Even if the Transfiguration was only a vision in their imaginations, rather than a truthful window into another world, it was still pretty good proof that he was the Christ. And frankly it does not matter which it was. If you can create a vision in the imaginations of three sober men, you probably can give them a truthful window into another world. And the scene that follows in Mark’s Gospel, where they are all arguing over the disciples’ failure to heal the epileptic, is as down to earth an account as you could wish. That was not invented, and it gives credence to the transfiguration story that preceded it. It does more; it gives us a window into another world, into the Majesty of Jesus. To be able to see in one’s minds eye the Majesty of Jesus is a priceless vision to have. It is worth following him to the edge of the known world, in order to have it! And if one ever does have it, it is worth going back into the known world to do something about its deplorable condition.
Of course Jesus had his blind spots. We all have our own shadow, as Jung called it. Even God has His shadow. To achieve his magnificent purposes, great suffering is involved on the part of Mankind, and as the crucifixion showed on God’s part too. That you learn through suffering is a universal rule. So it was inevitable that Jesus did not see the many practical difficulties in bringing his kingdom of heaven down to earth, difficulties that lesser men see with crystal clarity. But that is no excuse for lesser men to put their own careers and wishes before the welfare of the Church, and so reduce its stature until it is ignored and despised. Presumably they did this because they were incapable of marrying the sacred and the secular, without contaminating the sacred. Ever since clergymen have been allowed to marry, they ought to have solved this problem. St. Paul asked how a man can please God, if he has always to please his wife? How do you reconcile God and a wife? Married clergymen should have had an answer!
Actually the solution is straightforward; and when you see it, you can see nothing else, because it is glaringly obvious, as I say on page 3. All you need then is to see that first attempts often fail, and that you may have to sacrifice your life. Not your physical life, because in these humane times we do not at present crucify people; but you might lose your sanity, if things were to go wrong. And that would be much worse than the loss of physical life. Most people would find it daunting. And that is why most Christians dare not stray from the path of conventional religious dogma and doctrine.
But in the world today, men and women are crying out for a pattern of the good society: good both temporally and spiritually. It is, I think, generally recognised that democracy is better than tyranny; but there seems dissatisfaction with the way democracy is working. A “Property Owning Democracy” is a good slogan to start with, because I firmly believe people must have wealth if they are to be able to stand out against the latest fashionable folly or injustice. And if everyone had the same amount of wealth, no-one would have enough wealth to dare to do it. And this would be the recipe for a tyrant to enslave everyone. So inequality is probably necessary to maintain freedom. Similarly privilege is probably necessary too, otherwise the potentially public-spirited leaders would take so long to emerge, that the charlatans would get there first. But pure Capitalism has lost its appeal, as it lets the rich become richer, and the poor become poorer; and anyway it leads to a society in which most, if not all, important decisions are made on the basis of cost. To whom then should we go for advice, as to how to maintain the correct balance between cost and worth? Ideally one might think it was the Church. But in our country’s hour of need, the Church is useless. It is living in an unreal world, or a world that no longer exists. It would be folly even to listen to its advice. Just remember “Putting Asunder”! So we need not only a vision of a decent just society; we need a new religious vision as well. That was why I wrote RELIGION REWRITTEN, in order to start the process of creating a new religious vision. And the way to begin, it seemed to me, was to enable a man to reconcile his relationship with God and a wife. One world and not two, in the human psyche! Civilization is a seamless garment, even if civil liberty in practice demands a system of checks and balances. The solution was obvious; the difficulty, as always, was to work out the details. Writing Religion Rewritten was the work of a life-time; and my website is the result. I never denigrate Jesus, and hope that others will do better.