Of Metaphors, Demons, Gods and Men

8/14/2019 Of Metaphors, Demons, Gods and Men

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Of metaphors, demons, gods and men

By Franklin Mukakanga

Background: Having been raised in a Christian home, and having,for many years been a born-again, practicing Christian, I often meetpeople who, for many years, saw me live under the structure, formand umbrella of Christian religion. They want to know whats goingon with me, seeing as I am no longer doing many of the things Iused to do, going where I used to go, etc. About 5 years ago, myjourney through life took an unexpected turn. I weaned myself offthe fundamentalist Christian mindset that had been my comfortzone and entered a fascinating limbo in which I realized,acknowledged and embraced my personal responsibility for the

finding and fulfilling of my lifes purpose. Over the years since then,as I have evolved in my understanding and practice of living andbeing, I have found myself in a curious position: holding to noparticular religious system, peaceful, serene, more balanced andcentered than I have ever been; knowing my place in the universeand loving it.

To some who knew me in my former form, the space in which I amis confusing or obvious , depending on whether they choose towonder or assume the worst. One question I have been asked onmore than one occasion is: what about Jesus?

The following, though not specifically written for those who ask me,summarizes my understanding of the Christs person, purpose andmission.

For me, the nature and mission of Jesus Christ go beyond theestablishment of a dominant world religion based on the worship ofthe Christ. I refuse to be drawn into debates about the Christsdivinity or humanity. I refuse to engage in talk that divides betweenpeople whose time would be better spent celebrating their shared

humanity and loving and giving and growing. What the Christ wasbecomes immaterial if it fails of fulfilling its intent. That they mightbe one. That they might live life more abundantly, the making ofoneat-one-ment. Various phrases encapsulate the mission of JesusChrist. One thing remains true: The mission of the Christ was tobring about reconciliation in the estranged mind of humanitybetween mankind and God, who had never left or forsakenhumanity, but was thought of as cold, distant and vindictive.

That some called Him Lord, or that there are allusions to actualworship of the Christ, or even that a worldwide movement derives


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its name from His title, does not or should not detract from the factthat his mission was clear: to eliminate the illusion of separationfrom God and mans attendant dis-ease with, and constant attemptsto appease, the Divine. The former by a barrier of not-good-enoughness, watered, nurtured and matured into a crippling,

debilitating concept called sin, and the latter by ritualistic acts ofservile homage, which served to start the perpetual cycle all overagain.

The Christ manifested to bring an end to the misery that was manslot because of the superstitions, beliefs and practices that haderoded his self-confidence to the point of enslavement to basepassions and demons of various shapes, numbers and sizes. Manwas a prisoner of his own mind. Caged by fear. Unable toappreciate, let alone perceive the love of God, man needed a Peacemaker.

The story was well known. For as long as they could remember,there had always been a once upon a time. Tales of a time wheneverything was perfect. It was hard to accept that this hard lifethey were living was what they were meant to be living. Mans lotwas somebody elses fault. It had to be. Someone other than manhimself was responsible for the mess he suddenly realized he wasin.

As the story went, man hadnt always been a dichotomy. Man wascreated with a nature that defied the nature of everything else inthe universe. Man, when created, enjoyed only good, positiveemotions, and could not get angry or sad. He had sweat glands andarms and opposable thumbs, yet was not required to work, toil orsweatGod forbid! Man was always right and never erred injudgment. Nor did he ever reap the consequences of violating thelaws of nature. If he climbed up a tree and fell down to the ground,he could not feel pain and cry. Could he even fall?!

Man was favored by his maker, living an insulated existence where

all was peachy, and easy-going and good. He was put in a beautifulgarden whose trees did not need pruning and whose fruit could beenjoyed without ever breaking a sweat. He would remain in thisfavored state only as long as he did not develop a curiosity for theother, heretofore unknown, side.

But there was an enemy. A loathsome creature jealous of mankindsfavored status, that deliberately and maliciously tricked man intodisobedience in order to separate mankind from the blessings of the

divine linkage. Determined to keep man in misery, this enemycaused the female of the species to eat a fruitor desire sex


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depending on the version, which, consequently, made mansuddenly aware of the fact that everything in the universe has twosides! And that was rebellion at its worst. From then on, the battleraged. Good was of God. Bad or evil was of the enemy. Acts of goodbrought the Divine closer, acts of not-so-good caused alienation and

separation.

