Can the real message of Jesus save us now?

Debunking the Jesus-Only Gospel

Nov 07, 2024

If you’ve been a subscriber for a while you know that Amy and I are living on Thetis Island off British Columbia for the next six months. It’s a 6-square-mile island with 350 people. The photo above is the Thetis Island Post Office. It’s an open room in the same building as the tiny island market, catty-corner from the beverage refrigerator cooler. There’s only one way there - Pilkey Point Road, the main island road. Each time we pull out of our driveway to go to the Post Office (like today), we take a left on Pilkey Point. If you plan on going to the post office, you have to go that way. No Pilkey Point Road, no post office.

There’s only one way to the Thetis Island Post Office, but is there only one way to God?

For the purpose of this article, let’s take God as a given. You may be a person who questions traditional Christianity and not quite sure what exactly you believe about God. Maybe you are an ex-Christian, trying to disentangle yourself from religious doctrines and teachings that still haunt you. Perhaps you no longer believe in religion’s “God” but open to different ways of approaching questions of ultimate significance. Wherever you are, for this article let’s assume there is something real that the word “God” is indicating.

How many roads can get you to God? Are there many roads? Or, is there only one? If there were in fact a God you’d want to know this, right? If there are countless roads, no sweat. But if there’s only one way to God you’d want to know what way exactly that is.

According to traditional Christianity, there is only one way to God, one way for salvation, one way to get to Heaven. That one way is Jesus. If you don’t take Pilkey Point Road you can’t get to the Thetis Island Post Office, and if you don’t accept Jesus you cannot know God, be saved, and get to Heaven. I call this the “Jesus-only gospel”. It’s Jesus or bust.

And let’s not forget the stark reality of this Jesus-only gospel, according to traditional Christianity. The destination of any other road goes to eternal conscious torment in Hell. That means about 5.6 billion non-Christian people alive today will meet this fiery fate. This is why Christian missionaries take the gospel to the ends of the earth - so people can be told to accept the one and only way to God, salvation and eternal life, which is Jesus.

According to the Jesus-only gospel, all Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Atheists, Agnostics, and any and all non-Christians are excluded. Only Jesus-believers or Christians are in.

One of the most common Bible verses used to argue the Jesus-only gospel are the words of Jesus in John 14:6:

“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

To a lot of people these words of Jesus seem pretty clear - Jesus is the only way to God. The point is often made from this verses that Jesus did not say I am a way, a truth, a life - but THE way, truth and life, and furthermore, “no one” gets to God, says Jesus, “except through me.”

Recently, I received a message that read:

“Jim, there's the verse where Jesus says, “No one comes to the Father except through me.” I don't believe that verse anymore, but I don't know what to do with it.”

The way the Christian religion traditionally interprets these words of Jesus in John 14:6 comes off feeling like this:

“Listen up everyone! You know all those other religions and teachings about God? Well, guess what? They are all wrong! It’s me and my way or the highway to Hell. You can only be saved through me.”

Like the person who sent me the message, there are many people who find meaning and significance in Jesus but can’t accept the idea that 5.6 billion people who have either never heard about Jesus or chose to follow a different spiritual path, are going to be cast into an eternal lake of fire and never-ending torment. To add insult to injury, it is further argued that the Jesus-only gospel is evidence of God’s holiness, justice and even love.

This is one of many reasons why people leave the Christian faith. At some point they can no longer reconcile the idea that God is love AND God will send untold billions of people to eternal conscious torment because they chose the wrong religion.

As a reminder, I have an academic background in theology, and for many years was a Christian pastor. I wrote about my ministerial career in the article, Confessions of an Ex-Megapastor. Ultimately, I walked away from it all and I no longer identify as a “Christian”. I find meaning and significance in Jesus, but I no longer believe that the Christian religion is a credible source for understanding him. I refute nearly all traditional Christian doctrine, but I view Jesus as universally relevant, regardless of one’s belief about God.

I mention all this because it’s always my intent to represent the spectrum of legitimate options in working through matters of faith, without telling people what to think. Whether you are a professing Christian, staunch Atheist, or someone in the leaving-religion deconstruction process, it’s always my aim to be fair in identifying the alternatives.

