Colossians 1:9-4:1, Revised from "The Practice of the Way"

     Because of this also we, from which day we heard, don’t pause praying and asking on your behalf, so that you would be filled full of the knowledge of His will which comes from seeing it for yourself with every wisdom and putting it together in the mind which both come from the Pneuma, to operate worthily of the Owner as far as every desire to please Him, with every good thing achieved producing fruit and being grown by the knowledge which comes from experiencing the God for yourself, being enabled with every ability in line with His reputed real power resulting in every endurance and keeping a long temper. With joy thanking the Father who is enough for you folks as far as the share of the inheritance of the holy in the light; Who rescued us from the authority of the darkness and transposed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, by means of Whom we have the redemption, [that is], the dropping of the malfunctioning behaviors, Who is the avatar of the unseen God, firstborn of all the creation, because with Him the everything has been created in the heavenly realms and on the ground, the visible things and the unseen, either thrones or ownerships or beginning ones or authorities; the everything was created through Him and for Him, and He exists before everything and the everything has been stood together by means of Him¹, and He is the head of the body of the Congregation; Who is the start, firstborn from the dead so that Himself being the first it would have happened among all, because He was pleased for the sum of everything to reside within Him and through Him to completely reconcile the everything away from the darkness into Himself again, having brought peace through the blood of His cross, whether the things on the earth or the things in the heavenly realms.

      And you folks, at one time existing separated and hostile in your conscious mind by means of your good for nothing works, yet now He completely exchanged you folks away from that with His physical body through this death to offer you folks holy and unblemished and not liable to an accusation standing directly in front of Him, if you at least continue by the realization of Yeshua having been grounded and seated and not moving from the hope of the Gospel which you heard which was preached among every single creation which is under the sky, of which I, Paulus became a servant.

      Now I rejoice with the sufferings on your behalf and fill up completely with my physical body what the crushings of the Anointed failed to reach on behalf of His body, which is the Congregation, of which I myself became a servant in line with the household management of the God which was given to me for the purpose of filling you with the Logos of the God, the mystery hidden from the eons and from the generations—yet now was made visible to His holy ones, to whom the God wished to make known what the wealth of the reputation of this mystery is among the people groups, which is the Anointed within you, the hope of this reputation; Whom we proclaim warning every single human being and teaching every single human being by means of every single bit of wisdom, so that we should cause every human being to stand brought to completion by means of the Anointed; for which thing I also wear myself out contending for this prize in line with His energy which is energized within me with power.

      Because I wish you to know what kind of a struggle I have on your behalf, on behalf of those in Laodikeia, and as many as haven’t physically seen my face, so that their hearts would be motivated having been brought together with love and as far as every wealth of the certainty of this union, for the knowledge of the mystery of God, the Anointed, which comes from seeing that mystery for yourselves, within whom [the Anointed] are hidden all the treasures of the wisdom and knowledge. I say this thing, so that no one would defraud you folks with the use of probable arguments. Because if I am also away from you where the physical body is concerned, all the same I am together with you where the Pneuma of the Anointed is concerned, rejoicing and looking at how you are ordered and drawn up and the solidity of your realization as far as the Anointed is concerned.

      Like you then received the Anointed, Yeshua the Owner, operate by means of Him, rooted and constructed upon with Him and being stabilized in this realization just like you were taught, overflowing with thanksgiving. Look out for not any of you to be the guy carrying people off as captives through the philosophy and empty sleight of hand in line with the mythology of human beings, in line with the rudiments of the illusion of this world and not in line with the Anointed; because within Him is the entire sum of what makes God “God” in a human body, and you are having been filled with Him who is the head of every princeps and authority, with whom also you were circumcised with a circumcision not made by human hands with the stripping off of the biological body with the circumcision from the Anointed, being entombed together with Him by means of your baptism, with which you were also raised together with Him through your realization with the energies of the God who raised Him from the dead; and you folks being dead by the missteps and foreskin of your physical body, He made you alive together with Him, having humored us where all the missteps are concerned. Having wiped out the handwriting against us in the dogmas which were opposed to us, and he took it from the middle having nailed it securely to the cross; having stripped the beginnings and the authorities he flaunted them openly, having led them in chains in a triumphant parade by means of Him.

      Don’t then let anyone judge you folks with food and with drink or with part of festival holidays or new moons or shabbats; which things are shadows of what’s to come, yet the body casting the shadow belongs to the Anointed. Don’t let anyone cheat you out of the prize wishing with humility and a religion of angels, setting foot upon what things he had not seen, for no reason having a big head under his biological intellect, and not seizing the head out of whom the entire body through the ligaments and sinews being supplied and brought together grows the growth of the God.

      If you died together with the Anointed away from the rudiments of the order of this world, what are you following dogmas for like living by means of the order of this world? “Don’t grasp nor taste nor handle,” which things are all as far as what’s consumed by using them up, in line with the commandments and teachings of human beings, which on the one hand hold a logic of wisdom by means of voluntary religion and humility and unsparing treatment of the body, but on the other hand are not with any value towards dealing with the gratification of the biological drives.

      If then you folks were raised together with the Anointed, look for the things up top, where the Anointed is seated at the right side of the God; be mindful of the things up top, not the things on the ground. Because you folks died and your life had been covered over in the earth together with the Anointed by means of the God; when the Anointed is made visible—the life of you all—at that time you folks will also be made visible together with Him by means of His reputation.

      Make then the parts of your body which are on the ground dead: whoring, dirtiness, passionate suffering, bad attachment, and the avarice which is idolatry, because of which things the passionate anger of the God is coming upon the unpersuaded sons among whom also you folks walked at one time, when you were living among them. And now you folks also disrobe yourselves from all these things: impulsiveness, temper, hurtfulness, blasphemy, profanity from your mouth. Don’t lie to one another, having stripped off the old Adam together with his activities and having been clothed with the new who is made fresh again for the knowledge which comes from observation in line with the image of the One having created him, where there isn’t a Greek and Iudaean, circumcision and foreskin, a barbarian, a Skythian, a slave, a free person, but the Anointed is the everything and within everything.

      Clothe yourselves then, like the holy and dear chosen of God, with the deepest parts of compassion, kindness, humility, courtesy, a long temper, holding up one another and charitably giving to yourselves (if someone holds a cause of complaint in the direction of someone; just like also the Owner charitably gave to you, so also you folks), and love above all these things, which is what binds the finished work together. And let the peace of the Anointed arbitrate within your hearts, as far as which also you were chosen in a single body; and become thankful. Let the logos of the Anointed reside within you opulently, teaching and minding yourselves with every wisdom, with the charity of the God singing psalms, hymns, spiritual odes with your hearts to the God; and every single thing what ever you might do by means of logos or labor, do everything by means of the name of the Owner Yeshua, thanking the Father God through Him.

      The women, post yourselves under the men as it is connected with the Owner. The men, love the women and don’t be made bitter towards them.

      The children, obey the parents in line with everything, because this thing is pleasing with the Owner. The fathers, don’t incite your children to anger, so that they wouldn’t be discouraged.

      The slaves, obey the flesh and blood owners in line with everything, not with eye-service like human pleasers, but respecting your owner with sincerity of the heart. Whatever you might do, work from the breath of life like you’re working for the Owner and not for human beings, knowing that you will receive repayment of your inheritance from the Owner. You are enslaved to the Owner, the Anointed; because the person doing wrong will be attended to for what he did wrong, and there isn’t any favoritism.

      The slave-owners, grant the right thing and equality to your slaves, instinctively knowing that you also have an owner in the heavenly realm.

