The Soul Physician

“Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick” (Mark 2:17).

This saying of Jesus is found in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. As with many other sayings, he is not actually referring to the well and the sick, or to physicians. This is a figure of speech which I assume was a reference to the religiously complacent and those who question the system of belief they were born into.

To the mainstream Jew, it is likely that one of the most radical aspects of Jesus’ teachings was the concept of the kingdom of God within, and the notion of man’s oneness with God. The Jew, like today’s Christian, believed that God and man were separate, and that claiming oneness with God was nothing short of blasphemy. “It is not for a good work that we stone you but for blasphemy; because you, being a man, make yourself God” (John 10:33). Jesus’ message did not appeal to those who were uninterested in exploring anything outside the mainstream teachings. These are the “well” that have no need of a physician. It is the unsettled, those who are willing to consider the God within possibility, that require the physician, the spiritual guide.

My own spiritual journey has taken me off the superhighway of mainstream religion. I, and others like me, discovered quickly that those who insist on staying with conventional doctrine have no interest in alternative approaches. In contrast, many of us have taken the off-ramp from the mainstream because we were disenchanted, weary of espousing dogmatic teachings and the practice of hollow rituals to simply fulfill religious duties. We gladly consulted with those physicians, those books and teachers, that helped us navigate this unchartered territory.

Jesus was a healer, a soul physician that, for those who have the eyes to see and the ears to hear, still stands as a ready guide to a way of thought that continues to this day to be a fringe to the “straight-thinking” orthodoxy of mainstream religion.