We will look to the wisdom of Winnie-the-Pooh to teach us valuable lessons on how easy it is to fall into the trap of Envy, and also a delightful story from the Gnostic Acts of Thomas, or Thomas Didymus, the apostle also known as the Twin.
You might ask, why are we discussing Winnie-the-Pooh, Piglet, and Eeyore, and also the Gnostic Acts of Thomas, in the same video? Are we implying that both of these works have equal standing for consideration as rising to the standards of canonicity?
Actually, that is exactly what we are implying. There are many scurrilous books and videos circulating that somehow the early church was hiding something or denigrating somebody when they decided that Gnostic works were heretical and should be suppressed. The truth is, the Gnostic works are heretical, and should not be regarded as Scriptural, but on occasion there are moral lessons to be gleaned from these works, as long as discard the chaff, the heresies.
YouTube video for this blog: https://youtu.be/Nq_UwpKe84A
YouTube script with book links: https://www.slideshare.net/BruceStrom1/do-not-envy-lessons-from-eeyores-birthday-party-and-the-gnostic-acts-of-thomas
We will learn something about Gnosticism. Most Gnostic systems have heretical views on intimacy, they either are overly ascetic, saying that physical intimacy is evil because it is associated with the mortal world, or are sexually libertine, saying that since this world is evil and holds no power over us holy ones, we can do anything we like, since evil can’t harm us.
EEYORE’S BIRTHDAY PARTY
The true measure of a classic children’s story is that it can teach moral lessons to both children and adults, and that adults can enjoy reading them even if they have no children, and that is especially true for Winnie-the-Pooh, which includes the story of Eeyore’s birthday party, which teaches us valuable lessons on the danger of the sin of ENVY, and how envy can creep into our souls without being noticed.
Benjamin Hoff, in the Tao of Pooh, has excerpts from Winnie-the-Pooh on Eeyore’s birthday party, so rather than duplicating his work, I will simply quote from these pages of his delightful book:
Benjamin Hoff narrates, “Let’s take another example of How Things Work Out: Eeyore’s birthday party.”
“Pooh discovered, after Eeyore told him,” after Pooh found Eeyore so sad, sad even for Eeyore, and he asked him why he was so sad, and Eeyore moaned and said it was his birthday, and waved about, and said, “Look at all my birthday presents,” and Pooh, clueless, said he did not see anything at all, at which time he told Pooh, “that it was Eeyore’s birthday.”
Christopher Robin remembers:
“So, Pooh decided to give him something. He went home to get a jar of honey to use as a birthday present, and talked things over with Piglet, who decided to give Eeyore a balloon that he’d saved from a party of his own.”
“But after a while, Pooh began to get hungry.”
“So, Pooh sat down and took the top off his jar of honey. ‘Lucky, I brought this with me,’ he thought. ‘Many a bear going out on a warm day like this would never have thought of bringing a little something with him.’ And he began to eat.”
“’Now let me see,’ he thought, as he took his last lick of the inside of the jar, “where was I going? Ah, yes, Eeyore.’ Pooh got up slowly.”
“And then, suddenly, he remembered. He had eaten Eeyore’s birthday present!”
“Well, most of it, anyway. Fortunately, he still had the jar,” this would make a nice birthday jar. “After all, it was a nice jar, even with nothing in it.”
Christopher Robin remembers that “Piglet had gone back to his own house to get Eeyore’s balloon. He held it very tightly against himself, so that it shouldn’t blow away, and he ran as fast as he could so as to get to Eeyore before Pooh did; for he thought that he would like to be the first one to give a present, just as if he had thought of it without being told by anybody.”
This is a subtle form of envy, wanting to look better than your neighbor, and this is envy because you are tempted to damage the reputation of your neighbor to enhance your own reputation.
