And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him. I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world. When he had thus spoken, he spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay, And said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, (which is by interpretation, Sent.) He went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing. (John 9, 1-7; our Italics)

First of all, the sin is a characteristic of a born being – “he, or his parents” – and is taken by disciples in the usual sense of the personal culpability, according to which the blindness is just a punishment. Jesus rejects the idea, acting to restore the eyesight to the man. The incident occasioned a bunch of attitudes of different social groups, according to their positions, both in the Nature and in the social hierarchy.

First, there is the reaction of those close to the blind man. These, normally, cannot understand: isn’t this the one begging? Something is not in order… in that order which, although unnatural is accepted, we should say, like axiomatically, as an assumption from which we start in any explanation, as a law!

Further the former blind man undergoes the judgment of the supreme court of the pharisees, of the ones who ratify the truth in society, in a crescendo culminating with the moment of the definition of the idea of sin:

Jesus heard that they had cast him out; and when he had found him, he said unto him, Dost thou believe on the Son of God? He answered and said, Who is he, Lord, that I might believe on him? And Jesus said unto him, Thou hast both seen him, and it is he that talketh with thee. And he said, Lord, I believe. And he worshipped him. And Jesus said, For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see might be made blind. And some of the Pharisees which were with him heard these words, and said unto him, Are we blind also? Jesus said unto them, If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth. (John 9, 35-41; our Italics)

The sin is, indeed, connected to the integrity of the senses of an individual – but this is not all. The lion has senses too, and it is just natural to kill an gazelle in order to live, but this is not a sin: because the lion “doesn’t see”, he just follows the call of nature. The arrogance of the devious self righteousness is that creating the sin, exactly as in the case of Adam and Eve: “ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth”. The lion is only lion, the wolf is just wolf, etc. they are part of the Nature; but the man cannot be man, he is too far away from Nature. However he has a great chance: he can be man only in God! This is the bottom-line message of the whole Bible, and we need to know it as a fact and to model our lives as such.

Nowhere is the arrogance of that totally unsecured “we see” more obvious than in science, insomuch as nowhere is its very existence, not only more unrecognized, but flatly denied. Is the technology – because, let’s face it, the science as it is practiced and understood today is mostly technology – is the technology giving us this right? Certainly not! Is this right contained implicitly in the fundamental concept of science – the force? Only if we use the force technologically, i.e. on its destructive side! However, the true moments of progress of science show clearly that this is not the right use of the concept of force, but that revealed in the first chapter of the Book of Creation, and endorsed by the New Testament: in Harmony!

The concept of sin is even more precise in one of the apocryphal texts, The Gospel of Mary Magdalene. We quote here from the translation of Karen L. King (The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle. Santa Rosa: Polebridge Press, 2003):

„… Will matter then be utterly destroyed or not?” The Savior replied, „Every nature, every modeled form, every creature, exists in and with each other. They will dissolve again into their own proper root. For the nature of matter is dissolved into what belongs to its nature. Anyone with two ears able to hear should listen!” Then Peter said to him, „You have been explaining every topic to us; tell us one other thing. What is the sin of the world?” The Savior replied, „There is no such thing as sin; rather you yourselves are what produces sin when you act in accordance with the nature of adultery, which is called „sin”. For this reason, the Good came among you, pursuing (the good) which belongs to every nature. It will set it within its root”. Then he continued. He said, „This is why you get sick and die: because you love what deceives you. Anyone who thinks should consider (these matters)!” (our Italics)

Nature knows of no sin, but the man, who, by science, can alienate the things natural, certainly possesses the sin!

The rejection of Jesus is the last expression of penetration of the social and human spirit in the relation Man-God. His reaction is also the last expression of the fact that the force, as conceived by man, is not the one which harmonizes us with the Nature, but the one that alienates us from Nature. Recall that one of the great questions of those who witnessed the passions of Christ was how come that the Savior couldn’t save Himself:

And the people stood beholding. And the rulers also with them derided him, saying, He saved others; let him save himself, if he be Christ, the chosen of God. (Luke, 23:35)

In this kind of  judgment the human essential condition is plain: if He is indeed the Christ, He must save Himself! Is like justifying the existence of a people, where the force, taken as instrument of destruction, is fully justified and even officially blessed. For there is no other way for that salvation but the purely destructive force. And the verse is categorical in assigning the judgment to „the rulers”. Why? The rulers are the expression of reason in a people. One cannot expect reason from crowds: the crowd is the place where the reason stops. That much knows every politician from the beginnings of the society on Earth. This is why Christ would pray for the crowds: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke, 23:34). „They know not” but the rulers do, and this is why „the rulers also with them derided him”: this is a typical political attitude, designed to attract the crowds.

