Riffin' On Cosmic Re-Orientation

31 Jesus answered them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.

32 I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” – Luke 5: 31-32

Want to know how absolutely crummy sin is? Technically, the subtext of today’s passage can really be construed as meaning at some level that these chosen disciples, these 12 luckiest of men amongst men, are ultimately “sinners” being called “to repentance” in their ministry with Christ.

Except, that’s not really Jesus’ character/tone, and that’s not really what they were up to. What they were doing was so beautiful/grand that it’s actually a deep disservice to refer to them, those “called” to this life by Jesus himself, as but “sinners” called to “repentance”.

I am seriously implying that in many places in the Bible, you can effectively construe Christ as having a snarky attitude regarding people being sin-focused. I wouldn’t be shocked to discover that “sin” was a pervasive concept/focus of religious traditions in the day and age Jesus was born into…

That Jesus had culturally inherited “sin” as a focus of the “spiritual life”.

Now “lack” is a pervasive and serious issue in the spiritual lives of individuals. A total lack of life experience…of crucial knowledge/wisdom… this is where the lion’s share of work resides for those who minister. Not wickedness.

Those who are taught, mostly…are the young. Those who are seriously ministered to are mostly…the young. Because life is a form of ministry, and to accumulate life experience is to spiritually actualize along the way.

Not to be a visionary at the expense of my sensibility but…after wracking my brain long and hard…it’s undeniable to me that the few times I’ve written on the New Testament/the words of Jesus specifically… there seem to be allusions in the surface level language that communicate to me that He somewhat anticipated future issues in the Church that would result directly from his ministry work with the apostles. That he anticipated institutional errors they would make in his name, in the vein of absolutely hammering in his utter Supremacy as a Being above all others. It all seems to be largely communicated through his intersection with the existing spiritual traditions of the Gentiles and the Pharisees in the New Testament, largely; whatever those religion traditions are up to specifically, the Bible seems to communicate that institutions have a proclivity to somehow screw up the masterful execution of spirituality within societies.

Wickedness does occur. Sin happens. You must focus on it and work through it and reach reconciliation with Source when it does via some sort of legitimate process. I do not mean to imply that I’m a roaring 20’s party boy type who’s promising that this is all rainbows and sunshine day in and out…I just really think that in 2023 we’ve grown so progressive as a country here that this is moreso where we really are at. A lion’s share of the spiritual work is in lack, not bad habits or outright wickedness.

What is Jesus referencing with his language by calling sin into the picture in what seems like a slightly sarcastic tone? He’s definitely referring to some sort of lack within individuals…the meaning of Jesus’ life comes in helping address that lack. I don’t think he would go so far of his own accord to ever refer to the people as sinners…that sounds like jargon of the day/framings of the day he inherited and may actually be squaring off against when he does reference the language. Personally, I feel like it probably is somehow meant to refer to original sin if the concept existed back then, or is alluding to schools of thought which describe humanity predominantly in terms of the ability to commit sins/really screw up, as if this is our dominant trait. It’s like he knew the Catholic Church would come to teach of original sin, as well as the myth of the Garden of Eden.

And the message being relayed seems to be “I have come…to call sinners to repentance.” If it’s a sin of lack, he’s merely calling them to wisdom. But I think he’s going so far as to radically suggest they shuck away their culturally inherited identity of “limited/sinful/suffering human” and actually resonate with the Source… “I and the Father are actually One…I am God.”

If original sin was a sin and it explains our capacity to sin further after the fact, then the point of devotional practice, aside from showering love upon God, is to erase our capacity to sin further…you must transcend your human identity and become one with God despite remaining a human. (This is the riddle of the prohibition and the fruit of knowledge of right and wrong; knowledge pertaining to right and wrong leads you to universal prohibitions. Society/Mankind has never actually made any real prohibitions…there’s nothing to make and nothing to be changed; all pursuits of knowledge are actually unconscious motions to attempt to reach communion with God…we want to know things so we can somehow come into a sense of communion in the here and now once we hit that certain epiphany…).

“It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

Think about it. Otherwise, the focus of spiritual practice mostly stays within the territory of Self, and you keep going back to the well because it’s a kind of unwinnable game…you will at some point sin or mess up, and then you will ask for forgiveness, and…it’s a grind but the game itself…to what end do you play that?

If you’re not erasing the root cause of sin and instead are just focusing on not sinning….that’s what life is, being self-centered. But if you choose to resonate at the level of personal identity as One with Source…you are quickly whisked away into at least ruminations, if not executions, of communal/social work that could be construed as service work by some. Or maybe it’s just friendly, and people around town love to see you when they’re out and about and run into you. It’s just normal, they are the very norms this society was built around, and it’s the sort of stuff this entire culture was built around… it turns out that this was the blueprint all along. Mysticism. The happy life. The American life.

The great stigma is to consider yourself as One with God. But that is precisely, ultimately, what Christ directly asks us to do many times over in the Bible. We think that maybe the Church like burned a few people at the stake for saying as much along the way, so we think it’s taboo/against the rules but… it’s the entire game. That’s what is asked, ultimately, and those who have done it from a social platform have made history along the way.

If Buddhism has taught me anything about social life/alphabets, you can't have an "I" without an "O" or a "U".