Thinking

It is the middle of the 1st century, near downtown Corinth, just after dark on a Saturday evening. People are strolling towards the Miller’s house.

The Millers are a lower-level wealthy family, so their house is nice and big, and standing in their courtyard as the sun sets, when a cooling breeze kicks up, is one of the most wonderful experiences anyone in town could have. Inside, the wine is being poured, and the guests are beginning to arrive.

From the outside, it could be any rich person’s party, except for the guest-list. Instead of rich friends and bureaucrats, this party includes a large number of poor people, ethnic Jews, and even slaves. That fact strikes the neighbors as scandalous, and has the neighborhood talking.

As the poorer Jews begin to arrive, they see the party in full swing. A lot of the wealthier, non-Jewish, guests arrived earlier, not chafing under the restrictions on Sabbath day travel. And a lot of them have imbibed too much wine already.

Pretty soon, people are drinking and showing off their new abilities. Some begin shouting over others, laughingly clamoring for attention. Others are boasting about how rich they are. Some of the husbands and wives are loudly arguing with each other.

It is to this scenario that Paul writes his letters.

Written the night before 5 April 2010, 7:09am. -Micah

These are two things I wrote on Twitter earlier today. Thought I would archive them here as well.

I’m a conservative in this respect: I think the scriptures give us an inside look at a moment in history when something new and amazing burst into existence. A flawed community composing a scandalous integration of rich and poor, slaves and slave-holders, and men and women from every ethnicity…all together, mingling as equals. This moment remains one of the most significant moments in history, and compels us to continually reach back for a better glimpse at what they saw…so that we might see the same thing, and transformation may burst into our world.

The scriptures are difficult, because we are not looking at some Platonic book of doctrines or commands, dropped from heaven to earth – but are looking at a gritty, real-world account of the struggles these radical communities were going through in trying to manage the monumental clash of all ends of the human spectrum, brought together at once. Whatever the scriptures are NOT, it remains that they ARE one of the most profound resources humanity has ever produced.

There are many things I do not understand about the New Testament, and the mentality behind what the New Testament authors wrote.

But I think I understand this.

In Jesus, God was declaring the sins of humanity totally wiped away. And so Jesus’ disciples went into the world proclaiming that sins had been forgiven, and inviting people to partake of the freedom that came with acknowledging that fact.

Holding to an identity centered around following rules, adhering to physical rituals, or  being proud of certain accomplishments would result in slavery – because the human mind imposes standards on us that no one can actually live up to.

But simply trusting what God had said and done, would release you to experience freedom.

All of Paul’s talk about “faith” is usually misunderstood to be stating the importance of believing certain facts. But Paul means to say that trust in God is the only thing that is important – trusting in him as our source of identity, trusting in his forgiveness and grace.

“Salvation”, for Paul, was trusting what God had done, and experiencing the freedom of that trust. When Paul writes to his converts, he states that God had removed the “consciousness of guilt” from their minds – not that God had removed the sins from his book in heaven (that was a given), but that God had worked in history to show them that their sins were gone. And when they recognized that fact, the freedom they experienced was a profound salvation.

In 325 AD, Christianity sold its soul to Constantine and the Roman Empire. The most peaceful movement in world history beat their plows into swords, and their pruning hooks into knives. And so began the bloodbath.

How could they have done this?

Jesus and the Empire were diametrically opposed. The Empire was built on the ends justifying the means – They wanted peace, and they would kill hundreds of thousands of people to get it. Jesus, in contrast, argued that the ends WERE the means – If you wanted peace, you had to practice peace. Those who lived by the sword would die by the sword – reaping what they sowed. No matter how noble your cause, if you approached it through violent means, you would always achieve violent ends.

How could Christianity, built on Jesus’ life and work, turn around and trade in Jesus’ logic for the logic of the Empire? What twist of thinking could result in such a radical change? How could this happen?

It is PRECISELY by abandoning the fulfilled eschatology of the early Christians that such a radical change could take place.

If the kingdom of God had come, then it is obvious that the kingdom was not something that could be enhanced with bloodshed and warfare. If the kingdom had come, then the task before Christians was to begin the hard work of healing the world, making peace, and resisting oppression through the strength of self-giving love, after the model of Jesus of Nazareth. If the kingdom had come, then the only way to build the kingdom was to practice non-violent grace.

