What DID Jesus Teach?

Now there’s a useless question, because in trying to answer it, Christianity has produced over 38,000 versions, at the last estimate I saw. If Jesus emphasized knowledge to the masses, shouldn’t there be something we can grasp to know the truth?

The period of history that began with Jesus’ efforts and led to Paul’s expansion of the gospel, was a kin d of interlude in history, a process of re-deployment, determining which strategy would succeed for future relevance. Since “Mother Nature” doesn’t tend to discard strategies, as it turns out, both systems will be used against each other.

While Jesus and Paul were teaching their own particular ideas, both were warning against ‘deception”. If knowledge can be used both “for” and ‘against”, how do we select truth from the avalanche of knowledge? How do we screen out the “noise” resulting from the “supersymbolic” system that has emerged?
The technique, as Jesus pointed out in Matthew 24, followed the strategy of the “superorganism”. War and bloodshed had been the main power from the beginning, as war, from the level of viruses and bacteria, had been the method by which new alliances were formed and new systems of greater complexity had emerged. We have studied to some extent, how war, and technology are related.

But in Jesus’ summation of history, his first warning was not about war, but deception. “Take heed that no man deceive you, for many shall come in my name(Messiah, as many Pharisees did claim such honors at that time)”

Bloom’s “cookie-cutter mold” had evolved to a higher level of integration, and the Pharisees were looking specifically for the kingdom of God on earth, ushered in by “God’s anointed” the promised messiah. Jesus was merely one among many who was represented as that messiah. But the “cookie-cutter mold” was already beginning, as the superorganism began tossing out any different models of the new “etherealization ” of ideas. With increased “deception” would come “wars and rumors of wars”, since warfare had always been the select method for a “shortcut” of evolutionary social development.

The system, in the same fashion as Bloom’s model, would put out competitors for the best idea, then reward those who were most successful in their efforts. This corresponded to the stage of the “Diversity Generators”:

“Each individual represents a hypothesis in the communal mind. You can see this in one of nature’s most superb learning systems, the immune system. The immune system contains between 10 million and 10 billion different antibody types. Each one is a guess, preconfigured to snag the weak points of an enemy. If one antibody isn’t properly shaped to lock onto an invader, another will have to sink its specialized hooks into the raider. It’s vital for defensive flexibility to have numerous fallback antibodies on the scene. So the immune system maintains a seemingly useless types in its population, though it keeps these idlers in a state of deprivation”

These “idlers” as we saw, are called “junk DNA”, and are the remnants, of sorts, of viruses that once tried to use our own bodies for replication. They remain to be used in bits and pieces for manufacture of unencountered “new” DNA that might come along. The “superorganism” would use this same strategy, creating as many different models as necessary, pitting one against another in competition, to see which reaches the necessary level to maintain the organism as a collective entity.

As a consequence of this “interlude”, when Rome was the last of the empires to rule by control of brute force and wealth, a new model would gradually emerge by which wealth would be distributed, according to successful competition among different models. This corresponds to the “inner judges” of Bloom’s model, employed to reward the successful with wealth for greater propagation, and to take away from those who failed, even that which they had at the beginning. Jwesus’ teaching of Matthew 7:13-14 takes on a different significance:

“Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate(conformity enforcers), and broad is the way(diversity generators), that leadeth to destruction, and many there be that go in thereat:
“Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.” Not “choose” but “find”. The conformity enforcers had sent out their “cookie molds”, and the diversity generators were in the process of “defining the enemy”. That was the stage which Jesus addressed. It would be necessary to “find’ the truth in order to receive the “reward’ of life, but by what standards? That of the superorganism, which simply threw out options in order to test responses, or by that of the individual, capable of choosing and directing his/her own life?

It was the word “standard’ again, forcing us to know and see, as individuals, what was the correct path. Paul and Jesus had both termed these two paths as “flesh” and “spirit”. The “flesh” was the way of the genetic blueprint and negative feedback, leading to the stages of growth described by Bloom, but the spirit was composed of the new developing patterns of symbols, which would have to become the new process by which humans worldwide would have to decide.

How could one escape the “deception” that was emerging, along with the “war and rumors of wars’ that had been the form of technological and social development? How to separate “flesh” from “spirit”?

Just as the organism establish rewards for the successful types that explore new territory, so would the superorganism find ways to reward the successful by the distribution of wealth, as Toffler points out in PowerShift:

“For at least the past three hundred years, the most basic political struggle within the industrialized nations has been over the distribution of wealth. Who gets what?”

What is the model nations have followed in this process? Competition. War and deception, working together as nations form. “For nation shall rise against nation”.(Matthew 24)

This process of growth into greater complexity by war is followed by the “inner judges” who take from those who do not succeed. This, in effect, is the law of entropy, in which greater organization i n one area creates greater chaos in related areas. What was to follow the process of war and competition for the distribution of wealth?

“And there shall be famines and pestilences..in diverse places”.(Matthew 24:7) The greater the success of the “superorganism” by its methods of growth, the greater the destruction or resulting chaos from war, technology, and entropy.

Matthew 24 describes the process by which the superorganism operates. The very process that drives it to greater success will lead to its own destruction, and with it, ourselves. This is entropy at work.

“And many false prophet shall rise, and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold”.

The word “iniquity” above, comes from the Greek which also means “lawlessness”. This process of lawlessness results when the superorganism elevates pure competition among systems to the highest ideal, as stated by Richard Tawney in The Rise of Capitalism:

“The true cause of industrial warfare is as simple as the true cause of international warfare. It is that if men recognize no law superior to their desires, then they must fight when their desires collide.”

“From whence come wars and fightings among you…(James 4:1)

Laws that served greater collective entities according to collectivist distribution of wealth would create a condition of “lawlessness” and dissaticaction for the majority. Forced to compete and fight as individuals for the morsel left by the superorganism, “the love of many shall wax cold”.

Toffler writes:

“The control of knowledge is the crux of tomorrow’s worldwide struggle for power in every human institution.

“Deception” was the key in both Jesus’ and Paul’s teachings. Both warned of deceivers. But how to avoid them? While Jesus warned of the “false prophets’ that would arise with great signs and miracles to deceive many, he also gave us the “key of knowledge” in the verse right above it, Matthew 24:23: “Then if any man says to you, Lo, here is Christ , or there, believe it not“.

In the developing world of the superorganism, “conformity enforcers’ and ” diversity generators” would emerge, and distribute rewards according to those must successful within that system, but the true solution was counterintuitive. Don’t believe any of them.

Knowledge, used by a non-living entity, such as governments, churches, or corporations, is useful in terms of its success pertaining to that institution. It has nothing to offer to individuals, who think, who act, and who can declare “I exist”. Governments, corporations, and churches, have neither body to be kicked nor soul to be damned. Only an individual human being can rise up and declare “I am, I exist”. That is why Jesus said to ignore the deceptions of the “flesh”.

It is the “I” that can step outside and be different, see itself as part of a cosmos, and make decisions for itself.  “I Am”As we have seen from Toffler’s statement in PowerShift, knowledge can be copied and shared infinitely, but it can also be used “for’ and “against” others. Knowledge can be used by one group against another to represent “God”, and it can also be used to kill in the name of God, as we see from history.