Just checking in

It's been a long time (March) since I posted anything here, and I figured I should at least plunk down a place-holder message saying I'm still alive and the blog isn't dead. I'm in the process of starting a private blog for a group of Unity Church students who took a class and are now doing some spiritual practice as follow-up, and need a place to share experiences and thoughts. That reminded me that I had not said anything here for months.

The major thing of note, for me, is my involvement with Unity classes, with a view to becoming a Licensed Unity Teacher. This will authorize me to teach classes in Unity churches and at Unity School in Missouri. There's a chance I will put together a 10-hour class on an Intro to ACIM and teach it both locally and at Unity Village. I'm also mulling over various possible classes and writings involving the relationship of the Course with the Bible, or on interpreting the Bible from an ACIM viewpoint. I've been rather amazed at how well Unity metaphysics dovetails with the Course, even to the point of stating that God did not create the physical universe. I'm more comfortable in this group than I've been in any other for a long time.

So Send I You

I was thinking a while ago about a verse in the Bible:

"As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you." (John 20:21, KJV). Jesus was speaking to his disciples after his resurrection when he said this. The idea was also stated in his prayer, in John 17: "As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world." (John 17:18) I think it applies equally to all of us; it means that we have been sent into the world, by Jesus, with the same mission given to him by his Father—God. What kind of mission was that?

"God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him" (John 3:17, NRSV). Likewise, we are not hear to condemn anything or anyone; we are here to save the world. A Course in Miracles agrees:

Those who would let illusions be lifted from their minds are this world's saviors, walking the world with their Redeemer, and carrying His message of hope and freedom and release from suffering to everyone who needs a miracle to save him. (T-22.IV.6:5)

Choose once again if you would take your place among the saviors of the world, or would remain in hell, and hold your brothers there.
(T-31.VIII.1:5)

The full acceptance of salvation as your only function necessarily entails two phases; the recognition of salvation as your function, and the relinquishment of all the other goals you have invented for yourself.

This is the only way in which you can take your rightful place among the saviors of the world. (W-pI.65.1:5-2:1)

Each of us is the light of the world, and by joining our minds in this light we proclaim the Kingdom of God together and as one. (T-6.II.13:5)

I am the light of the world. That is my only function. That is why I am here. (W-pI.61.5:3-5)

Love created me like itself. Today's idea is a complete and accurate statement of what you are. This is why you are the light of the world. This is why God appointed you as the world's savior. This is why the Son of God looks to you for his salvation. (W-pI.67.11:1-1:4)

We are the bringers of salvation. We accept our part as saviors of the world, which through our joint forgiveness is redeemed. (W-pII.14.3:1-2)

As I thought about being sent like Jesus, to save the world, other verses from the Bible came to mind, in which Jesus speaks about his mission. If these are true of him they are also true of us. For now, I'm just going to list a bunch of these quotes from the gospels. Check back later, because I expect to add some remarks after several of the Bible verses.

I have come not to call the righteous, but sinners. (Matthew 9:13)

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. (John 3:16, NRSV)

I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. (John 6:38)

I am the living bread that came down from heaven. (John 6:51)

I have not come on my own. (John 7:28)

I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me should not remain in the darkness. (John 12:46)

I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. (John 10:8)

I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. (John 10:10)

Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. (John 14:6)

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord. (Luke 4:18-19)

I must preach the kingdom of God to other cities also: for therefore am I sent. (Luke 4:43)

Jesus saith unto them, My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work. (John 4:34)

I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work. (John 9:4)

And he that seeth me seeth him that sent me. (John 12:45)

For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak. (John 12:49)

Notes on Lesson 37

LESSON 37
My holiness blesses the world.

This lesson says it very clearly:

Your purpose is to see the world through your own holiness. (W-pI.37.1:2)

To perceive truly is to be aware of all reality through the awareness of your own (T-13.VI.1:1).

Our self-concept acts like a filter or overlay. We are looking at the world through "me"-colored glasses. Our job is to accept the Atonement for ourselves, to recognize our own holiness, and then, as saviors of the world, to bless the world around us:

And so they call it forth in everyone they look upon, that he may be what they expect of him. This is the savior's vision; that he see his innocence in all he looks upon, and see his own salvation everywhere. He holds no concept of himself between his calm and open eyes and what he sees. He brings the light to what he looks upon, that he may see it as it really is. (T-31.VII.11:4-7)

The Course’s message is a message of total equality. No one is better or worse, less or more, or lacks anything another has, and therefore there is no room for sacrifice. If you have ever experienced being loved just as you are, with no demands of any kind being placed on you, you will understand the power of such a vision of the world.

This lesson also says much about the way the Course is to be spread: not primarily by words but by action, or perhaps more precisely, by attitude:

Your holiness is the salvation of the world. It lets you teach the world that it is one with you, not by preaching to it, not by telling it anything, but merely by your quiet recognition that in your holiness are all things blessed along with you. (W-pI.37.3:1-2)

Suggestion: Imagine that you are an enlightened master, knowing your oneness with God and all things. As you do the exercises for today, look around you from that state of mind. Look on everything with eyes of love, and a heart that only wishes blessing on all things.

I'll be back soon!