But if the kingdom had not come, then the way the kingdom was envisioned could by subtly changed. Rather than a bottom-up paradoxical presence of God, rather than a transformative community of peace, the kingdom could become a utopian dream of a Christian Empire. And that dream was only one step away from becoming an impetus for violent empire-building.

Only by giving up fulfilled eschatology, by letting go of a present and transformative kingdom, could Christianity sell its genius for the tools of violence. And that is exactly what happened.

By trading in their eschatology, they traded in the kingdom, and took the bait of Christendom.

In my previous posts (1, 2, 3), I’ve tried to be careful not to offer any speculation on the actual nature of resurrection or immortality. Instead, I’ve tried to follow the scriptures, and simply hold out trust and confidence in a God who is continually leading humanity to higher and higher levels of growth and progress, who cares for each one of us individually, and who never lets any of us go.

I think that is a secure and sound foundation for our hope.

But here, I want to offer a little in the way of speculation. Most people are unaware that science actually suggests a concrete and physically-real immortality. They are unaware because scientists are largely unsure what to do with it philosophically, and so simply choose to ignore it.

They are unsure how to handle it philosophically because philosophy is built on human intuition, and the areas of science that deal in issues of immortality are quite counter-intuitive. I’m talking, of course, about Quantum Mechanics.

Let me be clear here. Nothing in the scriptures suggest what I’m about to describe. I believe the scriptures are consistent with what I’m saying, but they do not tell us this information. We should not expect them to. The scriptures encourage a deep confidence in God’s care and protection of us, and leave discussion of the afterlife to exactly that. We must leave the rest of the details up to science.

So here is what science tells us.

According to the mathematics of Quantum Mechanics, the results of any event are probabilistic. Flip a coin, and there’s a 50% chance it will come up heads, and a 50% chance it will come up tails. Shoot a gun into the air, and there’s a large chance the bullet will fall harmlessly to the ground. But there is a small chance it will fall in precisely the right manner to kill someone else. This much seems straight-forward.

But Quantum Mechanics doesn’t actually say sometimes one thing happens, and sometimes another thing happens. It actually says that in all cases, both things happen. When you flip a coin, the math doesn’t specify that it might come down heads or tails, it specifies that the coin came down 50% heads and 50% tails. When you shoot a bullet into the air, it specifies that the bullet came down 99% harmless, and 1% fatal. Further, it specifies that your bullet-victim is not actually alive or dead, but 99% alive, and 1% dead.

There are two ways you can interpret this bizarre science. One – it doesn’t really have anything to do with reality. Two – it has everything to do with reality. In Quantum Mechanics, they call interpretation one the “Copenhagen Interpretation”. Interpretation two is called the “Many Worlds Interpretation”.

The Copenhagen Interpretation was the prevailing interpretation for many years, simply because the alternatives were unthinkable. But the Copenhagen Interpretation doesn’t come without costs. In order to deal with the discrepancy between the math and the observed reality, they had to invent a new effect – an effect in which the person who observes the flipping coin mysteriously “decides” which result actually happens. This is as bothersome as the alternatives they were trying to avoid, and has resulted in a slew of pseudo-scientific quantum mysticism. More importantly, it doesn’t actually explain anything. It doesn’t suggest a way in which this phenomenon works, and it simply assumes this phenomenon into existence.

In contrast, the Many Worlds Interpretation doesn’t assume anything other than what the mathematics already tell us. It simply takes the mathematics at their word, and accepts the troublesome fact: our universe consists of an infinity of different histories.

When the coin is flipped, the mathematics tell us the truth: history splits into two streams, one in which the coin lands heads-up, and the other in which it lands tails-up. When the bullet is shot, history splits into a stream in which it comes down harmlessly, signaling the start of a race, and a stream in which it comes down fatally, killing an innocent bystander, causing scandal, grief, and possibly revenge. Every decision we make, every event that happens, results in a splitting of history into two or more streams of results.

Many people find this picture appalling. But to me, it makes a deep sense. It gives a deep meaning to the concept of free will – rather than constrain us to a single history in which every move is predetermined, it gives us the vast expanse of possibility in which to truly and actually flex our decision-making capability. Only in this picture are the various alternatives presented to us actually real.

I mentioned that the Copenhagen Interpretation has been the prevailing interpretation for many years. For many people, this is still true. But among the physicists most involved with the relevant areas of science (Stephen Hawking, etc), the Many Worlds Interpretation now (rightly) prevails. The math is simply too convincing, and the alternative is not just another interpretation, but actually requires inventing a new effect to make it fit our preferred view of the world. That’s not how science is supposed to work.

