Dependent and Mutable Components

I wrote in the last post:

“If ‘we’ are our thoughts, then our individual selves are as encumbered as our progressively-collected thought-lives: sometimes and in some manifestations handy and undeniable, and sometimes uncertainly and inexplicably wavering and fading and disappearing into what can be experienced by us as a distance.  Or sometimes inexplicably lurching again into view . . . . That is what it is to think, and that is what it is to have an idea of ‘self’ inseparable from one’s individual thought-life.  That ‘self’ is a glory of incompleteness, even as that ‘self’ clutches to a conceit of itself as a whole . . . . To ‘question’ anything, then—as being that elevated process of inspection with which we credit ourselves—is always to question that thought-basis we identify as our ‘selves.’  The first and most important part of questioning everything is to question every aspect of our thoughts by which we reckon ourselves to be individual ‘things.’”

It is this necessary notion of questioning everything that I believe we must apply to a question of Jesus that is generally held to be of importance: “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matthew 16:26, KJV).  I suppose—given our present theme of “questioning”—it might be fitting to question whether or not that passage from Matthew has to do with people being cast into hell, though I imagine the answer will be in the affirmative.  Nonetheless, it must be mentioned that some Christians will maintain that Jesus’ warning is against failure of "discipleship” (or some such) among believers, leading only to a loss of potential rewards.

More importantly, I will ask in connection with the passage, what is the “man” who is understood to be distinct from his “soul”?  Are we not our “souls”?  I realize that Jesus describes the possibility of us being cast into hell with our undiminished bodies when we might choose instead entering heaven with the loss of an eye or a hand, but we know from looking at our hands with our eyes, or in considering persons missing one or both eyes, that the “person” is distinct from the “body”.  But our “souls”?

Is it not incumbent upon us to consider the possibility that the soul with which Jesus is concerned is we ourselves, and that the “we” that we individually personalize as “me” is just a phenomenon of consciousness?  And is not consciousness partial and temporally-defined?  Who are we to imagine that what we “think” or even what we “feel” is the substance of our persons in the eyes of God?  The upshot of all this is the realization that we might—in our personal religious searchings—satisfy (or not) any number of acceptances of belief, or performances of ritual, or experiences or conviction, and yet possibly none of that might extend beyond that part of ourselves that is maintained in consciousness.  What yet do we know of our souls?

If we reckon that our soul-future is amenable to being fostered by what we think, or do, or attempt to train ourselves to feel, and yet we are not privy (at least as much as God is) to the entirety of our souls, then is it not prudent for us to consider that such soul-fostering must be attended to in every form possible?  Why, for example, would we fixate on the notion that there was some moment or some isolatable episode in which we “came to believe?”  Would that be sufficient for the “light” (or whatever) of that realization (or conviction, or conversion, or whatever) to “illuminate” in necessary fashion the required number of corners of our unmappable souls?

This is perhaps—even after my years of key-striking—the proper jumping-off place for my exploration of “roused, readied, reaped.”  Every question and every matter can be haunted by the notion of whether anything of substance in eternal significance is really being addressed.  “Did Jesus really exist?,” we might ask.  And what manner of criteria are we applying to the (purported) evidence, and what specificity of historical basis would be necessary to declare, “Yes, it is the case (or the preponderance of evidence would affirm it to be the case) that Jesus existed”?

Are we not affirming all along what we ourselves “exist”—as we understand existence?  Is not our affirmation premature?  After all, that—counter-intuitive though it might be—is really the sort of thing that religion must answer to begin with.  Jesus asks us to consider whether we can retain or lose ourselves, and we meanwhile reside comfortably in our notions of self and admit only to discomfort (or assert our squelching of discomfort) for the future of those selves.

If, however, the notion of our actual possession of our selves is the matter in question, then our proper approach would be organic, not cerebral.  Our ideas and our beliefs come and go.  We know this to be true.  To say that we “know” this or that, or that we “believe” this or that, is merely for us to take momentary situations of our thought-lives and brand them as “real”—and all the rest as momentary aberration.  What a ridiculous approach to fundamental and eternal matters.  In any analogous, lesser matter of our lives, we would resolve to stretch and practice and exercise and exert ourselves—yet to God we give only thanks for comforting that perhaps minor part of our selves that we comprehend at any given moment.  It is small wonder that Jesus convicts us simultaneously of awesome arrogance and of pitiful insufficiency.

