Issue #16, Nov. 26th, 06

Just Say "Know"

Many of you know that I have come to the conclusion that the New Testament is a book of Awakening and not a manual for morality. In fact, I have started a new book project that sets out to prove just that. In the process of the gearing up I do to write a book, I do massive amounts of research.

It turns out that I am not the only one with this awakening point of view about the "Good News."  In 1945 some fifty two ancient manuscripts written in Coptic were found in a cave near the upper Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi. Among the most famous of these is The Gospel of Thomas. One of the reasons that this particular document is of interest is that it has been authenticated from fragments of the original work written in Greek discovered elsewhere.

The Nag Hammadi library is mostly the secret writings of an early Christian group known as the Gnostics. The Gnostics had a very different view of the message of Jesus and as a result were severely criticized, ostracized, and there works were actively suppressed even to this day.

The word gnosis describes the main divergent the Gnostics had with early Christians. Gnosis is a Greek word that means knowing or "insight." The Gnostics believed that to "know" one's self at the deepest level was to ultimately come face to face with the living God. and that the Kingdom of Heaven was experienced through enlightenment or Self-realization. Jesus speaks of this in the Gospel of Thomas, "You can't see my gift to you, you can't hear it, or touch it, or even think about it."

So the early church had a schism the result of which became one church focused on the external and a heretical sect focused on the internal. The orthodox Christian church ultimately worked on building organizations, hierarchy, and finally became catholic (Universal). Meanwhile the Gnostics went underground figuratively and literally. They were virtually wiped out by the 5th century by Catholic heresy hunters and the Roman Army. Possibly the burying of an entire library deep in a cave in Egypt was a last ditch effort to save the truth, as the Gnostics saw it, for some future generation.

Today western churches still have their focus on the externals of life: doing good works, having the right habits, believing the correct doctrine. If the aspirant does everything just so they will be rewarded in some future heaven, pie in the sky where they will survive with there ego, personality, and preferences all intact.

And yet we know from the "acceptable, sanitized" scriptures that Jesus came preaching the Kingdom of God is at hand, that the Kingdom of God is invisible, and that the Kingdom of God is inside of us and all around us. Paul tells us to be transformed by the renewing of our minds, and to hold in captivity every thought.

What if the Gnostics were right? What if insight and self-knowing do result in a knowing? In the Gospel of Thomas Jesus says, "I don't care how much you think you know about the All. If you don't know yourself, you don't know anything."

Orthodox Christianity has a high rate of divorce, violence, retaliation, and self-righteous piety in the face of it all. Maybe its time to reconsider the Gnostics. Maybe they were on to something. Could it be that The Answer has been inside of us all along and we just refused to look hard enough? As a psychotherapist I can attest that this is true.

Two New Offerings

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