Separated from the flesh upon its death and refusing to open your eyes to the Light, what state will you be in when God is so clearly all there is around you? When your own union with Him is so manifestly apparent? I can think of no greater darkness, no greater hell than this.
      No, I don't understand it at all. It is one thing to be raised an atheist and simply be ignorant. Ignorance is forgivable. It is another thing to allow your anger at transient and impermanent pain overwhelm you so that you pretend He doesn't exist. The harm you cause yourself is overwhelming.
     I beg you, in the Name of Love Himself, turn around. Even if it has to be in the next life, turn around from this course and open your eyes again to Him.

My Answer to a Request for a "Proof" That God Exists Without Using the Bible

      It's a person's own choice to embrace the Light, or keep their eyes shut to it. That is not the Light's doing, that is the personal choice of that person. One can be, and is, surrounded by this Being of infinite Light, Love, Joy, and Compassion, but if they refuse to open their eyes to this Being, if they plunge themselves into darkness by shutting their eyes, stopping their ears, and refusing to acknowledge His existence surrounding them, how is that His fault? They create their own darkness, they put themselves into a torment which does not need to be.
     What is energy? It's a really interesting question because the definition of energy we learn in school, "The ability to do work," is wholly inadequate to what we know it to be in reality. We know that everything which exists, ultimately, is a form of energy. We know that every particle of matter is really just a one-dimensional string of energy vibrating at a certain frequency and a certain spin. So energy, really, is the foundation, the building blocks of everything we experience as existing, all matter and everything which that matter comprises is ultimately energy which has been organized into a specific form and specific combinations of different forms. As a result, energy is literally everywhere at once. Even when we take something down to the "zero point" removing all energy from a vacuum, there is still the presence of energy and particles popping in and out of existence. In other words, it is omnipresent. We know that energy cannot be created or destroyed. It can change forms, but it cannot be created or destroyed. In other words, it is eternal. Energy might be considered finite in a finite universe, but in what many now believe is an infinite multiverse there must also be an infinite, unbounded, limitless amount of energy in order for that infinite multiverse to exist. Infinite, eternal, omnipresent, and the source or foundation of all created existence. Energy is also the source and spark of life as something is not considered alive without that electrical form of energy coursing through its biological circuitry. We're already halfway there to something that sounds very much like the Being you very much want to deny exists. How can the Source of life itself not be alive? I'm sure an argument can be made against it, but it is a question to ponder. What's really interesting is that all of these qualities we know to be true about energy the ancient Stoics attributed to "pneuma," what we translate as "spirit" (and which they referred to as a "fiery breath") something which we cannot see but the effects of which we can feel.
     So, let's take this one step further and assume that energy, the Source of life and underlying foundation of everything which exists, is itself alive. Would that Being not be, by its very nature, omnipotent? Because of its extremely intimate contact with all that exists, being literally the substance which gives everything form, would it not by nature be omniscient, knowing by nature the movement and location of every particle of matter and carrier of energy which exists? Honestly, we're already there at this point in describing such a Being, though I'm not sure the word "God" quite covers it. It is in fact quite the understatement.
     So, what would this Being be like as a person, should it be a person? Would it be selfish? Why? What would be the point of creating other beings then? No, I don't think so. I think it would be turned wholly outward and concerned with those beings. Would it make those beings like puppets? Again, why? What would be the purpose? No, it would make those beings, though dependent on the Being's own existence for their own, autonomous with their own wills. Would it just create them and ignore them? Again, same question. Why? What would be the purpose? No, it would create them for interaction with someone or something other than itself.
     And wouldn't it then somehow try and communicate with those beings so that they could get to know it as a person of some kind? Is it that much of a stretch that it would try to make its mind known about what it considers to be the best way for those beings to interact with not only itself, but with one another? There is a reason why we see such commonalities between the teachings of Jesus, the Buddha, Lao Tzu, the Stoic philosophers, and many others. There is a reason why we see the "golden rule" repeated across the ancient world in many different cultures. So, there is this.
     Is it proof that "God" exists? No, but I think it's a damn good argument for it.
     Then there are the hundreds if not thousands of Near Death Experience testimonies of people, many if not most of whom do not claim to be Christian, who report being surrounded by overwhelming love and peace centered around a Being of pure light, love, and infinite goodness which many equate with a loving parent figure. One more thought. Referring back to those NDEs, while 75% of them are generally positive and they return profoundly changed for the better, about 25% of them are deeply negative, hellish even. Many of those 25% were professing Christians who experienced such a hellish NDE in addition to atheists and people of various faiths. My conclusion to this based on what I've read isn't that these people had the wrong religious beliefs, as nearly every religious belief or lack thereof is represented, but it's that they were so caught up in themselves, their own interests, cravings, pettiness, and pride that they shut their eyes to the Light that wanted nothing more than to embrace them and for them to accept its embrace. They were willing to play the part of good religious person, but it was only an act. Internally, they willfully blinded themselves and experienced the consequences.