1Though he doesn’t use the word explicitly, Paul is here describing Yeshua as what anyone in the first century would have understood the Logos to be.

More Thoughts About NDEs, Consciousness, Baptism, and Paul's Writings

     Recently, as those who read my blog already know, I’ve been going back through and revising the portions of Scripture I compiled for “The Practice of the Way,” but I’ve picked up and learned more since making those initial, very rough translations from the Greek texts. In particular, I’ve read and become far more familiar with Near Death Experience studies, the first century Stoic philosophers, “cross-religious” mysticism, and I’ve become more familiar with current consciousness studies, theories, and worldviews, in addition to familiarizing myself with the underlying mechanics of what would be considered more “New Age” energy work, muscle testing, and even some energy healing. Reading through Paul’s writings again in Greek and comparing these things to what he wrote has led me to some really fascinating ideas and conclusions.
     I realized something when working through revising Colossians. In Stoic philosophy, as in many philosophical or even religious systems, every human being is or contains a share or a "fractal" of the Logos who Himself or Itself is identified with the God and is the firstborn of the God, and the same with the Pneuma. Similarly in New Age systems of thought, born from both an older Hindu tradition as well as modern quantum mechanics and theory, all human consciousness is in fact a part or "fractal" of the one single, overarching, “big-C” Consciousness.
      I realized this morning that when Paul talks about the "Body of Christ" of which all are body parts, and instructing the Colossians to seize or grab tightly to the Head of the body, which is Christ, he is literally using virtually the same language and saying the same thing about human beings and Christ as the Stoics were saying about human beings and the Logos, and for that matter, a similar concept to what modern "New Agers" and in particular NDE experiencers report about the relationship of the human consciousness to the "Source Consciousness." That is, we are all a part of the same Consciousness with Christ, the Logos, or however you wish to name Him as the functional Head or command center of that Consciousness.
     Thinking again about where it says in Romans 6, "The person who died has been made right from the malfunction," as it relates to the aftereffects experienced by people who have had Near Death Experiences or literal "Death Experiences" and have returned to life (something about which I wrote and explained more in depth in a previous blog post). That is, people who have literally died for a period of time (sometimes quite extended) with either brain death, the stopping of the heart, or both, and resuscitated (or resurrected). The thought which occurred to me is that this is literally a mechanic of death and resurrection regardless of how it happens. That is, a disengagement from one's malfunctioning responses and engagement with the Spirit is a natural and normal result of death and resurrection as is evidenced by people who have had NDEs and consistently display a greater love, joy, peace, compassion, loss of a fear of death, a greater interest in spiritual things, a greater sense of connection with God, and even paranormal or supernormal abilities regardless of the belief system they started with.
     The insight I had this morning about this has to do with “energy work,” “energy healing,” sending positive or loving “vibrations” energetically to another person and so on, all of which can have observable and even measurable effects on the “target” depending on who is doing it and how it is being done. The way a sacrament is supposed to work, theologically speaking, is that it requires the express intention of both the person performing the sacrament and the person receiving it, and that it requires the belief of both parties that what is said to take place is taking place. And I can’t help but think this is very similar to the description of what happens with the energy work among New Age practitioners. Also, while in modern churches, even the Roman Catholic Church, anyone can technically baptize and the baptism considered to be valid, in the ancient church, especially the first couple of centuries, this wasn’t the case. Baptism and Eucharist were only to be done by specific people using specific rites or techniques. While today that seems divisive and outdated, what if it wasn’t meant that way? What if the reason why only certain people were permitted to do it was because these were the people who were actually properly trained and capable of doing it in such a way as to have the originally intended effect?
     Paul makes it very clear in Romans that those who are baptized into Jesus Christ are joined to His death and resurrection. Throughout his letters, he uses this same language and is so adamant about the baptized person’s inclusion into the death and resurrection of Christ it forms the basis of all his other instruction and teaching, appealing to it frequently, as the proper functional source of the Christian disciple’s behavior as opposed to his own malfunctioning flesh. My thought is that this was no metaphor or mere initiation rite. The rite of baptism was initially meant to energetically put or place or entangle the person into Christ’s own death and resurrection or resuscitation experience and in so doing induce the aftereffects of an NDE within the baptized person without actually having to stop that person’s heart. In so doing, that person would experience the death of the ego, the loss of the fear of death, the experience of union with God/Source as part of the aforementioned Consciousness or Body of Christ, as well as initiating the documented paranormal abilities. And this had to be done by someone who knew how to energetically entangle that person (regardless of whether or not they understood the actual mechanics).

     What if this was the whole reason Jesus Christ died on the cross and resurrected, so that those who chose to be His disciples could be freed, made right from their egos or their malfunctioning minds through grafting His death experience onto them through baptism without them having to physically die, so that they could experience those same aftereffects which are now reported by Near Death Experiencers? I've written many times before about Jesus' death not being about God being satisfied with blood in order to forgive. But this isn't that. This is about Jesus Himself as the Logos exploiting what is perhaps a mechanic of a physics we don't really understand in order to provide a solution to our human malfunction.
     If this is the case, this understanding would have a great deal of explanatory power on a number of level regarding not only what Paul wrote about, but also the experiences of people within the NDE and New Age communities about a number of things.

The Elephant in the Church Sanctuary

 There is a huge elephant in the room where modern Christianity is concerned, and very few within the churches that really want to have an honest conversation about it. We all know that it is there. We may even whisper about it to each other, seeking to find a solution to it or understand why it exists at all. But actually seeking real solutions to it can be enough to have you excommunicated, called a heretic, and have your life turned upside down and forever changed.
     Pick up a Bible and read the Gospels. Then read the book of Acts. Then, if you're really serious, search into the Early Church Fathers and the writings of the Church leadership prior to the Council of Nicea. Now, compare what they describe as a "normal Christian" and a "normal church" with an "average Christian" and a "normal church" almost anywhere in the world today.
     Do you understand now what the elephant in the church sanctuary is? Put plainly, they don't match. They don't match at all. Not in structure, not in form, not in practice, not in teaching, and not in displays of power. And it does not matter what denomination it is being compared with. It still does not match with what is described as normal Christian philosophy and practice, nor with what is described as normal, regular church philosophy and practice. We can all read the description of the way it started, the way it is supposed to be and what is supposed to be on display; and we all know that no matter how "good" a modern church might be, it does not match the original standard.
     And no one wants to be honest about why this is the case. The common excuses are either that those in the past were "super-saints" or things were supposed to fizzle out after so long of a time, or in the more extreme line of excuses, people just don't have enough faith, or it was all just a bunch of myth and hyperbole.
     The honest truth about why the modern churches don't look like the ancient churches is because they're neither teaching nor practicing what the ancient churches taught and practiced. As much as they talk about protecting the "ancient faith," what they're teaching, regardless of denomination, is relatively novel and new. For the Catholic Churches, it's a religion which really formed around the fourth century and was dictated by Roman imperial politics. For the Protestant churches and their descendants, its beliefs and practices which are mostly no older than five hundred years, and deviate in many places severely from what is actually recorded even as they proclaim to be returning to the "ancient faith."
     Consider this truth carefully. Those same religions, organizations, and spiritual communities which profess to "believe in Jesus Christ" and follow Him and do everything in His name, claiming to be His disciples, at their core are nothing like what His original disciples taught and practiced because their core teachings developed long after the original churches. There is also the complication that the Gospels and letters the original churches left behind are frequently if not always translated with the express purpose of bolstering the more modern teachings instead of the ancient ones.
     There is a saying which I have come to appreciate, "If you keep doing what you're doing, you're going to keep getting what you're getting." Another similar one is, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result each time." The modern churches, and modern Christians, have been doing the same thing over and over again for centuries, each time expecting a different result, and each time being upset and surprised when they get basically the same result. It genuinely disturbed me when, attending a church conference a couple of years ago where the topic was how the church should respond to changing cultural and spiritual challenges such as the deconstructionist movement for example; it genuinely disturbed me that what was advocated and celebrated was the message to "stay the course!" Using the image of a ship during a storm. The thought which continuously comes to my mind with this image is that you don't keep the ship on course when it's about to run into the rocks, or run aground. A good pilot will take the new conditions into account and steer the ship in a different direction to avoid the serious hazards and dangers.
     Unless the churches stop doing what they've been doing, protecting theologies and belief systems (and sometimes weaponizing them against certain groups of people) which didn't even originate in the ancient church, and seriously look at why the ancient churches were different, and what they did as disciples which made them so much different and more transformative, then we will continue to get more of the same, and people will continue to leave what they've been told is Christianity for something else that feels more real, not realizing that they were never taught what Christianity really is to begin with.

