This is an addendum to the post of July 23, 2011 'Jesus And The New
Testament'. It is a significant enough insight, in my judgment, that I
am making a separate post of only the addendum itself.
Addendum June 29, 2014: (Based on a Facebook post describing a book Notes From (Over) The Edge.. by outstanding progressive Christian writer Jim Palmer.) I think there is a need to find words as Christians that do not make the name of Jesus the center and end-all of the human path to fuller love, joy and meaning of life so needed today. I think it is closer to the truth to say that the archetype of Jesus and 'The Christ' is an example of the first fruits of humanity's evolved capacity to receive and give love in a more extensive way than ever before. Jim Palmer's message is a great resource to those suffering the throes of Christian dogma but Jesus is only part and one opening to the path to a more embracing, inclusive human life and love. This may be missed in Palmer's continuous Jesus emphasis? But I am indeed very grateful for his voice and the attention it receives by those suffering deep religious transformations. It is a good and loving voice born of real experience.
The Jesus story must surely be a great leap forward in the unfolding process of God becoming human , not the completion of it. Because by the time the gospel writers have finished writing about him he is truly no longer a representative of the pure empirical human .... but one born miraculously, existing with God from eternity, living beyond nature at his willing, whereas nature and its principles is the only true and full home for all humans. So the incarnation of God in man, in the Jesus story, had its start in one who became, in the minds of the collective who followed him, far more than a human.
The Jesus story describes what was a profound leap in history toward more and more truly ordinary humans (not of unnatural miracle making or 'eternal with God' humans ) to be the place of God becoming fully human. I think such did happen in the real and limited human Jesus of Nazareth. But the "darkness(the collective consciousness of Jesus' day) could truly not comprehend that light" and the drastic change it heralded in the meaning of direct connection and interdependence of God and Human. And so the collective human psyche protectively backed away from such bedazzlement by producing, in the gospels, the archetypal hero Jesus, the claimed 'one and only ' place where God has "dwelt among us." (It's like humanity could only bear the consciousness of its evolving mutuality with God by approaching it in historical stages, Jesus thus being interpreted as only half human. This way humans could indirectly approach the dazzling light of the Sacred. That light was just too bright to contain at first for the mortals who surrounded Jesus).
The latest evolution of God and Human drawing near to each other is what could be a dazzling 'numinous' image for some, otherwise quite materialistic and/or past believers in an orthodox anthropomorphic(human like being) god, people today..... that God incarnate in the human Jesus was such a bright light psychologically it could only be tolerated by creating Jesus into something more than human. The split moment a person first realizes, becomes conscious, today that God seeks to become fully human in ones own self can be such a leap into the beyond-space-and-time world that it calls forth in today's human consciousness an authoritative non-negotiable experience of the 'numinous' or bedazzlement of the reality of God. One at such a moment may become a 'believer' in the richest and most comprehensive meaning of the word. This potentially could parallel and transcend the experience behind any 'miracle' story we read about in ancient religious texts. Jesus is clearly presented in the gospels as only perhaps half human and the rest god. But now, two millennia later, we are more psychologically prepared to 'see' just what the expression 'God becoming Human' is actually saying about us all and our mutual connection to the Divine.
Hopefully we are beginning to see more clearly the continuation of what the Jesus story shows us in its natural mythical symbolism, not historical recording, as the first fruits of the emerging capacity of the creature-human, in a mutual cooperation with the eternal creator God principle, to experience personally being extensively more fully loved and loving.(The gospels have not become mythical and symbolic in our day, they have been that from the beginning. We are just rediscovering it. ) This to me is the nature of the hope that is now available , not just to the individual but to collective humanity with all of its hostilities and threats to end itself.
This can be a sound psychological/spiritual understanding for the next great step for a third millennium new unfolding of the meaning of the Jesus story, making it more transparently not self-serving but collectively relevant and meaningful for our day and for humanity's most urgent needs.
Addendum June 29, 2014: (Based on a Facebook post describing a book Notes From (Over) The Edge.. by outstanding progressive Christian writer Jim Palmer.) I think there is a need to find words as Christians that do not make the name of Jesus the center and end-all of the human path to fuller love, joy and meaning of life so needed today. I think it is closer to the truth to say that the archetype of Jesus and 'The Christ' is an example of the first fruits of humanity's evolved capacity to receive and give love in a more extensive way than ever before. Jim Palmer's message is a great resource to those suffering the throes of Christian dogma but Jesus is only part and one opening to the path to a more embracing, inclusive human life and love. This may be missed in Palmer's continuous Jesus emphasis? But I am indeed very grateful for his voice and the attention it receives by those suffering deep religious transformations. It is a good and loving voice born of real experience.
The Jesus story must surely be a great leap forward in the unfolding process of God becoming human , not the completion of it. Because by the time the gospel writers have finished writing about him he is truly no longer a representative of the pure empirical human .... but one born miraculously, existing with God from eternity, living beyond nature at his willing, whereas nature and its principles is the only true and full home for all humans. So the incarnation of God in man, in the Jesus story, had its start in one who became, in the minds of the collective who followed him, far more than a human.
The Jesus story describes what was a profound leap in history toward more and more truly ordinary humans (not of unnatural miracle making or 'eternal with God' humans ) to be the place of God becoming fully human. I think such did happen in the real and limited human Jesus of Nazareth. But the "darkness(the collective consciousness of Jesus' day) could truly not comprehend that light" and the drastic change it heralded in the meaning of direct connection and interdependence of God and Human. And so the collective human psyche protectively backed away from such bedazzlement by producing, in the gospels, the archetypal hero Jesus, the claimed 'one and only ' place where God has "dwelt among us." (It's like humanity could only bear the consciousness of its evolving mutuality with God by approaching it in historical stages, Jesus thus being interpreted as only half human. This way humans could indirectly approach the dazzling light of the Sacred. That light was just too bright to contain at first for the mortals who surrounded Jesus).
The latest evolution of God and Human drawing near to each other is what could be a dazzling 'numinous' image for some, otherwise quite materialistic and/or past believers in an orthodox anthropomorphic(human like being) god, people today..... that God incarnate in the human Jesus was such a bright light psychologically it could only be tolerated by creating Jesus into something more than human. The split moment a person first realizes, becomes conscious, today that God seeks to become fully human in ones own self can be such a leap into the beyond-space-and-time world that it calls forth in today's human consciousness an authoritative non-negotiable experience of the 'numinous' or bedazzlement of the reality of God. One at such a moment may become a 'believer' in the richest and most comprehensive meaning of the word. This potentially could parallel and transcend the experience behind any 'miracle' story we read about in ancient religious texts. Jesus is clearly presented in the gospels as only perhaps half human and the rest god. But now, two millennia later, we are more psychologically prepared to 'see' just what the expression 'God becoming Human' is actually saying about us all and our mutual connection to the Divine.
Hopefully we are beginning to see more clearly the continuation of what the Jesus story shows us in its natural mythical symbolism, not historical recording, as the first fruits of the emerging capacity of the creature-human, in a mutual cooperation with the eternal creator God principle, to experience personally being extensively more fully loved and loving.(The gospels have not become mythical and symbolic in our day, they have been that from the beginning. We are just rediscovering it. ) This to me is the nature of the hope that is now available , not just to the individual but to collective humanity with all of its hostilities and threats to end itself.
This can be a sound psychological/spiritual understanding for the next great step for a third millennium new unfolding of the meaning of the Jesus story, making it more transparently not self-serving but collectively relevant and meaningful for our day and for humanity's most urgent needs.
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