The Gospel According to Judas - A Handbook on Life

> From this.

What if, at the end of the day, Romeo and Juliet were not meant for each other? And it was exactly this quality that made them what they were? What if “meant to be” is actually really boring, and what that really is is all the people who got together without the drama, married and had kids, who had kids, and they grew old, and died, and that was the whole story? When the entire world is against you, after dropping hint after hint, what you get is one stolen night, and then that entire world catches up to you — death is almost inevitable. Some sort of horrible tragedy, at least. But that’s Romeo & Juliet, right? There is no way it would have been anywhere near as romantic had they not both died at the end, being a hairsbreadth from getting away with the perfect crime.

Whether this means that it was true love, after all, or that it was not, is just because when one thinks of true love, one’s mind immediately jumps to the concept “meant to be” — maybe I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader. Is this an example of love’s true nature? I think not. It is an exception, and that is precisely why it is so prized as a story, as an experience. Maybe I am leaning in one direction, then. One idea of true love: if you love, truly, what else need it be? When you say, “I love you,” are you telling the truth? That’s it then. Maybe that’s all true love is meant to be. The nature of the world can be seen in this way, too: that the most ordinary of people can experience the most extraordinary of phenomena. For free. And I rather like that way of looking at the world.

> From this.

i hear tell there is a flower
which blooms only in the darkness:
if light were displayed upon it
would it immediately turn to dust.
now, how it is it may be
i have heard but scant the rumors,
rare few who faintly claim
they have seen what the flower
in its cool nethers may be…
palest of the white petals
which seem to be suspended
in air, so gossamer is its stalk…
these folk who breathe the subject
of this invisible, impossible flower,
others whisper they were born
and were nourished there,
in blackness deeper than night:
better to view the mysteries
of life, of flowers only darkness sees.

> From this.

Sing the song that songs cannot sing. Write the words that words cannot say. Draw what cannot be pictured, dance in ways the body cannot go. Find the inspiration for it all from the God who is love, for love is the greatness that greatness can aspire to. The eternal that lives in our mortal souls.

Thus is our true purpose in anything worth doing: to do the impossible. Can anything less be what is meant for us all, for the children of God? See how wonderful is the creation of our Father, and dream that we may also do such things as our Father is responsible for — when we are ready. When we know enough, when we have done enough. In eternity we will see what that means. Our second birth will be when we are born anew in Heaven, and will we there grow up to be as children of God are meant to be. Can we expect anything less of ourselves, we children of the light, made in the image of love, than what is love’s true potential? To do in all justice what cannot be done?

(Do not say “cannot”. We will forget such words.)

> From this.

In a passing moment in the Dreaming, once, outside of sleep and in my visions: I from this certain perch perceived the notion, conceived of a very curious thing. Originally not even put into words I could hear, but existing as a partially conceived cartoon and almost purely semantic in thought, thus no words enclosing: “the Tree of the Forgetting of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.” Has anyone else conceived of something that could be so wondrous? I cannot think that this idea has ever occurred to anyone ever before; such a thought in my reckoning would catch on in certain circles, would it not? Bottles of virginity? A lollipop of purity? Youth, just the good parts? The splash of being new again.

The claim of thus imagined is nothing less than the return to innocence, a return to Eden. When we were naked, and were not ashamed. Such fruit I imagined to be heart-shaped, and bright yellow — a fresh sweetness, no hint of sour at all. Almost as if skinless. And to eat of it, the sensation I cannot think of what it might be like. Better than childhood. Wider to the eye than an open sky.

> From this.

The following just came to me one sunny day, and the Lord remarked that it was the best thing I’d ever written:

There was a light, but it faded. It was not faith.

There were visions, but they twisted. They were not faith.

There was a feeling, but it was illusory. It was not faith.

Faith was to hold on, when all those things went wrong.

Because I saw that light, had those visions, felt what I felt.

The narrow way is a journey, and rest may only be momentary.

It is a life that leads to life.

It didn’t all make sense until later, for I had written it years before the War, and only leading up to and through the War did it completely make sense. It is a way to keep faith in this continually shifting sphere we call life, where nothing seems secure. You don’t have to discard the old things because you outgrow them in some way. You may believe in the same way as an angel, whose faith is constant in change, the flux of pure spirit, and is therefore touched of the eternal.

> From this.

If you believe, then you must believe this: that whatever evil, it will inevitably play into the purpose of God. This, I think, is the most difficult point to reconcile, and perhaps the key to the entire puzzle of existence. It is where, I think, we have the sticking point that people simply cannot reconcile, the point where some fall away from faith entirely. For it is a deep point of conviction in the greatness of God, and in His wisdom: that no matter how horrible, how horrific, that He can make of it right: if not in the immediate now, somewhere “in the end” (vague but sure). It is something we must believe, we of the faith, or the entire faith ceases to be nothing more than a band-aid on a sucking wound.

It may be that there are just too many things in the world that test this hypothesis. There are too many things that can shake this heart of belief. The true believer must be able not to turn away from the worst of the evil in the world, and still in his soul believe that God is good. Supremely good. For the greater the horror, the greater the God we must believe in — for only One greater than the evil can exist, if He exists at all. If making us believe that the Devil does not exist is Satan’s greatest trick, surely it is at least his secondmost favorite ploy to make of the world a playground of horrors. For anyone who feels, it makes faith need to explain itself. And God seems so silent on such things. But that is the test.

> From this.

It was during a discussion I was having with Einstein (about reasons why) that the question popped up, which I have mentioned before. We were talking about how “why this” begat “why that,” and “why that” begat another why. Both at the same time, we asked, “What if it keeps going?” Both from the opposite perspective on the question if God necessarily existed. When I asked the same question as he did, he knew that he had lost the argument. So, the point was, if there are always reasons why, what place is there for God? He seems unnecessary if we can always find the why of why. Which brings back the point of either it’s ultimately meaningless, or ultimately transcendent. If there is no God, it is the former: if there is no ultimate answer, then we are, at the final count, without mattering.

We can without God seem to live purposeful lives, ones with things like science at the helm to provide us with meaning, like to live for the preservation and furtherance of life. But if at every step in reasoning why, all we are left with is questions, there is no ultimate substance to all the reason. If, on the other hand, you begin and end with “God is love,” we then do have the beginning and end: of being itself. Albert seemed to have forgotten one thing he had said, while he was alive: “There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.” For really, any miracle is of God, however rationally you may comprehend its existence. And God’s omniscience: that is to know the answer to every question why, even if it keeps on going, before the question is ever asked.