I’ve been struggling to write this for days. I sit down to
write, and I stare at the blank page just as blank myself. Something
subconscious within me has been actively avoiding it, and immediately
trying to find other things to do. I even changed the operating
system on my laptop just to buy myself more time instead of sitting
down and working this out.
What is it that
I’ve been actively avoiding? Recently, I attempted to explain where
my hypothesis on Hamartia as neurological in nature came from, and
how it evolded, but that is not the end of the story. I didn’t feel
like I could just leave it at our common human problem. I wanted to
do the same thing for the solution to the problem. How did I arrive
at the conclusions I did, and why? This isn’t a light subject to
take on, and my conclusions about the solution, like my conclusions
about the problem, tend to stand outside of the theological
structures in which I grew up and in which I was at least initially
trained.
The way I was
initially raised and trained could best be explained by a short
Gospel presentation meant for quick or cold-contact evangelism called
the “Three Crucial Issues.” It’s been years, but if I remember
right, these issues were 1) All are guilty of sin and deserve God’s
judgment, 2) Jesus Christ died on the cross to pay for our sins, and
3) All one must do is believe that Jesus paid for their sins and they
would be saved, that is, forgiven of all their sins and wrongdoing
and granted entry into heaven when they died. The way I was taught,
once a person did actually believe this, then nothing they did from
then on could take this free forgiveness and entry into heaven away
from them. It was also taught that the only people who would be
forgiven and granted entry into heaven were those who believed this.
All others, whether they had access to this knowledge would suffer
God’s condemnation and be thrown into hell when they died. Writing
it out again now as I am, there is a certain simplicity to this
explanation which is of course appealing. And the way I was initially
taught to read the Scriptures, the 66 books of the Protestant Bible,
only reinforced this understanding, that is, as long as I used the
right English translation (preferably the King James Version, but the
New King James and the New American Standard were considered
acceptable). People from other denominations weren’t actually
Christians as I was taught, because they didn’t believe the way we
did, and they too needed to “be saved.”
Looking at it
written out now, there were so many things I took for granted, chief
of which was that I knew what “sin” was. I trusted what my
pastors and teachers taught me about it. I trusted that the books I
read about these things and other points of Christian teaching, all
of which were squarely within the realm of Evangelical Protestantism,
knew what they were talking about. Even after I was ostracised from
the group I had studied with and been a part of, I held rigidly firm
to all things which I had been taught, not so secretly hoping that my
“time of exile” would come to an end, and I would be able to
return to what had been a kind of found family for me. That no matter
how hard I tried I could not became more of a gift of God than I
undestood at the time, because, freed from needing to stay aligned
with the right belief system in order to remain “in the fold,”
for the first time in my life I gave myself permission to question
and find answers for myself.
I became Roman
Catholic, and in the process of so doing, I began actually reading
both the Early Church Fathers and the actual official Catechism of
the Catholic Church. The former revealed to me that the beliefs of
the earliest Christians had almost nothing in common with the way I
had been taught. The latter taught me that the Roman Catholic Church
which had been demonized in my Bible School coursework was not the
Roman Catholic Church as it officially taught, and that there was
more agreement than disagreement between the two. The priest who
confirmed me was one of the most Christ-like men I had met, and the
Franciscan Sister was also one of the most loving and kind women I
have ever met. I remember distinctly thinking to myself, if what I
was taught about the Roman Catholic Church was wrong, then what else
was I taught that was also mistaken? I then branched out and began
reading the spiritual works of other faiths as well as Greek
philosophy. And in all of it, it drew me, not away from Jesus Christ,
but always back to Him, whether it was Plato’s Socratic dialogues,
the Gospel of Buddha, the Tao Te Ching, or even the Bhagavad Gita. I
would eventually join the Old Catholic Church. I entered the
priesthood there on April 2nd, 2005, and was introduced
not just to Roman Catholic theological teaching, but Eastern Orthodox
as well. I would dive into the wealth of the Philokalia and the
writings of the Eastern Monastic Fathers in addition to more modern
Orthodox writings, both theological and mystical, and my
understanding of the writings of the Ancient Christian Church prior
to the schism between the east and the west grew by leaps and bounds.
I would also dive more and more into the original Greek text of the
New Testament, relying on it more and more until I just stopped using
English translations altogether except for a quick reference when
needed. I became so much better acquainted with John, Paul, Peter,
James, and Jesus Christ Himself in those pages, reading, translating,
re-reading, and re-translating over and over and over again so many
times with each book that I lost count.
