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Share ...
The Way to a Wonderful Life, Sunday, August
11, 2013
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Listen to the Radio Broadcast of this
Message: click
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"By
imagination and desire we become what we desire to be. Let us
affirm to ourselves that we are what we wish to be, we will become
transformed into that which we have imagined ourselves to be. We
were born by a natural miracle of love and for a brief space of time our
needs were all another's care. In that simple truth lies the
secret of life. Except by love, we cannot truly live at all.
Our parents in their separate individualities have no power to transmit
life. So, back we come to the basic truth that life is the
offspring of love. Therefore, no love, no life. Thus, it is
rational to say that, "God is Love." -
William Blake (1757-1827)
Reza
Aslan's new book, "ZEALOT ... THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JESUS OF
NAZARETH" has garnered lots of attention both through the Media and
the Christian Religious Communities. There are those who are
offended that a Muslim from Iran would write a book about Jesus.
But his credentials give evidence to his credibility: He holds a
Bachelor of Arts degree in religions from Santa Clara University, a
Master of Theological Studies degree from Harvard Divinity School, and a
Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Iowa's Writers'
Workshop, where he was named the Truman Capote Fellow in Fiction.
Aslan also received a Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology, focusing on the
history of religion, from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
In other words, Reza Aslan is a man with a passion for religious studies
and history. I will admit that I have not finished reading his
book. I read it on the plane going to Missouri and on the plane
coming back to Palm Springs and a few pages each day. There is so
much in the book that will surprise most readers and so much that, if
understood, will give benefit ... and parts of the book that will be
hard to understand and believe.
In the critics' rush to find fault with the
book and to dismiss it, they have missed some very important points made
in the book in regards to Jesus' ability to use the full force of his
faith to heal the sick and draw his audience into a fuller realization
of our relationship with G-d. Although most of the Christian sects
throughout the world, including Catholicism, have followed the
philosophy of those who came after Jesus, especially the Apostle Paul,
Aslan's book takes us through the mist of fairytales, false truths and
half-truths, to a more honest depiction of Jesus of Nazareth that I
found very appealing. I am very attracted to the Jesus as a
revolutionary against the political and religious authorities of his
time and his passion for healing work. Aslan's depiction draws me
to this Jesus who was so passionate about his faith in G-d and his
willingness to express the livingness, the forgivingness and the
givingness of G-d as who he was. Aslan's Jesus did not seek the
approval of anyone nor did he concern himself with the end result of
what his words and actions would take him. Very little that he was
teaching was new or original to him ... but he clarified that which is
truth in such a unique way that it appeared to be new. In truth,
it was a "renewing" or "refreshing" of that which
had been revealed before. Nor did he seek to justify or clarify
his ability to draw forth the spirit of health of those who appeared to
be sick or infirmed ... he understood that their dis-ease was based on
the acceptance of a false-belief.
Aslan points out that there were many people
like Jesus during this era who were making their living working
"magical" healings and cures for people. Jesus did his
healing work for free ... as a gift from G-d through him. This
fact only stymied and frustrated his critics all the more. But,
Jesus worked no magic but relied on faith and the guidance of Spirit for
his work. What he did was beyond the understanding of the people
of his time and is still beyond the understanding of the masses of
people today. In Aslan's "ZEALOT" we can read: "Despite
the magical elements that can be traced in some of his miracles, the
fact is that nowhere in the gospels does anyone actually charge Jesus
with performing magic. It would have been an easy accusation for
his enemies to make, one that would have carried an immediate death
sentence. Yet when Jesus stood before the Roman and Jewish
authorities to answer the charges against him, he was accused of many
misdeeds - sedition, blasphemy, rejecting the Law of Moses, refusing to
pay the tribute, threatening the Temple - but being a magician was not
one of them." I believe even his enemies knew that
Jesus had discovered something that was beyond their understanding.
