Great art. Horrible theology.

Michelangelo’s depiction of the Creation on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is rightly hailed as one of the masterpieces of world art.

It is, however, a perverse depiction of a pernicious theology. There is no gap between the divine and human hands. Believing there is, that there was a primal sin after which we are separated from our true happiness, is a blasphemy.

In that half-inch gap, created by men who wear silly hats for a living, is all the anxiety, depression, despair that has hounded us, individually and collectively, for so long.

The central teaching of Jesus of Nazareth was the discourse at the Last Supper, described in John’s Gospel account, not the Crucifixion the next day. The ‘good news’ of the Gospel is to show how to live a righteous (not self-righteous) life. Not how to die a grotesque death.

Teaching One: You are bound to God as vine is to branch. God cannot cut you off and still be God. Nor can you cut God off and exist.

Teaching Two: Therefore, be a peace with yourself. You do not have to climb mountains or cross oceans. What you have sought was before you all the time. You only need to real-ize it.

Teaching Three: Therefore, manifest your composure in acts of kindness to all others. All others. Not just those of your own group.

Therefore, whenever you use a tool to leverage the work of your hands, your senses, your brains, your soul, seek to be in a composed frame of mind when you initiate the action. So that the outcome will be an act of kindness.

Humans have been called the tool-making animal. And the ultimate User Guide for all tools is this: Be Calm. Be Kind.

That is the universal law: from the North Star to the Southern Cross, from the rising of the sun even to its going down; from the apogee to the perigee, the alpha to the omega.

Everything else is commentary or distraction.

Act on this belief: Love and serve one another, and so love and serve God, whatever you image ultimate reality to be.