And then, along
the way, I took a job working with students with moderate to severe
developmental and medical disabilities, among them Autism Spectrum
Disorder, Down’s Syndrome, Angelman’s Syndrome, quadriplegic
students, and more. It was in this position where I first asked the
question, “What if Paul meant what he said when he said that
Hamartia was located ‘in the flesh’?” and I started taking
psychology courses to find out. My answer to that question is in the
five posts preceding this one.
But my answer
to that question, that Hamartia, the “sin nature,” is really an
abnormally formed amygdala peculiar to human beings, raised several
more questions. I began to see it as a disorder similar to the
developmental disorders of the students I worked with every day.
Their brains hadn’t developed normally, and their behaviors
reflected that. Of course they still had choices they could make, but
those choices would be heavily influenced by their abnormal
neurological development. We had to gently correct harmful behaviors,
but what we were really taking note of and keeping track of was
whatever progress they were making, no matter how small. We expected
the aberrant behaviors because of the disorders, but what we kept
track of and celebrated were the behaviors which average human beings
would just consider normal and appropriate. The same is true of any
good parent with a child with a developmental or psychological
disorder. You don’t keep track of the wrong behavior, you expect
that and correct it when it’s happening, but you forget all about
it when they do something “normal and appropriate.” You flat out
celebrate that, encourage that, nearly dance for joy over that.
And similar to
Jesus’s question, I had to ask, if we as human beings, being as
twisted as we can be sometimes, know to do this with our own
children, why wouldn’t God do so as well with us? Why would He
demand repayment for each and every one of our disorder influenced
harmful behaviors, much less a blood sacrifice? Why would His focus
be on what we do wrong instead of what we do right? While this
question may have been subversively beginning to form in my
subconscious, it was a series of different podcasts by different
people who had deconstructed that really brought it into focus when
they asked, “What kind of a God who is love or Father would demand
the murder of His own Son in order to forgive people?” While I had
heard the criticism before of course, and brushed it off, now it hit
me squarely between the eyes. It was the kind of thing one of the
pagan tribal gods from mythology might demand, but not the God which
was described in the pages of the New Testament, or even for that
matter, the God who was described in the prophets of the Old
Testament.
I then really
began to look at this question, and go back to all of those
Scriptures which I had been taught to gloss over and interpret in the
light of the “Penal Substitutionary Atonement” (PSA) which had
formed the basis of my understanding of why Jesus died on the cross.
The more I looked, the more I came to understand that not only was
PSA only one way it could be interpreted among many, but it wasn’t
even the way the people to whom the Scriptures were originally
written would have understood it. I came to understand that the roots
and origins of PSA and the three crucial issues that I was taught
were really born in the 16th century, and not the first
century. And the deeper I studied the Greek language, and the Greek
texts of the Scriptures, the more I came to understand that the
English translations I had initially been taught to use were skewed,
intentionally or unintentionally, to teach PSA when the Greek really
didn’t, and it was never really the intention of any of the authors
of the New Testament, much less the Old. But then this leads to the
question, “What does it then mean that ‘Christ died for our sins’
(1 Corinthians 15:3) as the Scriptures teach?”
Let me
plagiarize myself a little here:
“The practice
of animal sacrifice is an ancient one. From what I’ve been able to
read on the subject, there have been animal sacrifices from the very
beginnings of human civilization, and from even before this. When the
first sacrifices are mentioned in the Book of Genesis in the
Scriptures, the practice was already well established. What’s
important to note here is that, prior to the Book of Exodus, God
never asks for or requires a sacrificial offering. Many Bible
Evangelicals will point to Genesis 3:21 as proof of God establishing
the need for a blood sacrifice to forgive sins. But the text itself
says nothing of the kind. It just says, literally, that God made
tunics from leather for Adam and Eve to replace the leaf coverings
they had sewn together. It never says God killed the animals to get
the leather. It never says this needed to be done for Him to forgive
them. The only thing the text really suggests is that God taught them
the rudiments of leather working out of compassion for their new
reality, and the delusion that their natural nakedness needed to be
covered up. Leather happens to be a far more durable clothing
material than leaves held together with grass or stalks. Another
passage held up is Abel’s offering from his flock being accepted
and Cain’s offering of vegetables he farmed being rejected in
Genesis 4. While it is one potential interpretation to suggest that
this supports God having established blood sacrifices, it is not the
only interpretation. It can just as well be said this passage might
be an amalgam or a metaphor for our malfunctioning human ancestors
who embraced tilling the soil and farming, the rudiments of
civilization, driving those other human species which existed once
upon a time, all hunter gatherers, to extinction. It really all
depends on how it is seen.
