Easter Reflections

Monday, 21 April 2025, 8:17 am
Opinion: Martin LeFevre - Meditations

“Small Things Like These,” masterfully starring Cillian Murphy, is a stunningly vivid portrayal of life in Catholic Ireland (and to a large degree Irish-Catholic America) about a half century ago. The movie brought back some painful memories, and unearthed some old questions.

I was raised Catholic when the Mass was still in Latin, at a time when children were compelled to go to church six days a week -- before school and once on Sunday, when it was a mortal sin to miss.

After being swept up in an incident of extreme violence by a nun on a friend in the 8th grade, I quietly questioned, observed and researched the Catholic Church through my high school years. So it was no whim when I came downstairs one Sunday as a senior and announced to my parents that I wouldn’t be going to church that day or ever again.

But as besotted and misbegotten as the Roman Catholic Church is (founded by the Roman Emperor Constantine from a motive that had more to do with politics than spirituality), Jesus of Nazareth lived and taught and was crucified.

Beyond that, we can be certain of very little. One thing is clear however: the cornerstone of Christianity, set in place by the Council of Nicaea in 325 -- that Jesus was God, not man -- is preposterous on the face of it. Though the truth is heresy to Christians, saying Jesus is God is actually blasphemy. Jesus himself said as much.

That said, Jesus’ life and death was great and godly. Stripping away the half-baked misinterpretations, obfuscations, Catholic misconducts and Protestant misconstructions, what was it? Can we gain insight into Jesus’ mission, and does it have any relevance for our endarkened world?

There is an immanent intelligence in life and the universe; of that much I’m sure. So for me it boils down to the question of whether cosmic intelligence cares about the fate of humanity.

I tentatively feel that for tens of thousands of years, since well before the time of Jesus, there has been an intrinsic intent, derived from the inherent intelligence of the universe, to bring about a radical change in human consciousness. At various times in human history, some people have been vehicles for this intent. Jesus was a tremendous example of one of them, but not the only one.

Though I have doubts, especially lately, about the validity of such a faith, if one can call it that, there are a few things I am sure of.

First, that consciousness is not what we have as sentient humans, but what we can have as sapient human beings.

Second, that we are the only sentient species on this planet, conscious of our consciousness, and that we participate in cosmic awareness when we negate self-centeredness and conditioning through attentive self-knowing.

Third, that Jesus was not God, nor some inexpressibly special gift from God, but one of the most poignant attempts in human history to bring about a radical change in human consciousness -- that is, in the human heart.

Fourth, Jesus’ mission failed though he didn’t fail. His last words (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”) echo sorrowfully through the ages.

Had Jesus’ mission succeeded, there would still be conflict, but there wouldn’t have been 2000 years of war, culminating in a nuclearized world. And man wouldn’t be on the brink of destroying the diversity and integrity of this jewel of a planet.

Therefore Jesus represents not a supernatural mystery, as Christians maintain, but the unresolved mystery of potentially intelligent life in the universe.

So why did Jesus’ mission go wrong? How could Jesus’ life have gone from a triumphal, prophecy-fulfilling ride into Jerusalem on the back of a burro, to being scourged and nailed to a Roman cross? The guilt-ridden belief that he was born to die on the cross for our sins was a deliberate inversion of the truth.

Illumined or nearly so, Jesus was a man, and as a man, he made mistakes. Was his fundamental mistake that he believed he had vanquished evil during his time of trial in the desert, but Darkness just withdrew, and laid a trap for him in Jerusalem?

In short, did Jesus overestimate the people of his time, and underestimate the evil in human consciousness?

I return to my original question: Is there an intrinsic intent, beyond thought-based consciousness of humans and AI, for humanity to flower in freedom from the prison of consciousness as we know it?

There are clearly self-hating and life-hating forces in human consciousness, born of the wrongful use of symbolic thought, that want to destroy the human being’s potential for true consciousness. But there is no celestial war between good and evil being played out in this world.

Astronomers and astrobiologists are discovering signs of life in our solar system and beyond. They are on the verge of announcing that life is as innate to the universe as star and planet formation. Surely man isn’t the only species in the galaxy that has evolved the ability to destroy its planet and its own spiritual potential.

Perhaps authentically intelligent life only contacts potentially intelligent life like Homo sapiens when they have made the transition and live in relative harmony with their planets and themselves.

Perhaps all the cosmic mind can do is point us in the right direction through “divinely inspired” human beings like Jesus. However, the fact is, we’re still heading in the wrong direction.

Martin LeFevre

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Martin LeFevre - Meditations

Scoop Contributor

Martin LeFevre is a contemplative and philosopher.

His sui generis “Meditations” explore spiritual, philosophical and political questions relating to the polycrisis facing humanity.

lefevremartin77@gmail