"Everything is Yours, And You Are Christ's, and Christ is God's"

 Lately, I've been going back through and translating 1 Corinthians again for my morning devotions in addition to reading from Epictetus. This morning, I've come back to 2:21-23. Paul is explaining in the preceeding verses how one who has a reputation for the wisdom of the world among the congregation at Corinth should become a moron (literal word) so that he would actually become wise, because the wisdom of this world is nonsense to God, and he quotes, "The Owner (Lord) knows by experience the internal dialogues of the wise that they are nothing but empty space." from Psalm 94:11 (LXX, 95:11). And then he says in 21-23, "As also don't let anyone among human beings brag; because everything belongs to you, whether Paulus or Apollos or Kefa, or the cosmos or life or death, whether things present or things impending; everything belongs to you, and you belong to the Anointed, and the Anointed belongs to God."
     Have you ever stopped to think about what the word "lord" actually means in the English language, and why we use it to translate "kurios" from the Greek? Literally, it means "property owner." Think about it, the lord of a manor is the owner of the manor. The lord of a castle is the owner of the castle. The lord of a slave is the owner of that slave. Most of the time we don't really think in these terms because it's kind of become an archaic honorific with no actual meaning, kind of like "mister," which is ultimately a linguistic cognate of "master." So, when we address God as "the Lord" we are literally calling Him "the Owner," and acknowledging that He is the ultimate Owner of everything, including ourselves as He is the one who created and maintains "the everything."
     So what is Paul saying in these last three verses of chapter 2? First he says, "don't let anyone among human beings brag," and in context with immediate reference to one's personal wisdom. Why? "because everything belongs to you." Why? "you belong to the Anointed (Christ), and the Anointed belongs to God." This is kind fo a hard concept to explain without it being misunderstood, because as human beings we tend to think in purely material, fleshly, physical terms because by default we let our malfunction do our thinking and responding for us. We tend to think in terms of personal ownership, and what we do and do not possess. How can everything be mine, as Paul says? I can't just walk into a store and take what I want, that would be stealing from the store. I don't own those things until I pay for them!
     "You" are not your body. "You" are not this lump of skin, muscle, and bone. The real you is "pneuma" and "logos" not flesh. The real you is like a gamer on an MMORPG controlling his or her avatar in order to interact with the world. No matter what happens to the avatar, the gamer themselves cannot be affected or harmed unless the identify too closely and too intimately with their avatar. The real you is rooted and born from the Being of God, immortal, eternal, and perfectly safe from all harm even though constantly at odds with the false you, the ego/mind/identity, concoted by the malfunctioning flesh because of its panic induced blindness to the real you.
     Those who are submitted to and cooperating with the Spirit of Christ, the Pneuma of the Logos, are not functioning from their malfunctioning flesh originated EMI. They are functioning as God originally intended, that is, it is God the Father manifesting, acting, and speaking through His Logos, Jesus Christ, who is manifesting, acting, and speaking through them. Literally, the Owner of everything, and what is born of the Owner of everything is also the inheritor of everything the Father owns. The flesh which will decay and die owns nothing any more than the avatar of an MMORPG owns anything, and is itself just data which can be lost, wiped, or just disappear like smoke on the wind.
     Put simply, the one who is functioning from the Spirit of Christ owns everything, because Christ owns everything, and He owns everything because God owns everything. Everything is available for that person's use as God wills it. There is no lack of resources available, because everything belongs to the Owner, and this translates down to those who are born of the Owner.
     So then, why do I appear to lack what I need? Are you so certain that you need it? Most of the time, it is our flesh which is responding for us, our malfunctioning survival responses, and it believes it needs things it doesn't, and pushes away things which the real you honestly needs. Furthermore, just like in an MMORPG, the only thing you truly "own" personally is your own will. Not your property, not your family members, and not even your own body, but the choices you make, and how you respond to things. Everything else is owned, really, by the company that controls the server, and they are only allowing you use of it for the time you are playing the game. In the same way, everything in creation is owned by God and we are allowed to use these things at His discretion for as long of a time as we are in these dying, malfunctioning bodies much like the child of a wealthy man is allowed to access that wealth at the father's discretion.
     Don't be the gamer who invests all he has in the stuff in the game who then loses everything when the game ends.

