God Speaking, Humans
Hearing, and a Nice Jewish Boy Meets Rabbi Jesus
I recently made the
acquaintance of a person by the name of Ben Johnson, who is a Christian active
in interfaith activities. We exchanged books, and he asked my opinion on a
particular chapter from one of his books. The basic premise of the book, The God Who Speaks is that humans not
only can communicate with God via prayer, meditation, etc., but that God also
communicates with humans, and this communication remains available and is not
just a thing of the past from the time of ancient prophets and teachers. The
particular chapter he asked me to comment on posed the idea that the
incarnation of Jesus was one form of God speaking/expressing/communicating with
humans. Following is my response, slightly revised, that I would like to share
now with a broader audience, that I originally shared with Ben, appropriately,
on Easter Sunday:
Ben,
You asked me to share with
you my thoughts about Chapter 2 of your book, The God Who Speaks. I thought it might be helpful to also read the
Introduction and Chapter 1, which I did. First off, I agree with you that this
is an important subject to address, and I agree with your assertion, contrary
to other viewpoints, that revelation, prophecy, God’s voice, guidance, etc. has
been and remains accessible. I also agree that there are issues as to how to
ascertain genuine Divine Guidance and distinguish it from imbalanced, delusional,
egoic fantasy and imaginings. I once took a little online course with a Jewish
teacher that touched on this subject and these issues. His answer was that
there are some qualities by which to ascertain real revelation from false
revelation. One factor was that the communication is always stated in the
present tense. Another factor is that the communication is devoid of any
emotional charge, that it is provided in a very matter-of-fact, non-emotional
manner. There may have been one or two other factors that I cannot now recall
(another may have been that the communication will not advocate any form of
violence or harm to others), but the above two rang true for me.
Getting to the specifics
of Chapter 2, and trying to keep this communication somewhat brief, I will
address a few issues from an interfaith perspective. Chapter 2 is premised upon
the idea, taken as fact and an essential core belief of most Christians, that
Jesus was an incarnation of God. The first issue concerns the common Christian
claim that Jesus was the one and only incarnation of God that ever was and ever
will be. I believe that common Jewish and Islamic belief is that there is no
such possibility as an incarnation of God. The common Jewish definition of the
Messiah does not include the Messiah being an incarnation, and of course, Jews
do not recognize Jesus as fulfilling the definition of the Messiah. My
understanding of the basic Islamic belief is that Jesus was one in a line of
great prophets, including all of the Old Testament Prophets, concluding with
Mohammed being the last in the line of these great prophets of The Book. For
them, the New Testament is like The Book, Volume 2, and the Koran is like The
Book, Volume 3. Of course, Jews only recognize Volume 1 and are thusly a bit
annoyed at Christians referring to Volume 1 as the “Old” Testament, which Jews
call the Tanach. Sometimes, out of deference to this sensitivity, I will refer
to the New Testament as the Christian Testament and the Old Testament as the
Tanach, a practice that interfaith Christians might want to consider employing.
A common Hindu perspective
would be that Jesus is one of many incarnations of God. Hindu scriptures and
lore are full of stories including divine incarnations, virgin births,
miracles, transfigurations, etc. as found in the Christian Testament. I have
heard an argument from some enlightened Christians that perhaps the correct
translation is that Jesus was a son
of the only God, not that Jesus was the only
son of God. This viewpoint is also in keeping with the perspective of many in
the western esoteric traditions, such as Theosophy, which consider Jesus one of
many Masters.
My
personal viewpoint lies somewhere between the Islamic and Hindu views, but may
be closest with the Theosophical view. I have many questions about traditional
Jewish and Christian concepts of a Messiah, enunciated in Chapter 15 of my
book, IVRI. The whole idea of an
incarnation, from a Christian or Hindu perspective, poses many provocative
issues that I do not wish to delve into here for the sake of brevity. It seems
like there are many questions as to how to define an incarnation/avatar and
distinguish that definition from other beings who are not incarnations. If God
is omnipresent, how can God be more present in Jesus or Krishna than in other
people? Transfiguration is also something recognized by Hindus as one sign of
yogic achievement. It is my understanding that those involved with The Vedanta
Center and other followers of Ramakrishna regard him in much the same way as
Christians regard Jesus, although they would be more willing to acknowledge
other incarnations and not make a claim to exclusivity as most Christians do. I
personally feel most aligned with the Jewish/Islamic/Theosophist view that
there are great agents of the Divine who can lower their operating frequency to
participate at the physical level, but who can also elevate their frequency to
slightly higher than physical levels. Such beings, when appearing in the
physical realm, are capable of entering without the agency of human physical
birth as we know it, and can leave without the process of human death as we
know it, although they may also appear to be born and to die as normal mortal
humans. I’ll just leave it at that for now.
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