So the Many Worlds Interpretation appears to be correct, and the consequence is that we now have to adjust our view of reality to deal with living in a multiverse instead of a universe. As with all scientific discoveries, this will require a lot of rethinking. But that is exactly why we value science – it shows us the world as it really is, not as we expect it to be.

There are a lot of significant consequences to this understanding, but I only want to deal with one at the moment. That is, of course, immortality.

A moment’s thought will show why the Many Worlds Interpretation is relevant to mortality. Most people’s deaths are highly dependent on random probability – whether one leaves their house a minute earlier or later, which cells get exposed to the sun, how the blood clots flow through the bloodstream. Without too much effort, we can probably all think of times when, if something went a little differently, we would be dead now. According to the Many Worlds Interpretation, those situations actually went both ways, and in one history, you died, and in this history, you lived.

If you can contemplate that for a minute, you may begin to ask yourself why you are the one alive right now. And science’s answer is that you are actually a stream of branching histories, spreading out through the multiverse, trying out every experience in the realm of possibility.

At the moment of potential death, there are always at least two paths forward – one in which you die, another in which by the slightest chance, you survive. But it should be obvious that you will never experience the path in which you are dead. Instead, as you come to the moment of death, you will see only the path forward in which you survive.

And naturally, there are histories in which you die. But on the scale of the multiverse, these histories are not dead ends, they are rocks in the stream, diverting the flow.

Your death is then never the end. It is, instead, the diversion of your life into other paths through the multiverse. You will never notice this diversion – instead, your life will continue on in more and more interesting histories.

For those of us who experience your death, this will naturally and rightly be a sad thing. We will miss your presence with us in our history. But for you, history never ends. Without skipping a beat – you continue on, living your life on the same earth, with many of the same people – but in a different history than we are left to experience.

And so tonight, you can step out on your porch, look up at the stars, and know that you have billions and billions of years in which to explore and experience this magnificent, unfathomable universe.

As I’ve hinted in my previous posts (1, 2), I think “God” means that there is progress and growth for infinity, that our efforts and actions reverberate down through eternity, and that there are always new things to learn and achieve. To me, this is what it means to believe in a personal, theistic God. Certainly other theologies suggest different scenarios – scenarios where in the end, everything we’ve done simply dissolves back into the emptiness from which it came. Those theologies are legitimate, but I would question whether they are theistic.

In broad form, here is what I perceive as the theistic view. There is a reality which underlies the world we see. That reality is firm and solid, and has consequences. Through history, that reality continues to be brought more fully into view, and the forces which stand against that reality (violence, oppression, slavery, hatred) ultimately collapse, either slowly and peacefully, or quickly and dramatically. And so, as each obstacle is overcome, we grow unendingly upwards and onwards toward unification with that ultimate reality.

This identifies both the cause and the direction of change.

Here’s why this is important. For hope to be real, it must be the case that things will get better. But this can’t be an immutable progress that happens with or without us, leading to laziness and resignation. Instead, it must be a progress that is built with our efforts, upon the work of countless others before us – a participatory growth. It must, in fact, be in participation with the underlying nature of the universe itself – co-creation with God. Without that, our obstacles will begin to seem insurmountable. But if indeed things are getting better, there are only three ultimate endings: things eventually revert back to decay, things finally reach a utopia, or growth continues forever. And I would argue that only the last one offers an ultimately real hope.

For many of us, the idea of society progressing without end is only comforting if we get to be part of it. But very few philosophies offer us any real chance of being involved – either we die and are gone, or we get resurrected into a changeless heaven. A third alternative being proposed recently in books such as “Surprised by Hope” by NT Wright, is that we are eventually physically resurrected and the earth is transformed.

This third alternative has the benefit of having us back involved in the progression of human society. But, at least in the way it is being imagined, it leaves a lot to be desired. It foresees an eternity of existence in a still-limited body. It requires God to step in and recreate the earth. It relies on a misreading of the New Testament, seeing it primarily concerned with changing the physical universe, rather than a more audience-relevant transition between covenants.

I think we need to do what the New Testament seems to: strike a very delicate position. The way I read it, the New Testament is almost entirely focused on the horizon of the first century. Jesus affirms the resurrection, but does so in an unusual way. In Luke 20:38, Jesus says, “[God] is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.”

Jesus seems to connect resurrection, not to a specific event, nor to an immortal soul, but to the all-knowledge of God.

