A Road to Peace - Chapter 1

It is with great diffidence that I place my work in this blog, for I am not a learned scholar of religion, but a humble seeker for truth. I place my hope for the future on truth. I am not arrogant enough to think that I have found the truth, but perhaps finding the truth is not necessarily the prize, but the transformation that happens during the seeking. Much of what I have to offer here is controversial to what some currently believe, and I do not expect everyone to jump on a new bandwagon. My only hope is that my writing may help move the world in the direction of peace. That is the reason I wrote my first non-fiction book, A Pluralistic Portrait of God, (available on Amazon.com) and it is the same thing that drove me to begin writing a second book. I have decided not to try and publish this one, but instead to parcel it out chapter by chapter in this blog. The book is titled A Road to Peace – a Christian perspective, and it deals with the issue of how I think Christianity can become a beacon of hope for a better, less violent future. What follows is the first half of chapter 1.

CHAPTER 1 – KINGDOM OF GOD

The road to peace is going to be paved by taking a fresh look at God especially within our Christian faith. It is all too easy to point the finger at other religions, institutions, and societies proclaiming that if they stop their bad behavior then everything in the world would be fixed. It is much more difficult to look inward and discover our own obstacles to peace. The first barrier is simply the great chasm of time between the human Jesus and our modern day which has caused Christians to drift from the original message of Jesus. Where to do we turn as Christians to rectify this problem? The bible of course.

Unfortunately, some Christians venerate the book instead of God. We have put God into a nice little box and tied him up with a bow, and called it the bible. This has ironically led to many Christians becoming similar to the self-righteous Pharisees that Jesus preached against. They have turned the bible into the Law, the standard by which to judge and condemn sinners. The bible has been used throughout history as a weapon to persecute Jews, those considered to be witches, heretics, and scientists. It has been used to justify black slavery, and sexist treatment of women. Historically the bible has been on the wrong side of almost all the major, moral dilemmas that the world has progressed through. In order to advance morally and scientifically people have had to fight against the sacred scripture. Today this continues and it is not bringing peace to the world only frustration, anger, and hatred from both sides.

The bible, then, has become a stumbling block for many Christians today. To be a Christian one has to either put on intellectual blinders or perform mental gymnastics to try to fit “The Word of God” into a round hole when clearly it has a square peg. That said, though, it is certainly not a book that Christians can ignore and place on a shelf to collect dust as if it is only an archeological remnant of the historical past. For the bible is the root of Christianity. If the root dies, then the tree dies too, and so it is with Christianity. The root of a tree is the most fundamental part of the whole plant, it is the starting point for the whole rest of the tree, and it is the supplier of water that continues to give life to the plant. The bible similarly feeds Christians spiritually, and is the starting point for their journey toward God. A tree, however, must grow forth from its root in order to produce fruit, and so to with Christianity. Right now it seems like the message of Jesus is stuck in the root, it has not developed into its maximum potential. If Christianity grows to its full maturity we have the power to cure the world of many of its worst problems. With just a root, though, we are powerless. We must use our root properly so that that we can grow into the tree of life for the world.

How exactly is the bible our root? First of all, what the bible isn’t is the exact words of God. This understanding of the bible has led Christians on extended detours away from God. I believe a better view of the bible is to see it as describing the development of Israel’s relationship with God. That relationship may never have been be perfect and in some cases might have been totally wrong. But none of the struggles to come to understand God were edited out, the moments of great connection with God, as well as the tragedies that led the Israelites away from God were all recorded in the bible. It is our job to look critically at the book, and see which trajectories were the correct ones. The important point, though, is that the Israelites never gave up, and constantly worked on their relationship with God. The Old Testament denotes that relationship as the Covenant.

As we read the Old Testament we begin with the creation of the first humans, Adam and Eve. Starting with them and journeying forward through time we learn all about the history of Israelites. This history is not recorded as unbiased facts, rather it is written only because it is relevant to God’s covenant. The actual historical events that happened were important because God played a hand in them. Notice, when God is giving Israel the ten commandments he prefaces them with, “I am the LORD thy god, which brought the out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.”(Ex 20:2 KJV) The deliverance from slavery was a unique event in history that proved to the Israelites that God loved them. In short, God is creating history, therefore, history is a pointer God. When we combine these two elements together, that God is the mover of history with the idea of a covenant, then we see that history is the movement toward the ultimate fulfillment of the covenant.