Because mans desire to know what was kept from him had causedsuch a terrible rift between mankindnow living in dejection anddichotomyand the Divine, appeasement of the enraged Deity wasnecessary, by way of sacrifices; and securing of Divine favor bymore sacrifices and worship became a top priority. Blood was spilledperiodically, both animal and human, as the life of the sacrificedtook the place of the life of the penitent.

One day, one big sacrifice would be made, the value of which wouldoutweigh that of all the blood of bulls and goats, and that wouldreverse both the separation from the Divine and its effects on thenature of man, eliminating the bad, and restoring the good topristine, universe-defiant glory.

This sacrifice would involve the death of someone really special.One from among us, or our god-warrior, who would stand for us all,die for us all.

The story was told for so long, it became a part of the fabric ofhumanitys collective psyche. In various cultures around the world,the story was told and retold, and naturally, took on a local tingeand flavor, using various names, specific details and idiosyncraticembodiments or incarnations. It was a great story. It explainedeverything.

It was a metaphor for the quest for reunification with our Source, a

virtual solution for a virtual problem. In seeking to understand theduality and meaning of life, we had imagined ourselves intoseparation from God. And we now imagined ourselves a solution towhat would have been an endless cycle of misery and futility,brought into being by our own imaginings.

Hence, in the fullness of time the manifestation of our desire: theChrist appears. A god-man, born to be the doorway back into right-ness or righteousness with God. The one to die so we wont have to.The one to carry our responsibility, so we dont have to. A livingand dyingmetaphor to reconnect us with the Source.


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In Palestine, Jesus of Nazareth is born, and lives out the metaphor.He enters into our belief system. Fulfills our expectations of a Savior.Lives the virtuous life. Becomes the reconciliatory blood sacrifice,since we believe that we are so bad that someone has to die inorder for us to get back in good books with God. Jesus dies for our

sins, those mental abstractions that demonize and represent ourleast desirable elements. Jesus dies for the things we collectivelyand singularly detest about ourselves, or the things that we orothers say we shouldnt do or be. (When you think that designengineering and sometimes simple willpower can allow us to remakeourselves without Divine intervention, it kind of makes you wonderwhether weve been much ado about nothing, doesnt it?) But,because he is special, hes resurrected, leaves the earth, sends HisSpirit, after commissioning a handful of disciples to tell the worldwhat they have seen and experiencedto teach the world Hismessage and way.Freely you have received. Freely give

But guess what? A few short years later, true to form, succeedinggenerations of teachers begin to hoard the teachings of the Christand institutionalize them, making them the preserve only of theinitiated, and were back to square one. In order to be right withGod, you now need to be initiated into fellowship with the Christ,conferred by a special ritual, in turn administered by an institutionthat the ritual gives you membership into. After this you haveaccess to Gods blessings. Without joining the institution, you

cannot have access to God, His blessings, or the relationship youcrave. One form of control, substituted for another, in effectrecreating what the Christ came to destroy: a barrier to the Divine.He is our peace, who has broken down every wall.

Our metaphor led us to its logical end: We are reconciled with God.We need no man to intercede with the Divine, to present ourpetitions or appease its wrath. We have free, unrestricted access toall wisdom, knowledge, understanding, love, joy, peace and light.

We are free! Yet we cant seem to handle the implications: We oweno one any explanations. We are totally responsible for ourselvesfrom here on out. God is within us. We grok God. Our metaphor hasdone what we had failed to do for ourselves. It has rid us of theillusion of separation and reconciled us with our maker. But, notknowing what to do with our new found freedom, we substitute ourold masters for new ones. This time, willingly placing ourselvesunder them, and expecting them, again, to lead us to Godwho, bythe way is within, wondering why we are looking without all overagainand expecting these teachers/gurus/masters to break downthe newly reconstructed, non-existent, barrier by intercession orinstruction meant to lead us to enlightenment.


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When we needed help, our maker indulged our capriciousness andjoined us in our reality in order to free us from a slavery of our ownmaking. We were here. It was confusing. We needed answers. We

created a problem whose solution would allow us to accept thatthere had been no problem to start with. Just a state of being thatwe had had a tough time accepting. This state of beingliving anddying, thriving and suffering, fair weather and natural disasterscould only be explained by a separation of the good from the bad, ofGod from ourselves. We needed a divider. We needed sin, and so wecreated it. We needed salvation from the sin we created. A Saviorcame.