With this in
mind, the first actual mentions of animal sacrifice in the Scriptures
assume it as a well established practice with meaning, and one which
God did not explicitly ask for. In every instance, the initiative is
taken by human beings to build an altar and offer a sacrifice in
order to honor Him in some way. The one exception here is actually
Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, a human sacrifice no less (also
practiced from extremely ancient times), which the text makes clear
that God had no intentions of Abraham going through with it. This
understanding of blood sacrifice as an established practice continues
into the Mosaic law. If you notice in the text of the law, in a
similar way that it treats things like slavery and polygamy, the
Mosaic law doesn’t found or establish the practice of sacrifice in
order to forgive sins, but it regulates it, establishing rules,
rituals, and specific ways it had to be done from the building of an
altar out in the bush to what the official place of sacrifice was to
look like to the priesthood in charge of that sacrifice.
So, what am I
driving at here? That animal sacrifice, much less human sacrifice, in
order to forgive sins wasn’t God’s idea in the first place. It
was an idea born out of our malfunctioning mind, that we could
somehow transfer our guilt onto an innocent animal or person and then
destroy it by destroying that creature, and had become integrated
very early in human culture and society.
So what does
God have to say about sacrifices? In the passage I translated at the
beginning of this, Jesus quotes Hosea 6:6 which says, “I desire
mercy and not sacrifice, and a knowledge of God more than whole burnt
offerings.” In Psalms 40:6-8 the psalmist writes, “Sacrifice and
offering you didn’t desire, but ears you prepared for me; You
didn’t require whole burnt offering and sin offering. Then I said,
‘Look, I am here! It is written about me in the head of the book. I
delight to do your will, my God. Your law is within my heart.” In
Psalm 50:7-23, God is explicit that sacrifices of animals don’t
impress Him and that He could do without them. Instead, the worship
He wants is gratitude and people doing what they promised. He really
takes issue with folks quoting His laws and covenant and then hurting
and harming others. In Psalm 51:14-17 David writes, in his great
penitential psalm, addressing God says that “You don’t delight in
sacrifice, otherwise I would give one; burnt offerings don’t please
You.” He continues by saying, “The sacrifices of God are a broken
spirit. A broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”
This last part is significant because God very clearly talks about
despising the animal sacrifices brought to Him by the people of Judah
in Isaiah 1:11-20, animal sacrifices and rituals regulated by the
very same Mosaic law which He instructed Moses to write. God tells
them to stop bringing them altogether because He’s sick of them. He
then tells them what He wants instead, “Wash yourselves, make
yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from My sight. Cease
to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, reprove the ruthless,
defend the orphan, plead for the widow.” Notice He says to stop
bringing the sacrifices, but then says “Wash yourselves, make
yourselves clean.” How were they supposed to do that without animal
sacrifices if animal sacrifices were absolutely necessary for
forgiveness and absolution? In Jeremiah 7:21-26 God tells the people
that He didn’t even command Israel regarding sacrifices or whole
burnt offerings when He brought them out of Egypt. Instead, He
commanded them that if they obeyed what He said, then He would be
their God, and they would be His people. So there is an implication
that even the sacrifices spoken of in the Torah were someone else’s
idea, and not God’s. 1 Samuel 15:22-23 also sums up which God
prefers when the prophet tells Saul that God prefers people listening
to Him to offering animal sacrifices. Finally, there is also Ezekiel
18 where the entire point of the chapter is that if someone who has
done a life of wrongdoing turns from that wrongdoing to do what is
right, God would forgive him and he would live. Nowhere in this
chapter are sacrifices mentioned as being necessary for God to
forgive that person.
The thrust of
the New Testament arguments are that animal sacrifices, the blood of
bulls and goats and sheep, could do nothing about our inherited
malfunction. The best they could do was make us feel less guilty from
a psychological perspective because something had been tangibly done
to make up for it. In reality however, God never needed them to
forgive us. He just needed us to realize our screw ups, turn around,
and seek Him.”
