CC44: The Book of Genesis

It's hard to argue with the reality that the Book of Genesis has had a profound influence on the growth of three major world religions. It's a powerful set of tales that evoke intense emotions. It's been retold over and over to breathless audiences. Its images appear in great masterworks of art. If its authors were here today, they'd be proud.

 

"At the end of forty days Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made and sent out the raven; and it went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth. Then he sent out the dove from him, to see if the waters had subsided from the face of the ground; but the dove found no place to set its foot, and it returned to him to the ark, for the waters were still on the face of the whole earth. So he put out his hand and took it and brought it into the ark with him. He waited another seven seven days, and again he sent out the dove from the ark; and the dove came back to him in the evening, and there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf; so Noah knew that the waters had subsided from the earth. Then he waited another seven days, and sent out the dove; and it did not return to him any more" (Genesis 8: 6-12). Ancient myths about creation, floods, trees of life, Divine signs, and hidden places pop up in cultures all over the world. Photo credit JAT 2014.

But I get frustrated by the attention given to the Book of Genesis. To my way of thinking, when the standard tools of socio-historical criticism are applied (form criticism, source criticism, redaction criticism, social-scientific context), two things become clear: (1) Genesis is entirely a work of fiction and (2) Genesis was cut and pasted together much later than most of the historical, prophetic, and remaining Torah books of the Hebrew canon.

Let me be clear: I believe the Book of Genesis is NOT the inspired word of God given to an anonymous prophet thousands of years ago. I believe it is largely an extended myth. A work of fiction with some bits of historical truth. A book that has much more in common with J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings than with other Hebrew works such as Ezra-Nehemiah or Leviticus.

When I was doing research for my Master's research essay (short thesis), I came across the most wonderful book in the university library. I was looking for a different book, which I couldn't seem to find, when suddenly my eyes fell upon a strange title: Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus.* Say who? (For those who are interested, the full bibliographic data is below).

Russel Gmirkin, the author of this admittedly highly academic book, uses careful research into early sources to suggest quite convincingly that the first part of Genesis (chapters 1-11) couldn't have been written before 278 BCE. He also shows why it's likely that Genesis was first written in Alexandria, Egypt -- not, as you'd expect, in the land of Judah.

Meanwhile, it's no coincidence that another important work known to scholars as the Septuagint began to be assembled at almost exactly the same time (c. 275 BCE) in exactly the same place (Alexandria, Egypt). What is the Septuagint? The Septuagint is the oldest known collection of Hebrew scriptures -- sort of an early version of the "Old Testament" (as Christians call it). What's striking about this collection is that it was written not only in Hebrew but also simultaneously in Greek -- translated from Hebrew texts for the Greek-speaking Jewish population of 3rd century BCE Alexandria. Fragments of the early Greek Septuagint have been found by archaeologists.

Much to the embarrassment of modern orthodox Jewish and Christian scholars, until the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in 1947 at Qumran (east of Jerusalem), scholars hadn't found any pre-Common-Era versions of the Jewish canon written in Hebrew** (or any major chunks of the Hebrew Bible, for that matter). The next-oldest-known authoritative copy of the Hebrew Bible (the Masoretic Aleppo Codex) dates from the early 10th century CE -- a mere 1,100 years ago or so!

Thanks to the Dead Sea Scrolls, scholars now have much more material to work with, but it's important to note that among the hundreds of scrolls found at Qumran, almost all are individual scrolls that contain only a single "book" (such as the Book of Genesis or the Book of Exodus). All but one of the "books" that are found today in the Hebrew Bible have been recovered in part or in whole at Qumran (proving their early origins, though not the date at which they became canonical). But many other kinds of texts have been found there, too -- non-canonical works that bear little resemblance to today's Rabbinic Judaism. And, despite everyone's curiosity, it seems there's no evidence in the Qumran material for the existence of a fixed canon in the 1st and 2nd centuries BCE (in Judean Qumran, at least). Scholars have found many Hebrew and Aramaic scrolls at Qumran, but no relatively stable canonical list to define and shape them. 

