Copyright 2011, John Manimas Medeiros

The Primacy of Stewardship: The Handbook for Christians Who Believe in Democracy, is distinctly different from any other book about the Christian Gospel for four reasons.

First is that it carries the reader to a deeper level of doubt applied to the presupposition that the Gospel is about moral law, about the moral law of God or about a moral philosophy or a guide for an ideal pattern of moral behavior.

Second is that it applies a scientific method, a procedure that meets the definition of a scientific experiment (everyone should get the same results) and that liberates the reader from the preconception of strictly moral meaning. The two-principles-and-five-questions method enables anyone seriously interested to see the scientific content of the Gospel message, and to appreciate this new way to see the Gospel message with one's own eyes -- as opposed to being handed an evangelical discourse on altruism, love and kindness. This book, therefore, hears and interprets the teaching of the Gospel parables as cold fact about the real, physical universe, and not only the emotional comfort of a warm embrace from a spiritual realm.

Here are the four reasons why The Primacy of Stewardship is different from all others:

First: What is the history of the healthy process of doubt?

FIRST COMMON INDOCTRINATED BELIEF: The Gospel message is from Jesus Christ and Jesus is the Son of God, and is the Creator God, and he died to redeem us, as expiation for our sins. Jesus suffered and died for our sins; God suffered and died for our sins, so that we could be saved and go to Heaven after we die.

FIRST COMMON LEVEL OF DOUBT: Jesus is not God, not the Creator God or son of the Creator God; Jesus is just a moral philosopher, like Socrates or Buddha, and possibly the entire story is fiction made up by a group whose main interest is social control or compliant behavior of the working class. There are other reasons to try to be a good person, such as self-respect and emotional health.

SECOND COMMON INDOCTRINATED BELIEF: People have a soul that lives after the body dies. People who are good while living in the physical world go to an eternally joyful spiritual world, Heaven, after they die, as reward. People who are bad while living in the physical world, go to an eternally painful spiritual world, Hell, after they die, as punishment.

SECOND COMMON LEVEL OF DOUBT: There is no Heaven and Hell, or, there is no conscious life after death of the body. Or, we do not know if we have any conscious life after death of the body, and it is not reasonable to expect that we do. There are other reasons to try to be a good person, such as self-respect and emotional health.

Historically, the first and second levels of religious doubt comprise the entire past literature of questioning Christianity. These two common doubts are deemed to mean that the doubter is a free thinker and liberated from childhood indoctrination, or has questioned the authoritarian doctrines of the Christian religion and is therefore a scientific person who thinks for themselves and is not a conformist. However, there is a deeper or higher level of doubt that is necessary in order for a person to be able to mine the Gospel message for useful information, or, to be able to discard authoritarian religious doctrines while not dismissing the Gospel message as only myth or a worthless waste of time. The method of this deeper level of doubt is to examine the Gospel message without reference to divinity or an after-life. The two past common levels of doubt entail dismissing, discarding or discrediting the Gospel message as mythical religion, a form of internal emotional dialogue that can meet an emotional need but does not apply to the external physical universe outside of one's personal feelings and thoughts. But there is another method to doubt and re-evaluate the Gospel message: examine the message without reference to divinity or an after-life while still treating the message as valuable and worthy of careful attention because it might contain important information. Therefore, the deeper level of doubt takes one to a new world where the questions about divinity and a soul are set aside and replaced by an intentional search for useful information about real physical life in the real physical universe.

THE THIRD AND MOST FUNDAMENTAL (AND OVERLOOKED FOR CENTURIES) INDOCTRINATED BELIEF: The Gospel message is the moral law of God, or at least the moral philosophy taught and practiced by a very special person who had miraculous or paranormal healing powers, was uniquely unselfish, and possessed the greatest wisdom. This is the fixed presupposition with which virtually every child and curious adult approaches the Gospel message -- to learn about what Christians claim is the moral law of God.

Second: What happens when you take your process of doubt to a deeper level?

