If you're new, you can check out an Introduction to this work in the very first installment, here.
As a reminder to everyone, this study's purpose is to "find philosophical bedrock."
What do I mean by "philosophical bedrock?" I mean an understanding of life through human philosophy that is so deep and so strong that it cannot be dug up or dislodged or broken through by any mechanism. I mean a common philosophy so firm and flat and broad that, upon it, humanity could easily build a temple to encompass all things, and a bridge to the universe beyond our galaxy.
I've looked far and wide, for decades, for philosophical bedrock. It's a funny thing. Everyone says they have it, yet none can show it.
I've searched with a suicidal desperation. Trudging through human philosophy is like walking through a quicksand of vanity: it all just falls away under the weight of life. It's mesmerizing to gaze at, but none of it will hold your foot.
My searching left me not just wanting, but deeply wanting; not just unsatisfied, but deeply unsatisfied. I searched and searched until, one day, finally, thankfully, an old Russian novelist pointed the bedrock out to me from across history.
So, why do I study Jesus specifically?
Because, when Tolstoy pointed out the solid, infinitely massive slab of true philosophical bedrock, I was dumbfounded to find Jesus Christ standing alone, firmly upon it.*
I have found no more stable ground anywhere in the world than this, under Christ's humble feet.
Frequently, because of the revolutionary nature of the Jesus that we meet in The Gospels, I have written, and will write, about an outward revolution. Already, several times, we've had cause to compare the image of Jesus and his followers to modern Christianity in a way that should spark revolution inside those not crippled by myopia. But I want to be very clear here (which I may not have been thus far): the outward revolution is secondary or perhaps even tertiary to my primary purpose.
The purpose here, for me, is to get myself completely out of this blasted philosophical quicksand. There is a great inward revolution to be fought, before any other.
The outward is subordinate to the inward. Without an inward revolution, there can be no outward revolution.
I study Jesus today because I need a better way to interact with the world around me. I study Jesus today because I have verified, in my own life, that when I adopt aspects of his philosophy into my heart, for whatever period of time, my life changes. I become, in fact, closer to the kind of person that I prefer to be.
When I am mindful of Christ's program, I become full up of love and creativity and hope. When I am mindful of Christ's program, the challenges of daily life and of the world at large appear tiny to me, so that bearing them seems effortless.
I study Jesus to refine my understanding of his philosophical program. More rigorous application of the program will increase, I believe, the goodness and livability of my life in general terms. This is the primary purpose here.
I may speak frequently of an outward revolution, but please understand that the inward revolution is the true payoff here. The revolution is against the self before it is against anyone else.
The payoff is a feeling of grace that leads one to be totally "ok" in one's own skin, or what I call "heaven."
Let's take a reading from The Gospel.
------------------------------
Matthew 3:9 through Matthew 3:10
9 And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you, God can raise up children to Abraham from these stones.
10 Even now the ax lies at the root of the trees. Therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.
------------------------------
Here we have a continuation of what John the Baptist was saying last time to The Pharisees and Sadducees who have come out to see him.
Today, the eschatology ratchets up a little more. John the Baptist's message out in the desert is an apocalyptic one, indeed, and it may draw one's mind to the brimstone tent revivals of the old American South.
In Matthew 3:9, John tells his visitors that, in the coming end-of-times, being Jewish alone won't be enough to save one from calamity. He tells The Pharisees and Sadducees that they can't just relax in the belief that their salvation and happiness is assured them by God only on account of their lineage. He says "God could put Jewish blood in these rocks here, if he wanted. It's not your blood that is precious to him, and so it is not your blood that will earn you relief! You must produce the fruit!"
The "good fruit" from 3:8 appears again in 3:10. In 3:8, as you recall, he demands to see the good fruit from The Pharisees and Sadducees. In 3:10, The Baptist uses trees as a metaphor for humans, and says that whatever tree doesn't produce the "good fruit" will be cut down and thrown into a fire. As our understanding of first-century Jewish eschatology grows, verse 10 will make more and more sense. These words, if recorded accurately, probably refer to a coming bloody military triumph of a Jewish King over foreign influences in Jerusalem; the coming of a "Kingdom of God."
Fire and brimstone, from The Baptist.
Tangentially, 3:9 and 3:10 may have come from the "Q" or "Quelle" source. "Q" is a hypothesized early gospel writing that did not survive to modern times. "Q-sourced" text is text that we find in both Matthew and Luke, but not in Mark. In Biblical scholarship, one major school of thought is that Matthew and Luke were written with a copy of Mark and a copy of the Q-Gospel open in front of the respective authors, for use as source material.
When we get into the actual quoted words of Jesus, we will be taking careful consideration of where we think the words were initially recorded. Frequently, that place will be the hypothesized "Q." That said, we will be studying Q in detail frequently over the next few years. For now, just know that today's reading from Matthew is not reflected in the older Markian Gospel.
We will retire of it here, today, with the first words in The Bible attributed to Jesus Christ just around the corner. I don't mind telling you that they occur in Matthew 3:15, so we will read them here not next time, but the time after that.
I hope you are as excited as I am. Yay, bedrock!
Please share this writing.
Love.
-------------------------
* Tolstoy was actually kinda smug about it at times, but I don't hold it against the old timer. I mean, he's dead and all. Plus he wrote all them fancy novels...
-------------------------
To read what's next, click here.
To read what's next, click here.
To read what came prior to this, click here.
