Faith And Reason, Resolving The Jesus Paradox

Jesus is not God and Michelangelo is Not The Sculpture of David and  and I Am Not My Reflection in The Mirror, Even If  I Am Created in The Image of God.

There are no contradictions and there  are no paradoxes, except as such serve the attainment of the ultimate purpose of creation. When the ultimate purpose of creation is achieved, all contradiction and paradox disappear, as they no longer serve the perpetuation of the perfected creation, in which there is no contradiction or paradox. Contradiction and paradox are the means to an end. They are a stairway to heaven. A train to a destination. Once one arrives at one's destination, one gets off the train and steps up and off the last stair, onto the platform from which can be seen how it all makes perfect sense. ( At least for a while.) 

To imagine any kind of future is always an act of faith. Faith untested has no substance, no momentum, accomplishes nothing but conceited self perpetuation of blind self idolization.
 True Faith is Never Blind. It is constantly curios, looking, observing, searching for news of God's Works  and awestruck by the miraculous nature of creation. It holds on to no fixed ideas but that God is One and Good to His Creation, Man, for whom the universe is made anew from one moment to the next.  Nothing else matters.  Miracles are not paradoxes or contradictions. They are the means by which The Creator Creates Our Aesthetic Experiences, through which we learn morals and adopt ethics in our civilization, so as to rid ourselves of tyranny, once and forever. 

Once one comprehends the Purpose of Creation, what follows is a period of monumental spiritual growth, and then slumber in a sleep so deep there is no memory of ever having been awake. And then a dream. And then an awakening.

Once one understands the purpose of Creation, what one leaves behind is better off for one's passing through. One  has been doing the work which God creates us to do, tending The Garden of This World,  and one leaves behind for those that follow, the fruits of one's efforts. 

Like Jesus.

Jesus is our servant, not our Lord. He is sent by God to show us the way by following his  interpretations of The Torah of Moses and The Hebrew Prophets of Israel. He changes not a dot of what the Prophets who came before him taught, and said as much of himself. To say otherwise is to corrupt and contradict the source. Once one achieves an understanding of  The Torah and establishes a personal relationship with The God of Israel, one can pray directly to God, In Truth. To believe Jesus is more a child of God than anyone else, can only breed confusion and chaos, as one can witness by observing the History of  Western Civilization which has been under the influence of Christianity for the last 2000 years.   The misunderstandings, contradictions and paradoxes of Christianity, have brought upon the world the danger of total annihilation and were the cultural environment that allowed the Holocaust.

 The video below with the crosses was originally made in 1939 with squirrels . Here it is done with mice. That is ironic and here is why.

Mouse as The Word of God

The original video was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. This one too, is no less worth watching.

 There is less confusion and chaos in Godless  Communist China, with it's vast population, than in The Western World with its so called Judo-Christian narrative. The true narrative of the Hebrew Prophets and the Christian narrative are incompatible and mutually exclusive. To hold both in one's mind and say they are both true, is mind boggling nonsense. There may be shared elements, but these narratives contradict each other. That can only happen if one doesn't understand  the Hebrew Prophets. Speaking of a Judeo Christian culture  is a Chaos causing idea that can only breed ignorance of self and self denial. That is as bad as it gets.

  The Myth of The Judeo Christian Tradition

 The Jews themselves have no clear unified purpose or vision as a nation. They never have. They coalesce around a Divine Narrative that only their Prophets have ever truly understood. They cling to it with stiff necked obstinacy and blind faith.  There have been Jewish leaders, Rabbis and Teachers, who had glimpses of The Prophetic Vision which characterized The Hebrew Prophets of The Hebrew Bible, like Maimonides and others, but even the best interpreters of  The Laws of Moses were under the influence of men who had made grave mistakes with horrific consequences, because they didn't understand The Hebrew Prophets concerning The End of Days and The Messianic Times. 

