except the Kingdom of God. This is a much better agenda than feeling you have
to attack things directly, or defeat other nation-states, the banking system, the
military-industrial complex, or even the religious system. Nonattachment
(freedom from full or final loyalties to man-made domination systems) is the
best way I know of protecting people from religious zealotry or any kind of
antagonistic thinking or behavior. There is nothing to be against, but just keep
concentrating on the Big Thing you are for! (Think Francis of Assisi and Mother
Teresa.) Paul’s notion of sin comes amazingly close to our present understanding
of addiction. And he thus wanted to free us from our enthrallments with what
he considered “mere rubbish” (Philippians 3:8), which is not worthy of our
loyalty. “If only I can have Christ and be given a place in him!” Can you hear
Paul’s corporate understanding in phrases like that?
The addict, or sinner, does not actually enjoy the world as much as he or she
is enslaved to it, in Paul’s understanding. Jesus had come to offer us a true
alternative social order here and not just a “way to heaven” later.
Did you ever notice that Jesus himself was not really that upset at the bad
behavior that most of us call sin? Instead, he directed his critical attention
toward people who did not think they were sinners, who could not see their
own shadows or dark sides, or acknowledge their complicity in the world’s
domination systems. Most of us would rather attack an easy, visible target—
preferably sex and body-based issues—and thus feel “pure” or “moral.” Like any
true spiritual master, Jesus exposed the root causes of evil (almost always some
form of idolatry), and did not waste time punishing the mere symptoms, as
moralistic people usually do.
In his groundbreaking study, The Apostle Paul and the Introspective
Conscience of the West, the renowned Harvard scholar and pastor Krister
Stendahl (1921–2008) writes that Paul hardly ever speaks of personal guilt, or
personal and private salvation—we are just trained to hear him that way!
Stendahl goes so far as to say that in the undisputed seven original letters of
Paul, he does not speak of personal forgiveness as much as of God’s blanket
forgiveness of all sin and evil. Sin, salvation, and forgiveness are always
corporate, social, and historical concepts for the Jewish prophets and for Paul.
When you recognize this, it changes your entire reading of the Gospels.
I do believe Paul was implicitly an evolutionary thinker, which he makes
explicit in much of Romans 8. Real power is now available and false power has
been exposed in Paul’s thinking, and now it is just a matter of time till false
power falls apart. I have witnessed much of this evolution of consciousness in