Notice that in the Old Testament there is a gradual shift of morality and closeness to God as time goes on. The time after the flood was better than the terrible times before, the time after the Law was received was seen as a better time than before the Law. The age of the Israel nation was considered better than the period of the judges, when “all people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes.”(Judges 21:25) Once the nation fell apart, the Israelites always looked forward to a better time in the future when the Messiah would come and restore them to their former beauty. The notion that with time the world becomes better is certainly a biblical one.

From the beginning of the Old Testament to the end we can trace a slow growth of the covenant. Initially, the covenant was just a promise that God would not flood the earth again. “I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh. And the Bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth” (Gen 9:14-15 KJV) This is the humble beginnings of the covenant, that God would give humanity the earth and not destroy it again with a flood. In this way, the covenant was about the survival of the human race. With Abraham, though, we see a hint of something bigger. God told Abraham that “All families on earth will be blessed through you.” (Gen 12:3 NLT) Here, still at the early stages of the covenant, we have stepped up from just existing, to the hope of having a life blessed by God. This is an amazing transition at such a primitive stage of humanity. Not only does the covenant now include God’s blessings, but it is for all families on the earth. Here, it is certainly obvious that God is speaking through the author of Genesis. The average mode of thinking in biblical times was group mentality. That is you are either part of my group or not, and that determined who was friend and foe. God, though, was already trying to widen the picture to include everyone. Now, Israel sometimes forgot that the covenant was intended for all people. Israel proclaimed war on their enemies thinking that God was also against those people and would help Israel win. This is certainly NOT a God that spiritual people today can believe in. To consider these culturally induced passages as “God’s Words” for all time, is to refuse to let God speak to humanity today. The bible gives us a portrait of the Israelites that includes their incorrect attitudes, but in other verses we see that when the Israelites were ready to move to the next spiritual phase, then God was there beside them pointing them in the right direction.

Human beings are composed of several hierarchical elements which include matter, body, mind and spirit. Each child must start at the bottom and climb up the ladder incorporating each element into the next to get to the highest point of spiritual fulfillment. This same process that every human being undertakes, has also being going on throughout history. At the dawn of humanity, humans were very much like infants, unconsciously embedded in the natural world around them, matter.1 It is right here, then, in the physical world that God meets them with his covenant. The initial sign of the covenant was the rainbow, a natural part of the world that was easily seen. It would appear after it rained to remind people that they were safe from another flood. But God wanted men and women to journey forth from these beginnings to move closer to him. This meant leaving the comfort of infancy and beginning the maturing process. This is what every child does as they begin to venture forth learning to walk, run and play, no longer cradled in the arms of mom or dad. A child begins to understand that they have a body that can be maneuvered within the world. The same transition happened with early humans as they developed language and used their hands to weave baskets and produce spears for hunting. When the Israelites moved to the next level, God in a sense redefined the covenant in a way that they could make more sense of it-- through the body. The covenant moved from the physical world, the rainbow, to a person’s body, circumcision. “This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee; Every man child among you shall be circumcised.”(Gen 17:10 KJV)

Each new level is still dependent on the previous elements. A person must still live within the world of matter, even though they have found their unique body within it. And a person still contains their body even as they move to the next phase of realizing that they have a mind. With the emergence of the mind humans could make laws and build societies. That is exactly what Israel did. God knew that the Israelites were ready for the next stage in the covenant, and so he delivered his divine laws to them through Moses. We must understand that these laws were given to them in a specific time period and that God gave them laws that made sense to them. We have since matured and moved further up the ladder in our journey to God, and so now some of those laws are certainly old and outdated. In a society were sacrifice was common, God gave the Israelites rules on how to perform sacrifices. In a society that took slavery as a natural part of life, God gave them laws to keep slavery under control. God understood that their consciousness was not yet raised to the point where slavery could be outlawed, they would have never understood or accepted such laws. To take the old, divine law meant for that period and try to incorporate it into today’s society does not make any sense. In any case, the giving of the law was a major step toward the ultimate fulfillment of the covenant. So the sign of the covenant changed from body, circumcision, to the mind, and laws. The Lord gave these instruction to Moses “Speak thou also unto the children of Israel, verily my Sabbaths ye shall keep: for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations; that ye may know that I am the LORD that doth sanctify you.” (Ex 31:13 KJV) Following the Sabbath was now the new sign of God’s covenant with Israel.

