A New Year

OK.
The words may not always be particularly polished; and the structure would be better if this was a formal piece but this medium has its compensations. Ideas can be quickly floated into the web-wide world and....., hopefully, those ideas will generate responses.

And this is the point.

I want these ideas to resonate with others. I want them to strike a chord. I want others to recognise what I have come to believe..., belatedly.

The Gospel of Mark is likely to be the earliest Gospel in the New Testament Canon. And it is a magnificent work of literature - a work of parable and allegory, myth and metaphor. A work that describes what it is to be human which, far from being a literal description of the life of Christ, is a work that highlights our human failings and encourages us to come together as one people with a common identity.

The psychological and sociological benefits of a Christian identity are plain but the problem for me has always been this.

If Christ is the only Son of a supernatural being then other religions are simply plain wrong and I cannot accept that.

If Jesus was simply a preacher around whom a divine myth has been created then the miracle accounts look like propaganda and this results in a very weak Faith.

If Jesus is both Man and supernatural being, this simply compounds the problem.

But let us regard the Christ in Mark's Gospel as Divine Reason. The equivalent to the Logos in the prologue of John's Gospel.

That Logos that embraces the Self but encompasses the Family.
That Logos that embraces the Family but encompasses the Community.
That Logos that embraces the Community but encompasses Society.
That Logos that embraces Society but encompasses Humanity.
That Logos that embraces Humanity but encompasses the World.
That Logos that embraces the World but encompasses the Cosmos.

I am no theologian and if what I write appears naive or trite, I ask for your tolerance. But if we see Christ as that Divine Reason that prompts us to look beyond ourselves, then the Gospel of Mark comes alive.

May Christ be with you throughout 2010 and always.

Dominick