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Health & Fitness

GOSPEL OF THOMAS, SAYING #3

A few years ago I attended the funeral of a friend named Kevin.  The minister talked about how all the true believers present were going to see Kevin again one day in Heaven.  We’d be up there talking and laughing like we were at a big family reunion in the sky.  There would be no more troubles.  Everything would be perfect.  This is the vision many Christians have of the Kingdom of God.

The Gospel of Thomas has Jesus describe Heaven in a different way:

Jesus said, "If your leaders say to you, 'Look, the (Father's) kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the (Father's) kingdom is within you and it is outside you."

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Jesus, as recorded in the Gospel of Thomas, speaks directly to fundamentalists like Kevin’s minister who believe that Heaven is an actual place where Christians go after they die.  Jesus somewhat mocks this viewpoint by saying that if Heaven is an actual place, the fish and birds are actually closer to it than people are.

The Bible includes a similar story about Jesus.  Luke 17:20-21 says, “And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation:  Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.”

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The authors of both Thomas and Luke may have derived this story from the same actual event.  If the “leaders” referred to in Thomas are the Pharisees referred to in Luke, we can understand why Jesus may have been a little edgy.  But, it’s clear in both stories that the kingdom of God is not an actual place where we’ll see our old friends and shake their hands.

Both Luke and Thomas say that the kingdom of God is within you.  Heaven isn’t a place out there where you go; it’s behind a door inside you that's waiting to be opened.

In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus goes on to say, “When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living Father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you live in poverty, and you are the poverty."

Jesus is saying you will be known by God when you open that door and find the Light of God within you.  That’s what will bring you into God’s kingdom.  If you’re waiting around for your soul to be transported to the Kingdom of God without seeking Him out within yourself now, then you are living in a spiritual poverty which impoverishes the rest of the world.

Gnosticism is about finding, knowing, and releasing into the world the spark of the true God within each of us.

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