God joined us in our delusion. The universe played ball with itsbelligerent children. Not because we would have been unacceptableto God without the awful things that subsequently befell the Christ,but because we would never have believed that God was not madwith us any other way. Not with our polarization of our consensualreality. To our minds, we had broken Divine law, and justice had tobe served. The Christ was manifested in order to serve that justice.There was something wrong with us. We deserved to be punished.We did not deserve to live. We should be blotted out of existence.Wait! We cant be. Let someone else take responsibility. Letsomeone else bear it. Our metaphor. Our Messiah. Only when our

affront to Divine law was punished and Divine justice satisfied couldwe feel worthy of Gods attention. Only when we absorbed the wrathof God against our errant ways could we feel we had donesomething to earn the trust and love of God anew. Even ifvicariously. Only then could our God and our selves get on withliving.

This is why the death of the Christ in Jesus of Nazareth shifted thethinking, feeling and being of the whole human family. It was the

culmination of our universal collective metaphor for our thenpresent state, and what would become the doorway to our destiny.It set us free from the impediment to our fellowship with our maker,and, whether its individuals were consciously aware of theoccurrence of the event or not, allowed the whole world to walk outof a prison of superstition and fear. Free from the collective guilt thathad held us back from realizing our full potential, mankind couldbegin to aspire to be more, do more and experience living on awhole new level. The illusion of separation gone, man couldapproach God and even enter into relationship with God. Whilepeople may dispute the authority or even the facts of the story of

Jesus, and even though debates will rage forever about the natureand person of the being we call the Christ, no one can dispute the


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fact that this one man has had a greater impact on history (andmankinds subsequent evolution) than any other.

A shift in consciousness took place the day the metaphor becamethe man, and the man became the Spirit. The way was paved forevery individual spirit coming after him to be able to reconnect withits Source, completely free of the illusion of separateness, free ofguilt.

Peace between Man and God was made once for all. And humanityjust needed to pay attention in order to be able to see God, rightwhere Hed always been.

The growth of spirituality and the proliferation of paths, throughwhich millions are finding God, in many varied disciplines over thepast two millenia attests to the fact that, since the manifestation ofthe Christ, the way to God is open. The Christ brought about areconciliation with God in the collective unconscious for all, not aselect few. My peace I leave with you. My peace I give unto you.

Thus, wherever a man ceases to struggle with the Divine and findsunconditional love and acceptance, wherever love and joy and

peace abound in the heart, there the Spirit of the Christ is findingexpression, and there is it made manifest. Dogma or no dogma,offerings or no offerings, pound for pound, blow for blow, of thebeneficiaries and exemplifiers of the spirit of the Christ it is said, Yeshall know them by their fruits. If the fruit of the spirit is love, joy,peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, then wherever, and in whomever, they are found is a placewhere the Spirit of the Christ is alive and well.

Statements like I am the Way, the Truth and the Life No onecomes to the Father except by me show something other than anegotistical desire for homage and worship on the part of JesusChrist. They point out that God did something radical in the gift ofJesusour manifested metaphorto show that the separation thatman had created and propagated through religious systemsbetween man and the Divine was artificial. That the veil thatseparated was a human creation that needed to be torn down.

If God became flesh in the Christ, it was not in order to tear downone blinkered system and replace it with another. It was in order totear down the illusion of separation from God, propagated by a


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myriad of religious systems the world over and the tyranny thatcame with controlled, regulated access to the Divine; and to openour minds to the liberty that has always been ours to access andconnect with God. To remind us of our true roots and destiny.

Greater things than this shall ye do (words of Jesus), That he maybe the firstborn among brothers suggest something that manyChristians acknowledge, but only as a future event: That what theChrist was, we are to be. Some call it Christ consciousness. Thereaching of an elevated plain of knowledge and understanding thatallows each willing human being to live out the essence of his beingas exemplified by the Christ. It is our destiny to come to the point ofrealization expressed by the Christ: I and the Father are One. Atruth so simple, so sublime, that to the disillusioned andunenlightened, it sounds like blasphemy.

