miscellany

Mark Morford, over at SFGate, is one of my favorite columnists. I like in-your-face well-spoken people presenting well-thought ideas and he records his thoughts very well. I just read his article on the newly(?) discovered Judas gospel and, though his choice of wording is a bit venomous at times, I agree with what he says.

It's the prevalent, simpleminded ideology: God somehow spoke in perfect English through some sort of giant megaphone (the original podcast), which was then beamed straight into a number of deep believers, whose myriad stories were then perfectly transcribed by some honest and devout and in no way corrupt or politicized or sexually frustrated bishop's pen about 2,000 years ago, and there is no debate don't you dare question its legitimacy and motives lest you be cast into the hellpit of Sodom. Or maybe, you know, San Francisco.

These are the Bible literalists, those who blindly take the Bible as the exact word of God (of whom our president is one, as are many of his fundamentalist minions), and they only look at discoveries like this new gospel and stare numbly, uncomprehendingly, as fluid divinity swirls around them like some sort of frustrated mist.

The truth is, the Church was formed to serve people just like this, those who are unable to grasp nuances and unable to think beyond a certain scope, those who are unwilling or unable follow what is perhaps the singlemost powerful and significant of all Christ's (and Buddha's, and the Tao's, etc.) teachings: that is, to seek God within. Not in a priest. Not in a building. Not in an organized institution. Within you.

I learned of Gnosticism (Google's cache of Wikipedia's entry; Wikipedia was down when this was posted.) about a year or so ago and, of what I've been exposed to, I like it. To me, it is truly about spirituality and not about dogma. In my understanding, it describes dogma/church/religion as being for people who cannot think for themselves but still want spirituality. Rather than finding God* within themselves, they think they find God (and perhaps they do) in the trappings of religion.

*I found long ago that, rather than trying to explain my perception of the Order within my spirituality, saying "God" suffices in my general conversations. Though the listener will apply their own interpretations of the word to their understanding of what I am conveying, the gist of my thought remains mostly the same.