We are not creatures of thought saddled with the infirmities of bodily imperfection.  We are creatures who define our personal “we’s” as our consciousnesses, even as those consciousness-selves are but dependent and mutable components of our entireties—known but to God.

A Glory of Incompleteness

I will confess that I believe I have a ready answer to the question with which I ended my last post:

“How then can we keep ourselves always questioning?”

The answer is found in placing the premise of “roused, readied, reaped” against the contention (perhaps seasoned with no small measure of conceit) that “thinking” in its most elevated manifestation is also “thinking” in its most unyielding manifestation.  We imagine we will discover the truth of all if we question the truth of all.

“Questioning,” however, as we can practice it, can be practiced only as a process, as much bound up with the mechanics of beginning-middle-end as any other process.  The cycles—from the life-long to the near-instantaneous—of thought are inseparable from the material and temporal elements of our existence.  We are born, live, and die, and in the course of being entertained, our thoughts similarly are born, live, and die.  The extent to which our thoughts are brought up or taken up by us and then filed away or incorporated into a larger whole—that extent can never be estimated with assurance.  If “we” are our thoughts, then our individual selves are as encumbered as our progressively-collected thought-lives: sometimes and in some manifestations handy and undeniable, and sometimes uncertainly and inexplicably wavering and fading and disappearing into what can be experienced by us as a distance.  Or sometimes inexplicably lurching again into view.

That is what it is to think, and that is what it is to have an idea of “self” inseparable from one’s individual thought-life.  That “self” is a glory of incompleteness, even as that “self” clutches to a conceit of itself as a whole.  One’s “self”—in relation to that which good conscience would reveal as a larger expression of one’s being—might be likened to the conglomeration of chromosomes that constitute the inchoate but usually persistent “half” of a dividing cell.  One moment, that conglomeration is intertwined and interacting with the “whole”, and another moment—never definable by any exact distinction of time—that “half” has congealed itself into a pole of a dividing organism.

To “question” anything, then—as being that elevated process of inspection with which we credit ourselves--is always to question that thought-basis we identify as our “selves.”  The first and most important part of questioning everything is to question every aspect of our thoughts by which we reckon ourselves to be individual “things.”

Kept to be Questioned

I ended my last post with the following:

“And so, the question of Jesus’ ‘existence’ is inseparable from the conventions—prevailing in our time and prevailing perhaps differently in other times—about the understood boundaries of the question.  I submit that this connection with ‘understood boundaries’ is far more crucial to our thought processes than is generally recognized, and I contend that defying those ‘understood boundaries’ is crucial in itself to far more fundamental questions (yes, they exist) about religion than whether or not by any particular criteria Jesus might be held to have existed.”

We might ask ourselves whether or not Paul existed.  Of course, the historians’ certitude that there was such a person as Paul is virtually unquestioned, but I contend that the application of such a notion as “person” in this matter ought to be questioned.  The main reason anyone believes that Paul existed is because his letters exist.  Enough of the collection of his letters exist—exhibiting common themes and style, as I understand—for them to be believable as the output of a single person—“Paul.”  Fair enough, but is it any more of substance to say that the letters exist because of Paul, or that “Paul” exists because of the letters?

(I am proceeding on the notion that the Paul of the Book of Acts is reckoned by his appearance there to be no more "historical” than the appearance of the Jesus of Luke/Acts.)

If all of the letters of Paul were outright frauds, written by a person of some other name and with some nefarious intent, would “Paul” exist?  If all of the letters of Paul were the ravings of a madman who invented the character out of his imaginings, would “Paul” exist?  If a real Paul of mundane habits had concocted an epistolary alter ego credited with the activities of the letters, would “Paul” exist?  If a real missionary teacher named Paul had embellished his accounts with the heroics which characterize the lionized apostle of Sunday School lessons, would “Paul” exist?  If a person named Paul had done all the letters claim, and yet had falsely claimed the specifics of his potent biography (Roman citizen, Jewish functionary, “Pharisee”) would “Paul” exist?