Final Reflections on "Epictetus The Complete Works" As It Relates to the Study of the New Testament

 I ended my journey with Epictetus today, having finished "The Complete Works" and thoroughly enjoying it. Along the way, I've posted a number of thoughts as well as citations from his discourses. There are however a few things that I would like to reflect on about it.
1) The use of language and translation. Epictetus spoke Koine Greek, and his discourses and handbook are written almost entirely in this 2,000 year old dialect. This is also the dialect in which the New Testament is written exclusively. For the student of the New Testament, and anyone who aspires to be able to read and translate the New Testament, the importance of this contemporaneous witness to the language outside of a "Christian religious" context cannot be overstated.
     To the speaker of a language, the words he uses mean just what they mean, neither more nor less. Two people who speak the same language are able to communicate because they understand the mutually agreed upon meaning of both the words and the grammar and syntax with which those words are used. It is also understood, perhaps less so but still, that 1:1 meaning translation of one word for another is rare between two different languages. This is why, in many translations of the N.T., you will find the same word translated at least three or four different ways, and one word in English can render at least three or four Greek words as well. For the Koine Greek speaker, when he chose a word, he wasn't thinking about which meaning he was going to give to that word, because for him or her, there was only one meaning to that word in the same way there is only one actual meaning to any given English word for the English speaker. We understand the different ways the word could be used, but they all fall within the scope of that one meaning.
     The actual meaning of a word matters, and the lexical definition of a word matters. It's how we understand and translate that word from the Koine dialect into English. What I have observed over the years is that the dictionaries and lexicons of Koine Greek (most of them compiled in the nineteenth century or early twentieth) are almost uniformly biased towards Christian religious, and specifically Protestant definitions because they are written as resources to translate the New Testament specifically so that it reads in line with Protestant, and frequently Protestant Evangelical teaching. Whether this was intentional or not is up for debate. However, when you use resources that are more broadly targeted, and take into account the wider body of ancient Greek literature, then you begin to see different spectrums of meaning assigned to those words. For example, the BAGD, which is the standard lexicon for Koine specifically, is incredibly biased towards traditional Protestant religious definitions, whereas the Liddell-Scott, which takes into account the larger body of ancient Greek literature, is not.
     It has been said that if you control the meaning of a word, you control the people using that word. And if you control the lexical definitions that Christian translators use to make their translations, then you control what the translations do and do not say. And if you control what the translations do and do not say, you control what the people who read them are supposed to believe.
      Where does Epictetus fit into all of this? He speaks Koine, and is not a Christian. He mentions "Galileans" only once in book four of his discourses, otherwise he is a dyed in the wool Roman Greek Stoic philosophy who acknowledges and worships Zeus and the rest of the Olympian pantheon and reveres Socrates as nearly a prophet of Zeus himself. He uses words like "hamartano," which is almost universally translated in the NT as "sin," yet he means "error," or "mistake," as the word actually meant for hundreds if not thousands of years. He uses the word "logos" to mean "reason," "rationality," but more importantly, Logos as the divine governing principle which actively created and ordered the universe and in which every human being has a share, and not just "word." He uses the exact same words and language as is found in the writings of the New Testament, but it would make no sense whatsoever in the context of who he was and what he was to translate his words using the same religious meanings we would use to translate the same words in the New Testament. I imagine that were we to peruse the Greek texts of other non-Christian authors of the period, we would find much the same thing. And if we should, shouldn't we question why we've been using erroneous translations and meanings which are meant to favor one particular theological branch of Christianity?
2) As I have previously written, it became clear to me in many, many places in Epictetus' discourses that there were so many parallels of metaphor, logic, and analogy between his explanation of Stoic ethics and the words of both Jesus and Paul that it cannot be a coincidence. Yet Epictetus, even though his would have been teaching at least fifty years after Christ's resurrection, does not mention anything at all about either Jesus or Paul. All of his metaphors and analogies appear to be drawn from either deductive reasoning or from the pagan Greek poets and Stoic philosophers. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that Stoic philosophy and ethics were just as ubiquitous throughout the Roman Empire as Christian philosophy and ethics are throughout the United States today. Even when Jesus takes the coin and asks whose face and name are on it, so does Epictetus in one of his discourses. Jesus used the imagery of a plant needing to take root in order to thrive and produce fruit, so does Epictetus. There are so many parallels it would be impossible to list them all here in this relatively brief reflection. And Paul is no different as one could make the case that where Paul says, "To whomever you offer yourself a slave to obey, you are a slave of that one you obey" is one of the core principles of Epictetus' Stoicism. And so I think, at the very least, a strong argument can be made that these parallels exist because they are coming from the same Voice, the same Source, the same Logos speaking through and to different cultural worldviews to get the same point across on how we are to live.
     I was going to post a third point, but I can't remember what it was. It's getting late for me, and I'm getting tired. 5:15 am comes all too early. The points I have already made are likely going to be argued with, if not overtly, then internally by many readers. But these things cannot just be swept under the rug because they don't fit the narrative. They cannot be ignored because some pastor or Bible teacher either doesn't like them or doesn't understand them. Burying them doesn't make them go away, and it leaves us with a skewed understanding of the cultural context in which the things of the New Testament were said and written. And because of that, it leaves us misunderstanding what the authors of the New Testament were actually saying. And that is unconscionable if we truly believe God inspired them to say what they did, in the language they did, and in the cultural worldview they did.