Meanwhile, the Septuagint was apparently already known in Greek-speaking Jewish communities outside Judea. (These communities are called the Diaspora). One of the biggest of these Diaspora Jewish communities happened to be centred in . . . Alexandria, Egypt. This is important because the evidence available to us suggests very strongly that sometime around 275 BCE (in the early Hellenistic period that followed Alexander the Great's conquest of vast territories, including Egypt), a group of scholars got together in Alexandria, Egypt, and assembled a collection of pre-existing theological writings into the "proto-canon" we call the Septuagint. They decided on a list of scrolls or "books" that belonged together as part of this canon. The Alexandrian scholars certainly didn't write all the scrolls or "books" themselves. They merely collected together some scrolls that had been written by earlier Jewish thinkers, probably centuries prior to their collation in the Septuagint.

These earlier scrolls had something important to say about God, in the view of the Alexandrian scholars. But when these assorted teachings were put together, they made a mishmash. The collection was disjointed -- really just a bunch of prophecies and histories strung together. They didn't make much sense when read one after the other on their own. So the scholars had to do quite a bit of editing and rewriting to tie everything together (a process called redaction). Then, as I understand it, they added their own contribution: they wrote an introduction to the collection -- a myth that would tie together all the earlier prophecies into a cohesive theological paradigm that would make sense (well, sort of).

Enter the highly influential book of Genesis, pieced together from bits and pieces of earlier material during the Ptolemaic period in Egypt, and placed at the very beginning of the collection to serve as a theological "preface" for everything else that would follow.

To be sure, many elements of Genesis can be traced to Ancient Near East sources (elements such as the Flood narratives), but all this proves is that the authors knew their sources and wanted to draw on them. It's part and parcel of theological writing: you always try to draw on earlier sources in order to establish your own authority.

Unless, of course, you're Jesus.


*Russel E. Gmirkin. Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus: Hellenistic Histories and the Date of the Pentateuch. Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 433 and Copenhagen International Series 15 (New York: T & T Clark, 2006).

 ** The books that have been included in the Septuagint for at least 2,000 years were not all accepted into the tri-partite Jewish canon when rabbinic scholars in the late 1st century CE made some final decisions about which books to include in the Jewish canon. Jewish scholars, followed later by Protestant theologians, decided to exclude from the canon such Apocryphal books as "The Wisdom of Solomon" and "The Wisdom of Jesus, son of Sirach." (The latter book is usually just called "Sirach" -- the Jesus referred to in the full title is not that Jesus, but an earlier man who had the same name.) The Septuagint, though modified many times over the centuries, is still the official Old Testament of the Roman Catholic Church.

CC38: An Ancient Mystery Revealed

I'm old enough to remember the 1984 Wendy's commercial that featured three little old ladies and the snappy line, "Where's the beef?" Sure, the commercial was meant to sell Wendy's bigger hamburger patties. But the catch phrase went deeper than that. It quickly became a cultural metaphor for something that was "all talk, no action." Something without real substance. 

Many spiritual teachers are interested in selling you books about how to "raise your consciousness" and "seek wisdom" and be "one with all Creation." These books are full of platitudes and cliches, and they remind me a lot of the big fluffy bun that was being parodied in the Wendy's commercial. The bun looks impressive on the outside, but when you bite into it, you discover there's precious little substance inside. There's just the same old mystery teachings that have been taught by cult leaders for . . . oh . . . for at least five thousand years now. 

We are all One. Blah, blah, blah. Your soul is a spark of the Divine. Blah, blah, blah. Your physical body and your physical mind are drenched in evil and must be transcended. Blah, blah, blah. Specially chosen spiritual leaders have consented to descend into this corrupt world to lead the forces of light against the forces of evil. Blah, blah, blah. You can help in this great battle. Blah, blah, blah. The time is at hand when human beings will rise to a new, never before seen level of consciousness and enlightenment. Blah, blah, blah. In order to reach this new level, you must surrender yourself, let go of yourself, live in the moment, let go of attachments, let go of illusion. Blah, blah, blah. Only then can you know the bliss, peace, and joy of oneness with the Divine.  

At the beginning of Eckhart Tolle's bestselling 1997 book The Power of Now (Vancouver: Namaste Publishing, 1997), he describes an episode of spiritual awakening that took place after a "dark night of the soul" when he was 29. For five months, he "lived in a state of uninterrupted deep peace and bliss" (page 2). He then "spent almost two years sitting on park benches in a state of the most intense joy. But even the most beautiful experiences come and go."  

Really? They come and go? Because that hasn't been my experience. My experience has been that if you understand why you're doing what you're doing on the Spiral Path, and if you ground your spiritual journey in reality instead of in ancient mystical gobbledygook, you can get up every morning and go to bed at night and live every moment of your ordinary, ho-hum day in a state of profound trust and companionship with God.  