More importantly, if Paul was everything the New Testament claims (or at least it was not provable otherwise), would the contention that Paul “existed” differ in any substantial way from the contention that “Paul” might well have existed—leaving it to the listener to consider whether any germ of doubt is worth considering?  In sum, if the matter of Paul’s existence is contested, it will never be resolved, and if it is not contested, then it will be no matter at all.

I think it is crucial to view such matters in the active sense of “contested.”  Anyone, from the harshest skeptic to virtually the most ardent believer, can say that we will never really “know” (this side of the grave) whether or not Paul existed.  Certainly, in the generalized activities of religious scholars the existence of Paul is accepted.  Simultaneously, in the idealized activities of any scholarship, no matter is to held without question—“acceptance” of this or that is revealed to be flaccid (when placed under consideration) in any realm of strenuous and concerted inquiry.

How then can we keep ourselves always questioning?

Held to Have Existed

I have been thinking and reading lately about the question of the “historical Jesus” versus the “mythical Jesus.”  This phrasing is to some degree unfair, in that possibly it assigns the term “myth” to what might be potentially a phenomenon altogether different from what we in modernity call a “myth.”  That is, what we might call a “myth”—a belief directed toward a conceptualized person or thing that does not exist, though it is purported to exist—might in different times and places constitute a belief with much different implications.  "Heaven," for example, is called a myth typically by people who deny an afterlife, but even so by people who understand simultaneously that the proponents of heaven’s existence do not ascribe to heaven some localizable or examinable existence.  The people who claim that heaven exists do not usually claim that the heavens can be climbed to or flown to—regardless of the Genesis reference to the raising of water into the dome of heaven.

Similarly—particularly in view of the quite different time and place of early Christianity’s milieu from our own—it might well be maintained that the “myth” of Jesus was understood by some of his followers to be conceptualized as in—and taking place in—a higher realm than our own.  I imagine, then, that the proper application of the term “myth” to the understanding of Jesus in terms of the early Church—and in terms of those of us who might subscribe to the religious legitimacy of the early Church—has to do with the scope only of claims that he actually walked the earth.  In the twenty-first century, the question of whether Jesus existed is reckoned to be an existential one in regard to Christianity.  To us, if Jesus did not exist, then “his” teachings and story constitute at best an amalgam of philosophy, and at worst a horrid fraud.

This determination to test Christianity by whether or not its founder existed is nonetheless—though it seems eminently logical—poised over a trapdoor.  As others have pointed out with more clarity than I, the postulate of whether or not “Jesus” existed is only by habit or convention connected to any supposed criteria of salience.  It is of arguable substance to claim that “Jesus” never existed, and to claim that his story is pure invention arising from a fraught landscape of religious and political conflict populated by fiery apocalyptic preachers, when in the extremity of the argument one might point simply to that company of preachers and say, “There!  There you have your evidence of the historicity of Jesus!  There is the factual basis from which—no infallible degree of specificity being imposed—the entirety of his story (at least in its temporal facets) might be extracted.”

And so, the question of Jesus’ “existence” is inseparable from the conventions—prevailing in our time and prevailing perhaps differently in other times—about the understood boundaries of the question.  I submit that this connection with “understood boundaries” is far more crucial to our thought processes than is generally recognized, and I contend that defying those “understood boundaries” is crucial in itself to far more fundamental questions (yes, they exist) about religion than whether or not by any particular criteria Jesus might be held to have existed.

The Industry of Hebrews

I realize now that a thesis was working itself out in the course of my previous post:

“The two kingdoms to which I referred in the previous posts—the kingdoms of this world and of heaven described by Jesus—are ethical entities.  In practice, they are the playings-out of value choices, with the option in the first instance—the kingdom of this world—being devotion to the causes with which we define our belonging, such causes being particular and parochial.  In the second instance the focus is devotion to a greater singular cause attributed to the mediation of Jesus—to whom we belong and through whom we belong to all.”

Bearing in mind Jesus’ unsparing ethical demands, I wrote:

“The notion of a kingdom short of that of God is ridiculous in Jesus’ ethical framework, and he treats it as something ridiculous . . . . What is most important to our analysis . . . is the extent to which any of the history of the Establishment of the Biblical Nation of Israel can be thought to comport with the demands of Jesus.”

