Sunday, December 11, 2005
For God so Loved the World
Today's reading comes from the Gospel of St. John the Beloved, Chapter 3:
(14)Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so the Son of man is ready to be lifted up (15)so that every man who believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.
(16)For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, so that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. (17)For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world should be saved by Him. (18)He who believes in Him will not be condemned; and he who does not believe has already been condemned for not believing in the name of the only begotten Son of God. (19)And this is the judgment, that light has come into the world and yet men have loved darkness more than light, because their works were evil. (20)For every one who does detestable things hates the light, and he does not come to the light, because his works cannot be covered. (21)But he who does truthful things comes to the light, so that his works may be known, that they are done through God.
I've been very reluctant to tackle this passage, even though it has loomed large in my consciousness. This is, by all accounts, one of the most important verses in all of Christendom. This is the verse that tells us, we are told, that Jesus' death on the cross is the act by which our sinful lives are redeemed and the way to heaven is made clear. This is the passage, too that tells us how non-believers will be damned to hell for not accepting Jesus as their savior. I was moved to address this passage because of a comment from an anonymous person to one of my other posts regarding the nature of Jesus the man vs. Jesus The Christ.
The first step in understanding this passage is to understand the context in which this teaching is being given. In this story, Jesus is speaking to Nicodemus, who is one of His followers, and also a Pharisee, possibly a member of the Sanhedrin (temple leadership) itself. Nicodemus has come to the place where Jesus and followers are camped, to speak with Him about the opinion of Him among the Jewish religious leadership, and to get clarity regarding a previous teaching he'd heard from The Master. Again, from John, Chapter 3:
(1)There was at that place a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. (2)He came at night to Jesus and said to him,"Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher sent from God, for no man can do the things that you are doing unless God is with him."
What we are experiencing in this passage is something very intimate. This is an evening meeting, without the crowds, between Our Lord and a very influential member of His discipleship. As Jesus begins to teach Nicodemus about the need to be "born again," Nicodemus becomes confused:
(9)Nicodemus answered, saying to Him, "How can these things be?"
(10)Jesus answered, "You are a Teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things? (11)Truly, truly, I say to you, We speak only what we know, and we testify only to what we have seen; and yet you do not accept our testimony."
Jesus is speaking here of the difference between simply reading about God by studying the Torah (or the Bible in the Christian case) and experiencing the Truth of God's presence through personal, inner experience. Jesus says that He and his disciples only speak from personal experience, and he is surprised that someone as important to the religious community as Nicodemus hasn't had a similar experience that would allow him to understand what Jesus is talking about.
So, what Jesus has said, in essence, is: "If I have to explain it, you won't understand." Therefore we, too, must realize that the teaching Jesus is revealing here, and St. John has recorded for us are some of the deepest Truths contained in Christianity. They are, however, Truths that do not reveal themselves with a casual reading of the Bible. They can only be understood through personal experience; that which the Greek Christians referred to as gnosis.
Any attempt at explaining the meaning of these words will undoubtedly miss the mark. Like Jesus and His disciples, I can only speak what I know and testify to what I have seen. As my own gnosis is far from complete, I can only explain them as I understand them, and welcome comments on the understandings that others receive.
Since Jesus has been speaking of personal experience, of "that which we have seen," I think that the word translated here as believe cannot be understood to be synonymous with "blind faith," but should be understood more like "seeing is believing." Therefore, we could read John 3:15 as "so that everyone who experiences Christ and accepts that experience as Truth will not die, but have eternal life." As someone who believes (as the early Chruch Fathers and the ancient Jews believed) in reincarnation, I believe that Jesus speaks here of the end of the cycle of birth and death, of Final Liberation, or in His own words "Entering the Kingdom of Heaven."
As I have stated in an earlier post, I believe that the Son of God which Jesus refers to (often in the third person) is not himself in the personal sense, but to the consciousness which was bestowed upon him and for which he became a totally pure doorway into the world of human ego. As Jesus says in verse 15, and reiterates in verse 16, God loves His creation so deeply, that he sent His Son, The Christ Consciousness, into the world in the form of Jesus of Nazareth, the "Son of Man" so that it could be remembered and experienced by others; that through the experience and the acceptance of the experience as Truth, humanity could escape the false belief that we are the body, and therefore be free from death and at One with The Father.
The second part of this passage, I believe, holds much relevance to Christianity as it manifests itself today in America. Jesus first says that the Son of God has not come to judge people. The very next thing he says is that those who do not believe (remember, "seeing is believing") are already condemned, and that THIS is the judgment. It is not God or Christ dealing out "death sentences" to hell or commending people to heaven based on accepting or not accepting Jesus as their savior, but that some natural order, beyond judgment or values, keeps us in a state of "condemnation" (being unable to experience our closeness to God and having to experience the death of the physical body). After we experience God's Son, The Christ, an accept that experience as truth, then the condemnation is lifted and we are free.