This makes every ho-hum day anything but ho-hum.  

If you see what I'm getting at here.  

Eckhart Tolle and his mystical predecessors are always talking about escape -- escape from the body, escape from suffering, escape from illusion, escape from evil forces, and (in the most extreme form) escape from death. They're missing the point. The Spiral Path has never been about escape. The Spiral Path has always been about forgiveness, healing, and redemption.* 

"I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you. Do not be like a horse or a mule, without understanding, whose temper must be curbed with bit and bridle, else it will not stay near you. Many are the torments of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds those who trust in the Lord. Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart" (Psalm 32: 8-11). This amphora, found in Etruria and dated 540-535 BCE, depicts Herakles killing the Nemean lion - the first of the twelve labours of Herakles. The spiritual journey shouldn't make you feel as if you're reinventing Herakles' terrible struggles. (Amphora on display at Royal Ontario Museum. Photo credit JAT 2017.)

If you want to feel deep peace and joy every day (and this is possible, believe it or not), your ongoing goal is to HEAL yourself, not escape yourself. 

In order to heal yourself (and perhaps others, too), you need to understand at a conscious level what's going on inside your biological body as you struggle to make sense of your spiritual journey. To do this, you need more than ancient myths to guide you. You need science.  

There are no exceptions to this general statement. Every mystic in every faith tradition in every country of the world needs science. There is no ethical mysticism without ethical scientific exploration.  

There is no science in The Power of Now. There's a great deal of mystical speculation, but there's no science. Put plain and simple, I don't trust any spiritual teacher who's afraid to look science in the eye.  

There is no need to postulate, as Tolle does, the existence of a "negative energy field" (called an emotional "pain-body") whose job it is to control your thoughts and your mind like some sort of "invisible entity" (page 29). This sounds little different than demon-possession as it was formerly understood. It's an irresponsible and scientifically insupportable claim. It confuses and frightens people. 

Furthermore, it relies entirely on the author's own authority as mystic and prophet. It starts with Tolle's personal assumptions about the interface between mind, body, soul, and brain. From there, he builds a pyramid of guesswork. My question in response to his thesis is . . . where's the beef? Where's the science combined with the heart? Don't talk to me about a corrupting "pain-body." Talk to me -- scholar to scholar -- about neurotransmitters and glial cells and underactive sections of the brain and seizure disorders and over-activation of the pain-pleasure circuitry (to barely scratch the surface of the neurophysiology that's involved). I don't mind if you use some analogies and even some mythical archetypes to explain brain chemistry to a lay audience, but if you yourself don't understand your spiritual journey in scientific terms, then you're not saying anything different than Plato said to a vulnerable audience 2,400 years ago. It's pure myth. And it's pure crap. 

I'm sorry, but it's just not true that human beings can somehow separate the spiritual journey or the spiritual brain from the everyday science of everyday life. You cannot find God by sitting on park benches for two long years. (You'll find something on those park benches, but it won't be enlightenment.) You can only find God in a lasting way by making lasting choices in your life -- scientifically based choices that will slowly heal your biological brain and your biological body, and allow you to live each day as an angel-in-human-form. Your spiritual task is not to become less yourself. It's to become more yourself -- more and more like the soul you really are.  

This depends, of course, on a belief in the soul. If you don't believe you were born as a soul -- a pure, amazing, unique soul that always is and always will be a pure, amazing, unique soul -- then you and I have no common ground for discussion. Everything I've learned from God the Mother and God the Father, and everything I've learned from the angel who once lived as Jesus, begins with the core integrity of the soul. Everything I've learned about healing and redemption revolves around the full integration of your immortal soul with your very mortal human body. This is a journey of science as much as a journey of faith.

Healing and redemption revolve around the balance of body, mind, soul, and heart. Around the balance (NOT the pyramidal, step-wise hierarchy) of Maslow's physiological needs, safety needs, love and belonging needs, and self esteem needs. Around the balance of physical joy, mental joy, spiritual joy, and emotional joy. Around the balance of work, play, extroverted relationships, and introverted downtime. Around using the whole brain, not just parts of the brain. 

Whole Brain Thinking is the only way to find the Spiral Path, understand the Spiral Path, and persevere on the Spiral Path.  