Moving toward a conclusion, I wrote:

“. . . . what I am getting at is attempting to show how Jesus’ ethical system is not merely a challenge to aspects of the religion of his birth, but is also a refutation of any theory of Jesus’ ministry as being ‘religious’ in terms of that heritage . . . . What Jesus calls us to do is fulfill the highest aspirations of religion, and in this regard Jesus obviously finds the highest aspirations of the religion of his birth to point in that direction.  The necessary dynamic, however, is for us to view all such things through the lens of his demands, not to view his demands through the lens of any belief system.”

In the course of considering the question of Jesus’ demands viewed “through the lens of any belief system”—an unfortunate aspect of so much commentary upon his ministry—I thought of the Book of The Letter to the Hebrews.  I think the book will be very instructive to the point at hand, in that its author dealt with just such considerations—without, I am afraid, much success.

The author of Hebrews comes very close to describing the kingdom of heaven as I did above: “devotion to a greater singular cause attributed to the mediation of Jesus—to whom we belong and through whom we belong to all.”  Hebrews, however, is centered on the notion that Jesus replaced the functions of the High Priest—a perfectly legitimate concept, though any substantive treatment of it must bear the weight of scrutiny such as in Jesus’ observation that the priests themselves, in a sense, violate the Sabbath every Sabbath.  Unfortunately, the author of Hebrews does not display Jesus’ propensity for hanging questions and pregnant silences.  The author of Hebrews tries to substitute industry for inspiration.

Any Old Belief System

The two kingdoms to which I referred in the previous posts—the kingdoms of this world and of heaven described by Jesus—are ethical entities.  In practice, they are the playings-out of value choices, with the option in the first instance—the kingdom of this world—being devotion to the causes with which we define our belonging, such causes being particular and parochial.  In the second instance the focus is devotion to a greater singular cause attributed to the mediation of Jesus—to whom we belong and through whom we belong to all.

The contrast between these two kingdoms cannot be understood by us until we address the meaning of “kingdom” used in the mundane sense versus its application in terms of ethics.  The resolution of this preliminary matter is not complicated, though it is strongly counter-intuitive.  In its most rarified application, the term “ethics” is incompatible with “kingdom.”  If we practiced ethics properly, we would have no need for the disciplinary function of a kingdom, and ostensibly debatable notions of proper social and public policy could be achieved by cordial conversation, not through the exercise of sovereignty.

None of that is going to happen, of course, because we lack the ability to behave ethically.  What is most important for us to realize, however, is the fact that in the ethical system demanded by Jesus, no working-out of any defensible earthly kingdom is going to happen either.  The notion of a kingdom short of that of God is ridiculous in Jesus’ ethical framework, and he treats it as something ridiculous.  There is no answer to how King David, if he is going to be thought the “father” of Jesus, might possibly have called Jesus “my lord” in the psalms.  Jesus would have called David “my lord.”  (Or David, without genealogic relation to Jesus, would have called him “my lord.”  Whichever.)

It is of little matter that attribution of psalms to David might be nothing but a fancy, and it is of little matter that various sophistries might ostensibly “solve” the David and My Lord riddle.  What matters is that Jesus treats the matter as ridiculous and—though we must rely on the authority of extant, selected texts—the Gospels leave the riddle in its raw, unsolved condition.

That is by far not the least of the riddles that confront us once we try to apply Jesus’ ethic to the world of the devil.  Take the earthly kingdom of Israel, so important to the Jews with whom Jesus interacted, and so ingrained in the worldview that inundated the setting of Jesus’ ministry.  Nothing in the teachings of Jesus can be understand outside of the framework of Judaism—and nothing in the teachings of Jesus can be understood within the framework of Judaism.  We have another unsolvable riddle.

The family of Jacob—the family-nation of Israel—went down to Egypt in peace and lived there in peace for many years.  Then came the oppression, and the flight from Egypt, and the Conquest of Canaan, and the establishment of Israel the earthly nation.  In the orthodox interpretation, the sequence as understood here is peace, followed by oppression, followed by heroism, followed by peace.  (OK, there is a liberal portion of faithlessness and apostasy and cowardice, but such things simply figure into the moral adventure of the nation.)