If Christ died
for our sins, as the Scriptures say, then it wasn’t in order to
forgive them. But if it wasn’t in order to forgive them, then what
was it for? When we talk about the New Testament, Christian concept
of salvation, we’re talking about the New Covenant which was
prophesied by Jeremiah. It is called the New Covenant to distinguish
it from the covenant or contract God made with Israel through Moses
on Mount Sinai, and Jesus Himself uses these words (Byzantine and
Textus Receptus texts) when initiating what is called “The Lord’s
Supper” as well as “Mass,” and He linked it directly with His
own body and blood. In the initial prophetic text, the New Covenant
was to be made with “the house of Israel,” but in the New
Testament, it is made with the entire world and is considered to
apply to the entire world.
The terms of
the New Covenant as recorded in Jeremiah 31:33-34 are these, “But
this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel;
After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward
parts, and write it on their hearts; and will be their God, and they
shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his
neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they
shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them,
saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will
remember their sin no more.” (KJV) What I saw this time, after
reading it dozens of times and even memorizing this passage, was
where God Himself actually put the emphasis. Sure, forgiveness was a
part of it at the end, but the first thing, the substantial meat of
the New Covenant was that he would put His law “in their inward
parts, and write it on their hearts.”
In other
words, the new covenant was that they would do by nature what His law
required, and as Rabbi Gamaliel said, as well as Jesus Himself, the
entire law given by God to Moses, the Torah, can be summed up in
this, “You will love the Lord your God with all of your heart, all
of your soul, all of your strength, and all of your conscious mind;
and you will love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus added to this
the proscriptions to “love your enemies” and to “love one
another as I have loved you.” So what was it that God would put in
their inmost parts and write on their hearts? Love, and for all of
their behaviors to be produced from this rather than what produces
the harmful ones, which I have previously described as an abnormally
formed amygdala which puts the person into a nearly constant survival
mode based on threat assessment which is motivated by fear.
Another feature
of the New Covenant which is frequently overlooked or dismissed is
when He says, “And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor,
and every man his brother saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all
know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the
LORD…” Consider this in the light also of 1 John 4:7-8 which
reads, “Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and
every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth
not knoweth not God; for God is love.”(KJV) Consider also, in
reference to the human amygdala driving behavior through fear based
threat assessment, that the Apostle also writes in the same chapter
in verses 16-18, “And we have known and have trusted the love which
the God holds within us. The God is love, and the person making their
home in love makes their home in the God and the God makes His home
within that person. By means of this, love has been brought to
completion with us, so that we possess a freedom to speak on the day
of decision, because just like that One is, we are also within this
world. Fear doesn’t exist within love, but the love brought to
completion tosses fear outside, because fear has discipline, yet the
one being afraid hasn’t been brought to completion with the love.”
(author’s translation)
So what is the
New Covenant then? Is it about forgiveness and deliverance from a
hellish afterlife? No. It is nothing short of God Himself becoming
the source of the person’s behaviors. It is nothing short of
bypassing or disengaging from the human amygdala, rendering it inert
or on constant standby while God Himself, who is love, takes over and
suppresses or disengages that survival response. If it is God Himself
who is the source of behavior, is He going to murder, lie, steal,
cheat, cause schisms, do drugs, commit adultery through you? No, of
course not! In the New Covenant, rather than being concerned with
finding a way to forgive us, we see God working to treat our
neurological problem directly. The forgiveness we find in the New
Covenant comes from agreeing with Him about our problem and seeking
to do what He wants just as He said in Ezekiel 18, and not from a
blood sacrifice as such.
Paul writes
copiously about this, but you wouldn’t know it because of how
English translations have rendered what he wrote. He uses the Greek
word δικαιοω
and its various cognates in order to describe it. Starting with an
explanation of what we can observe about the problem, He then goes
into how God solved it. The problem in the modern translations is
that they almost uniformly translate it as “justify,” which is
nothing short of a transliteration of the Latin rendering from
the Vulgate, “iustifico,”
which translates as “to act justly towards, do justice to, justify,
pardon, forgive, vindicate,” all of which implies a strictly legal
understanding of pardoning or acquitting someone from a crime. But
the base meaning of δικαιοω
is “to make or set
right” in a wide variety of contexts. The legal context as
with iustifico to be
sure, but in many, many more as well. Its adjectival cognate δικαιος
literally means “observant of duty or custom,” especially in a
societal context, but also in a religious context. In other words, it
means that the person who is δικαιος
is doing what they are supposed to be doing, and δικαιοω
is returning something or
someone to the way it or they are supposed to be. The
concept can also be applied to restoring something to fairness or
balance which had been unfair or out of balance. And
so the very underpinnings of Paul’s understanding of the New
Covenant and salvation in his letters in general center around this
concept of setting the person right. But what did that mean?