Any one who takes this obvious contradiction of nature literally, can have nothing but a confused mind. The Prophet Isaiah was presenting a paradox to the faithful, the resolution of which  would put their mind to rest concerning the often necessarily violent nature of Nature. Once one contains in one's mind peacefully the nature of both the Lion and The Lamb, each having its necessary time and place, without judging either as the only way to survive, Peace of Mind is at Hand.

    Rabbi Akiva believed in a Military Messiah named Bar Koziba and his mistake led directly to the death of hundreds of thousands and to the Diaspora. Ironically, Bar Koziba's name should have been sufficient warning that despite great initial victories, The Jews under his leadership would lose everything. The word Koziba means disillusionment.   

Some Ultra Orthodox Jews are complacent with a Creation they see as Chaotic and are waiting for a miraculous messianic era where they will be rewarded for their tenuous blind faith and their unceasing study of what they don't comprehend, with treasure and slaves.  Many others believe even God couldn't make order of it all, and His Light exploded into an infinite number of broken pieces, which are our souls, trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. 

Now what Wall did he fall from? Perhaps the one Jews pray at in Jerusalem, and push little notes with their prayers, into the crevices of?

Praying to Jesus is just as ridiculous as pushing notes with prayers into the wall. Praying in the name of Jesus to signify that One Keeps His Teachings, meaning One Keeps The Torah of MOSES, that is fine, but unnecessary, as Jesus taught that one can pray directly to the Father with a Truthful Spirit.  

 These Jews believe that God's Light somehow accidentally shattered The Vessels meant to contain it and now there is a spark of The Messiah in all of us Jews and no real Messiah is ever coming. This is nonsense and paradoxical but  better than the Christian narrative, for it determines that the purpose of man is to correct the broken universe, to fix things, to ever strive to make things as good as one possibly can, because things are very bad.  The Jews sanctify life and the improvement of all life's experience, is their goal, as it appears to them that God just isn't doing a good enough job. For a version of  Jewish  convoluted mystical philosophy which is contradictory and paradoxical, read here.

Shattered Vessels

The great disillusionment of Jews with the Messianic Ideal they didn't understand, reached a climax with the False Messiah, Shabtai Zvi. Shabtai, who I believe was completely sincere in his belief that he was the one called upon to lead the Jews into the Messianic Age. He also sincerely converted to Islam when confronted with a life or death option. He did the right thing, but the Jews couldn't understand and many interpreted his conversion as an ultimate betrayal.  The Moslem ideal of complete surrender to the Will of God is in accordance with The Torah of Moses, but The Children of Israel are the Children of Jacob, who struggled with an Angel of God when he didn't understand what he was being told and thought The Angel wasn't doing a good enough job in making the world worthy of God's Name. This is a common Jewish sentiment.

I like Cubist Paintings because they are like Quantum Mechanic Phenomenon in That What One Sees, Is Very Much The Product of How One Looks And What One Is Looking For

After the destruction of their Temple on The Holy Mount, The Jews (of course not all of them)  began a descending spiral of spirituality. They say this of themselves, that every generation understands less and less what the prophets meant and what the generation preceding them understood.   This is the rationale for giving ever greater literal value to what was said the longest time ago, starting with Moses. This makes no sense and is contradictory, because every generation understands less than the previous one and therefor no one today can possibly understand Moses and explain what his priorities are, as Jesus does for Gentiles and some confused Jews, too.  To make everything Moses said equally important is very very paradoxical, full of contradiction and conundrum, and just outright confusing. The only one who understood Moses was The Hebrew Prophets, The Jews say, and they also say Prophecy has been taken away from Israel since the destruction of The First Temple, and given only to Babes and The Insane. Which is why I, whom am The Messiah the Jews are waiting for, have been declared legally insane. This should make it easier for them to accept that I am a Hebrew Prophet in The Spirit of Moses and Jesus of Nazareth.  This also explains to a large degree why many Jews couldn't accept Jesus's comparing himself to the Hebrew Prophets. They did call him insane, for saying so, but they had also called most of the Hebrew Prophets of God insane in each of their generations, and told Moses if he is a prophet, than everyone is a prophet and Moses should have no special authority. The Jews are not an easy people to be a Prophet to. They somewhat live by the Buddhist maxim, if you meet Buddha on the rode kill him.  There is much wisdom in this, if one doesn't take it, God Forbid, literally. It simply means don't idolize your own ideas about God or any one who teaches you about  God. God calls Himself, "I will be What I Will Be!" and Gives His Honor to no other.  But unfortunately for them, The Jews idolize their Rabbis and their Talmud and King Solomon and their ideas of The Coming Messianic Age. This is where it got them.