There are, as I have written before,
41,000 Christian sects but no one has been able to duplicate the healing
work of Jesus and is still considered a Christian. One man who did
do healing work similar to the method used by Jesus was Phineas
Parkhurst Quimby, and like Jesus he was very critical of traditional
religion. Quimby wrote this about his healing method: "MY
THEORY: the trouble is in the mind, for the body is only the house for
the mind to dwell in . . . If your mind has been deceived by some
invisible enemy into a belief, you have put it into the form of a
disease, with or without your knowledge. By my theory or truth I come in
contact with your enemy and restore you to health and happiness."
(Volume 3, page 208 of Quimby's Complete Writings)
Horatio W. Dresser
explained Quimby's ideas in a seven element list:
1. The omnipresent Wisdom, the warm, loving Father of us all, Creator of
all the universe, whose works are good, whose substance is an invisible
reality.
2. The real man, whose life is eternal in the invisible kingdom of God,
whose senses are spiritual and function independently of matter.
3. The visible world, which Dr. Quimby once characterized as "the
shadow of Wisdom's amusements"; that is, nature is only the outward
projection or manifestation of an inward activity far more real and
enduring.
4. Spiritual matter, or fine interpenetrating substance, directly
responsive to thought and subconsciously embodying in the flesh the
fears, beliefs, hopes, errors, and joys of the mind.
5. Disease is due to false reasoning in regard to sensations, which man
unwittingly develops by impressing wrong thoughts and mental pictures
upon the subconscious spiritual matter.
6. As disease is due to false reasoning, so health is due to knowledge
of the truth. To remove disease permanently, it is necessary to know the
cause, the error which led to it. "The explanation is the
cure."
7. To know the truth about life is therefore the sovereign remedy for
all ills. This truth Jesus came to declare. Jesus knew how he cured and
Dr. Quimby, without taking any credit to himself as a discoverer,
believed that he understood and practiced the same great truth or
science.
Both Quimby and Jesus understood that the
Law of G-d was not an enemy of science; they are intertwined ... mind,
body, spirit ... three-fold, but one in substance. From 1847 until
his passing in January, 1866, Quimby treated over 12,000 patients
devoting his life to healing the sick. Quimby is quoted as saying:
"I now stand on the rock of science and prove
all things by what I feel and see and not by what others tell me" -
"Science is the voice of God, opinions that of man" -
"Now the medium I use is the Holy Ghost or the Christ in me" -
"The wisdom that acted upon Jesus was the Christ and when Jesus
spoke of it he called it God" - "All can learn to be Christ or
science if they only study" - "Now science is wisdom put into
practice. So science is the son of God or Wisdom" - "But the
time must come when this false mode of reasoning must give way to a
higher wisdom where all things are proved by science" - "Then
there will arise a new science, followed by a new mode of reasoning,
which will teach man that it is wise to unlearn his errors".
Everything that I have quoted from Quimby
points to G-d, first as Intelligence, then as Sprit or Mind, and then as
Power. This Jesus must have understood. It is obvious as we
look at both Quimby and Jesus; truth known is demonstrated. I
would think that the critics of "ZEALOT" were offended by Reza
Aslan's assertion that Jesus' teachings were for the Jewish people only,
but this idea is put forward in the Gospels of the Holy Bible as well.
Jesus was Jewish and his passion was for the good of the Jewish people
and he had little concern for non-Jews. Does this mean that
non-Jews cannot benefit from his teaching or that his teachings are
deficient? I don't believe so. I believe that even Jesus
himself may not have realized how powerful his words were and would
become to those who follow his teaching, both Jews and non-Jews alike.
Just as we have all benefited from the teachings of Krishna, Buddha,
Isaiah-s and others of differing theologies, the truth can never be
limited or exclusive to any man-made idea of separation from each other
or the fairytale that G-d favors some and not others. This was the
primitive belief in Jesus' time. Surely evolution has given us the
knowledge, understanding and awareness to know this can never be true.
As Quimby tells us, "all can
learn to be Christ or science if they only study" ... in other
words G-d Intelligence and Power is available to everyone. It is
up to us to choose to discover it within ourselves. And when we do
we realize that "truth known is truth demonstrated." And
that faith without works is opinion, not truth, and lacks the
"knowing" ... the offspring of Love, that demonstrates our
good.
AND
SO IT IS!
Keep
the
faith!
Rev.
Henry Bates
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