According
to Paul, in Romans chapters six through eight, it meant the rendering
inert or neutralization
of Hamartia through death, and specifically, through the person being
“grown together” by
means of baptism with
Jesus Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection. As he writes,
“knowing this that our
old human being was crucified together with Him, so that the
malfunctioning body would be neutralized, for us to no longer be
enslaved to Hamartia, because the
one having died has been
made right from Hamartia” (Romans 6:6-7,
author’s translation).
And because we have been
“grown together” with Jesus Christ in His death, burial, and
resurrection, as he wrote in 2 Corinthians 5:14-15, “deciding this,
that if one person died in place of everyone, then all people died;
and He died in place of everyone, so that those living no longer live
for themselves but in place of the One having died in their place and
risen.”
But
then the question must be asked, if it wasn’t about payment or
retribution for our crimes and wrongdoing, how could His death and
resurrection make us
right from an abnormal or
malfunctioning amygdala? Here, I need to talk about the aftereffects
of Near Death Experiences (NDEs), and first I am going to quote those
scientists who study the phenomenon:
"Regardless
of their cause, NDEs can permanently and dramatically alter the
individual experiencer’s attitudes, beliefs, and values. The
literature on the aftereffects of NDEs has focused on the beneficial
personal transformations that often follow. A recent review of
research into the characteristic changes following NDEs found the
most commonly reported to be loss of fear of death; strengthened
belief in life after death; feeling specially favored by God; a new
sense of purpose or mission; heightened self-esteem; increased
compassion and love for others; lessened concern for material gain,
recognition, or status; greater desire to serve others; increased
ability to express feelings; greater appreciation of, and zest for,
life; increased focus on the present; deeper religious faith or
heightened spirituality; search for knowledge; and greater
appreciation for nature. These aftereffects have been corroborated by
interviews with near-death experiencers’ significant others and by
long-term longitudinal studies."
(Greyson, Bruce. "Getting
Comfortable With Near Death Experiences: An Overview of Near-Death
Experiences." Mo Med. 2013 Nov-Dec;110(6):475–481. PMCID:
PMC6179792)
A
longer list of the aftereffects are:
(From "Aftereffects of
Near-death States" by by P.M.H. Atwater, L.H.D.)
Near-death experiencers come to
love and accept others without the usual attachments and conditions
society expects. They perceive themselves as equally and fully
loving of each and all, openly generous, excited about the potential
and wonder of each person they see. Their desire is to be a conduit
of universal love. Confused family members tend to regard this
sudden switch in behavior as oddly threatening, as if their loved
one had become aloof, unresponsive, even uncaring and unloving. Some
mistake this "unconditional" way of expressing joy and
affection (heart-centered rather than person-centered) as
flirtatious disloyalty. Divorce can result.
One of the reasons life seems so
different afterward is because the experiencer now has a basis of
comparison unknown before. Familiar codes of conduct can lose
relevance or disappear altogether as new interests take priority.
Such a shift in reference points can lead to a childlike naivete.
With the fading of previous norms and standards, basic caution and
discernment can also fade. It is not unusual to hear of near-death
experiencers being cheated, lied to, or involved in unpleasant
mishaps and accidents. Once they are able to begin integrating what
happened to them, discernment usually returns.
Most experiencers develop a sense
of timelessness. They tend to "flow" with the natural
shift of light and dark, and display a more heightened awareness of
the present moment and the importance of being "in the now."
Making future preparations can seem irrelevant to them. This
behavior is often labeled "spaciness" by others, who do
their best to ignore the change in perception, although seldom do
they ignore the shift in speech. That's because many experiencers
refer to their episode as if it were a type of "divider"
separating their "former" life from the present one.
There's no denying that
experiencers become quite intuitive afterward. Psychic displays can
be commonplace, such as: out-of-body episodes, manifestation of
"beings" met in near-death state, "remembering"
the future, finishing another's sentence, "hearing" plants
and animals "speak." This behavior is not only worrisome
to relatives and friends, it can become frightening to them. A
person's religious beliefs do not alter or prevent this
amplification of faculties and stimuli. Yet, experiencers willing to
learn how to control and refine these abilities, consider them
beneficial.