Zionism, while no solution to the paradoxes and contradictions of Orthodox Judaism, was a vast improvement. It meant actually doing something to improve one's lot. That there was a secular Zionist movement by Jews who no longer believed in  God, or waiting for  The Messiah to extract the Jews from potential annihilation in Europe, was incomprehensible to many of The Orthodox. They paid for their blind adherence to misunderstood dogma with their lives. The Jews in many ways are The Jesus of History, sacrificing themselves so others can learn a Divine Message. Don't idolize dogma.

   The Chinese don't believe in contradiction or paradox. Where there is an apparent contradiction, they simply continue research until it resolves. Everything is measured by the good it does for the community. Social Equilibrium and Stability are the most important values. What doesn't serve this  purpose is a contradiction and to be eliminated. Where there seems to be an insoluble paradox, they put it aside for future generations and concentrate on what is soluble and  make constant progress. When The God of Israel Comes Into The Mind of China,   Mankind Will Know Peace on Earth. The Chinese civilization was to a large extant founded on the worship of Fathers or Ancestors. The Torah of Moses is founded on the Worship of The God of Our Fathers. The Hebrew Prophet Jeremiah commends the family that keeps their father's instructions, not to drink wine or live in permanent habitations and tells them that their descendants will stand before God from then on and forever, for keeping the commandments of their Father, even though these commandments were not given by Moses. I think I understand the Chinese and have great hopes, they will some day,understand me.

It is interesting that besides the Jews, the Chinese and The Indians are the two other nations that have been around as uninterrupted developing cultures since the time of the ancient Egyptians. The Jews achieved this without a homeland and are of the smallest nations on earth, whereas the Chinese and Indian nations are the most populated. The return of the Jews to Israel and the renewal of  Vibrant Hebrew Culture is a Historical Anomaly that has the attention of The world, particularly that of enemies of The Jews.

 We are all Jesus passing through our minds, leaving us behind, better off for having given him bread and water when he came to us a homeless beggar, Jesus who refuses our shelter because his home is the earth and his roof, the sky. His Father, The Creator of The  Heavens above to which he aspires and in them, our corrupted world of contradiction and paradox from which he would depart.  Jesus is The Little One, as are each of us who accept him as our guide. He is a Brother and a Friend.

    He is not and never said he is equal to God. Had he done so he would have created a self perpetuating paradox and contradiction, which is what Christianity has become for those who believe that Jesus and The Father are One. Jesus said.

 "I and my Father are One!"

and as The Jew  he was, and as the Teacher of the Torah of Moses that he was, and as The Hebrew Prophet that he was, he meant,

 "I and my Father are One- in purpose... and even that is a matter of Faith!"

 Had he meant that he and The Father are equal to each other,  One and The Same, he would have been saying that the Creator and The Created  are equal, that the object is the subject, that that which has a singular location in time and in space, a unique position in  a cross reference-which all things must have to exist, is equal to that which creates all positions in time and in space.  God creates us as finite creatures, each with a  name and crossed in a  unique position in time and in space, which we must relinquish,   for reasons in which we can only have Faith, and never prove as an equation.

WHERE AM I IN THE BOOK? WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO TO ATTAIN ETERNAL LIFE?