There. That's the Ancient Mystery in a nutshell: you have to use your whole brain -- your whole nervous system -- in a consistently balanced, healthy, emotionally mature way. When you do, you can more easily hear God's voice, because God's voice is as balanced and emotionally mature as can be.  

And guess what? You don't have to take my word for it! You can research all the ways to have a happy, healthy, fully functioning brain, and you'll come up with essentially the same ideas I've presented here!  

Science and spirituality together on the same page. Now we're cooking with gas.  

 

* On the last text page of The Power of Now, Tolle reveals that "the whole concept of forgiveness then becomes unnecessary (page 193)." Needless to say, Tolle and I couldn't disagree more.

CC35: Would You Like To Super-Size That Stampede?

In last Saturday's Toronto Star (Sat., Sept. 18, 2010), an article on page 2 stopped me in my tracks. Entitled "Believers fine with the Rapture, but what about Fido?" (written by Lesley Ciarula Taylor), the story described a new Internet-based business called "Eternal Earth-Bound Pets." This business, founded by a gentleman named Bart Centre, already has 225 clients who have paid $110 U.S. per pet to have their pets rescued and cared for after May 21, 2011.

Why are these clients so confident their pets will need to be rescued after May 21, 2011? Well, because the Rapture has been prophesied for that day, and as every Rapture-believing evangelical Christian knows, that's when "true believers" will be saved -- taken directly up into Heaven, body and all, in the twinkling of an eye -- and all the rest of the poor slobs on Planet Earth will left to contend with the dreaded Doomsday, currently prophesied to be coming soon to a sinful city near you on October 21, 2011.

Of course, since only the chosen among human beings will be beamed up to Heaven during the Rapture, there's the dicey question of who will look after all those soulless pets, the pets that will be abandoned by their Christian owners when the "stampede of saints" comes next spring.

This painting of an angel with an incense censer was created by the circle of Bernaert van Orley in about 1535-1540. Originally part of an altarpiece, its purpose would have been to help churchgoers imagine the glory of heaven for the chosen. On display at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Photo credit JAT 2018.

Enter Eternal Earth-Bound Pets. Mr. Centre, you go for it! I wish you luck in your money-making enterprise. I have no sympathy for orthodox Western Christians who choose to believe in apocalyptic bullshit like the Rapture. If their narcissistic, status-driven beliefs make them vulnerable to niche marketing schemes, that's okay. Maybe some of these idiots will learn the hard way not to listen to religious prophets.

Of course, these particular Christians are listening to the teachings of Paul, and Paul was himself an apocalyptic religious prophet. Paul was going around telling people that Jesus was coming back "really, really soon," and that people who gave over their lives to complete faith in Christ would not die, but would be saved, body and soul, and taken up into Heaven. ("Beam me up, Scotty.")

Give me a break. Paul was making absurd promises to people. He was telling people they could escape death on one condition: they had to fully accept Paul's teachings. Notice how he left himself "an out," though. If they happened to die before Christ's return, it was their own fault. They must have fallen short in their belief.

Too bad for you, buddy (said Paul). Your faith wasn't good enough (said Paul). You should have tried harder to follow my own special brand of teachings (said Paul). Repent, repent!

Paul talks a lot in First Corinthians about escaping sin and death. But he never talks in this letter about healing miracles.

Ah, you say, what about Acts 20:7-12, where Paul heals the young man who fell out of the window! That sounds like something Jesus would have done!

True, but Paul didn't write the Acts of the Apostles. Somebody else wrote it decades later, and, if scholar Barrie Wilson is correct, "Luke" wrote this book for the express purpose of bridging the doctrinal gulf between the followers of Jesus in Jerusalem (the Ebionites) and the followers of Paul (proto-orthodox Christians in Hellenistic cities like Antioch). It's cheating to rely on the Acts of the Apostles for confirmation that Paul cared about physical healing for low-status people. In the seven biblical letters written by Paul himself, there's nothing to suggest he cared a whit about the healing miracles ascribed to Jesus son of Joseph.

Paul wasn't teaching people about the kind of everyday psycho-spiritual-physical healing that Jesus carried out during his tenure as a physician-scholar in Galilee. Jesus, after all, was interested in healing the physical bodies and physical brains of marginalized people (women, lepers, the blind, the deaf, the "possessed" who suffered from neurological and psychiatric disorders). Paul, meanwhile, was only interested in mystical teachings about spiritual wisdom, ritual purity, prophecy, mystery, spiritual powers, and spiritual authority.