Politics aside, in hindsight the above excerpt just reflects the dominant idea of all ages, according to which God is almighty by force. This is not the first nor the last time, by any means, when the man sets the seal of law upon invented facts. This leads to catastrophic results. For God never used the force in the way it was meant to be used here, i.e. directly for destroying His creation. As a matter of fact He never used the force for creating the world!

What was really the idea of His attitude? Jesus came on Earth to show the man his true condition. This required, on one hand, the natural relation individual-cosmos and, on the other hand, the creation of a society in concordance with the Nature. As such He came in multiple capacities, both as man and as God. As a man He preached the tolerance because it leads to the naturalization of the human society (sic!). As God He is the Creator, and by becoming flesh he actually became the Creation. Now let’s sit and reason: what really would mean to save Himself? Probably the ensuing destruction wouldn’t mean anything, compared with the fact that, as a Creator, He would deny all of the qualities implied by His presence on Earth: as a man He would show that the tolerance is just a political scam, of no other species than that of the “rulers”, as God He would show that He destroys the creation at will in the manner of idols of Greek mithology. It is thus necessary to see in His resignation not the blind resignation of those idols, whereby the arbitrary of the will is just pushed on another level – that of the almighty fate – but the fact that the force as conceived by man is not a law of Nature. Christ just sealed this idea with the seal made from the primeval matter of essential myths of mankind: his own blood!

Jesus went unto the mount of Olives. And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him; and he sat down, and taught them. And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst, they say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou? This they said, tempting him that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with the finger wrote on the ground. So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground. And they which heard, being convicted by conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee? She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more. (John 8: 1 – 12; our Italics)

It is as if one can see the scribes and pharisees jubilating already because, humanly speaking, there is no way out of the situation! It is obvious that if Jesus would answer “don’t kill her” He would be chargeable with transgressing the law of Moses; if, on the other hand, He would answer “kill her” this would be against His capacity as a Creator, destroying His Own creature. Either way, the answer would be a good piece to be added to the case scientifically assembled by scribes and pharisees.

                But no! Jesus is indeed the Creator, the one who knew creation best, for who could know the creation better than the Creator Himself? This creation in the instance given by the Jews, had a very keen sense of sin, a sense of sin that could not be found to any other people, the Romans for instance, anyway not to the extent required by a situation like this! The Jews may not be the ones who invented the concept of sin, but surely they withdrew it from under the narrow determination of the personal guilt, giving it the wider determination of the unnatural acquired by man along his social evolution. Every individual from Jewish society was, by education, conscious of the sin carried inherently by the human being, so that reveling it in a proper situation, could make him more… humane. It is exactly the act Jesus Himself adopted: He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her! Obviously, no one would know himself wothout sin, and the adulteress was saved. In a street in Rome, for instance, she wouldn’t stand a chance: the Romans did not have the notion of sin. It is doubtful, though, that the whole situation could go this far in Rome, for there the adulter was not a religious issue!

            So this is the key: from a religious point of view the Jews were clearly more advanced that any other people in the world. Thus they were the only people in the world able to understand Jesus best. The indisputable proof was soon to become obvious: from this very understanding came His death on the cross!

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord (Luke, 4: 18, 19; our Italics)

If Christ came for poor, brokenhearted, captives and such, this means that, in spite of the fact that these are the clear productions of the society, the society does not have the capability to accomodate them. However they are part of the Creation and the Creator cannot leave them without help. The deep, scientific reasons of the New Testament must therefore be found in the reasons of existence of society.

                If we wouldn’t choose to reject the regulations of God in the Garden of Eden, we would still live an edenic life, where the society is not necessary. But we chose to have our own experience, and this cannot be lived but outside Eden Garden, in an evolution made possible by the existence of society. For, outside we met the force instead of the primeval light and, while using it, we needed to overcome it, whence the reasons of existence of society.

                Indeed, we always need a force in order to do something. Even the simplest motion asks for considerable muscular force, to say nothing of some actions of wider scope. Among such actions of wider scope first and foremost comes obviously the survival on Earth, which is by itself enough to justify the emergence of the society as a necessity. Indeed, the human society emerged as a basis to overcome the forces, first those of Nature from which the human species issued and then those of the alterity inside the society itself.

                On this road of creation and perfection of the human society – legitimate mother and daughter of the force – many unnatural realities detached, among which that of social hierarchy provides the reasons quoted above by Jesus Christ. Indeed, the social hierarchy is a corrupt product of the social division of labour, due to the very human nature. At the level of an individual, i.e. the possessor of the body executing that labour, the hierarchy creates a stress and, as special recent studies clearly show, is maintained by that stress.

                Indeed, it is not hard to see that in a human society, unlike other biological societies, the individual carries a greater burden, if not by anything else, at least by the possibility of communicating impressions external to Nature, which are actually those leading to stress. A modern civilized society shows here its true superiority by the fact that it manages the stress the best possible way. In a word, the essential characteristic of the social division of labour was that it interposed the man between Man and Nature, facilitating thus another social division, this time in the form of hierarchy, that alienated the man from mother Nature.