But how can Piglet be envious? We will allow Christopher Robin to continue, “And running along, and thinking how pleased Eeyore would be, Piglet didn’t look where he was going, and suddenly he put his foot in a rabbit hole, fell down flat on his face. BANG!!!???***!!!,” went the balloon. BANG went the birthday present. [1]
We must ask ourselves, did bad karma punish Piglet as he was running to the house of Eeyore? Was Piglet guilty of both the Judeo-Christian sin of ENVY, when he schemed to look better than his best friend Pooh, and also the ancient Greek sin of HUBRIS, a sense of arrogance that so easily sneaks up on all of us?
We first discuss this concept of hubris in our discussion of the Iliad by Homer, where Achilles is guilty of hubris in the Trojan Wars, when he kills the Trojan Hector in retaliation for his killing of Patroclus, friend of Achilles, on the battlefield, and Achilles then drags the body of Patroclus behind his chariot, circling the fortified city of Troy, for days and days, angering the gods for his disrespect for the dead and the family of the dead Hector.
Although hubris is not emphasized as much in the Decalogue as it is in the epic poems in ancient warrior cultures, you can see the punishment of hubris as a secondary theme in many Old Testament stories.
The book we are quoting from, the Tao of Pooh, is a delightful little book on how you can see the principles of Taoism in these delightful children’s stories. Dr Google also told us about another book that discusses how the unassuming Winnie-the-Pooh can teach us Christian moral lessons, The Gospel According to Winnie the Pooh, which we ordered, and if it is interesting, we will cut a video reviewing this book.
We will continue in our story, when Piglet arrives at the meadow where Eeyore lives, and we are not sure whether Benjamin Hoff is speaking, or Christopher Robin is remembering:
“Balloon?,” said Eeyore to Piglet. “You did say balloon? One of those big colored things you blow up? Gaiety, song-and-dance, here we are and there we are?”
“Yes, but I am very sorry, Eeyore, but when I was running along to bring it to you, I fell down.”
“Dear, dear, how unlucky! You ran too fast, I expect. You didn’t hurt yourself, Little Piglet?”
“No, but I, I, oh Eeyore, I burst your balloon!”
There was a very long silence, a long, Eeyore type of silent sadness.
The dialogue seems so free and easy, but the author has carefully crafted the dialogue to teach children who read it, and us, how to teach children, an all who read it, how to care for each other, how to be concerned for each other.
Eeyore is pretty much ignored in his thistle patches in the forest, but Piglet says he trips on a run, and what concerns Eeyore, Are you hurt? Can you imagine a child asking that? So, the characters in the forty acre wood are really ideal children, the children you wish were yours.
The forty acres wood of Pooh bear is truly a place safe for children, a place totally without guile, as you can see from the sign outside Piglet’s house, TRESPASSERS WILL, and adults quickly add, BE SHOT, but Piglet imagines that the sign states that his grandfather, Trespassers William, lived in this house before him.
To enter the Kingdom of Heaven, we must be without guile, like Pooh, we must be like children, as Jesus exhorts us,
“Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.”[2]
The remarkable Apostolic writing that most explicitly discusses how we should be without guile is the Shepherd of Hermas, which teaches us,
“Be simple and guileless, be like the children who are ignorant of the wickedness that ruins the life of men.”
The Shepherd of Hermas instructs us how to cultivate the purity in our hearts by avoiding slander and covetousness, as he continues:
“Speak evil of no-one, and do not revel in anyone who speaks evil of another.” You sin when you listen to slander, and when you believe the slander, you become a slanderer. “Slander is evil and an unsteady demon, never peaceful, always stirring up discord.”[3] Envy and slander are evil sisters.
The forty-acre wood of Pooh bear is a safe oasis for our children, an oasis each of us should seek to construct for our own children, and as much as possible in a sinful world, a place we should construct for ourselves. The forty-acre wood is truly a place without guile, where there is never any thought of anyone calling anybody else names, a place without slanders, a place where envy is but a fleeting thing beaten back by the lack of guile and malevolence.
So, we continue with our un-birthday party, Benjamin Hoff is speaking, or Christopher Robin is remembering:
“My balloon?” said Eeyore at long last.
Piglet nodded.
“My birthday balloon?”
