Cup Half Full
Last night I had an interesting conversation with my partner, who is not Christian. As he was consuming sake, he asked me the reason for Jesus. Well, though he’s asked me this before, I never really knew what to say. After all, I didn’t really know why he “had” to die, other than the fact that he was hated. I didn’t really quite grasp the need he was replacing, which wasn’t until I really dug into ACIM again that this was crystal clear to me.
And thus, I presented him with the concept of the “glass half full” and “glass half empty” analogy.
Let’s begin by supposing you have a full cup, and that you’re a perfect human per the 10 commands. You don’t kill, steal, and destroy. Respect your elders, etc. Jesus summed this up as love God, and love thy neighbor as yourself.
In Jewish culture, and even Muslim culture, if you fall short, let’s say, you slander your parents, a little water gets poured out. This is what is considered sin. It’s something you feel bad about because you know it’s wrong, and it doesn’t feel good. And if a lot of water gets poured out, in your guilt and shame, you need to do something about it to feel better about it. You may tithe, or you may slaughter an animal. Or you may hurt someone else to get it off your chest, and continue to sin. You might try to make yourself look better than you are, show off the things you have, and cover up the ways you feel inside to feel better.
Instead of placing that sin in other things, in a way you’re doing deeds to make up for that shame and guilt, instead of tithing to a bunch of organizations to feel better, or slaughtering animals to transfer your innocence into them, you put all that on Jesus. Jesus said, I’ll take all that, and put it on ME, and I will be that sacrifice. And in that sense, it makes sense. Jesus died for people who weren’t good. He didn’t say, you can continue sinning forever because your bad deeds will always be forgiven with me. He said, you’re always going to be forgiven, so in that love, you are forgiven in your deepest essence. So why would you want or need to sin, as you’re WHOLLY loved? Wholly > Holy.
Thinking in this way breaks that need to make up for not feeling worthy. In the old way, if you feel like you’re pouring your cup out of water, you’re losing. You’re losing your sense of worth, and replacing those feelings with shame and guilt. In order to make yourself feel better, you actively try to DO SOMETHING about it. Jesus says, it’s already been DONE. So just move on, and sin no more. It assumes that your cup is always going to be empty anyway, because no one can be maxed out. It reverses the logic.
You start with an empty cup, and Jesus fills that completely for you. You just become more like Jesus, because it’s not about the cup being perfectly full or empty, or half empty, or whatever. It’s never about being “good enough” for yourself, or for others.
In this sense, Jesus is the ultimate psychologist. Though we might be filled with shame and guilt, he still loves us. He loved Judas til the end, and even chose him, and washed his feet, despite knowing he would deceive him. He loved him through his rejection, and in the same way, he loves us through our rejection. He gives us a chance to be seen as loved by God, and for us to love God instead of hating God because we feel so bad. He reverses our shame, and returns our divinity of being fully loved under being 100% Holy (under God) back to equilibrium. It’s a concept of complete self forgiveness, in a way we have difficulty forgiving ourselves, we must accept the forgiveness that Jesus offers us. In his humility, he offers us that option.
After explaining this to my partner, he got it. Despite going then into an experience he had about how he felt this way after he did mushrooms, he teared up. Because he understood and got it. In a way, I finally got it too.