Romans 8, Revised from "The Practice of the Way"

 

There isn’t a single thing then which is at present a judgment against those who are by means of the Anointed Yeshua, not operating from the soft tissues of the body but from the Pneuma. Because the Torah of the living Pneuma freed you from the Torah of the malfunction and from Death by means of the Anointed Yeshua . Because the powerless thing of the Torah—by means of which the Torah was weak through the soft tissues of our body—the God having sent His own Son in what looks like malfunctioning soft tissues also surrounding the malfunction judged against the malfunction within the soft tissues, so that the regulation of the Torah would be fulfilled within us who don’t operate from those soft tissues of the body, but from the Pneuma¹. Because those folks existing from the soft tissues of the body mind the things of the soft tissues, yet those from the Pneuma the things of the Pneuma. Because the mindset of the soft tissues of the body is death, yet the mindset of the Pneuma is life and peace, because the mindset of the soft tissues of the body is hostile as far as the God is concerned, because they aren’t submissive to the Torah of the God, because neither can they be; and those existing by means of those soft tissues can’t please God². But you don’t exist by means of the soft tissues of the body but by means of the Pneuma, if in fact the Divine Pneuma resides within you, but if someone doesn’t possess the Pneuma of the Anointed, this person doesn’t belong to Him. Yet if the Anointed is within you, the body is in fact a corpse because of the malfunction yet the Pneuma is life because of a right state of being. And if the Pneuma of the One who raised Yeshua from the dead resides within you, the One having raised the Anointed from the dead will also make your dying bodies alive through the Pneuma residing within you.

      Therefore then, brothers, we are those obligated, not to the soft tissues of the body to live in line with those soft tissues, because if you live in line with the soft tissues of the body, you are intent on dying; yet if by the Pneuma you make the business of the body dead, you will live. Because as many as are led by the Divine Pneuma are Divine sons. Because you didn’t get a pneuma of enslavement again resulting in panic, but you got a spirit of adoption with which we cry out, “The Father is Abba³!” This Pneuma testifies together with our pneuma that we are Divine children. And if children, also heirs; Divine heirs in fact, and co-heirs of the Anointed if in fact we have the same thing happen to us as happened with Him so that we would also receive reputation together with Him.

      Because I figure that the sufferings of the current period of time aren’t worthy facing the impending glory to be revealed for us. Because the eager expectation of the creation eagerly welcomes the unveiling of the sons of the God. Because the creation was subjected to useless idiocy, not by mutual consent but because of the one having subjected it, upon the hope that this creation also would be freed from the enslavement of this decay into the freedom of the glory of the children of the God. Because we know that every single creation laments together and has the pains of childbirth together up to the present time; and not just this, but having the birth-certificate of the Spirit we also ourselves lament within ourselves eagerly welcoming the adoption, the slave-purchase of our bodies. Because we were rescued with this hope; but hope being looked at isn’t hope; because who hopes for the thing he’s looking at? But if we are hoping for the thing we aren’t looking at, we welcome it eagerly through patience.

    And in the same way also the Pneuma renders assistance to our weakness; because we don’t know what we should pray insofar as there is a need, but the Pneuma itself obtains an audience on our behalf with non-verbal expressions; and the One scrutinizing these hearts knows what the mindset of the Pneuma is, because in synch with God he obtains an audience on behalf of the holy. And we know that for those loving the God everything works together resulting in good, for those being summoned in line with His plan. Because those whom He knew by experience beforehand, he also marked out beforehand as formed together with the image of His Son resulting in Him being the firstborn among many brothers; and those whom He marked out beforehand, these also He summoned; and whom He summoned, these also He made right; and those whom He made right, to these also He gave His reputation.

      What then will we say to these things? If the God is on our side, who is against us? Who even didn’t hold back His own Son but handed Him over on behalf of all of us, how wouldn’t He also charitably give to us all things together with Him? Who will bring an accusation against the Divine chosen? God is the One making them right. Who is the one judging against them? The Anointed Yeshua is the One who died, yet more being raised, who also is at the right side of the God, who also obtains an audience on our behalf. Who would part us from the love of the Anointed? Crushing or distress or being hunted or hunger or nakedness or danger or single edged sword? Just like it had been written that, “Because of You we are made dead the whole day, we were calculated like sheep for slaughter.” But with all these things we are beyond victorious through the One having loved us. Because I have been convinced that neither death nor life nor messengers nor princeps nor things in the immediate present nor things impending nor powers nor height nor depth nor some different created thing can part us from the love of the God which is by means of the Anointed Yeshua, our Owner.

1Just as it was said in the text in Jeremiah, “I will write my laws in their thought processes, and on their hearts...”

2No definite article

3Aramaic for “Daddy”

Romans 7, Revised from "The Practice of the Way"

      Or are you ignorant, brothers (because I’m talking to those familiar with the Torah), that the Torah has ownership of the human being for as much of a time as he should be alive? Because the woman subject to the living man has been bound by the Torah; yet if the man should die, she would be shut down from the Torah of the man. Therefore then with the man alive she will be revealed an adulteress if she is with a different man; yet if the man should die, she is free from the Torah, with her not being an adulteress being with a different man. So that, my brothers, you also were put to death to the Torah through the body of the Anointed, for the purpose of you being with a different one, the one who is raised from the dead, so that we should produce fruit for the God. Because when we were responding by means of the soft tissues of the body, the feelings of the malfunctioning behaviors which were active through the Torah were within the parts of our body, resulting in the production of fruit for death; but at this point in time we were shut down from the Torah having died by means of what we were held down by, so as for us to be enslaved with the fresh quality of the Pneuma and not the old quality of the written letter.
     What then will we say? Is the Torah itself an error? Absolutely not; I wouldn’t have become familiar with the malfunction if not through the Torah; because too I wouldn’t have instinctively known attachment if the Torah wasn’t saying, “Don’t set your heart upon things.” Yet the malfunction having taken an opportunity through the command accomplished every attachment within me; because separate from the Torah the malfunction is dead. And I was alive apart from the Torah at one time, but the command having come the malfunction revived, yet I died and this command which was for the purpose of life was found inside of me resulting in death; because the malfunction getting an opportunity through the command deceived me and through it killed me, even as the Torah on the other hand is holy and the command holy and right and good.
     Has then what is good for me become death? Absolutely not; but the malfunction, so that the malfunction would become glowingly visible, is manufacturing death through what is good, so that the malfunction would become excessively malfunctioning through the command. Because we know that the Torah was born from the Pneuma, yet I myself am biological having been sold like a slave subject to the malfunction. Because I don’t know from experience what I’m accomplishing; because I am practicing, not this thing I wish, but I’m doing this thing I hate. Yet if I’m doing this thing which I don’t wish, I am agreeing with the Torah that it is beautiful, but I am currently no longer accomplishing it, but the malfunction residing within me is instead. Because I know that the good thing doesn’t reside within me, that is, within the soft tissues of my body; because the willingness is at hand within me, yet the accomplishing the good is not; because I’m not doing what good thing I wish, but I’m practicing this bad thing I don’t wish. Yet if I’m doing this thing I don’t wish, I myself am no longer accomplishing it but the malfunction residing within me. I am finding then the rule, for me who wishes to do the good, that the bad thing is at hand for me; because I am rejoicing with the Torah of the God in line with the inner human being, yet I am looking at a different Torah within the parts of my body soldiering against the Torah of my conscious mind and taking me prisoner by means of the Torah of the malfunction which exists within the parts of my body. I am a miserable human being; who will rescue me out of the body of this death? Yet thanks to the God through Yeshua the Anointed our Owner. Therefore then I myself am enslaved by the conscious mind to the divine Torah yet by the soft tissues of the body to the Torah of the malfunction.