Non-orthodox interpretations talk about uncomfortable things like genocide and rape.  What is most important to our analysis here, however, is the extent to which any of the history of the Establishment of the Biblical Nation of Israel can be thought to comport with the demands of Jesus.

This is the Jesus who tells us that faith the size of a mustard seed would allow us to (successfully) order a tree or even a mountain to plant itself in the sea.  We do not possess such faith, though of course without faith we cannot hope to enter Jesus’ kingdom.  Well, actually, we can hope (and try) but first and foremost we must come to grips with what Jesus demands of us—after we have come to grips with whether or not we believe he can legitimately make such a demand.

The Israelites were faced with a similar challenge with the Conquest of Canaan, an extended episode of openly recorded killing, destruction, and (in effect) rape that has earned in many quarters the name “genocide.”  One crucial element is usually left out of the equation, however.  The Israelites (in a vein that brings to mind the mustard seed) were ordered in the narrative to behave in such a noble and courageous fashion that the peoples of Canaan would simply flee, not resist.  (Whether they might have fared passably well in their resettlement is of course hypothetical—but after all this is a religious question, and God is omnipotent.)

God promised to drive the Canaanites out if the Israelites behaved appropriately.  The Israelites (as any people would) behaved to an extent inappropriately.  Hence the “genocide,” or at least the bloodshed and destruction that was so often described as if it were to the credit of the Jews’ ancestors.  Periodically, the conquering Israelites were even castigated for not engaging with sufficient vigor in bloodshed and destruction.  The Conquest happened, but it was not what it was supposed to be.

But what of the “peace” that the nation of Jacob enjoyed when first in Egypt, and then later (episodically, at least) when entrenched in the Promised Land?  Did they behave in such manner as to deserve such peace?  If we view the matter through the lens of Jesus’ ethical demands, the answer must be “No.”  (Of course, for all of us at all times, the answer is “No.”)

Even the idea of the nation (later, “kingdom”) itself would have to fall into question.  Jesus tells his followers that concerning themselves only about the welfare of those in this or that “in group” was to be no better than “the heathen,” though to be separate from “the heathen” was an ethical demand that weighed heavily on the Jews.

It would be unfair to the Jews to say that they cared only for their own (though Jesus felt it imperative at times to declare that there were those among the heathen who could rival any Jew in unfettered humanitarianism.)  It would also be unfair to pretend that the separation from the surrounding peoples demanded by the Jewish scriptures did not tend ironically to make the Jews act all the more like the heathen.

Yet the aspiration of much of Jewish thought was (and is) to behave so as to capture the admiration, and provide an attraction to, all the peoples of the earth.  This sort of millennial vision, however, would rely either on simple divine intervention, or on ethical refinement (and incredible courage) such that the Jewish people in any age might simply awe the peoples (and enlist the divine) in such a way as to make the world clamor to serve Jerusalem and support the Jews.  Such visions exist in the Jewish scriptures—they are as open-hearted as any sentiment in any religion, but surely we are in “mustard seed” territory here.

What I am getting at is not meant to alter or challenge our conceptions as mere mortals of Judaism or of Jewish history.  Rather, what I am getting at is attempting to show how Jesus’ ethical system is not merely a challenge to aspects of the religion of his birth, but is also a refutation of any theory of Jesus’ ministry as being “religious” in terms of that heritage.  In Jesus’ ethical system, the “peace” of Israel as a family or—later—as a nation was non-existent.  Let Israel (or, in the instance, Judea) be a wonderful nation with many wonderful people.  Let the gentile nations be wonderful nations with many wonderful people.  Let Israel call the surrounding gentile nations “wonderful”—even if that were to stretch the truth a bit charitably.  None of that would matter in light of Jesus’ ethical demands.

And let historians then or now argue about the gritty aspects of the Conquest.  That matter, as well, is irrelevant to Jesus’ ethical teachings.  Here we can begin to feel the rub.  In the workings-out of Jesus’ teachings, the history of the nation never happened.  Who cares who was high priest when the power-rapist-adulterer-murderer “man after God’s heart” David ate the bread he wasn’t supposed to?  Who cares which son of the concubine-ravager wife-pimp Abraham was to be the son of the Promise, when any old rock would do?