To be cross referenced means to be at Peace with one's mortality. This is much easier with a Faith that doesn't necessitate conjecture of an after life to balance things out and justify the appearance of evil. The Universe is Getting better all the time because striving for perfection is more perfect than thinking one has attained it. Only God is Perfect. Once one actually sees that The Universe is getting better all the time, True Faith is achieved. God creates us in a paradoxical sub-context of self creation,
which fluctuates between equilibrium, resonance and self content,
and discontent, contradiction and discordant chaos.
When True Faith is achieved, one gives up the illusion of self creation,
broadens context to universality of Benevolent Intent,
and gives oneself over to the aesthetic experience
of being entertained and educated by The One who does it Best!

 Had Jesus meant he and God are One, it would be as if he were saying that the author of a book who of course exists physically and in reality outside of the book,  and a character described and imagined as a result of reading the book, are one and the same. Even if I were to write an autobiography, at the very best, the story in the book can only be about me and could never equal me, because there must be much more to me than whatever I could write in a book. No matter how well someone imagines me to be as a result of reading the book, their figment of imagination cannot equal the same me that exists for real in my own mind, in my own memory. God wrote a story about Jesus and that story is in our minds until God speaks to us directly, whereupon we will no longer need that story.

My memories are my knowledge of how I arrived where I am. But if I don't know where  I want to go, this knowledge cannot become wisdom, for wisdom is knowledge that serves a life enhancing purpose.  Without purpose, information is noise and knowledge without use, even as entertainment, wastes space in the limited confines of our minds.

 Faith must resolve contradictions, and our beliefs must not create it or tolerate it in our mind. Neither can we resolve paradox by ignoring disquieting information. We must resolve ourselves to applying our minds by differentiating  and increasing context.   Otherwise conflict and chaos grow  and eventually overwhelm our world.

Moses commanded us not to worship any kind of graven image that represents any kind of life in the sea, the earth or the heavens. Jesus is a symbol in our minds, we must not make of him a graven image to worship, for doing so contradicts The Torah of Moses, which it was Jesus's purpose to teach!

The purpose of The Torah is to teach differentiation, and thereby resolve contradiction and paradox in the mind and by so doing,  resolve all conflict in the world of the living. The study of The Law is the Study of Differentiation. The purpose of this is the resolution of conflict.  Conflict in The Mind and conflict in The World. Conflict and Chaos have been the unceasing fruits of the Bipolar Madness of Christianity's War Between God and Satan. Christianity has its roots in the misunderstandings of The Jews and the Pagan World that preceded it.  

 Creation itself begins with great differentiation. First between the Heavens and The Earth. But it lacks purpose. There is room for contradiction and paradox. The earth is formless and chaotic and opaque, whereas we know it it to be full of lights which shine on even the darkest of nights,  a wondrous, I dare say miraculous, dynamic life producing equilibrium. In the beginning, in contradiction to the world we see around us, there is darkness on the face of an abyss so that we cannot know its depth or its dangers. Contradiction.  Chaos. Confusion. Lack of Purpose. But even here there is further differentiation. Until achieving a comprehension of purpose that resolves contradiction and annuls paradox, one must continue to apply discretion, and differentiate between information that increases comprehensive comprehension- and that which is contradictory and paradoxical nonsense...or noise. The next differentiation in The Torah of Moses, is The Spirit of The Orderly Creator Lord, Elohim, IS elevated above The Tumultuous Chaotic Waves, The  Waters beneath. With  the creation of the heavens and the earth we are not yet told what is above what. That comes later. But here we are told that The Spirit of The Creator is Above The Waters  like a wind.

And then the purpose of Creation is revealed in an act of further differentiation, which is the creation of the means of differentiation in the mind of man.  "Let there be Light!" and with this is made the most important differentiation of them all, with the Light comes the distinction between that which is good and everything else.  "And The Lord saw that The Light is Good." Light symbolizes  attention in the mind,  and it is with attention that we perceive and further differentiate, this so that we can delineate what we perceive and participate in  creation by making valuable aesthetic experiences for ourselves and for others. Attention as light, brightens the world of the blind from within. Helen Keller, both blind and deaf, said,

 " Better to be blind and see with your heart, than to have two good eyes and see nothing. " Helen Keller

The word for "attention" in Hebrew literally means, "That which is given of The Heart." We hold our attention on what we value, and on what we believe will increase the value of our life and the life of our loved ones.   We  strive for peace of heart and integrity of mind. 