On Belief and Realization

      I was listening to a podcast last night (Andre Duqum’s show, “Know Thyself”) where the guest being interviewed was pointing out that nothing actually “changes” when someone receives enlightenment. There is no miraculous conversion of the person from one thing to another, or addition to what they already are. The only thing which is different is their perception of what already is.
     I’ve been mulling this around subconsciously this morning even as I continue to go through Romans in Greek, revising a translation I already made, and it struck me that, "belief" or “trust” in the New Testament, and "realization" in the Eastern and New Age traditions are the same thing. One must believe or trust that they have already been joined to the Spirit of Christ as the New Testament teaches it, and in the same way one must realize that they are already one with God/Source in the Eastern or New Age traditions. Both involve a recognition, a knowing that internalizes what already is in order to make use of what already exists.
      Human beings were created in the image of God. The great lie of the snake in the garden is that we weren’t already the image of God and needed to do something to “become like God.” But our consciousness, the immaterial part of the human being is still the “image of God,” it is still, as some traditions might put it, a “fractal” of God, a share in the Divine Logos. Even Paul states plainly that Jesus Christ, the Logos incarnate, is "the image of God, the firstborn of all creation," and every human consciousness, having a share in that Logos is also still itself the image of God. But after our ancestors’ mistake, our biological brains, the transceivers that allow us to interact with the world within spacetime, were altered so that we are almost constantly in a kind of survival or threat mode, enslaving our consciousness to this malfunctioning white and gray matter, leading to a functional insanity whose end is death and destruction.
     Deliverance from this is dependent on a realization of what already is, that our consciousness, what we really are, is still the “image of God,” and shares in God being one with God through being one with or a share of that Divine Logos who is Jesus Christ. One must not just mentally assent to it, there must be a realization deep within that takes place that recognizes what is already true. This is why many if not most who claim to believe still fret and worry and just don’t seem to get it. They haven’t had that realization. They’re seeking, so to speak, they want to "believe" and are working towards that "belief," but they are still internally blind to what already is because this internally malfunctioning brain is blinding them and keeping them chained and enslaved to their fear, anger, and bodily cravings.
     The “faith” talked about in Romans is more than mere mental or verbal assent to a thing, it’s a realization that this thing is reality and making use of that reality for oneself, something no one else can do for you. You can tell someone what reality is until you’re blue in the face, but until they “realize” what it is, it will be for nothing. They’ll reply, “I know,” and continue on in their own destructive delusions.

     The cross, the death, burial, and resurrection of the Divine Logos as a human being enables us, either mystically, psychologically, or practically, to shut down that malfunctioning response center of the brain and work from that innate connection of our consciousness back to the Source, back to the God, through the Logos who incarnated as Jesus Christ. It enables us to "die" to that malfunctioning piece of flesh, and to "resurrect" with that fully enabled consciousness in the driver's seat where it belongs without the malfunctioning piece of flesh's interference or self-sabotage. It enables us to function correctly, with the brain returned to its subordinate place as a transceiver for the consciousness which is itself born of God, and with no need for external restraints like laws, rules, or regulations because it is God's own nature being expressed.

     Salvation, or deliverance, in this respect is in fact "by faith," but it is a realization of what is already reality, what is already true, what has already been done, not an initiation of something to become true.

Romans 6, Revised from "The Practice of the Way"

 

     What should we say then? Should we continue by the malfunction, so that the charity of the God would overflow? Absolutely not. Such ones as we who died to this malfunction, how would we still live by means of it? Or are you ignorant that, as many of us as were baptized into the Anointed Yeshua, were baptized into His death? We were then buried together with Him through this baptism into His death, so that just like the Anointed was raised from the dead through the reputation of the Father so also we should walk with a fresh quality of life. Because if we had become grown together with something that looks like His death, we will then be grown together with His resurrection also; recognizing this, that our old human being was crucified together with Him so that the organic structure of our malfunction would be shut down, with us no longer being enslaved to this malfunction; because the person who has died has been set right, parted from the malfunction. Yet if we died together with the Anointed, we believe that we will also be alive together with Him, knowing that the Anointed having been raised from the dead is no longer dying, death no longer has ownership of Him. Because the thing which died, died once and for all to the malfunction; yet should the thing live after that, it would be alive to the God. So also you calculate yourselves to be dead on the one hand to the malfunction yet living to the God by means of the Anointed, Yeshua.

      Don’t then let the malfunction reign within your body which is subject to death for the obedience to that body’s longings, neither offer the parts of your body weapons of wrong to the malfunction, but offer yourselves to God like alive from the dead and the parts of your body weapons of a right state of being to God. Because your malfunction will not have ownership of you; because you are not subject to the Torah but subject to the charity of God.

      What then? Should we screw up because we aren’t subject to the Torah but subject to the charity of the God? Absolutely not. Don’t you know that to whom you offer yourselves slaves for obedience, you are slaves to whom you obey, either of the malfunction resulting in death or of obedience resulting in a state of right being? Yet thanks to the God that you were slaves of the malfunction yet you obeyed from the heart as far as which type of teaching to which you were handed over, yet having been freed from the malfunction you were enslaved to a right state of being. I am speaking humanly because of the weakness of the soft tissues of your body. Because just like you offered the parts of your body slaves to being dirty and to this lawlessness resulting in the lawlessness you practiced, in this way now offer the parts of your body slaves to a right state of being resulting in a state of being holy. Because when you were slaves of the malfunction, you were free with respect to a state of right being. What fruit then did you possess at that time? By which you are at present ashamed, because the goal of those things is death? But at present having been freed from the malfunction yet having been enslaved to the God you have your fruit as far as a right state of being, and the result, the life of the Eternal One. Because the compensation you receive from working for the malfunction is death, yet the charitable gift of God is the life of the Eternal One by means of the Anointed, Yeshua our Owner.

My Understanding Of What Paul Was Trying To Say in His Letter To The Romans

      Lately, I’ve been revising the translations I made for my book, “The Practice of the Way” with the intent of republishing it as a second edition. After working through the life of Christ again, mostly from the Gospel of John, I’ve started in on the letters and have reached the chapters of Romans which I included in this volume, and to be honest, I’m finding myself having a harder time actually translating this work than I should be.