On the Trinity and the Meaning of Pneuma or "Spirit" in the New Testament

 The word "spirit" in the New Testament is a translation of the Greek "pneuma." "Spirit" itself comes from the Latin "spiritus." Both technically mean "breath, wind," and this is usually pneuma's lexical definition in most lexicons and dictionaries. This being said, to confine pneuma to this definition when translating is to actually mistranslate this word from a Roman/Hellenistic worldview. In Roman and Hellenistic thought, woven through as it was with Stoic ideas and concepts which were the dominant thinking of the time period, "pneuma" meant so much more, much like "logos" means so much more than just "word" and because of its greater meaning in this worldview, is almost untranslatable with a single word in modern English.
      In the first century Hellenistic world, the word "pneuma" referred to "the breath of life," but also the "creative fire." It was seen as being made up of the elements of air and fire. At times, it is used almost synonymously with "logos" as the "generative principle" of creation, and like "logos" it is seen as permeating all of creation, animating everything, and identified with "the God." It is one of the two things, matter being the other, as being neither created nor destroyed and is therefore immortal and eternal. It is in one place described as the "soul" of the God of which every human being has a share or takes part in.
      In modern English, really, the best actual translation of this word, if we were to take all of this into account, is "energy" as we understand it today within modern science. That is, it is the eternal, omnipresent foundation of all matter and existence, as well as the animating force in living beings which can be neither created nor destroyed.
     Consider this definition of pneuma when Jesus tells Nicodemus (by his name, a Hellenistic Jew), "What is born from flesh is flesh, but what is born from pneuma is pneuma. And the pneuma goes where it wills and you hear its sound but you don't know from where it is coming and where it is going. So is every single person born from the pneuma."
     Consider also that within the Roman/Hellenistic Stoic worldview, there is the God who is Father and Creator of all (identified as Zeus outside of Jewish thought, but still), there is the Logos, identified with the God, which is the active governing principle of the universe which the God used to create the universe and in which the entire universe consists and is held together, and which every human being holds a share or part, and then there is the Pneuma, also identified with the God, the creative fire, the animating principle of the universe, also in which all human beings have a share as their individual souls are themselves portions of it.
     The God and Father, the Logos, and the Pneuma. Sound familiar? We find these three also in 1 John 5:7 (Textus Receptus), "Because there are three who testify in the sky, the Father, the Logos, and the Hagion Pneuma; and these three are one thing."

      It is often said that the theme of the Gospel of John is Jesus as God. This is not entirely accurate. The theme of the Gospel of John is Jesus as "Logos," which is just slightly different in concept. But we can see this being addressed up front in the first chapter, "And the Logos incarnated and camped out among us..." When Jesus talks about Himself as being the Way, the Truth, and the Life, He is talking about Himself as Logos. When He says, "And if the Son shall set you free, you will in fact be free," He is talking about the Logos, incarnated as Himself, setting you free. The distinction between "the God" and "the Logos" is an important one, because while the Logos is identified with "the God" in first century Greco-Roman (and Stoic in particular) thought, it is clear that there is a difference, and the Logos is always considered to be the "firstborn of all creation through which everything was made" and in which all human beings have a share or portion of. The influence of the Greco-Roman Stoic understanding of "the God," "the Logos," and "the Pneuma," on the writings of John in particular, but also of Paul should not be dismissed or underestimated because it is Greco-Roman in origin and rooted in Stoic philosophy rather than being specifically Jewish or rooted in the Old Testament.