Paul taught apocalyptic bullshit. Jesus did not.

If Paul were alive today, he'd no doubt be preaching the Rapture, and telling his faithful flock how to piously prepare for the "stampede of saints" so they won't be Left Behind.

I'm looking forward to May 22, 2010, when I'll be getting up and having my morning coffee and looking out my window at the beautiful world God the Mother and God the Father have created for all their children.

Even the four-legged ones.

CC17: My Firsthand Experience With a Modern Apocalyptic Prophet

Even to this day, I can't believe I missed the signs of Grace's major mental illness.

At the time I first met Grace in 1998, I was working in the mental health field. Every day at the office I met and spoke with people whose lives had been torn apart by major depression, bipolar disorder, OCD, and Axis II issues such narcissistic personality disorder. I'd seen people suffering from psychotic depression, and I'd seen some of those psychotic patients undergo miraculous recovery after proper treatment. So it's not like I could claim ignorance.

Ignorance, no. But naivete . . . yes, I admit to a heaping dose of that. And compartmentalization. I made the near-fatal mistake of compartmentalizing spirituality, of separating spirituality from everyday life, of trying to place my spirituality -- and Grace's -- on some sort of special pedestal.

In my naivete, I was trying to climb the ladder of spiritual ascent. At the time, I thought that was a good thing. Only later did I realize that the path of holy ascent can be likened to a Boston Marathon of spiritual narcissists all scrambling to beat each other to the top of the special pinnacle where only a few special people are chosen to be especially close to God.

Like Plato. And Paul. And my spiritual teacher Grace. Apocalyptic prophets, all. Supremely confident. Absolutely convincing in their sincerity. Charming and persuasive. Endlessly energetic and enthusiastic. Psychopathic as hell.

That’s me in the red shirt during my Big Fat Idiot Stage in 2003. That’s Grace on the right in the light blue shirt (though she wasn’t looking particularly beatific during this shot).

 
I met Grace when I went for my very first Reiki healing. A mutual friend had arranged the Reiki healing for me. I knew very little at this point about New Age spirituality, and even less about traditional Christian mysticism. But I was eager to embark on a more spiritual path in my life (not so surprising for a 40 year old woman), and I'd suddenly found a bona fide Reiki master in my own community! It seemed too good to be true.

Grace had a beatific face. True, she was obese, but that was only because she so enjoyed cooking for other people to make them happy. True, she could knock back 5 ounces of vodka in half an hour, but that was only because she had a high threshold for alcohol (and she never drank the day before a Reiki healing). True, her two adult sons used alcohol and cannabis heavily, but that was only because they were so friendly and sociable and couldn't say no to their friends, and in any event they were loved unconditionally by their parents, regardless of their behaviour. True, she became heavily addicted to pornography, but that was only in the context of a loving, monogamous relationship. True, she had a violent temper, but that was only because . . . well, that was only because she was right and other people were wrong, and she needed to clearly express to other people that she wouldn't tolerate their unfair criticisms of her.

What mattered most to Grace was her spiritual path. She had trained as a certified Usui lineage Reiki Master. She revelled in the language, the symbolism, of it. Handpainted symbols covered the walls of the room in her home where she carried out her Reiki healings. She lit scented candles, played gentle, reassuring instrumental music, spoke in a reassuring tone. She talked the talk of divine love from beginning to end.

She talked endlessly and sincerely about divine love. She talked about the wondrous gift of divine healing that could come to people through hands-on healing. She said loudly and often that "we are all One, we are all equal." She constantly strove to update her knowledge through New Age books, Internet sites, and spiritual workshops. She took new courses. She taught new courses. She seemed like "the real deal."

But Grace was all talk. That's all she did -- talk. She did not practise empathy in her own life. In fact, she was one of the most vindictive, most unempathetic, most controlling, most self-entitled people I've ever met.

That's why I have to thank her. I have to thank her for teaching me so consistently and so painfully that you can't trust a spiritual teacher on the basis of words alone. You can't trust the teachings of a dysfunctional spiritual teacher. Everything Grace did was focused on Grace. She said she cared about her students and her Reiki patients, but she didn't. She cared about herself. She only taught spiritual teachings that made her feel superior to other people. She needed to be "the Master." She needed to be one of God's specially chosen messengers. She needed to make prophetic claims. She needed to be in charge of other people's spirituality. This was how she coped with her dissociative disorder.