       I’ve worked through it, translated through it so many times over the past thirty years that I’ve lost count. I probably know the Greek text of Romans better than I know any English translation of it. There’s just no good reason for me to be stumbling over the text. I feel like the Greek makes perfect sense to me, but when I try and render it into English I fall flat on my face, and I can’t explain that. I go back and look up the expanded definitions of words I already know and have looked up a dozen times before, and I still can’t seem to render into English what my consciousness, what my soul is telling me that it is supposed to say or mean.

      Part of this, I know, has to do with my hyperliteralism, a holdover from my Asperger’s from before my neurofeedback treatments. I’m still very left brain dominant, and still not used to using my right brain or allowing it much freedom, especially with this. I’m stumbling over the actual words trying to either use the lexical definitions or create newer, more modern English ones, and the final result of neither approach looks or sounds right to me, but I know deep within that the standard translations found in versions like the King James Version, the New American Standard, the New American Bible Revised, or the English Standard Version are off. I know it, but I’m tripping up on the actual words trying to render what it is supposed to say into English, and the translation, and what Paul was trying to say, is suffering because of it.

      In chapters one and two, Paul begins by trying to describe the downward spiral of human beings due to our common human ancestor’s mistake in the garden (from the opening chapters of Genesis) and the resulting malfunction, which he doesn’t actually mention until chapter five but assumes everyone knows what he’s talking about until then. He works off of the assumption that this resulting malfunction is located within a human being’s flesh, that is, the soft tissues of the body such as muscle, sinews, and organs, but doesn’t directly state this until chapter seven. What he does directly state is that the God is vehemently, passionately angry at this malfunction (as opposed to the human beings themselves) and what it has done to us, and has judged against this malfunction for the destruction it has caused. Where we were created as the genuine image of God, we now fail to measure up to that image because of this malfunction. For this reason, because the malfunction is inherited and physically based, it’s not possible for this malfunction to be corrected by just doing what the law of Moses, the Torah, says, and in fact, keeping the Torah, or any regulation or rule no matter how well intentioned, can and does actually exacerbate the malfunction. Everyone is born with it and it is the reason why our common human ancestor and all of his descendants began dying to begin with. It doesn’t matter if someone is circumcised or still has a foreskin, they are still affected by this malfunction and the flawed and erroneous behaviors it produces create a kind of insanity within everyone affected, making us unable to experience the God, and are destroying us and will eventually lead to the total destruction of the human race.

      God’s solution to our malfunction, as Paul explains it, is to freely give us through His own charity towards us His own Eternal Life, His own Spirit through a union with Jesus Christ in His death and resurrection, thus correcting or bypassing the malfunctioning flesh as long as we cooperate with Him, “walking in the Spirit” as he describes it. What Paul describes is that He gave this to everyone freely out of His charity towards us, that is, everyone already possesses it and in order to make us of it, rendering the malfunction inert, we just have to trust Him that it’s there and cooperate with Him. He then spends an entire chapter digressing about how it is entirely “Biblical” that a person’s malfunction is corrected by just trusting the God using the example of Abraham in Genesis who also trusted God and it was counted as him operating from a right state of being instead of the malfunction.

      From here Paul gets more explicit about the two states which exist within the human being, calling one the “old human being” and calling the other the “new/fresh human being,” depending on which state the person was cooperating with or, as Paul put it, enslaving themselves to. As far as Paul was concerned, a human being was either a slave of their own malfunctioning flesh, or a slave of God’s life, His Spirit with whom they had been joined. The former leads to death as its natural result, as he illustrated in no uncertain terms in the beginning of the letter. The latter leads to life, and specifically, God’s life within the person. There is no judgment against, no condemnation against those who are cooperating with God’s life within them, that is His Spirit, and His Spirit is incapable of erring or being subject to that physically based malfunction. The malfunctioning flesh however has no hope, no possibility of doing the right thing on its own, because it can’t. The only state of right being is God’s state of right being, and the only way to actually do the right thing is through engaging with and cooperating with God’s state of right being. Any engagement with or submission to one’s own malfunctioning flesh will result in errors, mistakes, flaws, and eventually one’s own destruction and death.

      This is what Paul was trying to say in Romans 1-8 in a nutshell. And really, this is everything he was trying to say. It was never about God being angry with human beings, He was angry with the malfunction. It was never about needing a blood sacrifice to be forgiven, much less a glamour or facade of “righteousness” which could cover us so God didn’t have to look at our filthiness. It was about God fixing the problem by joining Himself to us, combining Himself with us so that we no longer had to be enslaved to this malfunction, and in this way He would break the downward spiral of insanity which the malfunction induced within us, and the flawed, harmful behaviors it caused. In Paul’s later letter to the Galatians, he becomes even more explicit that there is no way to achieve a state of right being just by keeping rules, regulations, or doing what the Torah says. The problem is in the malfunctioning flesh, and it will still be in the malfunctioning flesh no matter how many rules you keep. Rule keeping can’t change the inherited malfunction. As he writes there, “Walk in the Spirit, and you will not bring the desires of the flesh to completion at all. Because the flesh desires against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh, and these two things are opposed to one another so that you can’t do what you want.”

      This principle message which Paul sent by courier, probably to Priscilla and Aquila first as they had been returned to Rome for a couple of years at least, to be disseminated to the rest of the Roman groups of Christians, isn’t as well understood as it should be because of many factors both historic and linguistic. And it should be understood because it is literally the underpinning, the foundation of everything Paul wrote in all of his letters. Even John alludes to this understanding in his first letter where he talks about “the one born from the God” and “the one born from the slanderer.” Where Paul talks about the extreme importance of love in his writings, John declares that the one who doesn’t love doesn’t experience the God, because the God is love, and the one who loves is born of God and experiences Him. They may have said things in different ways, but they were in perfect synch with their understanding of both the problem and God’s solution, and it had nothing to do with God wanting to destroy anyone.

      I’m still working through my roadblocks to doing justice to Paul’s thoughts in a translation of Romans, but for now, this is my understanding of what he was trying to say.

Romans 5, Revised from "The Practice of the Way"

Having then been made right from this trust, we have peace facing the God through our Owner, Yeshua the Anointed through whom also we have possessed the solemn access by this trust into this charity with which we have stood and brag loudly upon the hope of the reputation of the God. And not just this, but we also brag loudly about these afflictions, knowing that the affliction achieves endurance, and this endurance achieves a passed test, and this passed test achieves hope. And this hope doesn’t cover with shame, because the love of the God had been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Pneuma which was given to us. Because the Anointed still, with our still being weak, died for the sacrilegious when it was time. Because someone would barely die on behalf of a right person (because someone would also perhaps dare to die on behalf of a good person); yet the God combines His own love into us, because the Anointed died on our behalf with us still being malfunctioning people. By much more then, having now been made right with His blood, will we be rescued through Him from the overwhelming passion. Because if being hostile we changed to the God through the death of His Son, by much more having changed will we be rescued with His life; yet not just this, but also bragging loudly with the God through our Owner, Yeshua the Anointed through whom we now possess this exchange.

Because of this, just like through one human being the malfunction entered into the universe and Death through that malfunction, and in this way Death was diffused into all human beings by which everyone malfunctioned; because the malfunction was within the universe up to the Torah, yet the malfunction wasn’t being accounted with the Torah not existing, but Death reigned from Adam up til Moshe and over those not having erred by the same kind of misstep as Adam, who is a type of the One being intended.