      I don't think it's that much of a stretch to say that our concept of the Holy Trinity has its original roots in the Roman/Hellenistic Stoic worldview. This does not make it untrue just because of its Stoic origin, but it does mean that the concept did not originate within any period of Judaism.
      I am becoming more and more convinced that much of the New Testament, and even Jesus' preaching in the Gospels, was given and written with an audience already immersed in this decidedly Greco-Roman worldview in mind. I think it would do a lot of good for Bible teachers and translators to study the Stoic philosophers and Greco-Roman worldview before attempting to interpret what the New Testament teaches. Moreso than studying a Judean one.

The Message of the Cross

 Something that has repeatedly come up in reading Epictetus is the idea of what is and what isn't in accordance with nature. In short, in Epictetus' view, it is in accordance with nature that human beings act in accordance with reason (that is, "logos"), that human behavior by nature is meant to be "good," and that what is in accordance with nature is to only be concerned with those things which are up to you, what you actually have control over, and this is essentially your own will and whether or not your responses are based in reason or based in the passions, that is, fear, anger, or bodily cravings. That is, for Epictetus and the Stoics, it was a matter of which would have control over the human being, the logos or one's own flesh driven passions. This fascinates me, because in his view as I understand it, should a human being have total mastery over himself and not permit these things to be the origin of his responses but only pass judgment on the things of his own will and nothing external to himself or herself, then that person would be at peace, and be free from all concerns, all attachments, have joy, be more compassionate and more empathetic, and so on. And moreso, he or she would be a genuine follower of God. Within the circles of eastern religions and philosophy, also encompassing some New Age ideas, we find similar ideas in that in order to touch one's highest self, or operate from one's highest self, one must let go of or release fear, aggression, and the passions or cravings of the body. And in all of these systems, the ego, the "self" generated by the physical existence, must be dealt with in order to reach one's goal of attainment.
     And this morning, as I considered all of these things, I came back to this idea that human beings were initially created in the image of God, just as Jesus Christ was and remains the very image of the Father, so were our original progenitors. What one might call the soul, the spirit, or the immaterial part of man, what God first breathed into us was of Himself, of His own Spirit. In a way, and here I must be careful not to be misunderstood, also God from God, Light from Light incarnating into a physical, biological form. As I have previously written using the metaphor of a Massive Multiplayer Online game, our physical bodies are merely our avatars. What each of us really is, is itself immortal and eternal, because it is born of God Himself. What we are by nature is the very nature of God, that is, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, courtesy, trust, and self-control. That is what each of us actually is apart from the physical, biological body born from the elements of the earth. Part and parcel of the Logos Himself, joined as one with Him.
     But these biological forms, the brains which control them, are malfunctioning when compared with every other animal on Earth. The survival responses are in overdrive, forming and producing the ego/mind/identity and keeping the signal from what we genuinely are from getting through, or from assuming control like it was intended to. And so, as Paul writes, we cannot do what we want to do, and do what we don't want to do as we are driven by fear, aggression, feeding, and reproductive urges in response to just about everything.
     It is only when we disengage or detach from these responses that what we genuinely are begins to assert control once more. When a person disengages from those thoughts which trigger the survival responses, when they detach from those external things which might trigger fear, aggression, feeding, and so on, then almost immediately that person experiences peace, love, empathy, joy, and so on, and the more one practices this, the greater they grow. It is only as we disengage from our malfunctioning neurology and the ego which it produces that the Spirit of Christ, the Logos, will start to exert His rightful, natural control over the body. Another way of saying this is that we must die with Him, that He might live through us. As He Himself said, "The person who seeks to save his psyche (the ego/mind/identity) will destroy it, but the person who destroys his psyche for My sake will keep it into the life of eternity."
      This is the fundamental message and paradox of the cross, and one which God has appeared to speak through many witnesses in many cultures throughout history. This is God's nonsense which is wiser than the wisdom of human beings, and His "weakness" which is stronger than the strength of human beings. As Paul wrote, the message (logos) of the cross is nonsense to those who are being destroyed, but for us who are being delivered, it is God's power (ability, capability) and wisdom being charitably given to us through voluntarily dying to our ego/mind/identity so that His nature, the image of God and what is our own original nature, might reassert control over our malfunctioning physical forms. And this is why those who are not "Christians" yet still exercise detachment from those things which trigger the malfunctioning survival response are able to experience the "fruit of the Spirit" instead of the "works of the flesh" that Paul wrote about. Because they too, whether they know it or not, are practicing dying to themselves that He might manifest through them.
     It is a profound and revealing truth about the God who is love continuously reaching out His hand to His malfunctioning children.