When it comes to the words of Jesus in John 14:6 (“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”), the options are:

Jesus never said it.
Jesus said it and the Jesus-only gospel is true.
The words of Jesus in John 14:6 are not a Jesus-only gospel.

1. Jesus never said it

The New Testament has been the subject of many criticisms. Until a person investigates the fields of Biblical criticism and Criticism of the Bible you’ll never appreciate the difficulties and complexities in understanding the Bible. In Part One of this series I discuss the challenges of understanding the gospels in which this John 14:6 statement of Jesus appears.

Some critics argue that the Gospels were written long after Jesus’ death and that the age, authorship, and authenticity of the Gospels can’t be verified. I discuss criticisms of the Bible in the article, Which Bible Should You Read? It is a legitimate position to say that we should be skeptical if Jesus ever actually said the words attributed to him in John 14:6. This would obviously not be a favored position of the traditional Christian, who typically believes the Bible is the inerrant and infallible “Word of God”, and the sole and authoritative guide on all ultimate truth.

2. Jesus said it and the Jesus-only gospel is true

The second option is that the words of Jesus in John 14:6 should be interpreted in the most literal sense and Jesus was in fact saying that he is the only way to God, salvation and Heaven. I should admit that I am not fond of this option. The below image captures the Jesus-only gospel.

My problem with the first point “God loves us” is how it is nullified by the following three points. It’s capped off with that troubling question mark symbol at the end because if you don’t “trust in Jesus” (and only Jesus) you’re out of luck and off to Hell you go.

In my view, all four points in that meme above are suspect:

Firstly, the idea “God loves us” conceives of ultimate reality (“God”) as a separate supreme being who offers love transactionally to human beings (“us”) based upon a set of conditions, namely confessing our sin-problem and appropriating the Jesus-solution. Is it me or does that seem like a “God loves you, but…” proposition.

Secondly, the phrase in the meme “sin separates us” is based on the doctrine of original sin, which I have refuted previously on several occasions including most recently my article on the Christian teaching that “we are all sinners” and a previous article on “repentance theology”.

Neither do I believe the notion in the third point - “Jesus rescues us”. In my view, Jesus did not die on the cross to fix a sin-problem and rescue people from the wrath of God. There are many different views of the death of Jesus with quite elaborate explanations of what it meant. Some of those theories include:

The Penal Substitutionary Theory - Jesus Christ died to satisfy God’s wrath against human sin. Jesus is punished (penal) in the place of sinners (substitution) in order to satisfy the justice of God and the legal demand of God to punish sin.
The Ransom Theory - Jesus Christ died as a ransom sacrifice, paid either to Satan (the most dominant view) or to God the Father. Jesus’ death then acts as a payment to satisfy the debt on the souls of the human race, the same debt we inherited from Adam’s original sin.
Christus Victor - Jesus Christ dies in order to defeat the powers of evil (such as sin, death, and the devil) in order to free mankind from their bondage.
The Satisfaction Theory - Jesus Christ’s death is understood as a death to satisfy the justice of God. Satisfaction here means restitution, the mending of what was broken, and the paying back of a debt.
The Scapegoat Theory - Within this theory, Jesus Christ dies as the Scapegoat of humanity. Jesus is not a sacrifice but a victim. Jesus’ resurrection from the dead reveals him to be an innocent victim, which broke the cycle of scapegoating and made humanity aware of its violent tendencies. A useful resource for understanding this interpretation of Jesus’s death is
jonathan_foster
’s book, Theology of Consent.
Death of God Theory - I’ve written quite a bit lately about “Christian Atheism” and “death of God theology”. The Death of God Theory states that God became human in Jesus (Incarnation) and emptied his existence (Kenosis) as God-as-Other in Jesus’ death (Crucifixion), and can only be known as a hidden, silent, absence. To understand this theory, read, The New Gospel of Christian Atheism by Thomas Altizer.

Occam’s razor is a problem-solving principle that states that the simplest explanation is usually the best one. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to simply conclude that the revolutionary Jesus was targeted by the political and religious establishment of his day and was executed as an insurrectionist, or that Jesus courageously died for his truth and convictions without resistance or violence. This explanation essentially asserts that these are the facts and any other significance we project upon it, such as the theological theories above, is something we add.