What matters in any event is what we are called to, and how we respond to what we are called to.  What Jesus calls us to do is fulfill the highest aspirations of religion, and in this regard Jesus obviously finds the highest aspirations of the religion of his birth to point in that direction.  The necessary dynamic, however, is for us to view all such things through the lens of his demands, not to view his demands through the lens of any belief system.

Two Things Out of Nothing

No sense can be derived from an ostensibly monotheistic ideology that considers the deity within a framework of co-existing or priorly-existing independent entities.  A monotheistic ideology considers a single deity from which all else flows—otherwise anything independent of the “single deity” would be characterizable ultimately as another deity.

The Abrahamic belief systems identify a single deity—leaving aside the controversy (in which my position will be clear)—over whether a monotheism can encapsulate multiple “persons” within the deity.  Generally, the Abrahamic belief systems reckon that entities can exist which are distinct from the deity, but it must be the case that such entities are created by him—leaving aside the controversy about the deity’s “gender” (in which my position must be clear already.)

So, all else besides God has been created by him—out of nothing.  It might also be contended that a certain logic would dictate that—there being no independently-existing substrate—God has created all out of himself.  My position on this is clear—postulation about any illogic of something out of nothing is coterminous with postulation about God himself being created out of nothing.  Either God exists or he doesn’t.  Arguments about how he could make something else exist are simply re-litigations of the original point.

Jesus refers to two kingdoms.  The first important point about the “two kingdoms” is the fact that their realms incorporate the entirety of our experienceable existence.  “This world” (often ascribed some practical or titular—though hardly un-contested—subjugation to Satan) is described along with the “kingdom of heaven.”  In that the kingdom of heaven is described by Jesus as existing within the believer as well as existing in rightful sovereignty over all, it is most logical to view the two kingdoms—in an ethical if not practical sense—as two states of being.  On a single plane, we are describable as citizens either of the kingdom of this world or of the kingdom of heaven.

In parallel with the idea of “two kingdoms,” I contend that our existence is understandable most clearly in terms of two things—and two things only—described for us in the scriptures as having been created out of nothing.  First, the original Creation was formed out of nothing.  As I have noted elsewhere, it is paradoxically the case that this necessary “creation out of nothing” is given an amazingly short shrift in the Bible.  The “original Creation” is not even described narratively.  We are greeted in Genesis first by the (narratively) pre-existing chaos.  “Let there be light” is counterpoised with the substrate of darkness, which is given a substance even though we call it simply the absence of light.  Then we are told how this produced this which gave rise to that, and so on.

And the Gospels proceed in similar fashion.  Jesus will make wine, but only out of water.  Jesus will come up with a coin that Peter can use to pay their tax, but Peter has to go literally fishing for it.  Even the return of Jesus to his body (certainly a “creation” of an event unextractable by us from any realm of experience) is framed in a narrative similar in one sense to all other of his miracles.  Here an event of unsurpassed import is not displayed in itself before any mortal’s eyes.  As far as any human’s eyes are permitted, it is as though the Savior was (re)birthed by the tomb.

This leads me to the second thing that was created out of nothing. This second thing, the unity of Creation—not just Creation itself—was created out of nothing.  There is no logical reason why anything we can perceive ought to have ever existed—true.  Such is a foundational tenet of any monotheism that acknowledges a sovereign deity—and certainly God has been lauded for his creative act throughout the ages.  What is also true is that there is no logical reason why everything we can perceive is understood necessarily to be in connection to all else.  I am not referring to the idea that we each possess single sensory systems such that our processing of information must necessarily presume to connect all input—whether by close or by distant association.  What I am referring to is the biblical assertion that all is connected.  God made Creation.  He did not make Creations.

God gave us bodies.  He also gave us to understand that our care for our bodies can be at the expense of our neighbors’ welfare.  God gave us children.  He also gave us to understand that our familial responsibilities can be at the expense of larger ethical demands.  God gave us lives.  He also gave us to understand that our care for our lives can be at the expense of our eternal fates, or those of our fellows.