But the charitable gift¹ isn’t in this way like the misstep; because if by the one’s misstep the many died, by how much more is the charity of God and what is freely granted with that charity which overflowed from the one human being, Yeshua the Anointed, into the many. And the gift isn’t like through the one having malfunctioned; because the crime from the one in fact resulted in condemnation, but the charitable gift from many missteps results in the mending of the wrong. Because if by the one’s misstep Death reigned through the one, by how much more will these accepting the overflow of this charity and the right state of being which is freely granted reign by means of life through the One, Yeshua the Anointed. Therefore then, like through the one’s misstep resulted in condemnation for all human beings, so also through the one’s mending of the wrong resulted in life’s being set right for all human beings; because just like through the unwillingness to listen of the one human being brought down the many as malfunctioning people, so also through the willingness to listen of the One, the many will be set down as people made right. And the Torah was introduced, so that the misstep would be excessive; and where the malfunction was excessive, this charity overflowed beyond that, so that just like the malfunction reigned by means of Death, so also the charity would reign through the right state of being resulting in the life of the Eternal One through Yeshua the Anointed, our Owner.

1The word here is χαρισμα which is also frequently translated as “spiritual gift” in the sense of the healings, miracles, tongues, and so one described by Paul in 1 Corinthians and other letters, and in the Catholic tradition is the base word for “charismata.”

Thoughts on Consciousness and MMORPGs

     Recently, I've been listening to fascinating podcasts on the problem of consciousness and the nature of reality. It's not the first time I've visited the subject, though it seems like it's mostly the "New Age" community, or those derided as "New Age", that really explore this topic to any serious depth. From these podcasts, I learned that it was also credible scientists with serious credentials who were exploring the nature and origin of consciousness as well. 

     One scientist, Donald D. Hoffman, gave a really interesting interview about how the math suggests, or even confirms, that we have the relationship of consciousness to the world we experience backwards. That is, in his view and according to his calculations, it is consciousness which actually creates spacetime and everything which we observe and interact with, and when we are not observing it, it ceases to exist as such. Based on the laws of quantum physics. something becomes real only when it is observed by a conscious mind. The analogy he used was that of a virtual reality headset, or a computer monitor, which arranges the patterns of light to create the images that you see, but once you look away from them with the headset, they no longer exist as such. The same is true with the computer monitor while, say, playing a first person RPG game. The monitor arranges the patterns of light emitting diodes to create the facade of a fully developed world you can interact with, but once you turn away from looking at something, it literally no longer exists as such because it is no longer being displayed or "observed."

      I was thinking this morning about the idea that we create the reality we experience. Whether Hoffman's ideas are true or not, on some level this is true in that the human consciousness can only experience the reality interpreted for it by the physical brain as it receives sensory inputs. We can only experience as real what our brains are telling us is real. Thus the reality each individual person experiences is subjective to that person. As Morpheus said in Matrix, "What is real? How do you define 'real'? If you're talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then 'real' is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain."

     This being the case, there are only two possibilities then to explain why other consciousnesses are experiencing at least similar if not identical shared experiences to me or us. The first is that all other people and living beings are just creations of my own mind, and my consciousness is the only "I am." This means that my self-awareness is the only "real" person, and everything and everyone else is merely a hallucination that my mind is creating for me to experience. The second is that all other people and living beings are also autonomous consciousnesses subjectively experiencing a shared reality. This allows for the existence of "real" conscious beings other than myself and some kind of an objective reality with all conscious beings interact. If the second possibility is the case then there must be a greater consciousness, a supreme consciousness, an ultimate "I Am" coordinating the subjective experiences of the lesser consciousnesses. 

     Put in gamer's terms, I'm either playing a stand-alone one player game where both the information which forms the world around me and the engine which drives it are both self-contained within the single system (like Skyrim for example), or I'm using a client in a massively multiplayer online RPG coordinated by an overarching server which enables all clients to interact together with shared experiences. With this type of game, all of the data files, the description of the world, the sights and sounds, are all stored locally as client software on a personal computer. But in order for the game to work, there must be server software which allows all the individual clients to interact with one another, and also coordinates and keeps track of everything which happens within the game world as well as initiating events at the appropriate times. Not every client will offer the exact same UI depending on how it has been modded, what language it's in, etc. But every client must be connected to the server or one cannot experience the game in any meaningful way. I've had the strange experience, due to an error, of running a World of Warcraft client after it had disconnected from the server. Sure, I could run around and see things, but could see no one else, could talk to no one else, could do no quests, could interact with nothing, and I couldn't even log out or exit the game normally! 

     The same is true of consciousness and reality. There must be an independent, greater consciousness coordinating every else's experiences with mine in order for everyone else I interact with to be objectively real and not mere figments created by a hallucinating consciousness. If there wasn't, there could be no objective reality. If the consciousness of every single human being was itself creating reality which every other consciousness could experience (in the vein of a kind of "peer to peer" experience), then the shared reality would be utter chaos without something or someone to keep it within some sort of framework which every consciousness could relate to. But instead of utter chaos, what we still see is an ordered world which can even be described by consistent mathematics.

     In researching these things, it is my opinion that a perspective needs to be kept in that our collective consciousnesses were born from one Source, but that Source was not born from our collective consciousnesses as some are inclined to argue. And it is that Source which continues to keep that reality we all experience operational, and without Him it simply wouldn't exist, and neither would we in any fashion.

Romans 3, Revised from "The Practice of the Way"

 

What thing more then does the Iudaean have than anyone else, or what help is circumcision? A lot down the line with every turn. First in fact because the oracles of the God were trusted. Because what if some didn’t trust them? Their distrust doesn’t render the trust of the God useless, does it? Absolutely not. And let the God become true, and every human being a liar, just like it had been written, “So that You would be declared right with the things You said, and You would conquer with Your being brought to trial.” But if our wrongdoing combines with a divine state of right being, what are we saying? The God who brings passionate anger upon us is not wrong, is He? (I’m talking in line with a human being.) Absolutely not. Since how would the God decide the universe? Yet if the God’s truth overflows with this lie of mine into His reputation, what am I also still being judged like a malfunctioning person for? And not just like we are blasphemed and just like some people talk for us to say, ‘We should do the harmful things, so that the good things would come’? For which people there exists the legitimate verdict.

What then? Are we Iudaeans shielded? Not entirely, because we previously accused both Iudaeans and Greeks all to be subject to this malfunction, just like it had been written that,

“There isn’t a person who is right, not even one, there isn’t a person who gets it, there isn’t a person who searches out the God. Everyone turned away at the same time they were made useless. The person doing kindness doesn’t exist, there isn’t even one. Their voice box is a tomb having been opened, they deceived with their tongues, cobra venom is under their lips; of whom the mouth is fully loaded with curses and bitterness, their feet are keen to spill blood, fracture and grinding work are with their paths, and they haven’t experienced the path of peace. The divine fear doesn’t exist in front of their eyes.”¹

Yet we instinctively know that as much as the Torah says it’s talking to those in the Torah, so that every mouth would be hedged in, and the entire universe would be brought to the God for trial since the labors of the Torah will not set right the flesh of anyone facing Him, because the knowledge of the malfunction gleaned by observation comes through the Torah.

Yet now, separate from the Torah, a divine state of right being had been made visible being testified to by the Torah and the prophets; and a divine state of right being, not through the Torah, but through the guarantee of Yeshua the Anointed as far as all those trusting. Because there isn’t a difference between Iudaean and Greek: because everyone malfunctioned and doesn’t measure up to the reputation of the God, everyone is being set right for free by His charity through being recovered by means of the Anointed, Yeshua; whom the God displayed a mercy-seat [like on the Ark of the Covenant]² publicly, through the guarantee of Yeshua, with Yeshua’s blood for the proof of His state of right being because of the God’s dismissal of the mistakes which had happened prior to this within the God’s truce, for the evidence of His state of right being during the current period of time, as far as Him being right and setting right the person who is of the trust of Yeshua.

