My favorite Bible story: Mark 11

I am not a Christian, but I still find great wisdom and insight in the Bible, especially in the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke (John has it's moments, but I can take it or leave it). Of all the wonderful parts of the Gospels, the Beatitudes, Gethsemane, the parables, my favorite part is chapter 11 of the Gospel of Mark. It not only shows Yeshua ben Yosef, the man we now call Jesus, at the height of his ministry with his entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, but it shows his flaws and his humanness as well. Best of all, it shows Yeshua speaking of the true potential of humanity in the clearest of terms.

It begins, as I said, with Palm Sunday, and then continues to this (KJV)...

Quote:

Mark 11 12 And on the morrow, when they were come from Bethany, he was hungry: 13 And seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, he came, if haply he might find any thing thereon: and when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves; for the time of figs was not yet. 14 And Jesus answered and said unto it, No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever. And his disciples heard it.

After this, Yeshua and the disciples enter Jerusalem, and we find the famous moneychangers in the Temple scene. Then this follows...

Quote:

Mark 11 19 And when even was come, he went out of the city. 20 And in the morning, as they passed by, they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots. 21 And Peter calling to remembrance saith unto him, Master, behold, the fig tree which thou cursedst is withered away. 22 And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God. 23 For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith. 24 Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them. 25 And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses. 26 But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses.

There are three very important lessons in these verses. First, even more than the moneychangers scene, this story displays the essential humanness of Yeshua. This incredible man, this wonderful and wise teacher, loses his temper at a tree and kills it with a word (in Matthew the tree withers instantly, rather than overnight as here). This shows us that Yeshua is not perfect, he is flawed, just like all of us. How many of us have wounded another with unkindness in a moment of frustration? How many of us have gotten snappy with others, even others we love, when we are hungry, as he was? How incredibly normal and natural! This moment of imperfection on the part of Yeshua I find incredibly inspiring, because more than his temptation in the wilderness or his fear in Gethsemane or his doubt at Golgotha, this shows me a Yeshua I can relate to as another man, searching for peace within and without, and occasionally failing.

Notice then, in the second part, how he turns a negative into a positive. Instead of dwelling on his mistake, he uses the awe his followers feel at the sight of the dead tree into an object lesson in the power that all have within them. And notice also, there are no caveats or limits to the power of prayer (some were added to this same story in Matthew), only that one needs to believe, completely, in the power of the Divine and that the prayer will be answered. It doesn't matter what is prayed for, it doesn't matter the purity of the asker, all that matters is faith that goes beyond faith to perfect knowing and confidence.

But notice now the addendum to this teaching, the importance of forgiveness of others. This seems abrupt, almost a changing of subject, if one assumes the perfection of Yeshua, but in light of his flaws it makes perfect sense. Yeshua knows that he has done wrong by losing his temper and killing the tree, and in his heart he has asked the Divine for forgiveness for his trespass. Since this is on his mind, he then passes on the insight that God will forgive us precisely as much as we forgive others. With the knowledge of how close Yeshua is to his greatest forgivenesses of others at this time (the Tuesday before Good Friday), this teaching becomes especially poignant.

Mark 11, more than any other part of the Bible, reveals to me the true nature of the man we now call Jesus; God made man, yes, but not unique in this and, in his own way, just as flawed and human as any of us.

Why I cannot believe in the Monotheist God

Someone on SpiritualForums.com recently posted a link to download a PDF titled "Is Jesus God?", and, curious as always, I downloaded it and gave it a read. Other than two things, it contained no argument or line of reasoning I had not heard before. One of those two was interesting (a discussion of the logic of Yeshua's resurrection), but the other contained such inane leaps of logic I felt compelled to discuss it here.

At the end of the PDF was a 20 part logical Proof of the Divine. It began quite well (though not in any way that hasn't been used before before) with the idea that a universe with a definite beginning must have a Cause. From there it goes logically through the nature of such a Cause, but around Step 15 it starts to break down and make unfounded assumptions. I'll repost the final few steps here.

12. All the causes cannot be finite (non-ultimate) causes.

Therefore,

13. The personal moral existing Creator-Cause is infinite (i.e.,

ultimate).

14. The infinite cause must be eternal because eternality is infinity

applied to time (and no meaningful statement can be made about

space without reference to time).

15. An infinite eternal Cause could not change (since anything He

would change into, He would already be).

Therefore,

16. The Creator-Cause must be all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-

perfect (otherwise He could change).

Therefore,

17. A personal, moral, infinite, eternal, immutable (unchanging), all-

knowing, all-powerful, all-perfect Creator-Cause exists.

18. Such a Being is worthy of worship.

19. A Being worthy of worship can be called God.

Therefore,

20. GOD EXISTS.

Point 15 is really the core of why I cannot accept the ideas of Monotheism. The idea of an unchanging Divine, and the ideas of perfection that follow in 16 and 17, is the root of the idea of human imperfectness and sinfulness; God is infinite and we are finite, so if God is also perfect and perfection is infinite, we as finite beings must be imperfect. This is the genesis (pun intended) of Original Sin.

But what such a mindset misses is the unconscious limitations this perspective places upon the Divine. If the Divine is infinite and eternal (as stated in point 14), then the Divine must contain It's creation, since to not contain it creates a finitism; it says that this is something "God" is not. Yet if God contains Creation, God must also change, since change is the defining characteristic of Creation, and especially of Life. Therefore immutability cannot be an aspect of God, and mutability cannot be imperfect. Therefore we must be already perfect, since we are not separate from God.

The real leap of logic, however, is in #18. The idea that we should or need to worship the Divine is completely dependent upon the idea of God's separateness and our imperfection, yet as I stated above, the whole idea of our imperfection and separateness creates a limitation upon God, and therefore must not be true if God is infinite and eternal.

But this does not even touch upon the whole idea that worship of the Divine is a requirement. A requirement implies that worship is something that God needs or desires. If it is a need, it implies that somehow God would be lessened or damaged or hurt by not getting it, and how could that which is unlimited, eternal, and omnipotent be lessened, hurt, or damaged? The very idea that such could happen is a limitation in and of itself.

So therefore, worship must be required out of God's preference, yet why would such a preference exist? It must only exist if God created it. So what purpose does such a creation serve? It would imply that there is something God would prefer that would not manifest, and why would God create the desire for something and the situation where the desire could manifest, yet did not? This implies powerlessness on God's part, another impossibility.

The usual monotheist rebuttal of this is that God gave us free will so that we could come to God out of choice rather than out of compulsion, yet such a construction requires separation of God from Creation, which creates a limitation upon the Unlimited. For us to choose what God does not want us to choose would require God to have no part in our choices, which would require that we are separate from God. If we are separate from God, then there is something God is not, which is a limitation and therefore impossible.

What it comes down to is that the constructions of Western Monotheism require a limited and anthropomorphized Divine. While such idea do have an internal logic, they hinge upon assumptions that I find completely unfounded. Thus I have personally discarded the WM God and forged my own paths and ideas.

JCS