One of the best books I've read was "Mutant message from Down Under" by Marlo Morgan. It is about her walk about with the Aborigines and learning from them to hear the still small voice and the innocence we lost in the perception of good and evil instead of all things good and God controlled.
The gospel of Thomas is parallel with other gospels with few exceptions one verse states "when you can take off your cloths and trample them under feet like little children then you will see the son of man". We sometimes fail to see ourselves living in a physical temporary tent and think its attributes are us rather a vessel we must wisely manage.

To be able to stop the noise of the world around you and within you and take the time to listen to God is a discipline many of us lack. I am trying to do that more and more, but often the noise of my "listening", that is, my "trying" gets in the way.

Communion with God is through Jesus Christ, after all, He is the communion. Jesus is the centrality of Christian theology and the communion is the central tradition of the Church.

It represents a communion between God and man (and the Church, communion of human with humanity) that was established in Jesus. Jesus is the God who became flesh, thereby fulfilling the destiny of man creating a communion of spirit and humanity. The humanity of Jesus still exists, being flesh sitting at the right hand of the Father. His communion with the Father is shared with us so we too may have communion with the Father through the humanity of Jesus.

Now for the gospel of Thomas. I have read many of it's sayings and to compare those lines of unconnected sayings that have no context to the four gospels is like trying to compare a comic book to a well written novel.

It is not a gospel. The four gospels (which is not just about Jesus, but Jesus himself) has the beginning, middle and end of Jesus' ministry that each leads into the book of Acts. They have the full message about and of Jesus, birth, life, death and resurrection. It is the full picture of the Who, What, How and Why of Jesus.

The "gospel" of Thomas is not a gospel but a series of unconnected and unsupported sayings that may or may not have been said by Jesus. It is also a proven fact that this Thomas is not the disciple Thomas of Jesus' ministry, but was written at least a hundred years later by another man. Whether this man is named Thomas or not is not clear. But technically, it is not written by a witness of Christ (the four gospels were) nor are they about Christ and his humanity/God relationship. Anyone can write statements like this.

It is also written by and for the gnostics, who were considered by the Church as non Christians since they do not believe in the God/Man of Jesus Christ. They think Jesus was only a "good man" with a bunch of "good sayings" and not much more. Sure, he was good enough to die for humanity and brought up to heaven (if they believe in the resurrection) but do not believe the apostle John when he wrote in his gospel "In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God." And that word became flesh which was revealed to be Jesus. The Gospels are the revealing of the who and what of Jesus.

So no matter how many true sayings there are in the gospel of Thomas, which is no gospel at all, that does not justify it to be a source of scriptural backup for our beliefs as Christians. Sure, I would love that line to be true about throwing our clothing off and putting them beneath our feet, but I cannot use it nor support it in the light of the Christian Church.



Boyd "Live Nude and Prosper" Allen

"May the Lord protect our nudity from the sight of those who will not benefit, and may he allow us to be seen by those who will."

CNC