CCpart2ch17

18 Aug
I-70 in Kansas, heading west (YES!)

FINALLY, after another morning and afternoon of strange dealings in Lone Star
Land, in which yet another load was cancelled out from under me –it is bizarre
how many cancelled loads I’ve seen come and go in the past week; they can’t
all be hurricane related—and I received the abundant mercy of a Texas state
patrolman who let me go with a written warning for both speeding and an out-
of-date logbook (I could have been fined twice and detained for ten hours to
prove that I was legal to drive further), I now have the load that will fling me
toward the Great Northwest. At the behest of the Kimberly Clark Corporation,
I am bringing 32,369 pounds of “waste, synthetic fibre in machine pressed bales”
from their facility in Paris, Texas to another plant in Ogden, Utah.

I’ll have to tell Ben about this. For years whenever I have called him from the road, he has always asked me if I am
“backhaulin’ trash.” It is probably a reference to some cheeseball movie, maybe “Smoky and the Bandit” or “Convoy.”
Now, for the first time I’ve been aware of, I actually am backhauling trash. God knows why they want this stuff shipped
1,296 miles, but I am very grateful to I AM for arranging for me to do it. I am now just one assignment away from Oregon
and my ticket home.

* * * *

When I started the last chapter, I did not set out to trash the Bible, and I hope it didn’t seem like that was my intention to you
as a reader. To the contrary, I want to give the Christian Bible its proper respect for being just what it is on the world scale:
one of the most highly respected and cherished collections of verbal (ie. symbolic) expressions of the true nature of God
ever recorded in the history of humankind.

Those are awful high accolades, and I don’t believe they are an overstatement. Many people outside the Bible-believing fold
have turned to it for centuries as a reliable guidepost for inspiration, direction and wisdom –again, Gandhi being one of the
most famous examples—a proverbial finger pointing directly at the moon of God. This is why I have a copy of the King
James Bible in the “elite” milk crate of notebooks and source materials by my left side in Camerado’s passenger seat writing
studio. This is why I quote from it so often in the Chronicles. Heck, even people who are completely irreligious use
proverbs and expressions straight out of the Bible, so clearly does it ring the Bell of Truth in our hearts.

(…I know, you’re waiting for the “but,” but there will not be one)

However :-) let us not make it an overstatement by giving the Bible deified status, or assigning it a divine origin that no other
scriptures can have. The Bible was written by men (and by that I mean “men,” no women), and it deals with spiritual
matters; therefore as we covered back in Part One somewhere, it was written by men with an agenda. Men who clearly
intended to promulgate and disseminate their views on gender relations and sexual propriety, for instance (there may be some
future chapters devoted to my less-than-favorable assessment of Biblian politics, but not this one, so I won’t expand on
these statements now).

It was also written by men who were not above using fear as a persuasive tactic, in a way that their Holy Mentor and
Guidepost, I have to believe, given what we know about His character and His teaching methods, would not have advised.

This brings us back to the main issue of inquiry from the last two chapters: did Jesus say everything He said? I set up the
terms for a debate with anyone who would say “yes,” and I really would be interested to see someone follow through on
that. But, for reasons covered in the last chapter, the answer “because it is in the Bible, and the Bible is the inerrant Word of
God” won’t satisfy me. I want to see some genuine spiritual discernment from the other side.

As we discussed earlier, the teaching at Bible-believing churches like ACF is that, if you believe the Bible is the Word of God,
then you must accept the whole Bible as such. Several different times (mostly by the same person, oddly) I have been told
the story of Thomas Jefferson and how he cut out the parts of the Bible that didn’t sit right with him. Clearly the message
for me was that God doesn’t approve of having his Word sliced and diced by mortal man.

That is fine for my brothers and sisters at ACF,
if they feel called to be that kind of believer.
But my thinking is, why the hell not? I mean, if
you’re not the type of Christian who buys into
the Biblian claims of authority over the Spirit
within you, why would you presume that God
wants you to swallow the Bible whole? If most
of the Bible lights you up like a Roman candle
with the Word of God, and other parts resonate
with little more than a dull thud, why should you
have to pretend that it all speaks to you the
same? What is wrong with seeing the Bible like
a diamond mine: precious gems scattered
throughout, hidden among more mundane
rocks?

Like I said, I find the Bible to have an
extremely high concentration of gems, and
I seek to mine them each time I pick it up
[I should also mention that I always enjoyed
“round-table” Bible studies, which provide a
chance to hear several people’s unique mining
process at once, thus potentially enriching our
own]. This seems to be a good way of describing the process of discernment which is so vital to the spiritual life. Another
popular biblical image for discernment is that of separating the fruit of the wheat plant from the chaff. Is there no
value or even a negative value in applying this discernment process to our reading of the Bible itself? Is the Bible 100% fruit
and every other “holy book” written by man 100% chaff? How did any of them ever grow?