Where then are the bragging rights? They were shut out. Through what kind of law? Of things you have to labor for? No, but through a law of trust. Because we count a human being to be set right by trust without the labors of the Torah. Or is He just the God of the Iudaeans? Isn’t He also the God of the people groups too? Yes, He’s the God of the people groups too, since there is a single God who sets a circumcision right from trust and a foreskin through trust. Are we then making the Torah useless through this trust? Absolutely not, instead we are making it stand.³

1This citation by St. Paul is actually an amalgam or paraphrase of several passages, in particular Psalm 14:1-3, Psalm 53:2-4, Psalm 5:10, Psalm 10:7, Isaiah 59:7-8, and Psalm 36:2. It also echoes, like Romans 1, several passages from the Wisdom of Solomon, namely chapters 2, 13, and 14.

2Not in the Greek text, but added to clarify “mercy-seat” (Greek “ιλαστηριον”) which was the solid gold lid of the Ark of the Covenant which held statues of Cherubim and was sprinkled with blood once a year on the Day of Atonement.

3Like with the omission of the crucifixion and resurrection account, I have omitted the text of Romans 4 entirely. This chapter is frequently misunderstood where Protestant Christianity is concerned, and is really just St. Paul’s Biblical exposition of being made right by trusting God as opposed to one’s own achievements which he also expounds on in his letter to the Galatians. It was felt that this chapter would prove a distraction from the overall intent, and thus was omitted from this work.

Romans 2, Revised from "The Practice of the Way"

 

Therefore, you are without a defense, O every single human being who judges; because with what criteria you are judging the other different person, you will judge against yourself, because you who judge are practicing the self-same things. And we know that the verdict of the God upon those practicing such things as these is in line with reality. But are you counting on escaping the verdict of the God, O human being judging those practicing such things as these and doing them yourself? Or are you minded against the wealth of His kindness and relief and long temper, being ignorant that the kindness of the God is guiding you into a change of heart? Yet in line with your hardness and unchanging heart you treasure up for yourself passionate anger on the day of passionate anger and revelation of the right decision of the God who will repay to each person in line with his actions. He will repay the life of the Eternal One to those in fact looking for, in line with the endurance of a good work, reputation and value and incorruption; but with passionate anger and intensity to those from selfishness also disobeying Reality, being convinced by that wrongdoing. Crushing and confinement upon every single breath of life of a human being effecting the bad from working at it, both Iudaean first and Greek; yet reputation and value and peace to every single person effecting the good by working at it, both to Iudaean first and to Greek; because there isn’t any partiality in God’s presence. Because as many as screwed up without the Torah, will also be destroyed without the Torah, and as many as screwed up by means of the Torah, will be decided through the Torah; because not those who hear the Torah are declared right at the side of God, but those who do the Torah will be declared right. Because when the people groups who don’t possess the Torah should naturally do the things of the Torah, these not possessing the Torah are a Torah for themselves; such ones as demonstrate the work of the Torah written on their hearts, with their conscience testifying together with, and in the middle of, one another’s calculations prosecuting or also defending them on the day when God will decide the hidden things of human beings in line with my Gospel through Yeshua the Anointed.

“Yet if you are called a Iudaean and rest upon the Torah and brag with God and know His will by experience and prove different things by testing being instructed from the Torah, having convinced yourself also to be a guide of the blind, a light for those in the darkness, a tutor for the mindless, a teacher of infants, having the embodiment of the knowledge and Reality within the Torah; the one who teaches the other person, do you not teach yourself? The one who preaches not to steal, do you steal? The one who says not to commit adultery, do you commit adultery? The one abhorring the idols, do you commit sacrilege? You who speak loudly with the Torah, are you insulting the God through the violation of the Torah? Because, “The name of the God is blasphemed because of you among the people groups,” just like it had been written. For circumcision is on the one hand a benefit if you should practice the Torah; but if you are a violator of the Torah, your circumcision has become a foreskin. If then the foreskin guards the regulations of the Torah, doesn’t his foreskin count for circumcision? And the foreskin by nature who brings the Torah to completion will judge you the violator of the Torah through the letter and circumcision. Because it isn’t the person who is visibly a Iudaean nor the circumcision visible within the soft tissues of the body, but the person who is a hidden Iudaean, and the circumcision with the Pneuma not with the letter of the Torah, the praise of whom is not from human beings but from the God.

Romans 1:16-32, Revised from "The Practice of the Way"

Because I am not ashamed of the Gospel, because it is the divine power¹ for the rescue of every single person who trusts, both Iudaean first and Greek. Because the divine state of right being is revealed with the Gospel starting from trust and ending with trust, just like it is written, “and the person set right will be alive by trust.”

Because the divine overwhelming passion is revealed from the heavenly realm against every irreverence and wrongdoing² of human beings who keep Reality suppressed with that wrongdoing, for the reason that what is known of the God is visible inside them; because the God made it visible to them. Because His unseen things, or also His endless power and state of being God (the mind being aware of them) are observed from the creation of the universe by the things made, as far as them to be without defense for the reason that experiencing the God they didn’t think of Him like God or thank Him, but were brought to nothing with their thoughts and their witless heart was darkened. Asserting to be wise they became stupid and exchanged the reputation of the undecaying God with the likeness of an icon of a decaying human being, and birds and mammals and reptiles.

Therefore the God handed them over with the desires of their hearts into this filthy pus of them treating their bodies as worthless among themselves; such ones as exchanged the reality of the God with the lie and revered and ministered as priests to the creation aside from the One having created, who is blessed into the eons, amen. Because of this the God handed them over into worthless experiences, because their females too exchanged the natural employment into what is beside nature³, likewise too the males also letting go the natural employment of the female were kindled with their affinity for one another, males with males accomplishing an obscenity and getting from their going astray with themselves the compensation which was necessary⁴. And just like they didn’t examine whether or not they possessed the God with the knowledge gained by observation, the God handed them over to a failed mind, to do unbecoming things. Having been filled with every single wrongdoing, good-for-nothingness, avarice, harm, full of envy, murder, discord, cheating, malice, whisperers, slanderers, God-haters, violent, arrogant, braggarts, inventors of harm, disobedient to parents, witless, disloyal, unloving, unmerciful; such ones as knowing the regulation of God by observation that those practicing such things as these are worthy of death, don’t just do them but also approve of those who practice them.

1Here and following is once more the genitive of θεος without the definite article, signifying a more generalized adjectival use than specifying the individual person of “the God.”

2“Overwhelming passion” can also be translated “wrath, anger, or orgy.” Notice that it is directed towards the irreverence and the wrongdoing of human beings, not towards the human beings themselves.

3Referring to the bestiality which was at times a part of pagan worship rites of idols which was forbidden in Exodus 22:18, Leviticus 18:23, and 20:15-16.

4Also in the context of pagan worship rites of idolas as forbidden in Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13. Of particular note was the worship of Cybele in ancient Rome and prior where her priests would emasculate themselves, live as women, and offer themselves as temple prostitutes. The writings of the Early Fathers and the Didache specify the practice of pederasty as well.

1 John 5, Revised from "The Practice of the Way"

 

Every single person trusting that Yeshua is the Anointed has been born of the God, and every single person loving the One having given birth also loves the one having been born from Him. With this we experience that we should love the children of the God, when we are loving the God and do His commands. Because this is the love of the God for us to keep His commands and His commands not be heavy¹ [when we are keeping them]. Because every single thing which had been born of the God is victorious over the illusion of this world; and this is the victory which has been victorious over the illusion of this world, our trust. And who is the person victorious over the illusion of this world if not the person trusting that Yeshua is the Son of the God?

