Go buy yourself some friends

That's what Jesus said: "Go out and buy yourself some good quality friends", that just doesn't sound right, does it? But he said exactly that.

The whole point of this blog for me has been to get at the core message underlying the teaching of Jesus; the spiritual message of a spiritual teacher. Jesus was not a moral teacher, or a social teacher, or a religious teacher, or a financial adviser. His message cannot be understood through a moral/social/religious lens. A spiritual lens is required to understand what he taught. Paul described spiritual teaching in this way:

...we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one.

(1 Corinthians 2:13-15)

The "natural person" that Paul describes, takes the teaching of Jesus (for example) and tries to understand it through moral, social, or religious lenses. When he says, "the spiritual person judges all things" what he means is that everything from morality to social and religious behaviours are correctly understood when viewed through a spiritual lens. But the reverse is not true, you cannot get at the spiritual meaning through a moral, social, or religious lens. Also, you cannot call some type of high moral, social, or religious teaching "spiritual". No matter how high the teaching in these areas they can never climb up into the realm of a spiritual teaching. These teachings of the "natural man" cannot stand in for spiritual teaching. It is natural for "natural man" to look at a spiritual teaching and say, "Oh I get it, this is a moral teaching", or, "this is a social teaching", or, "religious teaching". It is none of these things.

Having said all that, spiritual teaching does use the same language that all other types of teaching use, it is the only language we have. So the question is; What is the spiritual meaning of "Buy yourself some good friends"? That needs to be broken down into it's components. What is spiritual "money/currency"? Spiritually speaking, what are you? Spiritually speaking, what is a friend? But before I get too far ahead I should paste the beginning of the story:

...“There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was wasting his possessions. And he called him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Turn in the account of your management, for you can no longer be manager.’ And the manager said to himself, ‘What shall I do, since my master is taking the management away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do, so that when I am removed from management, people may receive me into their houses.’ So, summoning his master's debtors one by one, he said to the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He said, ‘A hundred measures of oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.’ Then he said to another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He said, ‘A hundred measures of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, and write eighty.’ The master commended the dishonest manager for his cleverness. For the sons of this world are more clever in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light.

(Luke 16:1-8)

...then the sticky part:

And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings. “One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful in that which is another's, who will give you that which is your own?

(Luke 16:9-12)

Morally, socially, religiously... we have come to a dead end. These dogs simply won't hunt. There are a few key terms that I have underlined that need to be explained with a more spiritual translation.

The first of these words is "unrighteous". We understand what this word means morally, and religiously, but the spiritual meaning is somewhat different. In morals and religion "unrighteous" is the opposite of "righteous". Spiritually speaking the word means, "not in the realm of righteous/unrighteous things". It is "unjust" in the sense that it cares nothing about justice and has nothing to do with justice, it simply "is what it is". It is not good or evil, it can be turned in either direction on a whim. "Fickle" captures the sense well.

The second word is "wealth" which translates the Greek/Aramaic word "mammon". Often translations simply leave the untranslated word to stand as it is, which is not a bad idea. "Wealth" is an iffy translation, because in general, in the mind of today, "wealth" equals "money", and "money" oversimplifies the concept to an unhealthy degree. It's like the original word meant "pop" and you translate it as "cola". Imagine the problem if the original said, "don't drink pop", and you translate it as, "don't drink cola". That would give the impression that other types of pop would be acceptable. Mammon is a wider term than wealth/money, it is better widened out to "worldly advantage".

The third word often translated as "fails" also narrows down the original word to an unhelpful degree. Like it or not, all translation depends to a certain degree, on context. Meaning that the translator must interpret the context to find the best translation. In what I understand to be the context, "fails" is not a good choice, but better translated as "removed from the equation" or "omitted".

The fourth word is a biggie, "eternal". It is a biggie because it carries so much religious baggage. Religiously, the term is understood as, "lasting a very, very long time". But the word "eternal" does not describe a QUANTITY of a thing, but the QUALITY of a thing. The most common example would be "eternal life", understood by the religious as "life that lasts for a very very long time(forever)". This is a quantity of life, but the "Eternal" in "Eternal Life", is not a quantity, but a quality. There is much talk about "quality of life" in our culture. We understand what is meant by this through what we experience as high quality moments; maybe on a mountain top, maybe napping in a hammock, maybe skydiving, or in a gathering of good friends, or watching a sunset. We get the sense of a quality moment because within it we experience a higher sense of vitality. Life is better in these moments. "Eternal" as a quality of life is the ultimate life, thus "eternal life", is "ultimate vitality". This is the main thing to understand. The secondary meaning within "eternal" is that something of such high quality is, by nature, "enduring". Just like high quality clothing compared to low quality clothing. When you buy a t-shirt from the dollar store, you are not surprised that it fades, shrinks, or falls apart within a month, it is of low quality. On the other hand when you buy a $20 plain t-shirt from a trusted brand, you have expectations of greater endurance due to quality materials and workmanship. "Eternal" does carry this meaning of "enduring" as well, but it must be stressed that this is a secondary sense of the word. "Eternal life", for example, would be better understood as "ultimate vitality".