And as mentioned, the final question in the above meme “Will you trust Jesus?” comes with an implied and ominous warning. Not trusting Jesus is choosing eternal Hell.

When considering the Jesus-only gospel, it’s important to stop for a moment and realize that religion is a narrative into which a person is born, conditioned and indoctrinated. It’s a feature of almost every religion to claim its superiority. There is also a Mohammad-only gospel, Brahman-only gospel, Buddha-only gospel, Dawkins-only gospel, etc.

The predominant religion of one’s native culture or family upbringing is likely their religious affiliation. Most people do not “become” Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist or Christian; they are born or enculturated into them. If you are born in Nagpur, you’re probably Hindu. Born in Nishapur, you’re likely Muslim. If your birthplace is Nashville, you’re probably Christian. Born in Narathiwat, you’re likely Buddhist. Born in Nesher, you’re probably Jewish.

But according to traditional Christianity’s Jesus-only gospel, if a natural disaster takes place in Nagpur or Nishapur that kills thousands of people, they are doomed to eternal conscious torment. Why? Because Jesus is the only way.

Because I disagree with the Jesus-only gospel as an interpretation of John 14:6, I should in brief explain why.

False Theological Framework

Traditional Christianity is based upon what I call “separation theology”, which asserts that human beings are born sinners and estranged from God, and doomed to eternal damnation apart from salvation through Jesus. This view assumes the classic theistic conception of God, which depicts God as a supernatural supreme being who exists outside the universe, which He created and rules.

The Christian religion makes it difficult to understand verses like John 14:6 because it is interpreted through the lens of separation theology, with Jesus shoehorned into it. I wrote in Inner Anarchy:

“Jesus was not a Christian. He is not the founder of Christianity. Jesus never encouraged people to worship him. Christianity is a religion that was created a hundred years after his death, and was later hi-jacked and corrupted by 4th-centruty religiopolitical councils, and became something radically different from the truth that Jesus taught and lived.
Were Jesus alive today, he would not be a Christian. Jesus is still one of best-kept secrets because his truth has been grossly distorted by those who claim to speak for him. There is a religion-free Jesus who belongs to all of humankind. Christianity does not own or have first rights to Jesus. His truth has universal significance.
It’s a mistake to make Jesus a religious figure or front man for Christianity. You have to disentangle Jesus from what you heard at church to find the truth he said would set you free.”

I have on many occasions in previous articles refuted the legitimacy of separation theology and classic Christian theism. Some of those articles include:

It is my contention that according to the Bible and the teachings of Jesus, it is not possible for anyone or anything to be separate or separated from God, because God is the ground of all being. There is not one road to God, neither are there many roads to God. There are no roads at all. There is nothing outside of God. You might need a road to get to the Thetis Island Post Office but not God. No road required.

Let me be clear. What I mean by “road” is that there is no unique, special, single, exclusive, or superior religious leader, prophet, teacher or guru, or no unique, special, single, exclusive, or superior set of beliefs that are necessary in order to access God. Why? Because God is not a thing you access from the outside. The Bible teaches that God is the ground of all being. There are countless ways people make that truth meaningful.

Confusing the Significance of Jesus

The entire statement attributed to Jesus in John 14:6 reads, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” The reason traditional Christianity fumbles the true meaning of this verse is because it has always attached ultimate significance to the human person, Jesus of Nazareth, instead of his spiritual teachings.

The reason why Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have a Dream Speech is significant is not because Martin Luther King, Jr. himself was the civil rights savior who would single-handedly liberate the world from racism and discrimination, but because his words and life called for a courageous new order of liberation, equality and dignity, which we all are responsible for creating.

Jesus often spoke of the necessity of his death, which upset his closest followers. He explained that his death was a necessary step to shift their attachment from the physical person, Jesus, to the spiritual message that he lived and taught. Unfortunately, the Christian religion has failed to make this shift; they pay homage and place the focus on the physical Jesus but have not embraced his truth.

Who Was Jesus?

