Let's face it, if you read the Bible from a Judaeo-Christian point of view, you eventually must run into a solid wall of contradictions, as we were recently reminded once again by Bart Ehrman in his book God's Problem. The point is, who says you must read it that way? The literalist way of reading the book is limiting in the extreme, rather, borrowing from the Course's clear implication that duality is metaphor, and from the word traditionally ascribed to Jesus that "to those outside, everything comes in parables," (Mk 4:34) we could read many stories from a right-minded point of view, as we are starting to shift our perspective.
Looking at it with the right mind, unlike the guilt-ridden Judaeo-Christian viewpoint is there as an open invitation to anyone of us, as we begin to go our own path with Jesus's teachings, and start to recognize what it is he is talking about. Duality as metaphor becomes the key, and listening for another message than the message of sin-guilt and fear which the religions have constructed it to be.
For myself, long before A Course In Miracles, it was Dutch Author Jan Willem Kaiser, who set me on a path to discovering that meaning, and while I learnt much from him, I can honestly say that until I found ACIM, I was never able to fully appreciate what Kaiser had been showing me all along. By now I am hard at work on translations of Kaisers work, which I hope will be published in these next few years, and in fact I have published a book of four monographs by him and a book about him in the past twenty years.
Presently I'm maintaining a commentary on the Gospel according to Mark on Facebook, through www.GreekBibleStudy.org - and one should note that my commentaries/notes are accessible only through Facebook, and not through the Greek Bible Study site, although they expect to add such functionality lateron. In any case my commentaries will be based on the work of Kaiser, as well as the Course, and at least one regular commentary on the Greek Bible. They are designed to help make the transition in seeing duality as metaphor completely, and listen to the story on an entirely different level. I am entering this post to note the completion of my comments on the first Chapter of Mark on April 21st, 2008, about a month after I started this entry. I hope these will be helpful to many.
Copyright, © 2008 Rogier F. van Vlissingen. All rights reserved.
Exploring ACIM in context of Abrahamic tradition.
"Questioning every value that we hold," with new readings of old familar terms
Exploration of biblical lore as metaphor, honoring the spirit of Johan Willem Kaiser, whose work was to lead me to recognize the authorship of the Course.
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