God is not a man with a beard on a throne in the clouds | Pete Holmes | Big Think

God is not a man with a beard on a throne in the clouds
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A good story has the ability to transform its readers — it speaks to our psyche, and, in doing so, has the ability to how we perceive the world.

When trying to understand the adherents of the world's major religions, Joseph Campbell advises to try to look at mystical experiences through the lens of the founders. In doing so, we can better understand the context of their messaging.

When we talk about God as an old man on a throne in the clouds, when seen as a metaphor, the imagery helps us understand the divine — the beard expresses great age, the throne symbolizes its supremacy, and the clouds signify that it presides over all of us.
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PETE HOLMES

Pete Holmes is a comedian, writer, cartoonist, "Christ-leaning spiritual seeker", and podcast host. His wildly popular podcast, You Made It Weird, is a comedic exploration of the meaning of life with guests ranging from Deepak Chopra and Elizabeth Gilbert to Seth Rogen and Garry Shandling.
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TRANSCRIPT:

PETE HOLMES: It's funny, it's almost a Hollywood cliche, that people like me get turned onto Joseph Campbell when they go to Hollywood. But for me, it wasn't to write a better screenplay. Because he taught us about the hero's journey. I'm sure you've all heard about the hero's journey. And a lot of people, like George Lucas, use the hero's journey to create Star Wars. And that's wonderful. There's another thing that Joey-- I call him Joey Cams did, which is find a way to look at religion and religious texts through the lens of the people that wrote them. I used to think when I was growing up, wouldn't it have been great if there were video cameras and audio recordings of Jesus and filmed footage of the Resurrection, and we could just put it all to rest? And Joseph Campbell helped me realize that that would ruin it. Isn't that fun? That literal truth is the lowest level of truth. It's the lowest. The way that I love my wife-- the literal way that I love her is like garbage. The metaphorical and mythical and emotional ways that I love her, that's where the juice is. Carl Jung talks about the human psyche or our spirit or our soul or whatever isn't transformed with ideas or facts, it's transformed with symbols. So the fact that the gospels weren't written-- the earliest one, I think, was 70 years after Jesus died, and some of them were 100 years after Jesus died. And of course, the gospels contradict themselves. I point out that at the end of the Book of Mark, the third one, Jesus dies and isn't resurrected. [LAUGHS] So why is it in there, then? You know what I'm saying? If we're going for a book of persuasive theology, if I'm trying to convince you of literal facts, why would I include one of the four gospels, Jesus dies and he's just dead? Oh, well, maybe it's because that's not the point. They edited it. There was a council that edited it. [LAUGHS] They could have cleaned it up and made it more Greek logic, Western mind, this happened, believe it. But that's what we've turned it into. The Bible proves that this happened and he conquered death, and now that's why I believe in him, because Jesus is a winner. He made death his bitch, and we love winners. So we made it the religion of winners and the religion of wars. We made Jesus the religion of wars. [LAUGHS] So we've lost it. So Joseph Campbell showed me that it's not about literal facts or the unfolding of what happened in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. It's a story, because sometimes you need an explanation and sometimes you need a story. And a story is going to transform you and symbols are going to transform you. You see this in our culture. Batman is a symbol. Go out on the street and look at how many men especially are wearing Batman shirts. It's a symbol. It's something that speaks to our psyche about the pain of a boy who lost his parents, using his wound to become super and try and change his reality. That's a symbol. That's a Christ story. That's a hero's story, and we need those. Because it's not about, at the end of the day, winning a televised debate or finding DNA on the Shroud of Turin or proving his burial was here. I've been to Israel, I studied in Jerusalem. They were like, he was crucified here. And then they were like, well, he was crucified here. Guess what. We didn't start writing that down until 150 years later because nobody gave a shit. It wasn't about that. It was about your inner transformation. You. Yours. I d...

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