(damascus moments)

ramblings on my conversion

this came about through two different conversations i was having with friends (as usual). slightly edited for publication.

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my favorite Gospel has to be Mark, because that's the one that 'got' me. the reason, I think, is that it's where Jesus is more human. then John, then Matt-Luke. I see the division not as John - synoptics, but Mark-John (or question-Mark and answer-John, as I call it), and the others. Matt-Luke are a bit fanfictiony to me. they put a bunch of stuff there, and tried to make a coherent whole, but based on Hebrew and Greek expectations, basically. and those expectations were wrong, both sides of it, because neither could accept that things actually change, and that God could change his mind (most people still don’t accept this of course). they have good sayings, but we more or less know they got them from somewhere else. and then we have a few things that seem to run very counter to what Jesus is about in general, and now we have other documents that more or less prove that they've taken parts from other places, and put them there without context or turned upside down, and that's why these gospels are to be taken with massive grains of salt. overall, they just don’t seem to give an honest picture, they seem to give a very biased one, to fit something they expected. and, more importantly, they don’t give the picture that was revealed to me. and i trust what has been revealed to me.

i wasn’t always a 'christian', and the only reason i am, sort of, is because i had a damascus moment, literally on the road. i put it in quotes because i don’t really care for what goes by christianity anymore. not in the sense of church tradition, which i reject almost entirely, and not in the sense of the church christians today. i have no attachment to the word christianity or the tradition anymore. it can all go as far as i'm concerned. and probably for the best. i do worship Jesus, but i rarely use the word christ anymore. everyone uses it wrongly, again. it's a title. there can be other christs. we're all supposed to be anointed, actually. that's part of the point. the corruption of this word is so old that even the hebrews were already wrong about it.

i worship Jesus because i have had experiences, and i think he is the main creator God from the things he said and done, and how the world works. but there are others. i think we should worship everything and everyone that is good and contributes to our enlargement. i am not stingy with worship. actually all of it goes way before i had an experience of Jesus. this was actually not my first experience of the divine, not my first damascus moment. this lack of stinginess in worship i think it’s built in me, because i was led to believe in supernatural things despite being raised completely irreligiously because i felt how profound experiences of nature, of music, of the arts, of romance, all that stuff, they weren’t just chemicals. that ‘explanation’ always seemed absurd to me from the time i could think about things. so i was convinced, and predisposed. then it was a matter of finding details. somehow i found it in Genesis. when i was thirteen i became obsessed with Genesis (still am), and from then on i have worshiped this God, yes yes, even with all his murderous rage and questionable morals at times. i like that he isn't a pussy. only later did i understand that he then incarnated as Jesus (and even later that the incarnation was in part him repenting for some of the bad stuff he did in the OT). so, in short, i have very unconventional views about it.

i wish i could call myself a Jesuit, but that’s taken too. i’ve tried Yeshuite, but then i kind of gave up. it doesn’t really matter. i worship Jesus as the main creator god, and i think he is the incarnation of Yahweh from the Old Testament. when i realized the formulations of the trinity didn’t mean anything, really, everything suddenly made a lot of sense. for example, all my life i heard the joke that God used to be a hard ass (OT) and then he got soft because he had a son (NT). actually now i think Yahweh was not the Father at all (we actually didn’t know the Father until Jesus came to tell us about it, or rather, we used to, but it was way back in ages we don’t have any recollection of, or almost). so Yahweh became softer when he was born in the flesh, and because of it he gives so much glory not to himself, but to his father (who did the same as him, presumably in another world). this is something gods generally don’t do, both things, neither glory to another higher god nor coming to earth fully naked. they come to earth, but not as fully human, not with all the pains and indignities of the flesh. but he did. he had the balls to. and it softened him a bit, obviously. another thing is, when he discovered who he used to be, he had to face all the shit he did before. i can certainly understand this feeling, but imagine having it when you’re so powerful and intelligent. whether people accept it or not, Yahweh made a lot of mistakes. it’s just obvious. the prophets call the people to repentance but often they call God to repentance too. this is something people don’t see because it doesn’t fit their pre existing abstract framework, where God is immutable and always right. but if you read the stories, that’s not what it says.

