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A Conversation with Thomas Moore Best selling author of Care of the Soul talks about the meaning of the Gospels and the soul of medicine. Interview by Matt Laughlin -- Fall 2009, Vol 5, Issue 17 -- Download the PDF 
UH (Unified Health): Thanks for accepting our invitation to interview, Thomas! TM (Thomas Moore): My pleasure; I was looking forward to it. UH: I have to say while I was personally intrigued by your new book, Writing in the Sand: Jesus and the Soul of the Gospels, I wasn't really sure how an interview focused partly on this book would fit with our readership of holistic health practitioners. But then I heard about your upcoming conference and once I read the book I can definitely see how the four central messages you elaborate on totally apply to medicine. I understand you studied the Gospels by removing them from their current and historical contexts in order to focus more closely on the writings themselves, with a strong emphasis on the imagery, story and poetic significance. Would you elaborate on your methodology and intention in writing this work? TM: Yes. It might be helpful to put this in context for myself, too. I have been a psychotherapist for 30 years and have been very interested in the subject of healing in general. After writing Care of the Soul, which was published in 1992, I began immediately getting invitations from medical schools and conferences to come and speak. It surprised me at first, but then I realized it isn't so surprising since healthcare is essentially a souful enterprise. Fifteen years later I have just completed a book called Care of the Soul in Medicine. It's at the publishers now and will be out right after Christmas. I go directly from this book on the Gospels to my book on medicine. These two subjects are very close to my heart and in my mind. They're not separate. One way that I approached this issue is through my work as a therapist. I discovered - and it wasn't too much of a surprise, just the extent of it - that many of the emotional and relationship problems people have can be traced back to their understanding or misunderstanding of the Gospels. People grew up reading these texts and having them explained by preachers who often tended to be highly moralistic, inducing guilt and anxiety. This guilt and anxiety has a very negative impact on relationships. In my work as a therapist I saw patient after patient coming to me with a story of how they were having trouble in their marriages or various difficulties in their own lives. And we would begin talking about the way they were taught the Gospels. What I have done in this book, Writing in the Sand, is present the Gospels without guilt and anxiety. That's one of my intentions. It's not that I wanted to apply that idea myself but that I think it's there in the Gospels. When examined closely, I don't think the basis for all of that psychological trouble is there in the texts themselves. UH: So one healing influence of this book is the diminishment of guilt? TM: Yes, and as I say, I don't really start with that idea. I look in the Gospels and I don't see that kind of punitive, guilt inducing figure anywhere. Jesus is not that figure at all. I wonder where all this fire and brimstone came from. It's not there in the Gospels. As a matter of fact, in the Gospels Jesus is often being differentiated from the religious teachers who are much more moralistic. UH: So while this was not a core intention in writing the book it's certainly an aspect of the work that emerged when you examined the writings themselves. TM: That's right. It wasn't a core focus. I really didn't know what I was going to come up with in looking at the texts. Going back to methodology, what I did was first set aside the bias of interpretation of over 2,000 years. An interesting thing happened: a new idea of what the Gospels were about came through in key words. I'm very interested in language. In all my books I really focus closely on words. I looked at the Greek words and I looked at how they were used in earlier time before Jesus, trying to get a sense of what their fuller meaning might be. What I found is that in many cases the Greek dictionary I used, which is a very large, sophisticated one, will tell a meaning of a word and then note that in the new testament it means something else. And I wondered why do they say this? UH: That's curious. RETURN HOME from Thomas Moore interview |
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