In my opinion, Christianity messed up by putting Jesus on a pedestal and creating a religion in his name. In doing so, the Christian religion practically made Jesus into a freak - virgin birth, sinless humanity, God in the flesh, blood sacrifice for humankind’s sins, resuscitated from death, and bodily beamed into space-Heaven.

Jesus did not say he is THE son of God. He said he is A son of God. In fact, when Jesus is called out because his claim is misunderstood as a statement of exclusivity, he says, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I have said you are “gods.’” Further, in John 17:22-23, I don’t know how Jesus could have made it any more clear that the oneness he spoke of having with God is a oneness we ALL share in equally.

There’s a reason why Jesus preferred the title “Son of Man” and was referred to as the “second Adam”. They both are statements of solidarity with all human beings. Jesus claimed a bond and solidarity with the whole of humankind.

Even the name “Jesus Christ” was an invention of institutional Christendom.

The Hebrew or Aramaic name for “Jesus” was “Yeshua.” The name “Jesus” originates from the Latin translation of the Greek name Iēsous, which comes from the Hebrew “Yeshua.” The English equivalent would be “Joshua.” So we could just as easily call Jesus “Joshua.” So let’s do that.

As far as titles go, which were common at that time, Joshua preferred to be called “son of man” or “son of Adam,” which has the same meaning. Jesus’ name could have easily been known to us as, Joshua ben Adam. But instead, “Christ” (from the Greek word, Christós, meaning “anointed”) is a translation of the Hebrew word Māšîaḥ, and became used as a messianic title for Jesus. The title was chosen and written into the New Testament.

God is spirit and takes on human expression in people. Joshua ben Adam taught that all people must relate to God in the spirit of his name. Think of this in light of the name Joshua ben Adam. The “son of man” or “son of Adam” is a statement of human solidarity. In other words, relating to God in the name of Joshua ben Adam means we come to God in solidarity with all humankind. The church has never embraced this radical solidarity of Josuha ben Adam, and has instead pit people against one another in the name of God.

This radical solidarity was the way of Joshua. It included the idea that no person is separate or separated from God. Joshua once taught that if one comes to worship God with a sacrifice but discovers he is in conflict with his neighbor that he should leave his sacrifice at the altar and go make amends. On another occasion, Joshua challenged people to extend this line of solidarity to include even one’s “enemy.” He equated service to God as caring for the lowliest and least among them, and spoke of loving God and loving others as two sides of the same coin.

One can only relate to God in the name and spirit of Joshua ben Adam because God is inseparable from people. There is no “us” and “them.” Joshua ben Adam would reject any religion that advocates hatred, violence, and division against others. He once said that merely speaking a diminishing term against another person is a violation of his way. And yet too often modern Christianity has fashioned a gospel that is built on demeaning humankind by asserting the idea that people are bad at the core, repulsive to God, and deserve eternal torment.

The world mistakenly thought that it was his divinity that made Josuha ben Adam special. Instead, it was his humanity. Being divine is easy, it’s just what we are. Making it human is the challenge. This is the legacy that the one we call “Jesus” left behind. It’s easy being divine OR human, it’s epic to be divine AND human.

The Christian religion’s version of the salvation of the world is that the physical Jesus will someday return to earth and straighten everything out. Where is the logic in this? Jesus was already here once and the mess and misery of the world were not resolved. In fact, Jesus never said his mission was to single-handedly save the world. Instead, he said that his mission was to bear witness to and demonstrate the truth that would.

The colossal mistake of the Christian religion was building its salvation plan around the physical acts of Jesus in the world rather than what they meant in the spiritual realm—that is, in the “heavenly dimension” in us. It is an elevated state of mind. That is where we experience the reality.

The message of Jesus to the world was that there is no separation between ourselves and the ultimate reality that is at the heart of all things, which we most experience as love, peace, happiness and belonging.

When Jesus said, “I AM the truth”, he was saying that he was a human expression of this ultimate truth and reality. Jesus wanted humankind to know that we are not separated, divided, or in conflict with this transcendent reality we touch and feel deep within our hearts.

When Jesus said “no one comes to the Father except through me,” Jesus was saying that the entire paradigm of separation - separation from love, separation from belonging, separation from worth, separation from hope, separation from wholeness - is a farce. We will never know these realities fully in that paradigm of separation, which requires striving to achieve them. The only way of knowing them is through the truth that Jesus demonstrated, namely that these realities are knit into the very nature and essence of our being.

