Depth psychology, religion, spirituality, and more
SOMETIMES IT SEEMS WE’VE STEPPED THROUGH ALICE’S LOOKING GLASS into a world in which it’s become all but impossible to differentiate truth from lies and reality from wish fulfilling delusion. In this social context, Pilate’s question to Jesus (Jn. 18:38) becomes achingly relevant. What is truth, indeed? Who knows anymore, and how? In Paul’s first …
Continue reading "How to Tell What’s True from What’s False"
IF YOU LOOK AT IT PSYCHOLOGICALLY RATHER THAN THEOLOGICALLY, you’ll discover a fundamental problem with the way we see Christ. The traditional images of Christ, the ones with which we are so familiar, are all unambiguously masculine. On the one hand, we see Christ, the glorious son of God, ascended into heaven and sitting at …
WHEN JESUS COMES BEFORE PILATE, WHO’S FACING JUDGMENT? We are, according to the account in the Gospel of John (18:28-19:16). Here’s how. John’s story of Jesus before Pilate reads as if it were an episode in a play. The episode has seven scenes, alternately taking place outside and inside the governor’s fortress in Jerusalem. Here’s …
ALTHOUGH MOST OF THE TIME MOST OF US DON’T RECOGNIZE IT, organizations have souls. Our ancient ancestors felt the presence of spirits everywhere, animating everything. Plato abstracted that ancient intuition into a theory of ideal heavenly archetypes standing behind all material forms. By Roman times, St. Paul and other early Christian writers could talk about …
Continue reading "Why “Powers” and “Principalities” Still Hold Sway"
Discover a Side of Jesus You've Never Seen Before “Jesus and the Feminine in John” — a 5-week course on Zoom In mythology, a deity who dies and rises on the third day is a moon god, a son of the Great Mother. The good news of Christ says Jesus died and rose on the …
THE GOSPEL OF JOHN, THE “SPIRITUAL GOSPEL,” CASTS A DARK SHADOW — especially in English. The Fourth Gospel is known and loved for the light it shines on spiritual reality and the mystic path. How, then, could it also have justified racist prejudice and deadly persecution for millennia? The answer, in large part, lies in …
Continue reading "The News in the Gospel Hasn’t Always Been Good"
MARY MAGDALENE IS THE FIRST WITNESS TO THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS, according to the Gospel of John (20:1, 11-18), but she isn’t the “redeemed whore” of traditional Christian devotion. The Johannine portrait show us, instead, a towering woman of prophetic and spiritual power. The tradition that makes the Magdalene a prostitute grew out of a …
IN THE VIOLENT PUSH AND SHOVE OF OPPOSING BODIES in the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, one sign read, “JESUS SAVES.” The sign seemed profoundly out of place, in spite of its comforting promise. Among other things, the sign suggested the political cause the sign carrier was fighting for was blessed by Jesus. This statement, …
“IN THE BEGINNING” IS NOT HOW THE BIBLE ACTUALLY OPENS in the Hebrew text that stands behind our oh so familiar English translation. The Hebrew reads “in a beginning” or “in beginning.” I noticed the discrepancy while learning biblical Hebrew, and when I asked the instructor about it, he dismissed it as nothing but a …
EVEN THOUGH CHRISTMAS PAGEANTS BRING THEM TOGETHER, the wise men and the shepherds appear in separate nativity stories, one in the Gospel of Matthew, the other in the Gospel of Luke. The two stories are significantly different, but they deliver the same truth, the same subversive message: The kingdom of God has arrived to overthrow …
Continue reading "The Magi Didn’t See Shepherds at a Manger"
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