A Meditation

A Meditation 

by Vern Schanilec, 9/30/2017

Where is the Kingdom of God, kingdom of heaven?

What is eternal life and how does one gain it?

The three terms above can be used interchangeably regardless of capitalization.

The challenge is to identify and define the three clauses, and see about engaging.

Jesus was asked the question of the presence of the kingdom and how one attains eternal life many times and responded differently almost every time; his answer adapted to the hearer and what Jesus thought his or her needs were.

To the Corinthians Paul said "..We are workers with you for your joy, because you stand firm in the faith." 2 Corinthians 1:24

To Nicodemus Jesus said be "born again." John 3:7

To the thief on the cross, due to your faith "you will be in paradise today." Luke 23:43

Those who forgive will be forgiven, those who don't; sorry. John 20:23

Zaccheaus sold off half his holdings and repaid 4-fold those he cheated. Luke 19:3

To the Pharisees, "Don't look here, don't look there, look among and within you."
(Luke 17:21), 
and, just simply "believe in me." John 6:38

Paul “advised” in 1 Timothy 2:15: women will be saved "through childbirth."

So, which is it, are you saved by:

who you are

or what you say

or what you plan to do

or stand firm or not

or do the will of God

or who your friends are

or believe

or give birth

None of the above. They all miss the point.

The problem is, the directives Jesus and Paul gave are action-oriented, things you do. That this thinking is taken as "gospel" in the OT and brought forward into the NT is par for the course. And what else would you expect from a Hebrew OT writer whose prism is but rewards and punishments, blessings and curses. If it rained and crops were good God got the credit. If there was a famine, pestilence or occupation armies came marching in it was God's punishment due to what you did, or did not do. It was about your actions as an individual and/or a people.

Paul wrote more authoritatively than the gospel writers in my view but his take on women was bifurcated: he said they should be submissive to their husbands. Contrarily, he was a leader in suffrage for women because of the over 60 associates he mentions, a large number of them were women. I have a feeling men's fingerprints were involved in the text because Paul's positions as stated on this issue above are obviously not consistent. I would claim the same for the gospels.

Apparently Jesus spoke to Paul about it in the 14 years (2 Corinthians 12:22) he spent in the Damascus area saying in effect: "The gospel writers didn't interpret my statements correctly so you therefore will write in Romans 3 and Ephesians 2 that salvation is a free gift, not earned so that no one could boast. And if you want to know what good deeds to do and what they'll accomplish, develop a relationship with me (Ephesians 2:10) and through this 2-way street I will be your guide.”

Could we inject a bit of Mr. Spock-logic into the discussion and try to make sense of it all.

It appears God went to great deal of effort establishing relationships among people starting with Homo sapiens Cro-magnon 330,000 years ago and whatever can be deduced from Neanderthal existence for millions of years previous. That mentality was brought forward through the OT and into the NT with Jesus' proclamation of the Greatest Commandment: love God, neighbor (and family) and self, further inviting a relationship.

And what is the purpose of God and Jesus’ effort in investing in a culture of love. Would God line this up for our benefit on earth only? And if so, why? Why go through all those machinations only to shift gears in the life hereafter abandoning eons of honing relationships, only to readjust to eternal attributes whose details are still unknown. I don’t believe God would create this kind of confusion. It doesn’t make logical sense.

There's a connection to be made with doing good deeds and where that brings you, and what to expect of life hereafter. Who do you hang with, decent people or curmudgeons? And what do you observe of your interactions with decent people? Is it not a good thing that makes you feel you’ve improved the relationship? In so doing you are not gaining something with your good deeds, they bring you to a place where you get a view of what Jesus said "Be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect" (Matthew 5:48). A seeming impossibility at the least but it wasn’t meant to be literal as it reads.

It's quite possible the gospel writer didn't (again) interpret correctly what Jesus said. If you insert the words "strive to" be perfect the context changes 180 degrees from an impossibility to that situation in which when you do good deeds, you get a glimpse of what that perfection looks like and what its extension into the next life would actually be. And, apart from mystery (which I see as something God hasn’t revealed just yet), it all has to make sense.

Why does that make so much sense via logic. Whereas, because of our imperfections, we can't know exactly what that perfect situation will look like but can certainly have an idea which encourages us want to do more. Not to gain something but to bring us to a place where we can observe perfection in motion to the degree we can comprehend, is meaningful, and a glimpse into eternal life.

Why would God keep things from us by teasing us with uncertainty. Is that the same loving God who said we are made in God's image and likeness (Genesis 1:26)? Even God had to make up for the misinterpretation of his teachings via the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses by instructing Jesus of the Greatest Commandment of love (Matthew 22:36). How is it love did not permeate the OT as it does Jesus’ and Paul’s teachings? The closest the OT came is found in, of all places, Leviticus 19:18 “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.” And that’s it.

Remember the phrase "on earth as it is in heaven"? "Is" is present tense meant to encourage one to think in terms of what goodness can be realized on earth right now. Not after Jesus' second coming, which by the way occurred the minute he withdrew from his tomb  and spoke to Mary Magdalene; not some Armageddon scenario perpetrated by those who (again) misinterpreted the message, as per the Book of Revelation for example and have unnecessarily frightened believers for centuries.

The immediacy of Jesus’ teachings of understanding what the purpose of our earthly existence is paramount and transcends all the misinterpretations of Bible writers who got it wrong. Until we get our heads around this notion, we will constantly be bumping them against the sensationalism of good deeds/bad deeds, armegeddon, the anti-Christ (which 1 John 2:22 explains is not a single person but anyone who denies “the father and the son”. Why he left out the Holy Spirit can only be surmised, perhaps inaccurately reported [again]) and other distractions.

Doing good deeds gives you not only a glimpse of perfection but brings you to a place to come to understand the free gift of salvation through your spiritual prism. You don't gain eternal life with good deeds, they bring you to that place, already in place from day 1 and has always been, waiting for informed teachers without an agenda to teach it.

It isn’t just Jesus who addressed the issue of redemption and salvation. Back in the 700s BC the prophet Isaiah no less than thirteen times addressed God as Redeemer, and savior six times. This is why Jesus got the salvation question from the Pharisees who knew of the Isaiah’s statements and how it was not reported thoroughly, meaning, they knew the What but not the How. Paul cleared that up in his Romans and Ephesians writings.

God has always wanted a relationship with his creation. There's nothing new there. What is new is an understanding of what is contained in our individual relationships, what actions on our part bring us closer to understanding the workings of the relationship, where it brings one, and what the outcome is.