We must align ourselves with the purpose of creation to vanquish chaos and confusion from our lives. The Purpose Of Creation is God's and God is The Perfect Cause, The Creator Artist Who Affects Our Minds With Aesthetic Experiences so that we can Discern what is Good for Us and our Loved Ones, and what is Not Good for Us. God is Perfect Cause and our minds are Perfect Effect. The Cause is Ever Greater than The Effect. God is Perfect and we are ever striving for perfection.

The less clear and defined a statement of creation's purpose, the more likely chaos will encroach on the harmony of the mind.

The information in the buttons is worthless and the paradox dissipates once we throw one button in the garbage because it must be false and the other we make into a statement of fashion and art. Or else we can make this nonsense serve a valuable purpose by writing a caption above the picture, "This is an example of  incoherent information because it serves no purpose other than Art. Art justifies incoherence if it makes you understand incoherence doesn't serve the purpose of mutual understanding "

Contradictions and paradox are the consequence of using  language without sufficient context.  They result from insufficient definition and lack of  discernment.  Ultimately, contradictions can only be defined in relation to purpose, as without purpose, no statement is  more valuable than any other and therefor anything and its opposite can be asserted.  

A paradox is an incoherent statement, because it doesn't represent a potential reality. No matter how complex the mathematics or semantics that describe it, it can always be reduced to a statement that a symbol (or series of symbols)  is somewhere at some time and has a certain significance, and then asserting that the same symbol isn't there at the same time or has a different contradictory significance.

A ALWAYS EQUALS 1

4 PLUS A EQUALS 6

A DOESN'T EQUAL A

Imagine what  happens if we change the meanings of words every day without informing everyone.

One day A is 1  and the next A is 2, after we said A is always 1.

 ==========================================================

Jon always arrives at six and stays to seven.

It is six thirty and Jon must be here,

BUT THE PLACE IS EMPTY.

Something must be false about the above statements. 

 A symbol  is a unit of perception that represents a potential subjective reality. The reason it "all" concerns symbols, is because nothing else exists in the mind, but symbols.  

As long as we agree on the meanings of these symbols, we can communicate with them. Should one of us change their meanings  for whatever reason, and not inform us, contradiction, paradox and chaos ensue. The Bible is written with symbols, metaphors and parables.  Metaphors are simply complex symbols. Parables are dynamic complex metaphors. With ever increasing sophistication and complexity, The Bible enhances the meanings of Symbols, Metaphors and Parables, through cross reference of usage and cultural context. If we insist dogmatically on any specific interpretation of verse, there is endless potential for controversy. Like The Universe,  It's All Divine Art!

The most fundamental  and primal reality is what results from differentiation.

 Presence is not absence. 

 Left is not right and up is not down.

  White is not black.

 Silence is not sound.

 Empty is not occupied.

 Perception itself is the consequence of God causing differentiation in our mind by creating aesthetics. 

The Word Aesthetics means "all that which makes you feel" and not necessarily beauty or pleasure. Anesthesia means " the condition of not feeling". When we don't like what we feel, when we don't understand our own feelings, we sometimes seek whatever it takes to stop us from feeling. Whatever we are feeling emotionally, it is a means of spiritual discernment, of differentiation between what is good for us and what is not. By killing our feelings so as to avoid emotional pain, we are ignoring God's Language to us. It is like turning off a warning siren because we don't like the idea we are in danger. It is not likely to do us much good. By ignoring  the  natural meanings of our perceptions and sensations, we are cutting ourselves off from God's most fundamental language of communication with ourselves. Of course this doesn't apply to persistent physical pain, as long as we are aware that it indicates something needs treatment.   