Jesus' final statement in this passage speaks of our desires in the world and our love of materiality, and how this prevents us from experiencing The Christ. An important word to pay attention to here is evil. According to Neil-Douglas Klotz in his book "Prayers of the Cosmos," the Aramaic word which means evil also means unripe or "not yet ready to be harvested." Understanding this, the whole last part of the passage becomes illuminated, and could just as easily say:
When we love darkness more than light (when we are more interested in the world than in God), then everything we do will be incomplete. As long as we love the world more than God, we're avoiding God's love, and damning ourselves. We don't come into the light of God's love because we know that our faults will be illuminated and we'll have to change them, but we love our faults too much to do that. However, when we live in Truth, coming to God is easy because we aren't ashamed of anything, and we see that God is truly the source of all things, the only true "doer."
Comments:
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Well done!
I have often grappled with the same passage. However, I was not as thorough, clear and diplomatic with my interpretation - especially while in conversation with my fundamentalist friends. Thanks Jonathyn - with your permission - I would like to share your thoughts in the future for we are of like mind.
I have often grappled with the same passage. However, I was not as thorough, clear and diplomatic with my interpretation - especially while in conversation with my fundamentalist friends. Thanks Jonathyn - with your permission - I would like to share your thoughts in the future for we are of like mind.
# posted by 
: 12/15/2005 10:36 PM
: 12/15/2005 10:36 PM
I wanted to share my favorite translation of John 3:16. First the King James Version, again:
"For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."
Another interpretation, based on the Aramaic text as translated by Neil Douglas-Klotz:
"For Unity so loved Diversity, all the worlds of form, that it brought you a child of Unity, fulfilled in all aspects of self, so that whoever would have the same confidence in their own fulfillment, like the earth underneath supporting all, would not fade with their form, but continue, from world to world, with and in the ever-living Life."
The word “begotten” can also be translated as unified in all aspects of being. The Aramaic word for “believe” (etamen) is based on the same root as amen, and suggests a sense of confidence and trust. The word “perish” is the same in Aramaic as “lose” or to decay or fade away.
I, too, am a Gnostic Christian and find Klotz’s translation profoundly mystical and rich. I am grateful that you have posted your thoughts, Jonathan. I hope to continually add my comments from time to time.
For anyone who may have problems with interpreting “The Word of God,” and may think that doing so is heretical, I want to elaborate on why I am comfortable with doing so. First of all, I have doubts as to whether or not John the Apostle actually was the author of this Gospel. It is commonly accepted by biblical scholars that this Gospel was most likely written around 70 A.D. I believe that it is also commonly thought that prior to its documentation - the Apostles' accounts of Yeshua were passed amongst the common people via oral tradition. Has anyone ever played the game “Password?” In a nut shell, when passed orally, what we are left with is a very loose version of the original. My thoughts are that the author of the Gospel of John was most likely an early Christian scholar who never knew Yeshua, who thought in Aramaic but wrote in Greek, and documented his own interpretation of an oral tradition. To further muddy the waters, prior to the canonization of the Gospels by the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D (almost four centuries after the crucifixion), dozens if not thousands of Gospel versions were distributed amongst early Christian sects. Constantine’s counsel of hand picked men decided four centuries after the crucifixion what was “The Word of God.” And, then they edited it! The King James Version was not published until 1611. As we can easily see- much is lost with an English translation. It is my thought that what we know as the “Bible” is similar to a Reader’s Digest version and is open to interpretation by anyone seeking a closer relationship to Christ (or the Christ Consciousness).
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"For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."
Another interpretation, based on the Aramaic text as translated by Neil Douglas-Klotz:
"For Unity so loved Diversity, all the worlds of form, that it brought you a child of Unity, fulfilled in all aspects of self, so that whoever would have the same confidence in their own fulfillment, like the earth underneath supporting all, would not fade with their form, but continue, from world to world, with and in the ever-living Life."
The word “begotten” can also be translated as unified in all aspects of being. The Aramaic word for “believe” (etamen) is based on the same root as amen, and suggests a sense of confidence and trust. The word “perish” is the same in Aramaic as “lose” or to decay or fade away.
I, too, am a Gnostic Christian and find Klotz’s translation profoundly mystical and rich. I am grateful that you have posted your thoughts, Jonathan. I hope to continually add my comments from time to time.
For anyone who may have problems with interpreting “The Word of God,” and may think that doing so is heretical, I want to elaborate on why I am comfortable with doing so. First of all, I have doubts as to whether or not John the Apostle actually was the author of this Gospel. It is commonly accepted by biblical scholars that this Gospel was most likely written around 70 A.D. I believe that it is also commonly thought that prior to its documentation - the Apostles' accounts of Yeshua were passed amongst the common people via oral tradition. Has anyone ever played the game “Password?” In a nut shell, when passed orally, what we are left with is a very loose version of the original. My thoughts are that the author of the Gospel of John was most likely an early Christian scholar who never knew Yeshua, who thought in Aramaic but wrote in Greek, and documented his own interpretation of an oral tradition. To further muddy the waters, prior to the canonization of the Gospels by the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D (almost four centuries after the crucifixion), dozens if not thousands of Gospel versions were distributed amongst early Christian sects. Constantine’s counsel of hand picked men decided four centuries after the crucifixion what was “The Word of God.” And, then they edited it! The King James Version was not published until 1611. As we can easily see- much is lost with an English translation. It is my thought that what we know as the “Bible” is similar to a Reader’s Digest version and is open to interpretation by anyone seeking a closer relationship to Christ (or the Christ Consciousness).
# posted by : 12/17/2005 10:06 AM
: 12/17/2005 10:06 AM << Home