(as i’ve said many times, and should add a reminder here, a big part of getting to this point was coming in contact with Joseph Smith, which is yet another kind of damascus moment for me, and something which is untenable for most christians and non christians alike. as i see it now, this is a great sign, and almost confirmation on its own that it is correct).

so anyway, i didn’t use to get Jesus, in part because i was born in a culture infused with all of it, including the abstract framework for understanding him, the vain repetitions of religion that did not appeal to me, and the fact that most christians, just like most atheists, were really stupid, and i couldn’t believe they knew much of anything, especially about such important topics. plus, i had no external reason to submit to those things. quite the opposite. i just didn’t get it. but from the age of thirteen or so i was obsessed with Genesis, Exodus and the wisdom books especially, and so i decided i worshiped this God. (i even tried to join judaism, first rabbinical then karaite, but it didn’t pan out, thank God. i am since cured of this urge to belong, but back then i thought, since i don’t like groups, but i think it would be the right thing to do to join one, i would try to join the most exclusive group on earth. it’s quite funny now to me in retrospect, probably because i never got far at all).

then much later, ten years ago or so, from facing the evil in the world, which was becoming so obvious that i couldn’t ignore it anymore and go about my life, and seeing how most people talking about it from a stance that made sense to me were christians, i went back to the gospels. i didn’t get it at first, but it must have been working in the back of my mind, because one day i had the decisive damascus moment.

it was with the story of the woman with the flow of blood that got me. she comes to Jesus and touches his garment and is cured, and he is in the middle of the crowd and feels that power has gone from him and asks, Who touched me. i am still enthralled by it. the apostles are like, Everyone is touching you, so what are you talking about. but this one woman, she was the only one who could ‘extract’ power from Jesus in the middle of the stupid crowd and he felt it, and was surprised too, like, There actually is a real person here somewhere, who knew. i don’t know why this passage in particular got me, but that was it. i kept thinking about it.

i was walking my wife (then girlfriend) home and talking about it with her, and then it just hit me: Jesus is true. he is the real deal. i still remember the exact place on our walk where it happened, a place that in translation is called ‘watching flowers’. it all fits very sweetly and makes a lot of sense, now that i think of it, and this detail about the place i hadn’t thought of until just now. i guess Jesus meant it when he said you have to consider the lilies of the field.

so yes, i got that Jesus was true. whatever that meant. and more than that, he actually was the God i had been worshiping all this time. and things developed from there (including, once again, making the mistake of trying to join a group, this time a church, which is another story that also ends in failure; or rather in success, because Jesus saved me from that again).

with time, i read the NT and especially the Gospels many more times, and i think the reason why Mark is my favorite is that it’s more sincere, almost unstructured in its presentation, and where Jesus appears more human. and then John, which is more focused on the divine side, but i think some of Jesus’ specialness is lost without Mark, because Jesus there appears most of the time to be superhuman, no doubts, no flaws. and what i really like about Jesus, and what sets him apart for me from other gods, is that he dared to actually be human, and rejected all temptation to use his immense power to bend reality to his will. and that fits actually with how the world was made, how it is described, and how it actually works.

(there are other damascus moments in my conversion, such as a direct experience of the Virgin. if there was a mystical experience i’ve had, that was it. but i don’t even know how to talk about that. there is also the whole question of saint Paul, which i seem to be the only person who understands in the way i do, but it’s also hard to put into words, as it would need a more systematic treatment which i am frankly incapable of. plus, there is the whole Joseph Smith issue, which i’ve talked about here a couple of times. that too, is very important to me).

so, in short, my conversion, if we can call it that, is highly individual, i cannot even explain it really, and thus my relation to it all is also personal. but i guess my basic stance has always been that just because there are people with supposed authority and credentials, doesn’t mean they know what they’re talking about. so the common interpretations of Jesus, in general, mean nothing to me. it comes from direct experience, and it’s impossible for me to deny it. so i guess i base my worldview on Jesus, but also Genesis, and the wisdom books, and many other things, including nature, and my marriage, and all the experiences of life. and essentially i try to find ways to fit them with each other, rather than assume the authorities’ interpretations that they don’t, or that they do in ways that make no sense to me.