This, to me, is pretty profound, and needs to be the basis for a re-thinking of the ideas of immortality and resurrection.

Interestingly, the book of Revelation mentions very little about resurrection – focusing instead on the vindication of the oppressed, and the downfall of the oppressors. The only real mentions seem to be an intriguing statement about deeds following the dead, and the scene often called “the final judgment”.

First, Revelation 14:13:

Then I heard a voice from heaven say, “Write: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.”
“Yes,” says the Spirit, “they will rest from their labor, for their deeds will follow them.”

My initial interpretation is that this is describing a “before”, during which people’s deeds are a barrier between themselves and God (going before them), and an “after”, during which people’s deeds no longer separate them from God (trailing behind them).

Second, Revelation 20:12-15:

And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what he had done. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

The focus here is on judgment, on the one hand, and on the abolishment of death, on the other. While we have the wicked being dismissed, we do not have a similarly concrete statement about those in the book of life. Whereas in Jesus’ parable of the sheep and the goats, he invited the sheep to enter in, there is no such invitation here. All that is really said is that death and Hades are burned up.

To me, these passages seem to leave a lot of questions about the afterlife and resurrection. Revelation seems to be telling us that barriers between man and God are being removed (“death and Hades”, and whatever was letting deeds proceed people), not describing the actual ramifications and effects of that removal.

If we triangulate with a third scripture, then we end up with an interesting picture. In 1 Corinthians 15:54-57, Paul says:

When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”

“Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

He seems to be saying that the physical body does not need to be removed in order to become immortal, but instead will be “clothed” in immortality. And the way in which this happens is that death is overcome by the removal of sin, and sin is overcome by the removal of the Law, and the Law is overcome through Jesus.

If we can assume that these passages are talking about connected things, then it seems like Paul says death is overcome when the Law is removed, and Revelation points to the victory over death and Hades as the removal of the separation between God and man (one’s deeds no longer precede them, getting in the way). And Jesus points to immortality as being known, having a certain relationship with, God.

So it seems like the focus of these scriptures is on a resurrection event as the removal of certain relational barriers, not specifics of the timing or nature of personal immortality. It seems like the scriptures are not telling us about immortality or the afterlife, but telling us that we can rely on our confidence in the power and knowledge of God.

In other words, the scriptures seem to be about the removal of fear. And the way that is portrayed in the New Testament is a two-fold process, through the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, and then through the removal of the Law and the institutions of condemnation that surrounded it.

So then, we should be really hesitant about looking to the scriptures to understand the nature of resurrection. We should instead look to the scriptures for the kind of confidence Jesus demonstrated on the cross, trusting himself to God and his love.

Jesus’ confidence was rewarded in an extremely unusual way – a bodily resurrection less than three days later. This isn’t what we expect for ourselves, but it should push us in the direction of thinking that whatever happens, it may be unexpected and unusual, but always flows from the love and power of God.

As society moves forward, finding itself more and more in touch with the reality that lies beneath it, we should expect to see the glory and power of God more and more. And as that happens, we can be confident that in ways surprising and unexpected, God will be protecting, preserving, and restoring us, never letting us go, because to him, nothing is lost.

Though we do not know in what way things are being preserved, we can know that they are safe. And though we do not know in what way they may re-appear to us, we can know that we will indeed see them again…

…because to God, and increasingly to us, all are alive.

In my previous post, I outlined what I think reality must be like in order for human hope to persist.

Now I want to examine how that looked in the first century.

The New Testament scriptures begin with a declaration that change was coming. “The kingdom of God is near!” is one of the first lines in the gospels.

The change that was coming was in contrast to the world that then existed. While the first century world was based on divisions between ethnicities and social classes, and centered around institutions like the temple, the government, and the priesthood, the new world that was beginning would be based on equality and human relationships. This contrast could not have been more intense.

One world-view was built on illusion and pretension, another was built on a deep awareness of reality. The way the early Jesus-movement saw it, their cause was bound to win, because reality was behind them. And since their cause was going to win, their opponents either needed to become aware of reality, or they were going to receive a painful wakeup call.

They declared this fact to the powers and authorities in their world. And they described that coming wakeup call in colorful apocalyptic language. This is the biblical judgment day – the day when your bigotry and delusion finally catch up with you. Jesus described that event as having to experience “crying and anger”, and the shame of being outcast – of feeling the deepest darkness.

Where did that put Jesus’ followers?

