The Gospel of Thomas on Servants & Masters
I was reading the Gospel of Thomas (from the Nag Hammadi Library) in verse 47 he quotes Jesus as saying "it is not possible for a servant to serve two masters, or he will honor one and insult the other."
This put me to thinking, did he mean Gods? Or self and the world?
If one is searching for God and has yet to find his truth, would this mean that the person would have to remain Godless and rely on faith alone? Because if you believe in one God and it is not the true one then you are insulting the true God right?
Or is he separating the servant as Self from the World?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Mary Magdalene on
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In which intention, might we consider the more honorable? self serving, or serving the greater Self...
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Permalink Reply by Jeffrey Smart on
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I would say serving the greater good or Greater Self, but I would temper that by saying sometimes serving the greater good is not good at all. For example Nazis in Germany felt they were serving the greater good of the German people but in fact they were destroying the lives of millions. The Stoics would say that the sage will always serve Reason, will always serve the Moral Good. And I think the wirter of the Gospel of Thomas was saying this, that one must be the servant of the Moral Good, God if you like, and not that of the world, of society, of culture when it is contrary to the Moral Good or Reason. I must say that the Gospel of Thomas is my favorite of the so called Gnostic Gospels, I good discussion!
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Permalink Reply by David Allen on
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This is a passage of particular interest to me as well. I think that it's core message is you have to choose, any choice that presents itself you have to choose, one or the other, you can't have it both ways.
I say it is of particular interest to me because it seems to head straight to the hart of what I perceive to be our societies trouble.
Given the apparent duality of our existence I spent time looking at "opposites" (i understand the relativistic nature of these words) good and bad, positive and negative, hot and cold, etc... What I realized is that there is an energy that flows flows between opposites that is defined by them.
So what is the opposite of faith? How do we perceive the energy that flows between them?
If Faith is about acceptance (no proof required), would that make the rigid rule of repeatability in science it's opposite?
Isn't this represented in the story of Adam and Eve in the garden? They could have faith (and abstain from the tree of knowledge) or they could seek understanding through knowledge (and eat the apple). Now the story goes on to say that God then kicks them out of the garden. This never made sense to me, it is more likely (to me) that the knowledge changed their perceptions and they could no longer see the garden. The garden is still here, what we see tells us which master we serve.
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