…so why am I gonna devote an entire post to religion? Easy, because I don’t plan to preach, and this is more an exercise on my part. Truth be told, this is more a post about names and weird coincidences, but I will get kind of pedantic at times… trust me though, I’m not preaching (I hate being preached to), I’m just thinking aloud.
So let’s begin. If I was placed at gun-point and asked whether I was religious or not, and if so, what religion I worshipped, I would have to say: “Christian”
So what’s with the quotes? For the most part, my involvement in the Christian faith is that I believe there is a God, similar to the one described in most Christian doctrine, and she had a son who went by the name of Jesus Christ. At that point, it kind of all falls apart. I’m not a fan of going to church, or with people preaching to me, etc. I basically believe that God is my home-girl who watches over me and is kinda just there. The God I know wouldn’t admonish me for making a lewd joke, because she knows I’m just kidding (and if you’ve noticed I’ve made God a woman, well, that’s only because “it” sounds bad… I’d prefer God be asexual and not take sides).
Anyway, so where is this all going? Easy, I was reading Wikipedia and decided to read the entry on Jesus. While I’m not strongly religious, I did take a class on the history of Christianity in college, and I seem to have picked up my mother’s interest in history. This lead eventually to me reading of the Gospel of Thomas which I’ve heard about but never took the time to look at. It’s not a canonical gospel, but from what I understand of it, I think it resonates with my personality and beliefs. Here are a couple of excerpts from said article:
The Gospel of Thomas is mystical—it emphasizes a direct and unmediated experience of the Divine.
Oh, look at that, a “direct and unmediated” connection to God… what else?
…the Gospel of Thomas premises salvation on an enlightened understanding of one’s true identity — an image of oneself as divine.
Perhaps because I’m a twin, I find myself wondering about my “identity”, what makes me… me, but I’ll touch on the twin thing shortly…
So now I ask myself, who was this Thomas? This person who shares my first name? He who apparently preaches ideas I find myself in favor of…? More reading asserts the Gospel of Thomas was written by the hardly mentioned apostle Judas Thomas Didymus. To abbreviate the article, Thomas was hardly mentioned in the gospels, and only in John’s gospel three times. The third time he was mentioned (in John 20:24-29), he doubted Jesus’ resurrection and became a believer after asking to touch the wound. I find this fact significant because it parallels my belief in the existence of God… for me, seeing is believing. I’m pragmatic by nature, give me hard empirical evidence .
But see, there I contradict myself. I’ve seen nothing to prove that (the Christian) God exists. Again, here is why the Gospel of Thomas is significant. This gospel is not a narrative, like the canonical gospels, but is simply a collection of sayings (attributed to Jesus). The emphasis is on interpreting the words of Jesus and discovering God through them. In a way, it’s this self-interpretive nature that describes my own views on religion. Anyway, I did not start this post with the idea that I’d be talking about my religious views, this is all a stepping stone in my thought process, so lets move on.
As stated, the author of this gospel is assumed to be the apostle Judas Thomas Didymus. The name Thomas is derived from the aramaic Tau’ma, which means “twin”. In addition, Didymus is Greek for “twin”. As stated previously, I have a (identical) twin brother named John. This is where my brain does some kung-fu… The apostle Thomas was only mentioned in one of the four canonical Gospels: John’s. In a way, the existence of the apostle Thomas hinges on the existence of John, which I could says has strange parallels to the fact that my brother’s name is John; it’s also the name of my father. This is how my brain works, people!
Coincidentally, the gospels of Thomas and John are often compared. It was the topic of Elaine Pagels‘ book Beyond Belief. I’m not gonna read too much in to it and try to assert that John and my personalities are divided along the same lines… I basically went through this entire post to point out this odd symmetry. I’ll let my brain chew on this later.
That’s all for now. I read an entry in Wikipedia and then I started connecting dots and here we are. Consider this a small window to my world, and how I think. Scared? =P
-Tom