Life paradoxes begin to take on a
sense of purpose and meaning, as forgiveness tends to replace former
needs to criticize and condemn. Hard driving achievers and
materialists can transform into easy-going philosophers; but, by the
same token, those more relaxed or uncommitted before can become
energetic "movers and shakers," determined to make a
difference in the world. Personality reversals seem to depend more
on what's "needed" to round out the individual's inner
growth than on any uniform outcome. Although initially bewildered,
families can be so impressed by what they witness that they, too,
change-making the experience a "shared event."
The average near-death experiencer
comes to regard him or herself as "an immortal soul currently
resident within a material form so lessons can be learned while
sojourning in the earthplane." They now know they are not their
body; many go on to embrace the theory of reincarnation. Eventually,
the present life, the present body, becomes important and special
again.
What was once foreign becomes familiar, what was once
familiar becomes foreign. Although the world is the same, the
experiencer isn't. Hence, they tend to experiment with novel ways to
communicate, even using abstract and grandiose terms to express
themselves. With patience and effort on everyone's part,
communication can improve and life can resume some degree of
routine. But, the experiencer seems ever to respond to a "tune"
no one else can hear (this can continue lifelong).
(Copied from
https://iands.org/ndes/about-ndes/common-aftereffects.html)
Atheists
become pastors, selfish people become selfless, ordinary people
develop paranormal abilities; and as a person exceptionally familiar
with the New Testament narratives and letters, I cannot help but see
the parallels with the experiences of the early Christians which were
written about therein. I also cannot help but recognize the emphasis
placed on "dying to self," "dying with Christ,"
and as Paul wrote point-blank in his letter to the Colossians as to
why they were to be mindful of the things within the heavenly realms
instead of minding the things on earth, "because you died and
your life is hidden with Christ inside God."
Jesus taught that His followers
needed to die to themselves, and the embrace of this death is the
underpinning of all Christian practice. As Paul also wrote in his
letter to the Romans, "Don't you know that as many as were
baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We were then
buried together with Him through the baptism into His death so that
just like Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the
Father so also we should walk in a freshness of life." I read
the list of aftereffects of an NDE, and it seems like that is exactly
what these folks are experiencing after literally returning from
being clinically dead, sometimes for relatively long stretches of
time.
Thinking again about where it
says in Romans 6, "The person who died has been made right from
Hamartia,"
as it relates to the aftereffects experienced by people who have had
Near Death Experiences or literal "Death Experiences" and
have returned to life. 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 Logos
of God, that immaterial part of oneself suppressed by the
malfunctioning amygdala,
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.
And
so this is the answer to why Jesus Christ died, voluntarily
sacrificed Himself, in the place of every human being. So that every
human being would be able to free from the domination of their
abnormally functioning amygdala by
experiencing death and resurrection without actually having to
physically go through it,
that is, that they would be free to choose God Himself as their
source of behavior rather than this bit of malfunctioning flesh. And
this is the assumption which Paul makes throughout his letters,
urging those to whom he is writing to choose to “operate with the
Spirit” rather than with the flesh; to remain connected with the
Head of the body, the Logos who is Jesus Christ of whom we are all
members, pieces, and fractals, and who is identified with the God
Himself. And he is clear about one’s options in this matter. One is
either enslaved to one’s abnormal amygdala, one’s flesh, or one
willingly enslaves themselves to the God of whom they are a part, the
Spirit. There are no other options.
And
what does this have to do with the afterlife
then? Actually, not a whole lot. Because the understanding I’ve
come to is that the salvation which the New Testament teaches has
very little to do with where one goes when one dies, and everything
to do with being freed from Hamartia in this world, in the here and
now. The salvation which
is taught has to do with being freed from the harmful behaviors
caused by our constant, fear based survival responses, and being free
to communicate once more with that part of ourselves which is one
with God Himself. It is about the realization of the New Covenant,
and having the heart and will of God activated and written within
each of us so that we do not cause harm to one another, and so that
we love as He loves because He is the one loving through us.
And
how do we actualize this? By being told it happened, and trusting
that it is true enough to where we act on it. It is like being told
there is a billion dollar bank account with your name on it. You have
to trust that it is true in order to make use of it. If you don’t
trust that, if you don’t believe the person who tells you, then
there’s no way you can make use of it.
