a right path... outside social conformity

Those of us raised in the Western world, with either a humanist or Judeo-Christian background, usually get the message that in general this is the right way to live: do well in school, learn how to get along with people, pursue an occupation that will be useful to society and allow you to live comfortably, take care of your family, keep your indulgences moderate, and generally follow the rules. That seems reasonable. What are the worldviews behind this well-established norm? Many of us were taught by adults who may not have mastered bible teachings themselves, or who may have adopted religion more as a social convenience, so the day-to-day usefulness of the teachings may be lost on us. We may have found Sunday school to offer both judgment and platitudes that seem irrelevant to much of modern life. As a result, some have turned to psychology or Eastern philosophy for practical instruction on how to get thru challenges. Many dismiss church-goers as sentimental and parochial. Yet could teachings of the sage Jesus still be a right path for modern people, even for agnostics?

Before Judeo-Christian teachings were appropriated for expansionist aims, justifying wars and control of the masses in general, they were simply written recollections of what idealistic outcasts had said, including Jesus. Taken at their own merit, you can see the wisdom of the original writing, even if you don’t believe in heaven or hell, or consider them as states of mind. Jordan Peterson did a thorough and impressive job of laying out the Christian mythology in comparison with Jungian and other archetypes, to show a richly symbolic view of that path. Stevan Davies presents a thoroughly untamed doctrine that undoes the aforementioned view of social conformity as the right way to live. He writes the following:

The way of life that Jesus advocates throughout the Gospel of Thomas is in the starkest imaginable contrast to the conservative, prosperity-conscious, family-centered, rule-ridden ethos so often promulgated in his name…. [Instead he advocates] abandonment to the winds of God, and resolute refusal of the false securities that dogma, authority, or worldly or conventional religious rules of conduct and purity can bring you to the state of utter authenticity and surrender that birth the Kingdom in you and make you a revolutionary agent of its birth in reality (p. xvii)… birth of the Kingdom threatened all previous human accommodations to the way of the world; after his very first public sermon, the Gospel of Matthew tells us, occasional attempts on his life were made….Jesus’ vision of the new way was rooted not only in visionary ecstasy but in utterly illusionless and ruthless analysis of power in all of its aspects….what Jesus was trying to create was not an ethical or sociopolitical revolution alone; he was attempting to birth a fully divine human race, a race of beings as radically alive and aware as he was himself. (p. xix)

Davies, S., Trans. (2004). The gospel of Thomas. Boston, MA: Shambhala.

a right path... outside social conformity

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