As the Israelites matured in their understanding of God, the covenant continued to change. The relationship between God and his people was never a static thing, as we have seen it began at the level of matter, and then was transformed into a bodily covenant based on circumcision. Next it was raised up to the level of the mind and laws. The Israelites lived at this level of the covenant for many years, during that time the foundation rested on the Law that they believed was a revelation from God given to them through Moses. They tried to keep God’s Laws at the center of the nation. The bulk of these rules consisted of regulations for sacrifices and festivals. The Laws concerning morality have survived to our current time, known today as the 10 commandments. Israel eventually got to a point where the covenant, guided by Laws, needed to be expanded to the next level. Sometimes it takes a great catastrophe to change from one’s natural ways of doing things. At this point in the history of Israel, aggressive nations to the north were standing poised and ready to conquer them. It was during this great era of stress and tribulation that the prophets raged against the current system. They ranted and raved against the normal way of doing things, that is offering sacrifice. The priests, on the other hand, were stringently on the side of the Law and sacrifices. The message of the prophets, however, was that sacrificing was not going to save the people from impending doom, only a conversion of the heart would cause God to save them. The prophets knew that sacrificing was an integral part of Israel’s original covenant, they were well versed in the scriptures that came before them. Yet, they still proclaimed that God was speaking something new now. Isaiah and Jeremiah are two of the more popular prophets that people recognize today. There were, though, more prophets such as Hosea, Joel, and Micah. Another named Amos proclaimed that God said:

I hate all your show and pretense
The hypocrisy of your religious festivals and solemn assemblies.
I will not accept you burn offerings and grain offerings.
I will not even notice all your choice peace offerings.
Away with your noisy hymns of praise!
I will not listen to the music of your harps
Instead, I want to see a mighty flood of justice, and endless river of
righteous living.
(Amos 5:21-24)

The prophets were people who had a new vision for what the covenant with God was suppose to be about. They realized it was not about rituals, feast days, and sacrifices. They had the audacity to proclaim that the scripture that went before was actually wrong, and had now been overwritten by something new. Jeremiah told Israel, (in the original words of the Jewish Tanakh)

For when I freed your fathers from the land of Egypt, I did not speak with them or command them concerning burn offerings or sacrifice. But this is what I commanded them. Do my bidding, that I may be your God and you may be My people; walk only in the way that I enjoy upon you, that it may go well with you. Yet they did not listen or give ear; they followed their own counsels, the willfulness of their evil hearts. They have gone backward, not forward.(Jer 7:22-24)

This idea of rewriting scripture has been toned down in our bibles today. According to The New Living Translation Bible this passage reads slightly differently.

When I led your ancestors out of Egypt, it was not burnt offerings and sacrifices that I wanted from them. This is what I told them... Jer 7:22-24)

Jeremiah’s original message boldly proclaimed that God never commanded sacrifice, even though the book of Leviticus clearly stated that God did demand those things. The prophets wanted to eliminate this old, outdated way of dealing with God, so they tried to erase what came before, to overwrite it with a new idea. They ached for a new and better Israel. They had great hopes that Israel would survive the threat from the surrounding nations and come to live according to a new covenant of the heart. This new way of understanding God was to make the old non-existent. This great vision was best explained by Jeremiah.

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 in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neigbour, 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.” (Jer 31:33-34 NLT)

This realization of God is at the top of the spiritual ladder, it is at the very heart of what it means to be human. According to the prophets the covenant was to be confirmed by spirit. Yet, spirit is invisible, and that makes it hard for people to make the leap from mind to spirit. So the Israelites had a hard time accepting the words of the prophets. Many of the great prophets died defending their understanding of the covenant.

Israel was defeated by her enemies. In 586 B.C Babylon conquered Israel, most of the Israelites were deported. It is at this point, crushed and defeated that the Israelites looked back at what the prophets had said and realized that something may have been wrong with their current system. For one thing, they had lost their temple, it had been destroyed by the Babylonians, so sacrificing was no longer an option. They had to enter into a new understanding of God or their religion would die.

Bibliography
1. Ken Wilber. Up From Eden. Wheaton, Illinois: Quest Books Theosophical Publishing House, 1996. p. 54