04.06.25 "Being Joyfully Miraculous"

My familiarity with New Testament teachings is average, and certainly I have never been a *Bible* scholar. Perhaps this is why watching *The Chosen* has been so meaningful for me. It is giving me a New Testament education that is useful and one, perhaps, that I need NOW more than I needed it before. For this education I am grateful.

Friday night I watched more of the new Season #5 of *The Chosen* subtitled "The Last Supper" which is currently in theaters. What is being clearly depicted is how much opposition Jesus had with the entrenched, Jewish, religious establishment. This of course has been a growing theme all throughout the series.

The priesthood of the Pharisees see Jesus as a huge threat to their authority and they are now actively plotting his arrest and death. The occupying Romans actually get a better treatment.

Jesus keeps telling the Pharisees that they are too involved with the letter of the law and not the spirit of the law. In the book of Matthew, Chapter 22, Jesus reduced Jewish religious teaching down to just 2 "commandments." Love God with your whole heart and mind, and love your brother like yourself. Perhaps ACIM would add, love your brother like yourself because your brother IS yourself. "... you will begin to learn and understand why you have believed that when you met someone else, you had thought that he was someone else. And every holy encounter in which you enter fully will teach you this is not so." (OrEd.8.22)

I also find many parallels in the New Testament story to the current state of the ACIM movement. Many are too entrenched in what they believe to be the letter of the teaching and are missing the spirit, which is the joyful spirit of the miraculous. They remind me of the Pharisees. There is tremendous push back from some ACIM people on those of us who embrace being joyfully miraculous and who believe in miraculous healing.

Jesus actually tells us it is arrogant to be too focused on the words. "The arrogant must cling to words, afraid to go beyond them to experience which might affront their stance. Yet are the humble free to hear the Voice which tells them what they are and what to do." (WkBk.186.5) It is significant for me to see Jesus giving this same message to the Pharisees 2000 years ago.

26 min.
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