GRACE, ORIGINAL SIN, SAVING DANCE, DEATH, HEAVEN, ARCHTYPES, REINCARNATION, YEAR 1, OUR RESPONSIBILITY:
GRACE:
St. Paul never met Jesus. Never heard the voice, except in an epileptic vision. Never saw the body. Did not have a New Testament to read. Only heard the good news second hand, from different perspectives and interpretations. We know there are as many interpretations of Jesus and Christianity as there are sects. We know
Paul was familiar with various Greek myths, religions, pagan stories, and Mithraism. So, what is Paul saying one must believe about Jesus in order to be saved by his grace? Must one believe Jesus was God's son, died for our sins, and was resurrected? Stripped to fundamentals, what must one believe regarding definitions of sin? What is sin? Does sin consist in wilful wrongdoing under an evil mind? Does it require knowledge that a thing or act was wrong? Does it encompass mistaken wrongdoing? Does it mark us as separate from God, regardless of what we do, unless and until we accept Jesus as God's Son, who sacrificed himself for our sins? Does salvation require that we have a clear idea of who Jesus was and the essence of his teachings, or does it only require that we believe He, as God's Son, died for us, and/or that we follow His teachings, regardless of whether anyone ever spoke them to us? Is opportunity for salvation fairly availed to all? Do those who never heard of Jesus, or who died before being born or as infants somehow or somewhere get a second chance?
Suppose a poorly trained evangelist mis-hears, believes, and teaches that Hesus was born on May Day of a mother named Rebekka in a town called Beersheba perhaps in a country called Libya, was hung from a tree in order to atone for our ignorance, for which all who accept His grace are to be bodily resurrected and saved to live forever as if they were at age 15? Would such a mis-trained evangelists's converts be "saved?" What would such "salvation" mean?
ORIGINAL SIN: Thomas needed to see Jesus body to believe. What of those who never see the body, never heard the story, and never imagined any such a miracle? Cannot they also be guided to evolve spiritually? Of course they can. However inspiring the historical story may be, there must be something behind it that is more essential than any single person's interpretation or imagination. Sin must have something fundamental to do with a state of being separated, as an imperfect and Particular perspective of God, away from the Holism that is God. Sort of like a separation of a particle from its wave function. So it would seem well to re-think the concept of "original sin," to conceptualize it more as a state or condition of being apart from, and therefore imperfect in respect of, God, in respect of which there is availed a way back. It would seem that the way back would be to intuit what God is about and then to will to accept and devote oneself to that; to be willing to have all that stands in the way of getting back to be, by grace, lifted.
SAVING DANCE: At some point, during some reincarnation or resurrection, it would seem that one would need to intuit or apprehend how it can be that one can make one's way back and still retain any identity that remains inferior to and apart from God, without wholly losing oneself and being reabsorbed into God. To dance, it appears God needs separate, apart, and particular dance partners of some kind. Making such a dance possible appears to be enough of a challenge, even to God, to entail what seems to us to be a slow process of guided evolution. Slowly, God takes our feedback and guides our archtypes finally to evolve, intuit, and apprehend that we are in a dance. God wants a dignified dance, one that entails free will, or, at least, degrees of freedom. So the process is not immediately forced, as it would be were God satisfied to dance with a paper doll.
DEATH, HEAVEN, ARCHTYPES, REINCARNATION: Our bodies are secondary, derivative significations. It's the conscious feedback they facilitate that's important. Archtypes for the feedback abide, reform, and re-manifest in new bodies as old ones wear out. It's the spiritual evolution of the archtypes for which our bodies facilitate expression that's important. Consciousness in its particular manifestations is everywhere and always of a same common sponsor and connecting character. The Universe that avails the Holism (or Field) of Consciousness also avails that Field to give and receive feedback to and from Archtypes of its particular perspectives. The parts are different from, yet connected to, the whole. The Holism seeks to guide into beingness Archtypes worthy to dance with. Subject to missteps that help us mark the right steps, we are participating in a dance that connects towards spiritual evolution. We are here and now perspectives of a same, eternal spirit. We participate to blend our lives and incarnations with spiritual evolution that leads to our salvation in Archtypes within a holarchy that connects back to a dance with God. Along the way, aspects that misstep or fail to harmonize with the unfolding choices and purposes of the Lord of the Dance are discarded, or perhaps recorded in storeage, reserved to possible later revivification. This dance is less because of our "original sins" than because of our innate separation and need to preserve or reestablish connection. This dance is in respect of God's needs as well as our apprehensions. Thus, Eastern incarnations of spirit blend with Western salvations of embodiments of Archforms. There's no original sin; only original need. God has all-access to our pasts, but is not all-knowing as to our futures. To gain fulfillment in the dance, God requires our participation. Of import to us is not belief in the "reality" of the here and now, but apprehension and faith regarding its relation to the hereafter, i.e., the dance between the Particulars, the Archtypes, and the Whole.
YEAR 1: In and about Year 1, there was a context that would have inspired thinkers to ponder a need to inspire a better way for humanity to make sense of the relation between the here and now and the hereafter. That connection could not very well have "become viral" or been illustrated to the understanding of people at the time except in respect of the language, myths, terms, and beliefs at the time. It just so happens that God was necessarily involved in guiding the development and evolution of those ways of speaking and inspiring. It appears that many of the figures of speech for that way of thinking will and should continue to find worthwhile expression as the dance continues to unfold.
OUR RESPONSIBILITY: In a way, our greatest fear should be in apprehension of our power. For that which we appreciate, pray for, and seek, will often tend also to find favor with God. We have significant roles in participating in choosing the steps for how the dance should unfold.