Jesus was basically saying, “You strive to be right with God, yet I have shown you that you and God are not separated but one. There is no other truth to invent or scheme up. Even if you tried, you could not ever come up with anything better than the way it already is.”

Jesus said, “I AM the truth.”

He didn’t say “I KNOW the truth,” as if truth is a piece of knowledge held by the mind. Neither did he say, “I HAVE the truth,” as if truth is a possession you can pass along to another. Jesus said, “I AM the truth.”

Truth is a reality at the level of being.

Truth is not something outside to be discovered, it is an actuality inside to be realized. What is this actuality? Oneness with God. This is your true Self.

Jesus is the truth that God and humankind are one. This is the truth that sets you free.

3. The words of Jesus in John 14:6 are not a Jesus-only gospel

Alternative 3 is that the words attributed to Jesus in John 14:6 are not best understood through the lens of traditional Christian theology. Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Some logical questions about these words of Jesus would be:

How should we understand Jesus as “the way?”
How should we understand Jesus as “the truth?”
How should we understand Jesus as “the life?”
What does it mean to “come to the Father”?
In what sense is Jesus the only way?

Speaking of Occam’s razor, on several occasions Jesus spoke of the preeminence of love. For example, in Matthew 22:36-40 Jesus said:

“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

It seems clear from this and other statements of Jesus that love is the highest and ultimate truth. In fact, one of the few places where the Bible explicitly defines God (1 John 4:7-8) asserts that “God is love”:

“Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

One could make a credible argument that when Jesus says “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” he was saying that the “way”, “truth”, and “life” is love, and that God can only be known in, through, by and as love. I realize this option may sound like sentimentality or naivete, but is it?

I could make the case that the greatest single need and desire of humankind is love, and that the greatest power we possess as human beings is the power to love. One could say that our greatest freedom is always being able to choose love, and that there is no higher purpose than to be love. Love is the ultimate fulfillment of all philosophy, religion or spirituality, and the highest expression of what it means to be human.

One could paraphrase John 14:6 with this love option as follows:

“I have shown you that love is the way, and the truth and the life. It is only through love that God can be known.”

I realize this interpretation is perhaps not the most dazzling. I get it. Love??? That sounds so simplistic, trite and cliché. On the surface it doesn’t seem to have all those deep and extravagant theological theories and explanations. But where have all those theological theories gotten us? The Penal Substitutionary Theory (in my view, the most convoluted of them all) gave us the Jesus-only gospel. And where has the Jesus-only gospel gotten us? Division, animosity, hatred, violence, war… and countless billions of people suffering eternal conscious torment.

I know “love” sounds simplistic. But the other day I sat down and thought long and hard about it, and I could not come up with one problem, one challenge, one difficulty, one example of human suffering that could not be solved with love.

I don’t mean fake, sweet, saccharin, empty, hollow, weak, shallow, lip service, token, sanctimonious, conditional, convenient, polite, egocentric… “love”. I mean… well… like… Jesus love. Selfless, courageous, unflinching, fearless, gritty, sweaty, messy, audacious, unshakeable, sacrificial, tenacious, unwavering… love. The kind of love that won’t stop in the face of death… even death on a cross.

Maybe Jesus was special not because he was more divine than the rest of us, but because he was courageously more human than most. It’s the humanity of Jesus that won’t let me leave him behind even after I walked away from the religion that claims his name. It takes guts to be human the way Jesus was.

Cornel West wrote,

“To know Jesus is to live dangerously, honestly, freely - to step in the name of love as if you may land on nothing, yet to keep on stepping because the something that sustains you no empire can give you and no empire can take away.”