Based on the writings we have, they lived in hope of vindication. In that confidence, they faced death and persecution, knowing that their efforts would ultimately pay off, that in the end, their cause would triumph.

They did not look beyond the horizon of their vindication. In fact, they described the coming experience of vindication as having the tears wiped from their eyes, as having no more sorrow or pain.

We need to understand those statements in context. There is a definite sense in which these things become true at a spiritual level. But there is more. In the Jewish scriptures, these same terms were used to describe things like the return of prisoners from captivity. You can imagine why – the relief of becoming free from slavery would be a drastic release from suffering.

It’s important to realize that this is not an absolute release. After freedom, ex-slaves still experience suffering and tears. But they have moved to a new life, a new level of existence.

The same is true of the first Jesus-followers. Though they didn’t look beyond the end of the first century, they did recognize that even after their vindication, there would be work to be done.

The end of the book of Revelation is a highly poetic description of what their vindication would look like. The old Jerusalem is tragically burning, but a “new” Jerusalem is descending from heaven to earth. This Jerusalem is identified as the group of Jesus-followers, and in them, the presence of God has been brought more fully.

But this picture, though grand, is no utopia. There are still opponents outside. And there is still work to be done. From the center of this metaphorical city, a river of life flows outward, watering the rest of the world. Trees in the city produce leaves that are healing the nations. The outside world has neither been fully dealt with, nor is it being ignored, nor is it being written off. Instead, the process of healing and growth continues.

It would be a mistake to see progress and growth as all done with. It would also be a mistake to try to re-create the struggle that these people went through. Their struggle has been completed, and we will not engage in the same conflict again. Instead, we have our own obstacles to overcome, and our own change to create.

In the picture of Revelation, the city has been established, and begins its work of healing the world. The gates are open, inviting everyone in. And as they come in, the city grows and becomes more glorious, on and on and on.

The book of Daniel has a similar image. In it, a rock begins rolling, picking up speed until it smashes the forces of violence and oppression in the world. That rock becomes a mountain, and grows until it fills the whole earth.

Our effort is neither done, nor will it be completely done in the future. Instead, after victory comes growth, and then more victory and growth forever. Our efforts achieve real and lasting results, and we build upon those results as we ascend upward and outward into an ever more glorious future.

There are many philosophies of the future, many perspectives on how society progresses, and many thoughts on what gives us hope.

It seems by now to have been well-established that humans need hope in order to survive. When hope fails, people die shortly thereafter. Unfortunately, many of the philosophies that have flourished in the last 100 years have seemed intent on offering nothing but despair.

There are good reasons for that, and many of these philosophies are based on a straight-forward reading of science. Alternative philosophies offer us hope – but only through the expensive move of escapism, leaving us feeling like our efforts in the world are pointless.

Frankly, I don’t have the space to deal with these issues. Instead, I want to offer what I see as the only viewpoint that is capable of giving us hope and confidence, and simultaneously keeping us engaged with the world. That viewpoint will allow us to engage in a radical way, speaking prophetically to corruption and oppression, never once giving in to despair.

First, we must view the world and the universe as deeply good – as filled with wonder and glory. We must view ourselves as intimately connected with everyone on earth. We must see ourselves as interconnected and intertwined in society as a whole. This will allow us to empathize, to understand, and to approach issues systemically, rather than through finger-pointing.

At the same time, we will not minimize the issues there are. Many people and institutions live in complete denial of the reality they find themselves in. As such, they oppress others, they shrug off responsibility, they destroy people’s lives and efforts.

And this brings us to the main dynamic: there is a reality that WILL persist, regardless of what currently stands against it. The reality of unity, of empathy, of equality, will ultimately and always prevail. And since this is so, we can confidently stand against forces of oppression and injustice, knowing that their time is short.

This is not blind optimism, leading to laziness. The downfall of oppression will happen through our efforts, not independent of real-world work. But this also does not rely entirely on our own abilities. As we work to resist oppression, to undo the forces of violence, we have a powerful weapon on our side…and that weapon is reality. Because we are working to bring the world in to conformity to the glorious reality the lies beneath it, we can and should expect amazing and miraculous things to happen. It is as if we are chipping away at a block of ice, until we suddenly find an avalanche breaking free, spontaneously multiplying our efforts thousands upon thousands of times.

We can see that the world is good, that reality is wondrous, that oppression is real, that our work matters, that we are not alone in our efforts, and that change and justice will come.

