78 Ancient Ideals
and do something about it. Stop and think: examine yourself. Let
him who is without sin cast the fi rst stone. Does stopping a blood-
hungry group of men with a simple expostulation qualify as a mir-
acle? If not, what does?
Guilt is one of the deadliest weapons in the Self hood’s arsenal.
It cripples men and women, both in the body and in the spirit. One
of Jesus’ central messages is that no sin is unforgivable if the sinner
is truly sorry. He tells individuals to throw off the griefs of the past
and start again, try to be a good man or a good woman. Go and sin
no more, Jesus says repeatedly in the Gospels. At that moment, the
ones who hear him are born anew if they have the strength to be.
How many of us are in some mea sure disabled by the burden of past
sins? We can’t get beyond our guilt or regret, or our anger about
what happened in the past. Nietz sche said that one of the most dis-
abling human maladies is resentment against time and time’s It Was.
We want to turn back time and correct the past. Or we spend our
days wishing that the past had never been what it was. The kingdom
of heaven is now, Jesus tells us— throw off the old inhibitions, throw
off guilt and live in the pre sent. Pick up your bed and walk.
William Blake, who idolized Jesus and disliked Yahweh, at least
as he is conventionally imagined, thought that the forgiveness of sins
was at the center of Jesus’ teachings. “Throughout all Eternity”
Blake says, “I forgive you[,] you forgive me / As our dear Redeemer
said / This the Wine & this the Bread” (477). Jesus is the power in
us that wants to learn from the past but not be suff ocated by it. It’s
the part that is always ready for a new beginning, in which we cast
off the Self hood like a suit made of rotten rags and live. For Blake,
the heart of the Gospels is not the crucifi xion or the last supper, the
suff ering and death that Yahweh seems to require as a sacrifi ce to
redeem the sins of man. It is the doctrine of forgiveness. Jesus is
asked how often a man should forgive the crimes of someone who
has sinned against him. Once, twice, seven times? Of course, the