This One is the One having come through water and blood, Yeshua the Anointed, not with just water, but with the water and with the blood; and the Pneuma is the One testifying, because the Pneuma is the Reality. Because three are they who testify in the heavenly realm, the Father, the Logos, and the Holy Pneuma; and these three are One Existence. And three there are who testify on the ground, the Pneuma, and the water, and the blood; and these three are resting in the One Existence. If we accept the testimony of human beings, the testimony of the God is better; because this is the testimony of the God that He had testified about His Son. The person putting his trust into the Son of the God holds the testimony [of the God] within himself. The person not trusting the God had made Him a liar. And this is the testimony, that the God gave to us the Life of the Eternal One, and this Life is by means of His Son. The person possessing the Son possesses this Life; the person not possessing the Son of the God doesn’t possess this Life.

I wrote to you these things so that you would know that you possess this Life of the Eternal One, to those who put their trust into the name of the Son of the God. And this is the freedom to speak openly which we hold facing Him that if we should ask for anything in line with His will He listens to us. And if we know that He listens to us, whatever we would ask for, we know that we have the requests which we had requested from Him.

If someone should see his brother making a mistake with a malfunctioning behavior not in the direction of death, ask for it and He will give him life, to those making a mistake not facing death. There is a malfunctioning behavior facing death; I’m not speaking about that so that you should question it. Every wrongdoing is a malfunction, and there is a malfunction not facing death.

We know that every single thing [within you] having been born from the God doesn’t malfunction, but the One being born of the God keeps him and the good for nothing one doesn’t touch him. We know that we are born of the God and the whole illusion of this world lies by means of the good for nothing one. Yet we know that the Son of the God came here and had given to us the intention so that we would experience Reality, and we are within Reality by means of His Son, Yeshua the Anointed. This One is the real God and Life of the Eternal One. Little children, guard yourselves from idols.²

1That is, when His commands aren’t heavy when we are keeping them.

2One gets the sense that John intended to keep going with a new topic, but ran out of room on the scroll. You were limited in how much you could write by how long the piece of paper was.

1 John 4, Revised from "The Practice of the Way"

Dear ones, don’t trust in every pneuma but examine the pneumata by testing if they are born of the God or not, because many false prophets had come out into the universe. With this you experience the Pneuma of the God: every single pneuma which agrees that Yeshua the Anointed had come with flesh and blood is born of the God, and every single pneuma which doesn’t agree with Yeshua isn’t born of the God; and this thing is the one of the one opposed to the Anointed, which you had heard that he is coming, and now is already within the universe. You are born of the God, little children, and had been victorious over these false prophets, because the One within you is bigger than the one within the universe. They are of the illusion of this world, because of this these false prophets talk out of the illusion of this world and the illusion of this world listens to them. We are born of the God, what [within you] experiences the God listens to us, what [within you] isn’t born of the God doesn’t listen to us. From this we recognize the Pneuma of Reality and the pneuma of going astray.

Dear ones, we should love one another, because love is born of the God, and every single thing [within you] which loves had been born of the God and experiences the God. Every single thing [within you] not loving didn’t experience the God, because the God is love. With this the love of the God was made visible within us, because the God had sent out His one of a kind Son into the universe so that we would be alive through Him. With this is love, not that we ourselves had loved the God but that He Himself loved us and sent out His Son a mercy-seat about our malfunctioning behaviors. Dear ones, if the God loved us in this way, we also are obligated to love one another. No one had been a spectator of God at any time. If we should love one another, the God makes His home within us and His love has been brought to completion within us.

With this we experience that we are making our home within Him and He within us, because He gave to us out of His Pneuma. And we had been spectators and are testifying that the Father had sent the Son a rescuer of the universe. Whoever should agree that Yeshua is the Son of the God, the God makes His home within him and he within the God. And we had known and had trusted the love which the God holds within us.

The God is love, and the person making his home within love makes his home within the God and the God makes his home within him. With this that love had been brought to completion in the midst of us, so that we would have a freedom to speak out on the day of the decision, because we also are just like that One is within this universe. Fear isn’t by means of love but the love brought to completion tosses fear outside, because fear holds discipline and what is fearing hadn’t been brought to completion with love. We are loving because He Himself first loved us. If someone should say that, “I love the God” and should hate his brother, he is a liar; because the person not loving his brother whom he had seen can’t love the God whom he had not seen. And we have this command from Him that the person loving the God also loves his brother.

1 John 3, Revised from "The Practice of the Way"

Do you see of what kind of love the Father had given to us, so that we should be both summoned to be and exist as children of God¹? Because of this the illusion of this world doesn’t recognize us, because it didn’t recognize Him. Dear ones, We are children of God right now, and what we will be wasn’t yet made visible. We know that if it should be made visible, we will be the same as Him because we will see Him just like He is. And every single person possessing this hope upon Him makes himself sacred, just like that One is sacred.

Every single person engaging with the malfunction also engages in lawless behavior, and the malfunction is lawless behavior. And you know that One was made visible so that He would remove these malfunctioning behaviors, and the malfunction doesn’t exist within Him. Every single person making his home within Him doesn’t malfunction; every single person malfunctioning hasn’t seen Him nor experienced Him. Little children, don’t let anyone lead you astray; what [within you] is doing the right behavior is right, just like that One is right; what [within you] is engaging with the malfunction is born of the inner slanderer, because the inner slanderer malfunctions from the start². For this reason the Son of the God was made visible, so that He would undo the works of the inner slanderer. Every single thing [within you] having been birthed from the God doesn’t engage with the malfunction, because His seed makes its home within it, because it had been birthed from the God, and He can’t malfunction. With this the offspring of the God [within you] and the offspring of the inner slanderer [within you] are visible; every single thing not doing the right behavior is not born from the God, including the one not loving its brother.

Because this is the news which you heard from the start, so that we would love one another, not just like Kayin was of the good for nothing one and cut the throat of his brother; and for the sake of what did he cut his throat? Because his actions were good for nothing yet his brother’s right. And don’t be shocked, brothers, if the illusion of this world hates you. We know that we had been transitioned from Death into Life because we are loving the brothers: the person not loving makes his home within Death. Every single thing [within you] hating his brother is homicidal, and you know that every single homicidal thing doesn’t possess the life of the Eternal One making its home within it. With this we became experienced with love, because that One laid down His breath of life on our behalf; we are also obligated to lay down our breaths of life on behalf of the brothers. And whoever would have the means of living of the illuson of this world and should watch his brother having a need and should close his deepest feelings from him, how does the love of the God make its home within him? Little children, we shouldn’t love by message nor by tongue but with action and reality.

With this we will know that we are of Reality, and in front of Him we will convince our heart, if our heart should experience something against us, that the God is bigger than our heart and experiences everything. Dear ones, if our heart shouldn’t experience anything against us, we have a freedom to speak facing the God and whatever we ask we get from Him, because we keep his commands and do the things pleasing in front of Him. And this is His command, for us to put our trust in the name of His Son, Yeshua the Anointed and would love one another, just like He gave a command to us. And the person keeping His commands makes his home within Him and He within him; and with this we experience that He is making his home within us from the Pneuma which He gave to us.

1I am reminded here of the Roman practice of a father “adopting” his own biological children, legally acknowledging them as his. Notably, there is no definite article before θεος here and later where the same term, τεκνια θεου, is used. Rather than specifying “children of the God” it might also be rendered “divine children,” that is, children born from God as substance.

2Consider Paul’s distinction between the “new human being” and the “old human being,” and also his explicit teaching on the antagonism between the pneuma and the flesh in Romans 7 and Galatians 5.