But it is also important to realize something else. The setting-to-right of an issue in the world does not bring about the end of our work. There is no utopia. There is only ever-increasing growth and realization, as each achievement and victory brings us to higher and higher planes.

We should be glad for this. If utopia was achieved, we would soon settle into complacency, and then turn again to despair. But if there was no movement and no progress, we would have little hope or inspiration, and would again be left with only despair. Only perpetual movement and progress can give us meaning.

Again, this progress is not straight and uniform. There are abrupt changes, hurdles to overcome, and dramatic reversals. But we can know that our work is building, that the things we do today truly change the world, and that the results of our efforts will last forever.

Which brings us to the big-picture view. Eschatology often presents us with one, final end, in which utopia is achieved. But for the reasons given above, this view is not realistic. If we achieved a utopian heaven, we would soon despair of doing nothing, and our heaven would become a hell. In any view of the future, we must look for an ever-growing, ever-changing existence – or existence becomes meaningless.

So I believe in this: Society must continually grow and progress, upwards to infinity. So must each individual. Time is infinite. Growth is infinite. And together, as societies and individuals, we will grow upwards and outwards into the infinite fullness of reality.

This, alone, seems to me a real basis of human hope.

Biblically speaking, Jesus’ triumph, his victory over the forces mounted against him, and the completion of his own internal struggle, was on the cross. Dying, he conquered. His crucifixion was his exaltation.

Jesus made it clear that triumphing through letting go was not just something he was doing, but something all of his followers would do as well. “Whoever wants to be my student must take up his cross…”

If Jesus’ personal triumph was on the cross, where would we find his Messianic triumph? Where would we find him establishing his position over his kingdom?

Jesus’ followers asked him exactly this question. “When will these things be, and what will the sign of your appearing?”

This is usually taken to be a question about end-of-the-world issues. But they are really asking when Jesus will be shown (will appear) as the king over Israel. And his answer is as paradoxical as his life and death.

According to Jesus, he would be the king of Israel when Israel bit the dust. When the walls fell, when the temple was shattered, THEN Jesus would rule from the throne. Because…only then would Israel and Jesus finally be united in the same fate. Only then would they both have been stripped of physical attachments. Only then would they have both become the victim of violent forces. Only then would they both experience the opportunity to be reborn as something newer and better and more eternal.

By uniting with him in the likeness of his death, they would have the opportunity to experience newness in the likeness of his resurrection.

Awhile ago, I watched a movie about the author of “Conversations with God”. The author and main character, Neal Donald Walsh, claims to have heard from God over an extended period of time. In these conversations, God showed him that most religious concerns are irrelevant. I am with him on this.

God makes these main points:

1. We are all One.
2. There’s Enough.
3. There’s Nothing We Have to Do.
4. Ours Is Not A Better Way, Ours Is Merely Another Way.

Given the appropriate context and meaning, I’m with him on all these as well. In the grand scheme of things, there is nothing that really needs to be done. But, given this, what does he suggest as the primary principle of life?

As I understand him, it’s simply to do “whatever works”. There is no right way to accomplish something; we simply need to make the choices that will lead to our desired result the most quickly.

I actually think that this is a somewhat reasonable basis for morality, if that’s what we’re looking for. But it doesn’t really help us much. It doesn’t tell us anything we don’t know. It doesn’t help us decide whether to kill a particular individual or not – since we can’t know the future, we can only guess as to whether killing that person will lead us to the results we want.

As a basis for living, then, this is a workable method, but not a brilliant one.

In contrast, Jesus offers us something else. Jesus doesn’t ask us to guess at the future. Jesus doesn’t ask us to make leaps of logic in order to determine our actions now. Instead, Jesus is incisively and brilliantly simple. Whatever you want – be that.

If you want peace, be peaceful. If you want love, be loving. According to Jesus, we cannot separate our ends from our means. We cannot pursue peace through violence, we cannot achieve love through hatred. “Whoever lives by the sword will die by the sword” – whatever means we choose will always be present in the ends.

And so, for Jesus, we must live from a deeply burning integrity, regardless of the result.

Jesus, in my understanding, asks us to look deeply into each moment and decision, and determine what is intrinsically desirable there. Not, “What can we stomach now, to get what we want later?” But rather, “What decision at this moment most fully and authentically comes from me?” Or, “What do I value most deeply?”

In his provocative way, Jesus asks us to ignore “whatever works”, and to turn our focus instead on whatever is beautiful.