A lot of people do not want their crown. They want their religion to tell them what is true and what to do. The church has often colluded with its people to persuade them that the main purpose of the church is to rain down guilt and self-reproach for ourselves, honor and glory to Thee . . . Yet I defy anyone to find one word from the gospels where Jesus himself demands such of the faithful.
The Dalai Lama expands on a truth deep in a mother’s love: “One reflection that arises from the agreement of all the major religious traditions on the centrality of compassion is that it reminds us [that] because we have all been nurtured in a womb, because we are all born of a mother, affection is in our basic nature.”
Can a new thing be said about Easter? I don’t think so. Were there a new thing to say—a new twist—whose twist? Whose gospel? Mine? And yet repeating old thoughts is just slogans, which are not worth saying twice. Are we then stuck? Throughout its ages, religion has very often gotten stuck in its old thoughts and power has always been the sticking point . . .
Will Christianity pass away? Will some other religion or philosophy take its place? You hear such questions from time to time . . . A scripture says that “nothing will be impossible with God.” On the question whether God will keep God’s savings in the church forever, we might better err on the side of caution.
Was there really a Judas? Or was the character “Judas” a creation of the first Christians who told these stories–a way for them to utter an ineradicable curse upon all their brothers who would not see Messiah in their master Jesus? I do not know the answer to that question. All of us know, however, that through every generation from the first, the church beat words into weapons to torment Jews and kill them as Judases. How unblessed are those who see others as enemies and thus preserve their righteousness.
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