Don't get me wrong -- Grace was highly dysfunctional for a damned good reason, and I know that. She was a survivor of an abusive childhood home, where an alcoholic father sexually abused his daughters, and an alcoholic mother humiliated the children. It's to Grace's credit that as an adult she managed to hold down a respectable job and stay in a stable marriage for as long as she did. But Grace was unable to accept that she had addiction problems and needed professional assistance. By the time I met her, she was a mess. And her "commitment" to her path of spiritual ascent made life worse -- both for herself and for her vulnerable students.

I didn't break off ties with Grace until 2005. I hope that in the past few years she has received the care she needed. Somewhere underneath all her vitriol was the kind and loving person God knew she could be.

Unfortunately, I never got the chance to know that person.

CC16: The Difference Between Mystics and Prophets

This morning, I happened to hear a radio interview with Mike Holmes, Canada's famed "make it right" building contractor, teacher, and advocate for families in distress. Mike Holmes had been asked to speak about the "home inspection business," and he was lamenting two current realities. First, many home inspectors have little or no hands-on experience in the contracting industry (so they don't know what they're talking about), and second, many home inspectors simply don't care. The practical and ethical standards aren't high enough, in Mike Holmes's view, and this means that home buyers who rely on shoddy home inspection reports will end up with "lemons" -- houses with major structural problems.

"Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind: 'Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me. Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements -- surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?'" (Job 38: 1-7). As you can tell from this biblical passage written by the mystic Job, God (the creator and architect of all) has an opinion about human beings who demonstrate hubris instead of respect for God's careful, patient designs. Shown here is a team washing the windows of the entrance pyramid at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, ON. It's no easy task, and you shouldn't try it unless you're an expert and have the all the proper equipment. Teaching about the soul, the brain-soul nexus, and ethical mysticism is no different - it takes proper training. Going to a weekend energy-healing workshop doesn't qualify you as an expert. Be patient, be humble, and take the time to overcome your own status addiction issues before you seek to become a mentor to others. Photo credit JAT 2017.

Anyone who has ever lived in such a house knows how stressful, how exhausting, how infuriating it is to be told there's nothing wrong with your house, even as you watch your basement fill up with water after every rainstorm.

This is how I feel about the "mysticism business." Practical and ethical standards are pretty much non-existent in this field. And I'm not talking here about the charlatans and the New Age preachers who knowingly take advantage of vulnerable people. I'm talking here about the church.

The orthodox Western church has given itself prime credentials as THE "home inspectors of the soul" without having any solid knowledge, experience, or compassion to back this up. They hung out their shingle centuries ago, and it's been hanging there for so long that most Christians just assume the church must know what it's doing when it comes to "home inspections of the soul."

But it doesn't. When it comes to matters of the soul, the church is no different than the slipshod home inspector who tells you that a nice, new coat of paint on your outside walls will fix your leaking basement. Just because a home inspector gives this advice loudly and often to all his clients doesn't make it right. You can paint the upper walls as often as you like, but it won't make a damn bit of difference to your crumbling foundations. The only way to fix the basement, of course, is to dig up all the soil around your house (even though it makes an ugly mess of your gardens for a while) and methodically repair the hidden cracks. It's a lot of work. But in the end it's worth it.

If you're an earnest spiritual seeker who wants to know more about your soul, don't bother asking the United Church of Canada for guidance. They have no official answers for you. They would prefer that you not embarrass them with your questions about the soul. The soul, you see, is perilously close to being a four-letter word in the United Church lexicon. It's no longer uttered in polite company. Polite company -- which includes professors of theology and United Church ministers and policy makers -- wants you to speak about grace and Spirit and God's justice breaking in proleptically.* But they don't want you to speak about the soul. They want you to be part of a soulless church -- at least, that's what they're implying.

Mike Holmes worked as a hands-on contractor for many years before he signed on to do his first TV show. (If I remember correctly, he grew up in a home where his father worked in the building industry. Mike Holmes's children, now grown, have also been learning the ins and outs of home contracting and home renovation.) People who watch Mike Holmes's TV shows trust him. They trust him because they can tell he's not an actor -- he's a real contractor who knows what he's doing. People learn a lot from watching his shows, because he's also a good teacher and a dedicated advocate. He puts his money where his mouth is.