                In the old times the society obviously survived at the expense of life of its individuals, continuously imperiled, not because of the inherent natural stress of any animal society, but because of the unnatural stress imposed by hierarchy. In any biological society the individual must support a natural stress by the very condition of its existence and of the society in the food chain. The humans, once installed at the top of the food chain didn’t have any need for the natural stress, for there was no competitor anymore. In a human society the individual relieved therefore from the natural stress of the species, has to stand the unnatural stress of the hierarchy, which kills in an unnatural way according to its very nature.

                In the old times though, the human society was not so far away from any biological society when it comes to the indifference with respect to its members. This is why it needed the ten commandments: to regulate the human social relationships in a human way. What then, we can ask, were the chances of survival of an individual weak, humble, sure victim of the unnatural killing stress? As in any other biological society, such an individual is destined to death. The reason, this unique privilege of the man which, at the individual level, forces us to evaluate the chances of survival, made its way through imagination, thus transforming the purely spiritual aspect of the problem into a political one. For, it was obvious that the humble and the stressed would surely die – this was just a common occurrence. Why then, not offer him a hope on the way he goes naturally? And the hope came naturally for the unnatural way of existing of society: if you cannot find proper accomodation in this world, don’t despair, you will have it in the “other” world! This is one of the first scientific attitudes: first imagine a world the way it should be, i.e. natural, then show that there is a real possibility to reach for that world: the more miserable you are here the happier you will be there, no matter how vague “there” appears. The whole problem is one of indoctrination, and with this were charged the different forms of political religions later on transformed into religious politics, in order to justify the annihilation of the competing alterity.

                It is in this general state, that the most developed among the old societies – whose development was, of course, due to the possession of force making thus possible to lay hands on everything – made possible the idea that, on the contrary, everybody can live in this world with the minimum stress, by just putting the stress on others outside the society – the alterity we are talking about. Imagination, keeping up with direct observation, created the idolatry, both for justifying the society with respect to other human societies – the suns of Ammun, the sons of Baal etc – and for the individual necessities: pray the idol and it will satisfy your prayer! This way the prayer was created.

                Meanwhile, let’s notice though that the humility, this mother and at the same time daughter of the continuous unnatural stress, not only wasn’t eliminated from the developed societies, but sublimated in forms not yet met before. The evolution didn’t go so far as to eliminate the humiliation as a method and the humility as its harvest. On the contrary, in the times of New Testament, the humble and meeks, these really superior and subtle products of the unnatural stress, were completely scooped out from the society, which brought them forth but was not able to accommodate them. The ones able to produce force were slaves, i.e. tools, the ones unable to produce force were cast off.

                It was just such a time when Jesus Christ came, to teach us how to behave in a realistic state, i.e. in life, not beyond it. Thus it should come as no surprise the fact that He addresses first and foremost to those cast away from the society, as the verses above show. This is altogether the most scientific attitude that allows us to say: He is the living God. For there is naturally a human condition in everyone, no matter of his physical and social status. The society alienated the man from God and from himself, giving him the idea that the position in society is everything. Vanity of vanities! Everything can easily go to dust in the blink of an eye.

                So it comes that, regarding the unnatural stress impugned by the society upon the individual, the recommendation of Jesus is that age-old one, to blend harmoniously in your place. Slaves obey your masters, women obey your husbands, don’t worry about tomorrow etc. And Jesus doesn’t follow here the old political religion, but purely the science. One doesn’t need quite an academic degree in order to see that these are ways to minimize the stress in order to extend the natural life, that much we can realize. But the explanation given to us by Jesus is way beyond the science of all days: to direct opposition there is always a direct opposition, and the individual has no chance against society. The one who raises the sword by the sword will perish! Notice the subtle matter: it is not that the one who raises the sword will kill his enemies etc. like in the old heroic poems, but a clear-cut “will perish” – and no argument here, it always happens. The starting idea? There is no natural alterity: as an individual the man is universal. Therefore look first at yourself, and judge others by yourself, not by what the society made you to be. The voluntary acceptance of the actual own situation (happy obeisance), and the comparison with the nature where you are a whole (the lilies of the valley, the birds of the sky) not with the society using you just as a part (the king Solomon “in all his glory”) are the first steps along the path of a life without stress. The retaliation does not have this virtue: the satisfaction of revenge invades, sooner of later, our life shaped as a danger.

            In order to comprehend these teachings of New Testament, would be sufficient to accept that all of us are in a state of humility, and all of us are under the spell of the same fate, making it thus worth to be meek. And, how is it possible to convince a king or, more recently, a finance tycoon for instance, that he can be submitted to humiliation too? In this respect the New Testament scientifically testifies of a reason superior to human one, first by its perfect harmony with the Old Testament, then by the choice of the people and of the historical moment of ministration and, finally, by the use of Nature according to its true laws.