“Yes, Eeyore,” said Piglet, sniffing a little. “Here it is, with many happy returns of the day.” And he gave Eeyore the small piece of damp rag.
“Is this it?” said Eeyore, a little surprised.
Piglet nodded.
“My present?”
Piglet nodded again.
And just then, Pooh arrived.
“I’ve brought you a little present,” said Pooh excitedly. “It’s a Useful Pot.” This useful pot “is for putting things in.”
Then Eeyore discovered that, since the balloon was no longer as big as Piglet, it could easily be put away in a Useful Pot and taken out whenever it was needed, which certainly couldn’t be done with the typical Unmanageable Balloon.
“I’m very glad,” said Pooh happily, “that I thought of giving you a Useful Pot to put things in.”
“I’m very glad,” said Piglet happily, “that I thought of giving you Something to put in a Useful Pot.”
But Eeyore wasn’t listening. He was taking the balloon out, and putting it back again, as happy as could be.[4]
How content Eeyore was with his pot and his balloon in this story. Perhaps the story is not about Eeyore and his birthday and his useful pot and his balloon to put in the useful pot, but that Eeyore realizes that though Pooh and Piglet weren’t perfect, since they almost forgot his birthday, but that in the end they were his friends, genuine friends who cared about him. Realizing this, Eeyore is not at all tempted to be envious of those who receive better birthday presents than useful pots and balloons to put in useful pots.
Then Benjamin Hoff has some esoteric Taoist kind of lessons that he drew from this subdued un-birthday party, but I think the essence of what he was saying can be summed up from the verses of my favorite Doris Day song, Que Sera, Sera:
When I was just a little girl
I asked my mother, what will I be
Will I be pretty? Will I be rich?
Here’s what she said to me:
Que sera, sera
Whatever will be, will be
The future’s not ours to see
Que sera, sera
What will be, will be.[5]
The reality for some of us, and for all of us some of the time, is that when our birthdays are forgotten;. sometimes there is Pooh or Piglet who steps up to remember our birthday party. When kids are younger, how often are their parents too busy to take them to the park? When the kids are older, with kids of their own, how often are they too busy to visit the grandparents, sometimes even complaining about how the grandparents really do not spend time with their kids? How quickly we can fall into the gateway sin of envy when we feel life is not fair, when our loved ones don’t really find time to show their love to us.
How many retirees want to say to their grown kids, who have families and lives of their own, “Kids, you have my permission to just skip the funeral, I promise I won’t complain, and instead bring the family to visit me on my birthday, or in the summer, or let us do a cruise together? After all, flights are cheaper if you book them months in advance, rather than booking them on the spur of the moment, just before I am lowered six feet under.”
Which is the theme of the recent 2018 Disney movie, Christopher Robin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Robin_(film)
But the truth is, sometimes there is no Pooh or Piglet to comfort us. Sometimes we face injustice and cruelty. But regardless, we are the guardians of our thoughts and emotions. We are responsible for our happiness, nobody else.
Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic philosopher, advises us in his Meditations to “begin the morning by saying to yourself, ‘I shall meet with the busybody, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these things happen to them because they are ignorant of what is good and evil.’” “I can neither be injured by any of these, for no one can fix for me what is ugly, nor can I be angry with my kinsman, nor hate him.”
SAVE UP TREASURES IN HEAVEN
The story in the Gnostic Acts of Thomas references the parable of the Rich Main in Luke, who the Lord bids not to store his treasures in barns on earth, but to rather gather treasure in heaven.
We must not be like the rich man in the parable in Luke: “The land of a rich man brought forth plentifully; and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ And he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones; and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; take your ease, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you; and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So is he who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”[6]
We also have the exhortation the Sermon on the Mount:
“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal.”[7]
Giving alms to the poor, and being generous to your neighbor, is an antidote to prevent the evil vine of envy from growing around and choking your heart. This link is made in the Catholic Catechism, which references the Apostolic Work cited, the Shepherd of Hermas. Generosity to our neighbor is an antidote to the sins of slander, theft, and hatred for your neighbor, as well as being an antidote to envy.