I'm not a home renovator (even though I wield a pretty mean paint brush!), but I do have a particular talent, and I'm trained in what I do. My particular talent is mysticism. My talent isn't better than anyone else's talent. It's different, but it's not better. Like Mike Holmes, I have a set of professional tools, and I know how to use them. I also insist that these tools be used according to the highest ethical standards.

In my view, few Christian mystics in the history of the church have used their talents ethically.

Furthermore, many of the men and women who've been traditionally revered as Christian mystics have not, in my opinion, been mystics at all. Rather, they've been apocalyptic prophets.

There's a big difference between a mystic and an apocalyptic prophet. I know this because of my experience, training, and academic research. The church, however, often doesn't make a distinction between mystics and apocalyptic prophets. The church tends to conflate them -- which is kind of like saying there's no difference between a real contractor and a TV actor who doesn't know which end of a hammer is up.

This is why the church's doctrinal garden is filled with the weeds of teachings based on mental illness (i.e. apocalyptic prophecy). These weeds include ancient traditions from Plato, apocalyptic literature, the apostle Paul, and later Christian theologians such as Tertullian and Augustine of Hippo, all of which have choked out the original teachings of Jesus.
 

The church’s teachings on the soul are filled with weeds (as on the left). Many people seem afraid that, if they pull out the weeds, they’ll have no tangible mystery teachings left to sustain the spiritual roots of the church. In fact, when the weeds are pulled, what remains is the beautiful underlying structure of the soul’s courage and goodness. Gardens (and churches) are always healthier and stronger when the weeds are pulled. Photo credit JAT 2014.

Jesus was a mystic -- a mentally healthy person capable of holistic thought, empathy, intuition, creative learning, logical thought, industrious actions, and advanced philosophical inquiry. Jesus was not an apocalyptic prophet -- a mentally dysfunctional person who demonstrates a consistent pattern of dissociation, dualistic thinking, narcissistic entitlement, anti-social behaviour, and a need to gain attention from admirers by making "divinely inspired" prophetic claims about the future.

Mystics are content to TRUST God, and have no need to make predictions about the future. Mystics know that God will do what God needs to do when God needs to do it. Mystics make no claim to having the keys to the future. Only those who don't trust God insist on guarantees about what will happen and when it will happen. Bullies and narcissists are drawn to prophecy. Jesus was not a bully or a DSM-IV narcissist.

Mystics believe in the eternal soul in a positive, uplifting, holistic way, and they don't try to scare the crap out of other people by making dire predictions about what will happen to somebody else's soul. They believe that all souls are good because “God don’t make no junk.” Bullies and narcissists enjoy making threats about the fate of your soul because it gives them a twisted kind of high. It's an addiction -- not a very pretty one, but an addiction nonetheless -- just like any other DSM-IV addiction problem.

Mystics (the real ones, anyway) are emotionally mature. They understand boundary issues. They understand that other people ARE other people. (Seriously dysfunctional people don't see you as "real" in your own right, with your own distinctive personality -- they see you merely as an extension of their own self-entitled needs, which is why they try to force you to comply with their wishes at the expense of yours.) Prophets love to give other people big, long lists of laws -- required thoughts, required behaviours, which you're expected to follow. Prophets tell you that their laws are divine laws. But most often the laws are designed to provide some sort of psychological relief to the prophet himself or herself. Usually, the laws entrench the "divine authority" of the prophet, and place the prophet in an elevated position. This is just narcissistic bullying in a more sophisticated form.

Mystics don't talk about fearing God. Mystics talk about having a positive, mature relationship with God. Mystics don't fear death. Mystics don't believe in cosmic evil. Mystics don't believe that human beings are more important to God than God's other creatures. Mystics don't believe that human laws are infallible. Mystics know that God is always listening and always acting in the world whether we pray for help or not.

Mystics trust in the fantastic goodness of God.

Apocalyptic prophets believe in their own power and their own status. They don't trust anybody, especially not God.

Jesus was a mystic. He trusted God the Mother and God the Father. It's time for the church to let Jesus' teachings about God re-enter the hearts and minds of our community of faith in the twenty-first century.

It's time for us to learn to trust our beloved God.



* If you don't know what "prolepsis" means, then I'd like to suggest you're a lucky person. You'll sleep much better at night if you're not wasting your time trying to embrace the scientifically impossible feat of time-travel.