The fifth word is "dwellings", the original Greek word is "tents", it is used for simple dwellings, but also in the New Testament it is used for the "holy tent" of God, also known as the "tabernacle" in the Old Testament. It was the "mobile temple" of God for the Israelites in the wilderness before the temple was built. So the question is, "does this word mean simple 'dwelling places', or does it refer to 'holy places'?" Both terms are problematic. Generally, it is taken as "dwelling places", and it is understood as meaning "heaven". The problem here is that it is plural and there is only one "heaven" all go to the one heaven supposedly, not various heavens. If the word is understood as "holy places" this is also problematic because for the religion of Jesus' day, there is only one correct "holy place", not many. I suggest two things, that the New Testament makes the claim that we, each of us individually, are the temple of God/holy place, and that we, each of us individually, are also described as "building blocks" that are making up the new "holy place of God". This, I think, is the proper, spiritual lead-in to understanding what is being said in the passage.

So, having said all that, this is how I would render this difficult passage:

And I tell you, make friends for yourselves at the expense of fickle worldly advantage. To the degree that this advantage is omitted is the degree to which they will receive you into the ultimate, enduring holy places. “One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. If then you have not been faithful with fickle worldly advantage, who will entrust to you the true advantage? And if you have not been faithful in that which is another's, who will give you that which is your own?

(Luke 16:9-12)

That still leaves a lot to be unpacked. Fickle worldly advantage is a very broad thing: the place, time and family you were born into, a rich powerful uncle, a fat inheritance, physical beauty, genetics, intellect, emotional stability, social status, good health... it could be a million things. We did not earn these things, they came to us by chance. The question is, what will we do with these advantages that are here today and could be gone tomorrow? Will we use them truly for the good of others, or judge others whom "chance" did not provide with such advantages as ourselves? What will we do with our personal superiorities?

These superiorities are nothing in the sight of God, yet too often they are standards we live by. These superiorities are to be "omitted". We ought to cancel them out, "remove them from the equation" in humility when interacting with others. Of course we all stumble in many ways, we all fall back on these personal advantages in times of weakness. Nevertheless, it is simple math: to the degree that we omit these things is the degree to which we will be truly "received" by others. These fickle superiorities are meaningless, when we live by them, we are not "doing life" well. No one wants to "get real" with someone who lives by these fickle worldly advantages. That is the point, because "getting real" is getting into the true "holy places", the holy places inside of you and inside of me, the places where we open ourselves up to the spirit of God.

Below I have placed some clips from a couple of popular movies. This first clip shows how we fail when coming into that holy place, when we come to that "getting real" time. It is from "Silver Linings Playbook". Both characters have been having struggles with mental health issues. The man is obsessed with getting back together with his wife who cheated on him. The woman is a widow who's husband has recently been killed in a car accident. The man agrees to take her out for dinner, strictly as a "friend" thing. Here is the clip:

"YOU ARE AFRAID TO BE ALIVE! YOU ARE AFRAID TO LIVE! YOU ARE A HYPOCRITE, YOU'RE A CONFORMIST, YOU'RE A LIAR! I OPENED UP TO YOU AND YOU JUDGED ME! YOU ARE AN ASSHOLE!"

That is about how it goes when we are on the brink of "getting real", getting to that holy place, and then fall back hard onto our fickle superiorities. How many non-Christians have been in this exact place of this woman? Opening up and getting real with a Christian acquaintance only to be shoved down and made to feel inferior? Barriers go up, and the holy place is left vacant. The taste left in the mouth of that non-Christian is summed up by this woman's words.

The second and third clips below show an authentic entering in to that "holy place", where things do "get real" and healing takes place. The scenes are a bit separated from each other in the actual movie so I had to add them separately. This is from the movie "Shrink", the man is a famous Hollywood psychiatrist whose wife committed suicide, nobody knows this. He is a mess inside and has a drug problem. He writes books about "how to be happy". He has been given a patient, the young black girl, who's mother also committed suicide. She is troubled and also doesn't want to deal with the tragedy that she has gone through. The man, as a famous Hollywood psychiatrist, has a lot of "fickle worldly superiority": fame, money, reputation, the girl comes from a bad neighbourhood and a broken home. For quite some time, she has been holding on to "the note" that her mother left her, unable to bring herself to open it. She has been resistant to the man's professional help up to this point in the movie. The second of these two clips, is the direct result of what happens in the first clip:

The man in the the first clip from "Silver Linings Playbook", put up a barrier around the "holy place". The woman, "laid her money down" and he took it and ran. He took his "fickle worldly advantage" and used it as a weapon against her. He used it to make an enemy.

The man in these last two clips from "Shrink", exposed himself publicly. He torn down the fence around his own "fickle worldly advantage". He removed it from the equation. He omitted it. He spent it. He proved faithful in this "little thing", so she trusted him with a greater thing. She received him into the "holy place", into her own inner sanctuary. In forsaking his "fickle worldly advantage", she bestowed upon him the true advantage. He "made a friend for himself" in this way and brought about healing. Healing, not only for the girl, but also for himself. He "got real" and entered into his own inner sanctuary.