What is love…

if not working toward a world of peace, liberty and justice for all, and to honor the inherent and equal worth and dignity of every person
if not seeking to alleviate human suffering and to address the root or systemic causes of such suffering
if not being mindful of every word you speak, every action you take, every decision you make, every interaction you have, every attitude you display, every motivation you act upon, in light of how it impacts the hearts and spirit of others
if not to refuse to act in hate, malevolence, animosity, gossip, deceit, slander, vindictiveness, insensitivity and indifference
if not to take up the cause of the forgotten, marginalized, excluded, oppressed, victimized and vulnerable
if not to see the worth, good, humanity and potential in every human being
if not to approach each other with the mindset of building one another up, rather than tearing each other down
if not to relate to one another out of goodness, decency, kindness, civility and goodwill
if not accepting that we are all sisters and brothers of one human family,
if not the courage to protect, defend and aid those who are vulnerable, marginalized, unseen and forgotten.

If this is not love, what is it?

The interpretation of John 14:6 that the way, the truth and the life and the way to God is love may be both the simplest explanation and the most profound.

Jesus: Hello and Goodbye

Traditional Christianity has never let the physical Jesus or Joshua ben Adam be dead. We resuscitated him from the grave to worship Jesus and create a religion in his name. But the thing we will not do is live his truth.

Can we let Jesus be dead? Hasn’t he done enough? What else is there for him to do. 2,000 years later, and we still will not let Jesus come down from the cross.

Can we not let Jesus rest in peace or allow him his transition to what’s next? Must we demand his return to fix everything? Aren’t we supposed to be doing that?

Religion created a problem that doesn’t exist, and forced Jesus to bodily rise from the dead to fix it. Jesus told the world he had to go in order for us to truly get it, but then religion rolled away the stone, copyrighted his name and crowned him God.

Do we need Jesus to be alive in bodily form for him to matter?

Why can’t the spirit of Jesus be alive as we live our own lives with the love, courage, wisdom, compassion, humanity and authenticity that characterized his life?

Why can’t Jesus still be alive in and through the truth, values and convictions he lived and demonstrated?

Why can’t Jesus be alive in our own commitment to stand with the victimized, marginalized and oppressed?

Why can’t Jesus be alive by honoring his memory with our own audacity to speak truth to power?

Why can’t Jesus be alive in our tears for the suffering of the world and our commitment to the liberation of all humankind?

Why can’t Jesus be alive in our journey of fully actualizing the truth of being both divine and human?

In this sense, Jesus is still alive. Why is this not enough? Why can’t we see this Jesus in and as one another?

If Jesus is “the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world”, it is because Jesus lived his life in the purity of his convictions, vulnerably flung his heart open to the world, and shattered the illusion of separation from God, from which every sorrow in the world is born.

Isn’t that enough?

For some years now I have been working on the Religion-Free Bible (RFB). I re-wrote one of the final conversations between Jesus and his disciples:

Jesus said to them, “The time is coming soon when I must go.”
“You cannot leave us, Jesus. How could we carry on without you?”
“You must find me in yourself.”
“How can that be? There’s only one Jesus.”
Jesus said, “The life you have seen in, as, and through me is also your life. We share in that one life together. If I stay, you will think that this is about me, and miss the life I am speaking of.”
“But should we not elevate you to the highest place among men and worship you?”
“Only do as I did, and heed that life and spirit that is within you. Listen to its promptings. Follow what it shows and tells you. This is the way.”
Jesus walked away from them. He felt their dismay. At some distance he heard one say, “How can Jesus leave us now? This was all about him.”
Jesus stopped and turned back and with their eyes fixed upon him, Jesus said with a soft face, “No friends. This was all about you. It was always you.”

In Summary:

Traditional Christianity’s Jesus-only gospel means countless billions of people will face a tragic fate of eternal conscious torment.
There are many theological theories about what the life and death of Jesus means, but the simplest one we won’t accept.
Maybe Jesus was special not because he was more divine than the rest of us, but because he was courageously more human than most.
The interpretation of John 14:6 that the way, the truth and the life and the way to God is love may be both the simplest explanation and the most profound.
As Americans, the presidential election deeply impacted people in many different ways. For my part, this post about love is my small contribution this week. I will post my weekly “Week in Review” this weekend, and then continue with my regular article schedule next week. If you find what I share meaningful, please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support the effort. Thank you :)
I received my first piece of mail at the Thetis Island Post Office. Interestingly enough it was from a Substack subscriber who sent me a book he published, Notes on Nothing: The Joy of Being Nobody.