XI. More about Human Nature
(last edited: 6/21/08)

 

1. Another way to look at it.

1.1. We humans have the potential to rise above the pains of our material world and to experience real peace and joy – while still on this world. (This says nothing about “heaven.”)
1.2. Jesus provided an effective way (maybe the most effective way; maybe, the effective way) for making this ‘ascension.’

1.3. (Our ‘altitude’ will naturally curtail, and we’ll need more wind or flapping, but once this possibility of 'flying' is experienced, it is relatively easily returned to. While we live, we will have to keep reminding ourselves. But, we have indeed heard a different drummer and once heard, we can tune in again and again.)

1.4. In order to make this ‘ascension,’ we have to recognize our own timelessness (immortality) and freedom – our own “transcendence.” Usually, we look right through the transcendent implications of our own existence, never recognizing them. But, they are there.
1.5. But also, we have all been (very) selfish, and feel the appropriate guilt. In order to really rise above the world, we need to fully repent (sincerely apologize) for these sins and pay (feel pain) for them. We need to feel truly innocent.
1.6. (Note that to “fully” repent is something more than to simply repent -- and naturally involves a strong sense of transcendence…)
1.7. Could be that the sense of innocence is, or at least triggers, the general sense of transcendence. We can sense a perfect self.

1.8. But, in order to fully repent, we need someone personal to fully repent (apologize) to – at least in our minds. For whatever reason, an abstract G-d doesn’t really fill that bill -- but the very personal Jesus does. Idols used to do that for us.


1.9. And through his torture and death, Jesus also pays for our sins – if we love him.
1.10. It is through our love for him that his pain becomes our own. If we don’t love him, it doesn’t work.
1.11. But if we do, it is done.

1.12. Jesus’ prescription seems to work, and by knowing human nature we can understand, at least in part, how it works.
1.13. (I can only “talk around” the dynamics. I can’t be especially explicit as to how, exactly, they work. But hopefully, you will feel the truth of the rough idea)
1.14. It involves submitting to, surrendering to. It involves thinking, “I’m so sorry; do with me as you will; I deserve it…” This is falling down on your knees and sobbing. Honest, full submission, letting go. "I'm so sorry..."
1.15. And, we need someone above us – someone to worship… Someone to submit to. Someone, whose hands to place our lives into.
1.16. The more personal this someone, the better. This is what cleanses us and lifts us up. This is what Jesus is about.
1.17. This is peace on earth and it brings good will towards men. It is joy to the world. It is the good news that Jesus brought.
1.18. I think that Jesus was hardly referring to heaven. He was mostly talking about individual peace on earth (not world peace). He was saying that we can enter G-d’s kingdom here and now. "After life" is essentially impossible for us to understand. We might as well be worms trying to understand calculus.
1.19. But whatever, we seem to have an at least subconscious sense of G-d, of being separated from Him due to our sin, and an overriding need to return to Him. Which it seems that at least some of us can do right here on earth.


2. It makes sense to think of Jesus as being a more effective “scapegoat.” (To be continued.)


3. Why the obvious objections to Jesus don’t ultimately float.
3.1. Now surely, the “born again” experience and state of mind are rooted in, mirrored in, neurology. And like transcendence in general, if being “born again” was invented,” it was invented by evolution or G-d. It was not invented by Christians. This experience/state involves a real and distinct neurological profile – however it got there.
3.2. Those seemingly non-sensical phrases we keep hearing from Christians -- such as “I took Jesus as my Lord and Savior” -- are simply the words naturally evoked by the Jesus story and the Christian experience with it. We who haven’t had this experience have no idea what they’re talking about, and just assume that they’re babbling – but, they’re not. They have experienced something real – whatever it reflects. They have heard a different drummer…
3.3. The “specificity” of the Jesus story shouldn’t turn us away either. Its message is totally generic (and the core of our values); developing a sense of transcendence requires a story – abstractions don’t do it; and, stories, by definition, are specific.
3.4. Nor should the complexity of the story turn us away. The story has to address human nature -- which is plenty complicated.
3.5. That a G-d would come to us in the flesh, as a human, shouldn’t be a problem either. Each of us, each human, is a miracle anyway (see Part I, Immortality). In addition, as noted before, for most of us, the triggering stimulus has to be “personal.” And that should be plenty. But G-d -- as something like a living, conscious, caring, free and timeless universe -- might well desire to project ‘Itself’ into our 4 dimensional reality as only human but all G-d, in order to assuage the natural guilt that permeates our lives and blocks our viewfe and that show us the way back. He would do that in order to help us solve our ultimate problem (in order to get this far, we have to assume that the world is about something).
3.6. That the idea tends to be scoffed at by the well educated isn’t a problem either. We humans have two distinct ways of processing information, carried by the two hemispheres of our brain. One hemisphere is analytic; the other is holistic. Public education, in the west at least, is geared almost entirely towards developing the analytic hemisphere. But, it is the holistic hemisphere that experiences transcendence. So, not only have the well educated been directed away from the experience of transcendence, they tended to be predisposed to that direction in the first place. The poorly educated have been spared both factors and therefore assimilate the Jesus story, and the transcendence it conveys, relatively easily. Women, being less dominated by a particular hemisphere, also find acceptance of transcendence relatively easy.

4. Why the objections/reservations are overruled.
4.1.

4.2.
4.3. We humans possess a sense of transcendence.
4.4. Transcendence probably is real.
4.5. Our sense of transcendence implies G-d.
4.6. But then, we seem to have a built-in sense of separation from G-d. Collective unconscious? Racial memory?
4.7. Our goal in life is to return to G-d.
4.8. Our sense of transcendence is like the promise of G-d – it sort of lights the way. It points the way. Is the light at the end of the tunnel.
4.9. Sensing transcendence allows us to rise above adversity and feel the joy underneath.
4.10. It allows us to sense our perfect selves.
4.11. But our ability to experience transcendence tends to be very weak at best, and our sense of it tends to be quite fleeting. Most of us need help in hanging onto it.
4.12. We seem to need something physical to focus upon. Abstract thinking does not trigger this experience.
4.13. The idea of G-d doesn’t do it for most of us.
4.14. We need a real person in order to feel the transcendence – our sense of transcendence is triggered by people and relationships. We sense transcendence in people and relationships.
4.15. We sense that we are separated from G-d because of our sin.
4.16. We need to pay for our sins in order to breach the space between us and G-d.
4.17. But someone who we love and loves us can take our place – can pay for us.
4.18. Plus, we need to honestly, and fully, repent – to fully submit.
4.19. Seems like Jesus provided all we need if we can just slip into his magical world of transcendence.
4.20. Fully appreciating his pain and sacrifice allows us to fully repent.
4.21. We can love him and believe that he has suffered and died for our sins – and cleared our way back to G-d.