Day Twenty-three

It’s an interesting concept. While it’s all about me, I’m not all there is. This allows me to acknowledge that I am the center of my universe while opening the door to the realization that I am not the center of the Universe. Rather than have to deal with a strict either/or, I have the opportunity to integrate into a both/and paradigm. I am not God, but God is me! If this is true it places the matter of my personal salvation—even though I’m still not sure what this really means—into a dynamic context of relationship rather than a static one of mere acceptance. What I do or don’t do does matter, not because it conforms with or violates predetermined criteria, but because if affects the ongoing relationship either positively or negatively (the possibility of neutrality must, of necessity, be reserved for further discussion at a later time).

I can’t speak for anyone else, but such a theological construct sheds a whole new light for me concerning my relationship with God (the Other), and upon the functional nature of Jesus as the Christ. Perhaps the reason that we still remember the man today, and continue to study his divine revelation, is because he avoided absolute egocentrism or theocentrism, instead successfully merging the two into a comprehensible human understanding. Rather than making Jesus’ teachings conform to our understanding of God, we need to be vigorously involved in the process of learning what Jesus teaches about God. His authority comes from his comprehension of the Truth, and it is upon that basis that he shares this Truth with all who have eyes to see and ears to hear.

Such an understanding obviously poses a threat to the authority of the institution—in Jesus’ time the Temple, in our time the Church—because it is eliminated as the mediatory entity. This is not to discount the value of the institution altogether, but it definitely alters its purpose and function, a fact that was no more welcome in Jesus’ day than it is in our own. I’m starting to better understand what the initial conflict between Jesus and the establishment was and how it led to the sequence of events that it did. I’m also starting to feel somewhat hopeful that my pursuit of this line of thought is going to open the door to an entirely new relationship with the Other through the Christ!