Other Church Fathers reaffirm this teaching, including St Gregory of Nyssa:
Why has the Acts of Thomas been denounced as a heretical Gnostic work?
Thomas the Apostle was known as Thomas Didymus in the Greek, and Didymus is a nickname meaning the Twin. The Scriptures, Tradition, and History are all silent as to exactly why Thomas was called the twin, maybe that was just part of his name, we do not know. But the Acts of Thomas imagines that Thomas was the twin brother of Jesus, which contradicts all the theological formulations agreed upon in the Seven Ecumenical Councils of the ancient world. How can twins be part of the Trinity? Would Jesus’ twin brother share in His Divinity? Perhaps this would support the heretical view that both Jesus and Thomas were both born mortal, and Jesus’ divinity descended upon him after he was born, perhaps when he was baptized by John in the Jordan.
Anyway, in our video we will mostly use either Manichee or pagan images, we do not want to support the idea that Gnosticism is merely a different type of Christianity. Manicheism is the best known and most successful of the Gnostic systems, St Augustine fell under its spell in his youth, it also spread to China.
The Acts of Thomas also has a heretical view of marital intimacy. Thomas travels to India at the time the king is throwing a feast to celebrate the marriage of his only daughter, and kings are always eager for their daughters to marry and have children to continue the royal bloodline. But our Gnostic Jesus miraculously appears in the bridal chamber of our royal couple, and he proceeds to instruct them, No Children Allowed! This Gnostic Jesus says what the real Jesus would never say, “If you abandon this filthy intercourse, you become holy temples, pure and free from afflictions and pains both manifest and hidden, and you will not be burdened about cares for life and for children, the end of which is destruction.” After all, your children might turn into robbers, or demons may possess them, or you will turn into robbers to earn a living to feed your children.
And Dad, the King, is really upset when he learns that his daughter and son-in-law have decided to follow the heretical advice of this Gnostic Jesus, when his daughter proudly announces she will live the life of a nun, although she is married: “I will have no intercourse with a short-lived husband, the end of which is remorse and bitterness of soul, because I am yoked with the true man,” the heretical Gnostic Jesus, who is not Jesus at all, who is not the Jesus who turned water into wine at the Wedding of Cana. St Paul explicitly rejects the idea that married men or women should live their married lives as virgins, withholding intimacy can be most uncaring.
Now that we have established that our Gnostic Jesus is not the real Jesus, but is just a storybook Jesus, we learn that in the first chapter of Acts our Gnostic Jesus tells his twin brother Thomas,
“Fear not, Thomas, go to India and preach the word there, for my grace is with you.”
But Thomas would not obey and said, “Send me where you will, but somewhere else! For I am not going to the Indians.”
So, what does our Gnostic Jesus do? He sells his twin brother Thomas into slavery, to a merchant serving the king of India, King Gundaphorus, since the merchant and king could use a slave who knows carpentry, and the merchant sets sail to India, with Thomas as his slave.[8] This was not a very nice thing to do, you did not want to be sold into slavery in the ancient world. If you were unlucky, that would mean a very miserable and short life.
https://youtu.be/poyvJajCXnE and https://youtu.be/O67cmVRvBtA
THOMAS BUILDS THE KING A PALACE IN HEAVEN
Now we come to the main story, where King Gundaphorus contracts with Thomas to build him an earthly palace, but instead Thomas builds the king a palace in Heaven. We will admit right off the bat that this is likely a situation where lying is not permitted, because we do not want to justify a Gnostic lie, and because the lie does not directly save lives, as did the lies told to save the Jews of Schindler’s List.
Although Thomas is a carpenter, the king has doubts about whether he really knows something about building palaces, for he proposes to build his palace in the winter rather than the summer. And Thomas makes a big show about measuring the land on which the palace will be built, and planning where the doors and windows and bakehouse and aqueducts will be built. So the king leaves him lots of money and departs.
