I am beginning to wonder about the ‘god’ Moses met on the top of Mt. Sinai.

The Gnostics believed that the Hebrew god was actually a lesser god who screwed up when he made the Earth and man, and not the creator of the Universe. The creator god is the One that all of the major Faiths claim to worship, albeit they name the creator according to their ways.

Jesus overruled that god in ancient Judea. Unlike his ‘father’, Jesus was not a transactional type. He said things like ‘turn the other cheek’ instead of ‘an eye for an eye.’ He broke bread and drank wine in anticipation of the sacrifice of his own life, one he was about to make, voluntarily, to the Hebrew god. The Hebrew god, by comparison, had asked Abraham to sacrifice his firstborn Isaac, in order to demonstrate his loyalty. Whereas Jesus was said to go around healing folks and driving the demons out, all for free (but nice if you gave him and his apostles a home-cooked meal) the Hebrew god had this thing with covenants: if you do this for me, I’ll do that for you…sort of thing.

All very transactional. All very egoic. I dunno, but my mom never said, ‘I’ll cook supper if you guys behave.’ If she had, we would have all starved.

Jesus was entirely different fish altogether from his papa. So much so, the Gnostics did not believe that the Hebrew god was the one who sent Jesus or for that matter, was the creator of the Universe.

Ego is what could do unto others what no one would want others to do to them. The spirit of ego contravenes the spirit of the Golden Rule. Here, I am referring to the Hebrew god’s instruction to the Hebrews to kill every man, woman, and child in the Promised Land, in order to make room for the Hebrews and their new nation. No one would be stupid enough to go to all the trouble of making different kinds of humans, only to have one kind destroy the others; how is it we do not give our creator the same credit? And if we do, then we have to conclude that the Gnostics got it right, and that the god who fooled the Hebrews is the spirit that is bound to the Earth; to wit, Lucifer.

There is indeed one creator god, and the Hebrews did find him. It is just that god has two aspects, the spirit and the ego (aka the ‘flesh’), and the Hebrew junta took to promoting the egoic side over the side of Light, possibly because that matched better with their new leader, Joshua, who, unlike the philosopher-visionary Moses, was a military guy; and he thought like a military guy.

Even the notion of not working on the Sabbath: Jesus would not keep up appearances when he saw someone in need of immediate assistance. Afterwards, he still had to account for what he did in violation of the Hebrew god’s will.

‘It’s okay to heal people Monday to Saturday, but not on Sundays,’ says Yahweh. ‘Why?’ the Hebrews ask. ‘Because that’s my day off!’ says Yahweh. (um, hello?)

Perhaps Jesus believed that folks might have been listening to the creator’s low-voice, rather than the high-voice. This is what he was challenging. He wanted people to know that we are separated from the light of the creator by selfishness, by reaction, by transaction – by ego, by the human-spirit’s low-voice.

Topping it all off: the ‘Promised Land’, you know, the one which flows with ‘milk and honey’ was not given, but rather taken by the Hebrews, at the behest of the Hebrew god, Yahweh. Everyone calling it home up until then was slaughtered, according to the Bible.

The Promised Land, now the ‘Holy Land’ has never seen a day without bloodshed. How ‘holy’ can a place like that really be? Three Faiths revere it. One god created it. They have never stopped fighting over it. They all kill in the name of God, for it. One god created it. Hello?

You want to make the ‘Holy Land’ holy? Stop the killing. Stop the illegal colonizing. Be good neighbours.

N.B. For me, the most telling is how the Hebrew god accepted the sacrifice of Abel’s, a poor little baby lamb (not at all a sacrifice by Abel, in my book; how much effort does it take to kill a poor  baby lamb?), whereas Cain’s sacrifice, the fruits of the field that he tended and harvested, were rejected.  The Hebrew god didn’t even come up with a good reason for the rejection? He just condemned Cain. That could not be the father of Jesus, the one Jesus prayed to in the Garden of Gethsemane, could it be?

Perhaps, because he tested Jesus too. And Jesus ended up on the cross. He got a worse deal than Cain.

Conversely, Jesus forgave Peter three times, for not measuring up and standing beside Jesus in his darkest hour, and even conferred upon him the leadership of his movement.

I am siding with the Gnostics on this one. If they’re wrong, then the generation gap between Jesus and his dad is one for the ages.