I'm not sure why any such proof is necessary. It's not for me, I know I'm still here. I'll know when I make a push to not be. It's like part of a contract with existence, having existed. It would be rude to existence, the privilege existence has given me, to not affirm it as long as I still exist.
I've continued to read interesting stuff that I've made strange connections with and between. Something about the Christmas season always has me ending up reflecting on Christianity, and this year I found and started reading Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity in a bookstore. I haven't finished it, and may not since the last time I was there I couldn't find it.
It's a scholarly work, so it examines and questions and looks at evidence and facts objectively, as much as possible, to come to theories or conclusions. Reading Judas looks at the development of the writing of what became the canonical New Testament gospels, set against what was going on socially at the time, which was a lot of turmoil and disagreement and distress.
Any uniformity or consensus Christians today believe existed in the early Jesus movement was a brainwashing fiction that started as early as Paul, even while he himself was an extremely controversial figure in the movement. Scholars believe that rifts were huge between different groups who were preaching diverse meanings about the stories circulating around this Jesus character.
What I get out of it is that The Gospel of Judas was written from a certain political stance within the disparate Jesus movement, critical of an opposing stance on particular issues that were being argued. But in the same way, the canonical gospels were also doing the same thing, and the book analyzes how the Jesus story develops and gets embellished from gospel to gospel to support the stance of a particular side of the disagreements.
In the end, one side won and the other side lost. Roman Emperor Constantine became a Christian in the 4th century and formed the Nicene Council to come up with the canon. The Roman Empire became the Roman Catholic Church (as Mission of Burma tells it) and an entire side of Christianity was suppressed and wiped from history and only recently recovered in the 20th century with the discovery of the library at Nag Hammadi, the Gospel of Judas and to some extent the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The emphasis is on the mess that was the Jesus movement in the first few centuries following Jesus's death. And because one side won and the other side lost, Christians today only know one side of the story and don't realize the diversity of belief into the meaning of Jesus's death that existed and was being argued. They've been brainwashed to completely reject those other works.
And I connect this to another book I read at the library, Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. In short, the book is a first person account of a disaster that occurred on the upper slopes of Mt. Everest in May 1996, when 12 people ultimately ended up losing their lives in relation to the incident.
The connection is that the description of events turned out to be very controversial with various parties claiming differing versions of events. Adding in the altitude that rendered rationality questionable at best, no one really knows what happened up there, just as no one can authoritatively define what was going on with the Jesus movement in those first few centuries.
The internet is rife with commentators taking sides and vehemently opining and pointing condemning fingers when . . . they weren't there. They don't even know what it's like to be in the Death Zone on Everest and exercise little imagination to try.
It was a mess on Everest. It was a tragedy and bad decisions were made, but I think every individual did his or her best at any given moment. Krakauer does point out bad decisions, but I don't think he was blaming anyone or pointing fingers, but that's how other parties took it and it became a very public feud (not part of the controversy is Krakauer's condemnation of the asshole South African team and the reckless and uncooperative Taiwanese team that were on the mountain at the time. I take it those are accepted facts).
It was very emotional. It was strangely emotional for me reading it. Part of it is the connection of Everest with Tibet. But more of it is the drive of some people to climb Mt. Everest. Are these people nuts?
Now I've did my share of doing dumb in my day, putting myself recklessly into situations that were potentially harmful or dangerous. I understand the drive to push oneself to one's limits or even beyond – my limit being meager compared to anyone who even thinks of attempting Everest.
That's what cycling was all about. I cycled to climb. It was all about climbing relentless hills and hammering on through any hurt, and it never stopped being a thrill getting to the top of some challenge. And once I stopped being able to do hills because of age or alcoholism or diet, cycling became boring. Or at least something different.
I've mentioned my two San Francisco Marathons before, on the course before the organizers changed it because elite runners were threatening to boycott because the course was so hard. I admitted to myself after the second one that I wasn't emotionally prepared for it (not to put too fine a point on it, I wasn't emotionally prepared to run that second marathon).
It wasn't traumatic, but it haunted me for a whole month hence, and every day I spent 45 minutes to an hour obsessively going through the entire course in my head. I think I even got on my commuter road bike once and rode the entire course through. And it did effectively put an end to my running. I started cycling because my knees weren't recovering.
But to climb Mt. Everest? That's really rolling dice with your life. You sign up to climb Mt. Everest, there is no guarantee you're coming down alive. There's no guarantee you're coming down at all.
And I'm making this strange connection in my mind that suicide is my Everest. Pushing into unknown territory that may end in tragedy or a pay-off that no one else but a select few can hope to appreciate. Pushing towards suicide for a spiritual goal is . . . gambling with my life.
I would never think to climb Everest, I've felt altitude sickness at 18,000 feet in Tibet and there's no way I can imagine attempting 20,000, 24,000, 29,028 feet. That would be . . . suicide. But that's where I understand the drive of these people. That's why I felt emotionally involved in their attempt and why it felt personal when it became a tragedy.
Another book I just found at the bookstore that I want to start reading is The Essential Gnostic Gospels, a compilation which includes the Gospel of Judas. This is a collection of works and ideas that existed in the early Jesus movement that was suppressed by Constantine, the Roman Empire and the Nicene Council. The ideological losers.
This is the book that makes me separate Jesus from what Christianity became, because the Jesus portrayed in what are now known as the Gnostic Gospels is a character that makes me realize Jesus was really a big fucking deal in his time. The things these followers recorded make me feel he was on an elevated spiritual plane.
When exposed to canonical Christianity, I feel like I'm trying to be brainwashed. I should be impressed by walking on water or miracles . . . why? If he did, then he did and if you saw it, you saw it. Maybe I'd be just as amazed as seeing someone dribble a football (American). I'm more impressed when Thich Nhat Hanh, who has a deep respect for Jesus, said, "The miracle isn't walking on water, it's walking on land". That's shocking!
I should want heaven why? I should fear hell why? Such simple delineations which made me feel like they were trying to hoodwink me into something that didn't make any sense. Good? Evil? What the fuck?
And I shouldn't wonder the teachings in the Gnostic Gospels are also kabbalistic and buddhistic. The antithesis of the closed-minded exclusivity of what became Christianity – you're either with us or against us.
So many ways that Jesus's effect on the world went wrong, but from my initial readings of some of the Gnostic Gospels, I'm more convinced of one thing Christians got right, which is that Jesus was a big fucking deal. If they got his true teachings embodied in the Gnostic Gospels, that would be even better.
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| TUESDAY, DECEMBER 27, 3:36 p.m. |