So, I've been quite busy getting my two Portland Workbook support groups going, and writing up some notes for the weekly group meetings. Plus working on the Unity church website here. I've neglected posting here on Miracle Thoughts, but I will get back to it soon. I'll post some of the remarks I write up for my Workbook groups.

Nothing to Forgive

Yesterday's lesson, #359, contains this line: "we have made mistakes which have no real effects on us." And then it says, "Sin is impossible." That is the basis of forgiveness in the Course: There's nothing to forgive, no sins; just mistakes that have had no real effects. Let me remember that today.

The Law of Love

TODAY'S LESSON: Today I let Christ's vision look upon all things for me and judge them not, but give each one a miracle of love instead.

If I could wave a magic wand that affected everyone who knows me or interacts with me in any way, what would I like that to do? I would want everyone to refrain from judging me in any way, and to always look upon me with love. Isn't that what you would want?—for them to view you with eyes of compassion, understanding, mercy, and tolerance? To have everyone look past your mistakes to your heart?

The Course is telling us that we have such a magic wand. The wand we can wave to manifest such a wave of love and compassion is this: Give to others what you want them to give to you. Yes! It's the Golden Rule. What you give is what you receive. You are giving to yourself. "I...give to them the freedom that I seek." I "give what I would find and make my own."

How do I want other people to treat me? How can I make that happen? By treating them the way I want to be treated by them. It's as simple and as profound as that. This is the Law of Love.

Misquoting Jesus

Last week, I picked up two books from the library by Bart D. Ehrman: Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, and Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew. I think these are books that some of you would like to read.

Ehrman also wrote Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It into the New Testament. His area of interest is fairly obvious from the titles. I've just finished Misquoting Jesus and I really loved it. The Introduction was especially interesting to me because he tells his story of being raised as a liberal Protestant (Episcopal), having a born again experience in his teens, attending Moody Bible Institute (about 13 years after I attended evening school there) and then Wheaton College, and finally Princeton Theological Seminary. Gradually, his faith in the "inerrancy" of scripture was eroded as he studied more and more deeply into history, the existing manuscripts, and the huge number of scribal errors made as the books were copied over and over and over, over the course of centuries. His path roughly parallels my own. As he puts it:

"It is one thing to say the originals were inspired, but the reality is that we don't have the original—so saying they were inspired doesn't help me much, unless I can reconstruct the originals...Not only do we not have the originals, we don't have the first copies of the originals. We don't even have copies of the copies of the originals, or copies of the copies of the copies of the originals. What we have are...copies made many centuries later. And these copies all differ from one another, in many thousands of places...These copies differ from one another in so many places that we don't even know how many differences there are...There are more differences among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament."

He explains why that is so, describing who the copyists were (mostly amateurs). He points out that very few people were literate. Sometimes manuscripts were laboriously copied by people who could not actually read what they were copying! Mistakes were inevitable. And often, people changed things because, in their opinion, the wording of what they were copying was "not right."

For instance, he says that most Bible scholars agree that the first 18 verses of John, and all of Chapter 21, were added at a later time. Their vocabulary is different, their style is different. The gospel seems to come to a clear end at the end of Chapter 20, but then there is another chapter. Some think the original author added these parts in a later version. Others think someone else added them. Yet, all the manuscripts that we have include them. So, how do we arrive at the "original" of John? Leave out these parts because they were not originally part of the book? Perhaps try to reconstruct John's sources, such as a signs source and a discourses source? The scholars can't even agree on what the "original" of John (and other books) really would mean. All we can do is get back as close as possible to the original of what manuscripts we have.

And then, of course, there are the dozens of Christian writings, contemporary with the ones included in our current canon, that were widely read in the first few centuries but eventually rejected by the established church.

Ehrman shows how, and why, the King James Version of the Bible is notoriously unreliable, having been based on "a Greek text derived ultimately from Erasmus's edition [1522 AD], which was based on a single twellfth-century manuscript that is one of the worst of the manuscripts that we now have available to us!" He discusses many passages that are in most of our English Bibles that, based on the evidence of the manuscripts now available, don't really belong there, such as the last twelve verses of Mark. Some "proof text" verses are not what they seem to be, including I Timothy 3:16, often quoted to "prove" that Jesus was uniquely "God manifest in the flesh," when the original reading seems to be simply, "He who was revealed in the flesh."

Anyhow, I devoured this book, and probably will devour the second one as well. I think I need this kind of balance to my fundamentalist background. There is still this lingering thought in my mind that it isn't right to contradict anything in the Bible. If the Bible says, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth," then it must be so. Therefore, when the Course asserts that God did not create the world, my mind has trouble accepting it. But if, as Ehrman asserts, the Bible actually is "a very human book, with very human points of view, many of which differ from one another and none of which provides the inerrant guide to how we should live," then disagreeing with any particular passage in the Bible is perfectly acceptable.

I still do believe that God inspired the men who wrote the Bible, although what they wrote was surely colored by their own culture, learning, and even by their human egos. I doubt that all the choices about what to accept as "the word of God" were as inspired, and I'm sure that most of the changes that occurred in the copying were not inspired. That leaves me with a book I have to respect, and even revere as a prime source of spiritual wisdom, but a book that is no longer my final authority.