AN ELECTRIC JESUS RIDES THE ESCALATORS to the COSMIC CHRIST


There is no easy antry to heaven, or it would not be heaven. Just as there is no easy ascent of Everest. The difficulty of the journey is a good part of what makes it desirable. The global Jesus who saves everyone, the Cosmic Christ who welcomes all to the world wide web of his high parlour is all spider-Christ, false-Christ, anti-Christ. Such a messiah would be a criminal guide, like a bad sherpa on the ascent of Everest. One who takes the inheritance, but leaves his pilgrim’s bodies frozen in some frieze of false hope for all eternity. The ascent of heaven is a risky blood adventure, an ongoing advent that is out of this world at the end. So one that involves taking pains, taking up a cross, it involves the grace of a memorable journey into a death and resurrection. If it was too easy and we could get there standing on a daily electrically–driven elevator, then the pilgrims would begin to die of the ennui and boredom.
Real people can find no desire in any too-easy alms-given heaven, nor in a doled out bludge-brought paradise. Take a look back down the ascent next time you alight at the Parliament and see the gape-ticketed shape of the faces, the too-broadly church of heaven in the disconsolate slump of the human body language. Too-easily transported pilgrims to heaven will both look and be as hell-carried and hope-crushed as the commuters coming up the escalator out of Parliament station. For the electric Jesus at the terminal of that ascent will be as embracing as a ticket machine.
After Tolerance fails we will need the Truth again.

Wayne D. Knoll