In all those “gave us to understands” lies a certain presumption that I am attempting to highlight.  It is in a certain sense possible to maintain that the believer’s foundational premise—in trying to do what is right—can be to try to do everything possible, and to “cast the rest upon the Lord” (or some such.)  Certainly, prayer and trust are laudable, but it must be understood that the persistent tendency to which we are drawn is to delineate between what we can do and what we cannot.  That—within the logic of Jesus’ teaching—is impermissible.  There are no realms of ethical responsibility in Jesus’ teaching, just as there are no realms within the larger realms of the two coexisting kingdoms.

It would be ridiculous for me to speak of “ethical responsibility in Jesus’ teaching” and to ever act as though I was not simply relaying the message.  What I can do is try to draw attention to what are really two “created out of nothing” phenomena.  God’s hand can be seen in everything, but for us mortals God’s unaccompanied creative power can be seen in only two things.  First, there is the fact that Creation is described as existing.  Second, there is the fact that Creation is described as single.  This is possibly just for our consumption—certainly God can make as many Creations as he likes, but similarly he could at his pleasure have placed us in view of—perhaps even straddling—such diversities.  He has not.  There is one connected Creation for us.

And so we have bodies and children and lives.  There can be no notion that care for those things is mandatory, and care for other things is optional.  There can be no notion that any parochial value systems displayed by ostensibly godly men and women “in Bible days” can serve legitimately as templates for our behaviors.  There can be no notion that care for all Creation is creeping “pantheism,” or some such.  We can only try to do what Jesus requires, and in a single, connected Creation, what Jesus requires of us binary-oriented creatures is necessarily impossible—that is the upshot of his ethical system.

Jesus requires everything of us all the time.  The important thing here about his teaching of the two kingdoms is the fact that they are two modes of being.  The lesser mode is the realm of Satan, in which we can try to do our best.  The greater mode is the kingdom of God, in which we can also try to do our best.  We can submerge ourselves in the “earthly” realm of Satan, and believe ourselves to be on the right track, if we try to wend through an imagined landscape of the devil’s traps.  What Jesus teaches is that there is an entire coexisting kingdom, the “kingdom of heaven,” where our efforts dissolve before our eyes even as the arbitrary moral distinctions to which we are irresistibly drawn dissolve as well.

When we embrace the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of our personal dissolution, we can—haltingly, it must be admitted—address ourselves to Jesus’ demands.  Here it is absolutely essential to embrace as well the two conjoined elements of Creation and of interconnected Creation.  When we are the pitiful servants of a merciful master, all we might attempt will be impossible, but it is the extent of the impossibility that is crucial to any moral grounding that we might by his grace be granted.  Failing, as the kingdom of Satan will espouse, to do what we must for delineated causes—family, community, church, and the like—is not what we are truly to understand as failure.  We are to understand our failure in the vein of one great cause in one connected Creation.

The citizens of the kingdom of Satan and of the kingdom of heaven can be defined by precisely those implications of a connected Creation that are embedded in the teachings of Jesus, which will brook no notions of the sequestering of ethical demands.  In the kingdom of Satan, “hating one’s parents” is taken as some sort of admonition to be prepared to forsake all if necessary to serve God.  In the kingdom of heaven, “hating one’s parents” is an ever-present condition of existence.  To be “of” someone or “from” someone is to be of necessity not “of” or “from” the single Creation to which we are ethically bound.

To enlarge further on the subject of ancestry, there is Jesus’ denouncement of those of the Jews who maintained that they would not have joined their ancestors in persecuting the prophets.  In the kingdom of Satan, such an assertion would seem entirely reasonable, though of course entirely convenient when said by someone at a comfortable distance from the prophets’ age.  To Jesus, this contention of some Jews of his time—that they would have forborne from the evil deeds of their ancestors—is ridiculous.  To identify with being “of” or “from” something is always a trap—at least, that is the implication of Jesus’ teaching.

God created, as far as we know, two things out of nothing—two things that did not exist priorly, and that had no necessity of existence.  He created Creation, and he created one, single, interconnected Creation.  In the realm of Jesus’ teaching for us, God did not make Creation.  He made The Creation.