I have no problem, in other words, with what Thomas Jefferson did, in fact I believe it demonstrates a spiritual discernment
that is far too lacking in the modern church. My only issue, if we are to take the account literally, is with his method. The
Bible is obviously printed on both sides of each page, and if ol’ TJ was cutting out chaff on one side, he might be discarding
some good fruit on the other.

To see a symbolic application to go with the literal, and to explore what I feel to be a more effective discernment process
than eliminating what we don’t like, let us take a second look at the creative reaction of another Christian who apparently did
not like the way every verse of the Gospels sounded in his spiritual ear: Nikos Kazantzakis.

If you are familiar enough with the Christian Bible, you probably knew before I said anything that the second part of Jesus’
parable about Lazarus and the rich man did not come from the scriptures, and the author claims no “secret knowledge” of
what actually transpired. There are many cases where Kazantzakis takes scriptural events and places them in a different
context for the sake of story-telling –another example being the scene where Jesus saves a prostitute from being stoned to
death. He explains to the reader in his preface that he did not set out to “rewrite” the Gospels in the sense of replacing them,
but he clearly did mean to add to them, enhance them in a way. [Or, most precisely, Kazantzakis retold the stories of the
Gospels to show the impression they left on him after filtering through his particular mind and heart. No author
who is being honest could claim to do anything different than that.]

Why? If the Christian Bible was given to us directly from God via its authors and editorial staff (remember, the Bible is a
compilation of historical records, letters and testimonies, assembled and “canonized” in the 4th century AD, not a concerted
effort on the part of its authors to present a uniform Gospel), then surely it contains everything we need to know in order to
be good, devout Christians. Yes, I agree, it does, there is nothing lacking in it that a thorough discernment process won’t
uncover. But that does not mean that it is free of chaff, places where the limited human perspectives of its authors
and editors shows through. Since the Biblian approach is to worship the Bible uniformly as the Word of God, a lot of this
limited human perspective gets the same unquestioned sanction of Christians as do the fruits, the “diamonds in the rough”
that point directly toward God’s non-dual, infinite and eternal nature.

Let me stop beating around the bush and say exactly what I mean:

some

parts of the New Testament seem to have been written, compiled and

canonized as a deliberate effort to instill fear of the consequences of

non-compliance (with the C

hurch

, mind you) in the masses.

The

carrot-and-stick approach that we covered earlier. “You’re either for us or

you’re against us, and if you’re against us, then you’re against God.”

Again I ask: is there anything more sadly

human

than this mentality? I have

certainly “chronicled” my efforts at coming to accept or even appreciate

some of my human weaknesses, but I also call them what they are –

products of my ego—and don’t try to claim that they represent Godly

principles or ideals in any way.

I find it ridiculous that we should have to

make this claim about the entire Bible in order to properly utilize it as a

finger pointing us to the reality of God. The Spirit within us deserves

better than that.

Can it be then that “one man’s chaff is another man’s fruit?”

Absolutely.

I'd be a huge fool to suggest otherwise and then go about

describing which is which. My only addendum to this simple answer is

that

the kind of discernment I’m talking

about requires a brutal honesty and

awareness of which or whose agendas we are seeking to promote. If Mr. Jefferson merely removed any parts of the Bible
which pricked his conscience regarding his ownership of slaves, for instance, and how this did not mesh with the lofty
ideals he espoused in the Declaration of Independence, I would consider that discernment process to be a little suspect.
Similarly, if one goes to the Bible with an anti-homosexual agenda, one will be inclined to see these aspects of the Jewish law
and their application in the early Christian church as pure fruit, and Jesus’ teaching on removing the plank from one’s own
eye before trying to help your neighbor with the speck in his as largely chaff. The opposite could be the case if you have an
“anything goes” mentality and want to find Biblical validation for telling the world to mind its own business. Surely there is a
middle “open road” between the polar opposites, and God probably wants us to use our powers of discernment to find it and
travel it toward the heart of Christ, rather than find Biblical validation for our prideful agendas. (That is what my agenda tells
me at least.)

So what should we do with our personal chaff? Should we thresh it out of the book itself a la Thomas Jefferson? Simply
pay it no mind, as I’ve learned to do?

Or can we use it, creatively, as Kazantzakis clearly does, to draw even closer to the heart of God where the Bible
seems to go further away?

Can we use a combination of discernment and creativity to draw out the contrast between the evidence of pride in
the scriptures and the overwhelming power and presence of God’s love?

At the end of the first part of the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, the only part found in the Bible, Judas Iscariot –who
is brilliantly employed as the perfect character foil for Jesus throughout the early part of the book—is very satisfied by the
story’s outcome, because it quenches his thirst for vengeance against the rich.