CC6: Why I'm Hard On Scholars Who Study Mystics

One thing you're bound to notice as you read my posts is that I'm very hard on mystics.

I'm also very hard on scholars and academicians who write about mystics.

Let me put it this way: in one of my recent theology classes, a senior professor recommended that we read Evelyn Underhill's book Mysticism: The Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness if we wanted to understand more about the nature of Christian mysticism. The problem I have with this book is twofold: (1) Evelyn Underhill was not a practising mystic herself, and was writing from an academic perspective, and (2) Evelyn Underhill first published her book in 1911. That's one hundred years ago, folks. I can't imagine in all honesty that I would be urged to study a 100 year old textbook in any other field. (Can you imagine what that would be like in a field like chemistry?) Yet this book is still in print, and is still available on the bookshelves of regular bookstores. (I bought a spanking new softcover copy at an Anglican bookstore in 2009). This kind of stubborn denial in the world of theology makes me want to metaphorically pull out my hair by its little grey roots.

For the sake of scholarly balance, a much more recent book that is well researched is The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism, edited by Bernard McGinn (New York: Modern Library-Random House, 2006).

McGinn's book is a collection of short pieces written by well-known and lesser-known Christian mystics over the past two millennia. He provides a short introduction to each mystic, but he allows the reader to hear the mystics speak in their own words. His approach is in sharp contrast to Underhill's approach. Underhill, in my view, does not show an understanding of her own limits, and seems to believe she is within her rights to make factual claims about the characteristics and interior experiences of Christian mystics.

Thank you kindly, Ms. Underhill, but some of the mystical experiences you describe in your book sound to me an awful lot like various forms of serious mental illness, and I wouldn't be recommending those pursuits to anybody who cares about their mental, spiritual, physical, and emotional health.

Of course, I understand that Underhill was writing her book at a time when research in the fields of psychiatry and psychology was still young, and advanced investigations in neurophysiology and neuroplasticity hadn't yet been contemplated. I get that. What I don't get is the church's refusal to revise its theological understanding of mysticism in light of new neuro-psychiatric research. The Christian church was founded on prophecy (revelation) and mysticism. There would be no church without the claims made by early prophets and mystics. You'd think the church would desperately want to know how to use modern scientific advances to help them better understand what makes prophets and mystics tick.

"Again they came to Jerusalem. As he was walking in the temple, the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders came to him and said, 'By what authority are you doing these things? Who gave you this authority to do them?' Jesus said to them, 'I will ask you one question; answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin? Answer me.' They argued with one another, 'If we say, "From heaven," he will say, "Why then did you not believe him?" But shall we say, "Of human origin"?' -- they were afraid of the crowd, for all regarded John as truly a prophet. So they answered Jesus, 'We do not know.' And Jesus said to them, 'Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.'" (Mark 11: 27-33).  Mystics who take themselves too seriously will be reminded by God to be more humble and more aware of their personal limitations. Mystics are no more important to God than any other human beings. Photo credit JAT 2015.

 
But, of course, if the church took the bold step of researching its closetful of prophets and mystics, some of its traditional heroes might not look so good anymore. And then the church would have to start rethinking some of its doctrinal positions.

You know, stuff like . . . oh, Original Sin. Adam and Eve and the Fall. The Devil. Judgment Day. All that paranoid, obsessive-compulsive, DSM-IV-TR Axis I and II stuff. The kind of thinking that responds really well to a properly managed treatment course with olanzapine.*

Yeah, well, call me a cynic, but when you've had five years of experience working in a lay capacity in the field of psychiatry, it's pretty hard not to think in psychiatric terms when you read some of the things that Christian mystics have written over the centuries.

As a practising mystic, I would never say that mystical experiences don't exist or can't exist. I would never say that all reported mystical experiences are the result of mental illness. I would never say that all reported mystical experiences are pure fabrication, either. But some reported experiences are caused by mental illness, and some reported experiences are pure fabrication.

The trick is to be able to sort out the genuine mystics from both the tragically mentally ill and the enthusiastic fakers. We need science on our side to do this.

That's why I would like to see an introductory course on neuroscience as a requirement in the theological curriculum.


* olanzapine is the generic name for an atypical antipsychotic medication that is particularly useful in the treatment of schizophrenia and bipolar 1 disorder.