  For language to be efficient, A is not B and 1 is not 2. A language is a system of symbols the arrangement of which represents possible subjective realities. When these realities are held in common as truth, they become objective for the subjects that share them. Perceptions are symbols that differentiate between different mental, emotional and organic conditions and situations as regards the fulfillment of  the purpose of creation. There is far more to senses than the five we are taught about in school.

God created the colors and the sounds, the smells and the tastes like sweet and sour. God gave us the pleasures and pains  and the feelings of texture, of heat and of cold, of hunger and thirst and sexual appetite. All these senses are a language of communication between our Creator and us. Even atheists  must agree that our senses  serve the purpose of our survival. But our senses have the potential to give us a quality of life that goes way far beyond the mere necessities of survival. Once we choose to believe that our Creator communicates with us from within, from the day we are conceived in the womb, through our developing senses, we are establishing a communication line between the Divine and our Hearts and Minds. Like any language, it takes time and repetition, context and explanation for us to fully comprehend what God is telling us, every moment of our lives. Listening To God doesn't mean hearing voices, though it might.  It means listening to sounds and observing how we feel about them. It means asking ourselves why we feel one way when seeing a mother and a child laughing and another when seeing a child weep. God talks to us all the time, through our  instincts and urges, our hungers and our thirsts, of whatever kinds we have. Once we understand this and listen, very soon we don't need anyone to tell us what God wants from us.

 Contradictions and paradoxes are self contradictory information, which is not to say that they cannot serve a purpose. Mathematical paradoxes can become so complex and sophisticated that only mathematicians can say they are as yet insoluble, making of them mysterious perpetuated realities that emanate confusion about the nature of the universe for those who don't know the purpose of creation or the value of paradox and contradiction in mathematics. Mathematicians tend to take themselves very seriously. Not saying for a moment that what they do isn't important. It has been and is and ever will be, a way of exploring the potential for things to be a certain way, under certain circumstances, in our minds. As regards what is going on outside our minds, well, no one can do anything but speculate. I have no interest whatsoever as regards God outside the confines of my own mind. If God isn't in my mind with me experiencing what he is doing to me, how can He ever  Hear me say, "That fukking hurts!"

And now for dessert, some fun, not to be taken too seriously, with popular paradoxes.

 " All propositions are simultaneously true and false, including this proposition itself"; 
 This is true, because the truth or falseness of this proposition depends on the purpose for which it is brought forth. Were one to present it simultaneously to two different students with the intent of teaching intellectual humility, the one with a genetic propensity to humility would agree that the statement is true because his ego wouldn't crack under threat that he can now never be completely right about anything he asserts. The other student would insist the preposition wrong, as it is making all communication unreliable particularly that of his teacher who is trying to undermine his intellectual ego. So it is simultaneously true and false and a larger context resolves the paradox.

 "Every provable proposition implies ' This proposition is true but unprovable ' ". is a only a semantic paradox falling apart with the definition of the word "proof". To prove is to persuade and you can prove anything to a fool, including the inability to prove anything. Proof is a product of belief and not the opposite, and once belief is established, no contrary propositions have validity.

Another example of this is the famous paradox, " Question: Who shaves the barber? A town only has one barber (he is male). The barber only shaves all of the people who do not shave themselves.  Answer: It's a paradox, if he shaves himself then the second sentence would be false because he only shaves those who do not shave themselves."

Perhaps, the paradox falls apart on the definition of barber. If a barber is someone who shaves everyone who doesn't shave themselves, someone else who shaves only the barber isn't a barber, because he doesn't shave everyone else who doesn't shave themselves while he is shaving the barber. So the answer is simply someone who isn't a barber shaves the barber, and that is the barber himself who isn't a barber when he is shaving himself as while doing so, he is shaving no one else. Someone who is shaving himself is not a barber, because shaving is how a barber makes his living but not when he is shaving himself. People are not barbers when they just shave themselves. The barber "identity" of shaving those who don't shave themselves isn't stated to be permanent in time, because if so we might as well as say day is night or 2=3. When the barber isn't a barber, he shaves someone who is not the barber.

The barber is not always the barber, and that is when he is shaving himself.