Genesis Stories: The Results are In.

The essential question each of us must resolve when seeking to grasp the essential truths of Jesus, is whether we view our lives from a narrative founded upon sin versus one with an emphasis rooted in knowing truth.

It's vital to recognize that the subject of sin and punishment was NOT the primary or most important teaching given by Jesus. Instead, he called attention to the religious Law and the former way of understanding and transcended the idea by saying, "Even if you only THINK of committing an act considered sinful, you've fallen short and the result is just as destructive as if you'd actually acted on it."

What's been missed in the religious response, is that he's calling women and men to a "higher way of being" and a higher "way of thought" that stepped out from the ancient revelation that predated him. A "way of understanding, a way of being and a way of responding" founded in a reality that's easily considered as "modern" and intended for us to begin with and ultimately maintain as our personal basis and to underlie much of our thinking. And therefore, in this new model, to even think of committing harm or a hurtful act to another, whether by murder, adultery or otherwise, illustrates our lack of understanding or even our ignorance of the essential truth he taught. And so again, in this new way of understanding, "knowing" (essential truth) and walking in light of such truth will result in "right being," which is culminated and ultimately illustrated or expressed by us through our "right action."

This modern ideal transcends the paralyzing effects of the destructive Genesis story of human kind which confines us to a "knowledge of good and evil." The world we observe today is an example of how this ever present "duality" has kept modern man in the primitive shadows of thought. Those of us looking to religion as our primary source of transformative teaching remain in an underlying bi-polar response to life, never certain of whether we are blessed or cursed or whether the universe is for us or against us. As Jesus warned, "a house divided against itself cannot stand" and his message was to serve as a "new wine which should not be placed into old wineskins." Yet, the religious response to scripture, the resulting "sin narrative" and the endless effort spent to align Jesus's modern teaching with the history the predated him has perpetuated the exact results that our teacher warned of.

To be clear, no one escapes the consequences of those things considered as sin. They all come with a price of some sort. The results of those actions are often quite obvious to those around us. Or when they're not so visible, they often result in an internal unrest and fractured connection to God as our Father (within) and the light that Jesus shared was equally inherent within us. Most importantly, sin and sinful acts are to be understood as an illustration of an ignorance of our higher truth and not of any inherent sin nature.

Certain readers may find themselves resisting most any new approach by simply writing them all off as errant. I'd simply call attention to the pattern of the world that exists right before our eyes and suggest it's quite obvious that the system that religious ideals have instituted is at this time causing as much harm as it does good. Furthermore, and of most dire importance is that ignorance of essential truth perpetuates a tacit acceptance that ultimate calamity and destruction of human kind and the end of the world is an acceptable outcome.

God Is Reality, Not Religion.

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There’s no slippery slope being presented here. Jesus established the basis for what’s true about God. It exists as very solid ground, capable of providing very sure footing. If there's a slippery slope I observe, is that religion looks beyond the essential truths taught by Jesus and wraps them in a complexity and a priority that seldom returns the individual back to themselves as an enlightened, transformed being, capable of navigating the remainder of life from a spiritually self regulating way of being. The religious model insists we must add on a variety of items to “believe in,” which are to take priority over what exists that we may simply, “know as true.” As a result, it’s the religious waters of “complexity,” which continually rain down upon the path set forth by Jesus, that actually create such a slippery slope.

The Biblical Old Testament and the resulting takeaways from new testament writers has resulted in a "sin narrative." In the model, women and men are not enough and fall short of being enough, doing enough and even having enough. In this approach, we must add on an endless amount of teaching, study, church attendance, acts of service, ritual and worship, to ultimately be enough to please God. Hence, always the need for more. Which perpetuates the endless cycles of separation we've endured of striving to "become children of God" and the resulting dissatisfaction, discontent, dismay, and disillusion we've ultimately felt generation after generation.

John's Gospel verse 9:34: "To this they replied, “You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!”

Jesus's opposition to the religious leaders of the synagogues becomes very clear in John's gospel. What's been missed however, is that it's those established religious mindsets, fixated on the prior, ancient way of understanding, who present and perpetuate the "sin narrative." It's quite plainly illustrated, an enlightened one - now given eyes that see after an encounter with Jesus, and the unenlightened beings disputing Jesus and his testimony and insisting he was born in sin. hurling insults upon the (enlightened) one "who was born blind but now can see." Unfortunately, the same ideals are carried forth by Paul, who wasn't present for Jesus's teachings nor ever actually knew him. Enlightened one that he was, we still are reading of a lifetime spent attempting to reconcile his own past as Pharisee of Pharisees, with the truths he seeks to develop.

Jesus's teachings were grounded in a "truth narrative." In the first Genesis story of creation tells that from the outset our creator was well pleased with its creation and that human kinds reality is simply that we are all born as children of God to begin with. Not as a result of any magic wand religion suggests must be waved overhead to allow us passage into some manner of acceptance both in the present age and the hereafter. Religion has presumed a great deal of established disconnect and separation exists for us all, and strives to bridge the gap. There is no gap nor separation between the creator and it s creation. Jesus shared of his connection to God as being "one with the Father" and insisted we were to think of our connection with God in the same way.

Is this really such a stretch for you? Its the very first thing written of human kind in the bible! Yet, the remainder is the old testament is a never ending struggle to remedy the issue of good and evil that the second Genesis sets forth as truth. Notice in the second Genesis that the idea of God is very different from the transcendent essence that's unveiled in the first chapter Genesis. This God is afraid of a serpent and his divine creation is overrun by the same. Not so much of an issue with the creative power that's presented in the prior Genesis chapter. Finally, in the most fascinating way, the old testament issues forth revelations of a falling away of the very same system that produces the revelations.

Photo by Corina Ardeleanu on Unsplash

We're told in the original Genesis that we're created in an image that reflects the source of all creation. And that women were created alongside men as equals! Jesus arrives and teaches us of the same reality and refines our role in the process. To align ourselves with Jesus's teaching, we must know this as our essential truth in order to live out the transformative process for this to move from an intellectual understanding unto a transcendent one.