But the author is not satisfied, and he uses the “beloved disciple,” John, to put forth his objection: God’s infinite mercy is
missing from this account –I mean, is it not, readers?—and there must be more to the story. In confirming that there is, and
in giving Lazarus the personal imperative and choice to become the agent of God’s mercy by rescuing the rich man from the
flames of hell (“Deliver him, Lord, that I may be delivered. Otherwise I too shall begin to feel the flames.”), Kazantzakis’
Jesus confirms the scriptural teachings that compel us to seek the heart of Christ by opening ourselves up to
become ministers of abundant mercy and grace. The parable as recorded in the gospel of Luke actually teaches
the worldly way, Kazantzakis says indirectly, and the living Christ has taught me this other way –let me share it
with you.

Like I said, it literally made me cry, sitting there in the truck reading this part of The Last Temptation, and seeing how this
fellow Christian was willing to go “out of bounds” Biblically to uncover a precious gem that maybe even Luke himself did
not know about.

One other example I would like to look at together before I wrap up this tour of duty (I’m closing in on Portland now, will
reach the Rogue Valley late tonight), a story that has always been to me one of the most bizarre parts that made the final cut
for the New Testament: the tale of Ananias and Sapphira.

It is certainly no coincidence that Kazantzakis chose “Ananias” as the name for the rich man who entertained Jesus and the
disciples, and requested the parable to ease his troubled mind. It seems like he was letting his Jesus address both stories at
once, both places where he felt the scriptures left the Savior’s mercy wanting. The story of Ananias and Sapphira is found
at the beginning of Acts, chapter 5. The setting is among the first worshippers of the recently-crucified Yahshua ben Yosef
in Jerusalem. Chapter 4 has just explained to us how people of this first church had sold off property and possessions, and
brought the proceeds to the community; how they shared all things in common and had meals together and prayed together,
the whole nine yards. All for one and one for all.

Oh, but there’s always one bad apple in the bushel…

1 But a certain man named Ananias, with Sapphira his wife, sold a possession,
2 And kept back part of the price, his wife also being privy to it, and brought a certain part and laid it at the
apostles’ feet.
3 But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, to keep back part of the
price of the land?
4 While it remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thine own power? Why hast thou
conceived this thing in thine heart? Thou hast not lied unto man, but unto God.
5 And Ananias hearing these words fell down, and gave up the ghost: and a great fear came on all them that
heard these things.
6 And the young men arose, wound him up, and carried him out, and buried him.
7 And it was about the space of three hours after, when his wife, not knowing what was done, came in.
8 And Peter answered unto her, Tell me whether ye sold the land for so much? And she said, Yea, for so much.
9 Then Peter said unto her, How is it that ye have agreed together to tempt the Spirit of the Lord? Behold, the
feet of them which have buried thy husband are at the door, and shall carry thee out.
10 Then she fell down straightway at his feet, and yielded up the ghost: and the young men came in, and found
her dead, and carrying her forth, buried her by her husband.
11 And great fear came upon all the church, and upon as many as heard these things.

Yeah, great fear. You mean like, awe and reverence, right?

No, he meant FEAR. The cold-face-of-death-peering-over-your-shoulder-type Fear.

Ananias and Sapphira tried to pull a fast one on God, but God showed them who’s Boss by pulling their spirits right out of
their bodies.

Yeah. That’ll teach ‘em.

And as many as yous people out there who heard these things: Nobody, I mean NOBODY fucks with Yahweh in this part of
Jerusalem. Are we understanding each other here?

Please pardon my blasphemy, but this all sounds more like a scene from The Godfather than the Word of God. Can’t you
just picture Marlon Brando as Peter, people coming in and laying all their money at his feet. He even has his little posse of
henchmen to come out and hide the bodies –did you also get the sense this wasn’t the first time they’d done this?

Now tell me this story wasn’t included in the canonized Bible to leave a huge impression in the simple minds of the church’s
flock, people to whom the Bible was presented as literal Truth, and whose small, dispensable lives were well-conditioned to
respond to Fear as their primary motivating factor.

God, merciful and forgiving? Are you kiddin’ me? Fuhgeddaboutit! No second chances in this universe pal.

OK, so I think we’ve pretty much established how I feel about Acts 5: 1-11 in terms of it being fruit or chaff. Now, in the
spirit of Nikos Kazantzakis, I offer you my version of the second half of the tale of Ananias and Sapphira (I won’t try
writing in King James English, in fact the whole context has been pretty well modernized to bring it closer to the
contemporary reader):

[The Continuing Story of Ananias and Sapphira does its continuing in the next chapter]

© 2004 by Hermit Crab
a Fish Out Of Water production

N ext -- Chapter 18