Introduction

The first time I ever read The Gospel cover to cover, I was in my mid twenties, unemployed, and in the middle of a decade of abandon to hard alcohol and drug use.  That decade saw me, more times than I can count, in the back of a cop car.  I had come to my interest in The Gospel via an unorthodox path.  During the summer in which I first tried LSD, I had been reading Mahatma Gandhi's commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, a significant piece of Hindu literature.  I had become interested in the Bhagavad Gita after hearing of an oft repeated quote of Robert Oppenheimer's.  Oppenheimer, one of the architects of the nuclear bomb, had looked back at the first successful nuclear test and famously recalled the following:

"We knew the world would not be the same.  A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent.  I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita.  Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says "Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."

Immediately curious about the text from which these intensely powerful words came, I checked out a copy of Gandhi's commentary on the Bhagavad Gita at a local library.  I found the text fascinating and was compelled to learn more about the commentator, Gandhi.  The more I read about Gandhi, the more I liked.  I saw him described in multiple instances as an "anarchist" and a "pacifist," both of which piqued my interest.  Then, while reading about Gandhi's philosophy of non-resistance to evil, I was introduced to one Lev "Leo" Tolstoy, a contemporary of Gandhi's.

At the time, I only knew Tolstoy as a heavyweight of Russian literature.  I learned, however, that Tolstoy was considered something of a philosopher in his later years, and that he had had significant correspondence with Gandhi regarding non-resistance to violence and other spiritual matters.  Gandhi published a letter by Tolstoy in South Africa in 1909 titled "A Letter To a Hindu" in which Tolstoy stated that "love is the only way to rescue humanity from all ills, and in it you too have the only method of saving your people from enslavement."  The way Tolstoy wrote about "love" drew at something ancient inside me.

I read some of the correspondence between the two men, and then devoured some of Tolstoy's later works about Christianity, particularly "A Confession," (1879), "What is to Be Done?" (1886), and "The Kingdom of God is Within You," (1893).  Tolstoy's works exposed things in the world and in history that I had been unaware of.  Tolstoy's works exposed things inside of myself that I had been unaware of.

Leo Tolstoy, a man who had been dead for just over 100 years at the time, was my first and best introduction to the philosophy of Jesus Christ.  After reading what Tolstoy had to say about Jesus Christ, I was compelled for the first time to read The Gospel all the way through.  I dug up a Bible my parents had given me for Christmas some years past, neatly bound in leather and with whisper-thin pages, and started at Matthew.  That first time, I didn't stop until I was through John.  I lived in Longmont, Colorado at the time.

I recall one particular thing about that first experience reading The Gospel.  I recall very particularly reading the words of Christ in Luke 23:34.  The context of this saying of Christ is the moment of his Crucifixion.  Executioners have nailed Christ to a cross and suspended him upright to await his slow and painful death.  In the midst of this, Jesus speaks to God in regards to his murderers.

About them, he says:

"Father, forgive them, they know not what they do."

Upon reading these words for the first time, I confess that I did weep.

Upon reading these words I confess that for the very first time the world began to make good sense to me.  In these words of Christ's I saw the only obvious counterpoint to the woe of the world that I'd ever seen.

I tell you in truth that the gravity of Jesus Christ's word's, since the first time I read them for myself, has pulled increasingly at all else in the cosmos of my heart.

So...

I'd like to introduce to you what I am calling "The Moral Vision of Jesus Christ."  This will be nothing short of an exhaustive study of the words of Jesus Christ as he is quoted in The Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  When I say "exhaustive," I mean that we will diligently explore the context and possible meaning of every Christ-saying in the New American Bible.

In preparation for this writing, and in addition to extensive secondary source studies, I have compiled a complete matrix of all of Jesus' biblical sayings, arrayed across over 1,500 distinct keywords and various philosophical concepts.  This constituted many dozens of hours of intensive study and notation.

I would like to see this work published as a book someday, and I suggest that the reader think of this work as a sort of serialized book, as opposed to a blog or a periodical publication.

Before we start, I know that many will ask one question: "why?"  My answer is a personal one.

I am not a pessimist.  I am, however, a person who refuses to not see the ill of the world.

I have known, since the time I was very small, that the society I was raised in was ailing and not built on philosophical bedrock.  America rests on shifting sands, and has no true philosophical backbone.  America is a protection scheme for an exploitative monied minority.  This is the nature of all States.  Any candid look at history will verify this. 

The America I live in today offers her children no true purpose whatsoever beyond the conspicuous consumption of material goods and persistent masturbation of the ego.  This has splintered our society such that we have zero philosophical cohesion, nor even a recognizable morality du jour.  At any given time, America is merely a few hundred million violently fevered egos fighting to maintain their own perceptions of moral and material superiority and personal individuality in a vast cultural waste.

My best friends and huge swaths of my blood family are suffering from life threatening addictions or deep seated psychological malevolences.  I've recently watched suicide after suicide after suicide here in the "Land of the Free."  In fact, I currently witness suicides and death in the ranks of those I consider closest to me.

The society I exist in crumbles, and in the tumult is consumed the flesh of those I love.  The society I exist in crumbles, as well it should.  I do not expect that it will stand much longer, and I would not prop it up, even were it a task easily done.  In fact, by this writing, I mean to advance that day.

The answer to "why" is manifold.

I have commenced this writing to brush the sand away from the bedrock, so that everything built on that sand will be leveled.

I have commenced this writing to bear clear witness to the hypocrisy upon which this so-called "Christian Nation" stands.

I have commenced this writing because I believe that, relatively soon, America will be involved in a world-ending nuclear exchange, in direct contradiction of the prescient moral teachings of Jesus Christ.

This, then, is an Apocalypse.  In lay terms, this is a text of revelation pointing to an impending end-time.

I am astonished and eternally grateful to have found Christ's teachings as an oasis of purpose, here in the desert of purpose.  I pray that we will all soon find our way out of this desert.

Join me next time when we will begin looking at The Gospel According to Matthew and working toward the words of possibly the greatest philosopher of all time, Jesus Christ.

Love.
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