Jesus did not come to be worshipped. He came to show his brothersthe way back home. How to worship, not from a hill or building, butto worshipto reverence and adoreGod in spirit and in truth.Any one of us can become as Jesus is. Not in some sweet by-and-by,but right now. On this earth. In this lifetime. Yet to be like Jesus doesnot mean to become a clone of the man Jesus, who walked thestreets of Galilee. It means coming to maturity as the individual youwere created to be. Just as the Christ did. To be fully aware of yourDivine heritage. Of your oneness with God. Aware of your unique

relationship with your maker that gives you a unique expression andmission. An awareness that allows you to fulfill the reason for yourbeing here. To do the will of my Father is what Jesus called it.

The will of the Father is etched on your genes, your chromosomes,your conscience. It is manifested in your likes, dislikes, personalleanings, desires and aspirations. It is encoded in your finger print.No one can tell you what it is. It is within you. With trust in yourFathers special role for you, you can find joy in your singularity,

celebrate living in boundless love, and sharing all the good thatcomes to you with everybody around you.

Jesus came to make one of the many. To end the division that wasthe natural consequence of claims of exclusive access to God. Tobring the illusion of separateness from God to an end.

In many aspects, following the manifestation of the Christ over 2000years ago, the world can be seen to be moving towards thatoneness that was his stated goal for mankind, in ways that seem to

terrify many of the people that claim to be holding on the moststeadfastly to His teachings, causing them to go into a tailspin of


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panic division, which seems to happen spontaneously in somecases as a last-ditch effort to preserve the purity of the truth.

If the spontaneous division is not based on a difference on opinionregarding which day is the right day to worship on, its about who

the fundamentalists or the liberals are. And who between them is onthe right track. Which denomination constitutes the true churchand which one(s) is/are the harlot of the Revelation. Within eachtrue church, are the true believers and the compromised andlukewarm ones. Among the true believers are those who arecontending for the faith once delivered to the saints and those whoare on a slippery slope. Among the contenders for the faith are thetraditionalists and the modernists. Among those, the conservativesand the charismatics. The permutations are endless.

A cancer tumor is a great example of division gone awry. Amalfunctioning cell divides itself. And the newly created cellsandthe original celldivide themselves again. And they go on and on,dividing and mutating, forming a tumor and, having done that,replicating the out-of-control cell division over and over again.Cancer cells do not know when to stop dividing and mutating.Likewise, divisions divide the body of Christ ad infinitum. Theresalways a them. Theres always an us. That they may be one onlyapplies to the denomination to which one belongs, and, like acancerous tumor, the unending mutations of these endless divisions

sap out the vitality of what is, arguably, the greatest movement thisworld has ever seen. A movement which could benefit fromunification theory just as much as science could. When will theylearn that there comes a point when the divisions must stop in orderfor healing to take place and the oneness that Jesus Christ prayedfor to become a reality?

That they may be one. One of the Christs last recorded requeststo the Universe, and one that seems to be finding fulfillment more

outside than within the group dubbing itself the body of Christ. Thedemonized New Age movement, Pagans and natural religionists, theBuddhists and Hindus, etc., seem to have gotten the gist of themission and message of the Christ. The love, acceptance andgenuine compassion that are found in certain among them, whilenot proving or disproving the inherent superiority of their systems ofbelief , seem to manifest the pervasiveness of the Christ Spirit.

You. Whoever you are. Are you making one, and unifying? Or are

you dividing, splitting hairs, separating, criticizing and living in atunnel that allows for no way but yours to be the right way?


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Some people must define the scope of the work of the Divine; it isnot enough that they have found a path. They must clonethemselves in everyone they meet. Some have written rulebooks,

creeds and models, which they believe every seeker must follow,while others spend their time in endless arguments with anyonethat doesnt see eye to eye with them, trying with force of zeal andfervor of heart to win people over to their preferred religion or beliefsystem.

To them I would say: Get over yourself. Your metaphor is your own.What makes sense for you may not make sense for another. Anorange tree cannot yield pears. If a life is yielding the fruit of the

Christ spirit, it is of Christs spirit. Enlightenment comes not fromwithout, but within. Seeking to bring enlightenment to others isnoble. Allowing people to come to it in their own time, of their ownaccord, in the form that works for them, is wisdom.

The word became fleshthe metaphor became a man: full ofgrace and truth.

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Of Metaphors, Demons, Gods and Men