THIRD AND DEEPER LEVEL OF DOUBT: The Gospel message is not about morality or moral philosophy, but is the attempt of a great teacher to convey a scientifically factual message about who and what we are, to provide useful information, to tell us what we need to know in order to survive and thrive as a species. The scientifically valid informational content of the Gospel message is accessible to any reader who uses the two principles and the five questions, a scientific method for studying the Gospels in order to discover the scientific content of the Gospel message:

THE TWO PRINCIPLES AND THE FIVE QUESTIONS:

A) The Gospel message is about scientific facts, not about morality.

B) The purpose of the Gospel message is to tell us what we need to know, what we need to know in order to survive and thrive as a species.

The Five Questions:

1) What is the kingdom of heaven?

2) What is the main theme or main idea conveyed by the parables?

3) Why are there so many parables about good servants and bad servants?

4) What do all the good servants have in common?

5) What do all the bad servants have in common?

Third: I focus on the consistent message in the parables, because the parables are the original message intended to be conveyed from the source to the people. When Jesus speaks in parables, he is speaking from his own source, or from his own heart and mind. People naturally ask a teacher questions, but only some of their questions are wise or profound. Many of the questions that were presented to Jesus were about petty morality, justification for old customs or severe punishments, or questions from officials intended to steer Jesus toward conflict with the government or religious authorities, or to trap him into taking a position against politically correct or legal doctrines. The message is in the parables, and readers will be amazed at how consistent the entire Gospel message is when one adopts the conclusion that the kingdom of heaven is the kingdom of life in the universe and the parables are about the real, physical universe rather than about an inner life of the mind or about moral behavior important in a separate, spiritual realm.

Fourth: I do not favor any conclusion as to who or what is the source of the Gospel message. I am not promoting the belief that Jesus was God or not God. There are five identifying categories that encompass all possible identities for the source of the Gospel message, and I invite every reader to enjoy the freedom of choosing whatever possibility is most credible to them. Toward the purpose of having us study the Gospels scientifically, let's say that the Gospels are a message that is very important but we are not certain of the source precisely, but we can list five possible sources:

One: Jesus alone, a charismatic person and profoundly skilled philosopher and observer of human behavior, who by himself provides the parables and wisdom that constitute the entire message that we have received as the Gospels.

Two: Jesus not alone, but still a charismatic person and profoundly skilled philosopher and observer of human behavior, who by himself with a special educational and training experience, provides the parables and wisdom that constitute the entire message that we have received as the Gospels. This means he probably traveled and studied and practiced during the eighteen years of his "absence" (from age 12 to 30) in many lands, possibly Egypt, Persia, India, Greece, Rome, and possibly even China, Tibet and parts of North Africa such as Ethiopia.

Three: Jesus not alone, but still a charismatic person and profoundly skilled philosopher and observer of human behavior, who by himself with a special educational and training experience, provides the parables and wisdom that constitute the entire message that we have received as the Gospels. This means he probably traveled and studied and practiced during the eighteen years of his "absence" (from age 12 to 30) in many lands, possibly Egypt, Persia, India, Greece, Rome, and possibly even China, Tibet and parts of North Africa such as Ethiopia. And further, thirdly, the body of knowledge he came to master -- the message -- was not the result of any single ethnic or national tradition or sect but was in fact the accumulated record of wisdom and knowledge from the Gnostics and Greeks and Eastern cultures which represented a universal collection of the wisdom and knowledge of humankind to date. This option best explains the universal quality of the Gospel message that lifts it above the traditional sectarian or tribal religion of the Hebrews, even though Jesus was biologically and by cultural heritage a Hebrew.

Four: Jesus was a messenger from a superior extraterrestrial humanoid species that was sent on a mission to provide the human species with important information about what it means to be a technological animal, or intelligent species, and what are the traits and obligations and the possible destinies of such a species on a water planet like Earth.

Five: Jesus was God, or the Son of God and the Holy Spirit in a Holy Trinity, and in any case Jesus was essentially the "incarnation" of the divinity that created the universe and came to us in the form of a human being, Jesus, in order to tell us what we needed to know, or to tell us what He, God, considers to be good behavior and bad behavior so that we could be loved and approved by God instead of being lost without any hope of salvation and reconciliation with God.

Whatever one believes is the source, the original intended message is the same. The truth is the same no matter whence it came. -- John Manimas Medeiros