(150) Insights and Outrages

Author:  John
To:  Bob and Steve

In case you haven't happened upon it, there is an interesting publication on the magazine stands just now, which you may want to get (or if you're feeling cheap in these strange economic times, ya can wait for me to be done with it and I'll pass it along).  It's a special issue of U.S. News and World Report (one in an intermittent series, I think), titled "Secrets of the Bible".

This publication attempts to bring together recent research by biblical scholars, archaeologists, and writers about Jesus, and Christianity in general.  As I read through it, I felt like I was taking a survey course in a seminary.  Frankly, however, it is a mixed bag, with some really interesting stuff and then some stuff that seems to me a waste of time.  But I do think it might give a taste of what goes on in certain seminary courses, as well as clues as to why some seminary students actually lose their faith instead of becoming more committed to it. 

One of the more interesting articles is about the lost years of Jesus.  And its thesis is partly that Jesus was very possibly an associate, if not a member, of the Pharisees  No doubt that sounds contrary to the Bible's characterizations of Pharisees, but the author gives us some pretty interesting supporting evidence, and goes on to hypothetically fill in some of the missing years and influences of Jesus' early life.  He paints a very different picture of the Pharisees, as being an openly discursive group that encouraged debate about Jewish theological principles (and thus he justifies the biblical anecdote wherin Jesus as an adolescent is allowed to debate with temple scholars).  Well, that should be enough to peak your interest, or...not.

But the real reason I am even mentioning the U.S. News special edition is something entirely different I found in it.  It has to do with the Kabbalah, an ancient system of mystical thought.   There is a whole chapter on this special esoteric teaching, of which I knew little (leaving aside singer/dancer/diva Madonna's much publicized recent dedication to it!).   The article attempts to explain its basis, and in reading it I found that one of the Kabbalah's primary principles is (to me anyway) startlingly similar to something I proposed a long time ago in this blog (in several places, for example in my posting No. 35).  It also relates to something Bob wrote, along the same lines.  Here is a paragraph from that previous posting that summarizes both points:

Bob’s suggestion that God can better know perfection by creating some imperfection is very interesting to me, and I think it parallels something I said earlier: that in order for God to know all, he has to know what it is not to know all. In Bob’s view, in order for God to know perfection, he has to know Imperfection. So, as Bob suggests, we get to play the role of the imperfect, or in mine the unknowing. Either way that makes us sort of a foil to God. I think there could be some truth to that....

Okay, now I want to quote from the Kabbalah article in "Secrets of the Bible"  under the heading The Creation (note that am condensing it by leaving out some irrelevant passages and simplifying the terminology):

According to legend, being all and absolute, God was complete, but, even so, He held a desire to experience Himself as if from outside, and this was why creation came into being.  The divine plan is therefore for "God to behold God."  ...  To begin the process of existence God withdrew an aspect of Himself in order to create a space within Himself.  Around this space was the Endless Light, from which came the emanation that began the unfolding of creation.

Couldn'a said it better meself!
But seriously, are those two ideas not almost exactly identical! 
And supposedly, the Kabbalah teachings date back a thousand years before Christ.
What should we make of this, huh, huh?

Closing on a more serious note, I want to mention two stories in our local newsrag that sadden and anger me.  First, it seems that the local supervisors voted not to allow a Muslim mosque to be built in a certain rundown area of town that has not seen any development in 20 years.  They claimed that the zoning was wrong, but the article says they had made exceptions for Christian churches under similar circumstances.  The Muslim community is outraged. 
        Now, as you know, I am not happy with adherents of Islam here or worldwide, because I feel they have not done nearly enough to disavow the radical islamists and their actions in the middle east.  But this country is founded on freedom of religion.  I want to ask the supervisors this question:  If everything about this mosque case had been exactly the same except it came from a Baptist church, would they have voted the same?  I bet dollars to donuts they wouldn't.

And speaking of outrage, the second item in the paper outrages me even more.  A Catholic priest in South Carolina has told his parishioners that they should refrain from receiving holy communion if they voted for Obama. The priest says that because Obama supports abortion rights, supporting him "constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil."

It is stuff like this that makes me wish that churches (read that "denominations") would disappear altogether, forcing each of us to come to a personal non-dogma influenced relationship with God.