So how does Thomas go about building this palace, not on earth, but in heaven? The Acts of Thomas tell the story, “Thomas took all the money and dispensed it, going about the towns and villages round about, distributing it and bestowing alms on the poor and afflicted, giving them relief, saying, ‘The king knows that he will receive a royal recompense, but the poor must for the present be refreshed.’”
The king then sends an inquiry to Thomas on how the construction of his earthly palace is progressing, and Thomas does not miss a beat, he assures him that now all he needs to do is build the roof for the palace, and more money is needed! Which the poor need, because the poor always need more money, and more money they will get as soon as the king sends it.
The king is curious about his newly constructed palace, his friends answer his inquiries: “Neither has Thomas built a palace, nor has he done anything else of what he has promised to do, but he goes about the towns and villages, giving to the poor, teaching a new God, healing the sick, driving out demons, we think he is a magician.” “Thomas continually fasts and prays, eating only bread with salt, wearing one garment in both fine weather or foul winter, and takes nothing from anyone, and what he has he gives to others.”
In America, Thomas would likely be thrown in jail for fraud, and in ancient India, “the king smote his face with his hands, shaking his head for a long time.”
How does this delightful story resolve itself? The king’s brother Gad dies, and in the Acts of Thomas, “the angels took the soul of Gad into Heaven, showing him the dwellings there, asking him, ‘In what kind of place would you live?’”
And of course, Gad sees the wonderful palace Thomas has been building in Heaven for his brother, the king, but they say he cannot live there, so he asks the angels if he could visit earth and buy the palace from his brother.
The story in the Acts of Thomas says the angels agree to this, “the angels let Gad’s soul go. While they were putting grave clothes on him, his soul enters his corpse, and he said to those who stood around him: ‘Call to my brother, that I may ask of him one request.’”
The king listens to his brother’s request, his brother who was dead but is now alive again, and after he recovers from the shock of seeing his brother resurrected, he asks his brother, “Why should I give you my castle in Heaven? Ask Thomas to build for you a palace in heaven; if he built one palace, he can build two.” Now that he knows he truly has a palace in heaven, he releases Thomas from prison, he requests that Thomas pray for him, and there are Gnostic visions, [9] but the Acts of Thomas never answers the most basic question: Why can’t he share his castle in heaven with his brother?
This is not an idle question, because CS Lewis in his book, the Great Divorce, tells us one important distinction between heaven and hell: in heaven, everyone wants to be close to each other and be friends, but in hell, everyone wants to live by themselves, as far away from their neighbors as possible, because nobody likes their neighbors in hell.
The Talmud has a similar story of a first century convert to Judaism, who wished to store up treasures in heaven, King of Adiabene, who “during the famine gave away all his wealth to the poor. When his relatives criticized him for squandering his riches he replied, ‘My ancestors stored up treasures for below, but I have stored up treasures for above; they stored their treasures in a place where power can prevail, but I in a place where force is powerless. They stored up treasures of money, but I of souls. They stored up treasures for others, but I for my own good. They stored up treasures in this world, but I for the world to come.’“[10]
This story was from our video on the teachings of the medieval rabbis on DO NOT ENVY, DO NOT SLANDER.
DISCUSSION OF THE SOURCES
Winnie-the-Pooh has recently gone out of copyright, which means that the illustrations of the original book are now in the public domain, which is lucky for us. Do not make the mistake of assuming that the Disney Winnie-the-Pooh is the same as the Pooh that Milne wrote about, the original Winnie-the-Pooh is more of a contemplative philosopher, or at least a hummer of tunes. The only Disney character that is similar in temperament to the original is Tigger, and perhaps Kanga and Roo. Even the original Eeyore is more erudite than the cartoon Disney version. The exception is the recent 2018 Disney movie, Christopher Robin, that is much more faithful to the spirit of the original book, this Pooh is a mix of the Disney and Milne Pooh Bears.
We found the Acts of Thomas as one of the works in the Other Bible compilation. Several complete manuscripts of the Gnostic Acts of Thomas have been preserved, the Greek versions are the earlier versions, some of the heretical verses have been smoothed over in the Syrian manuscripts. This work should not be confused with the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, which contains mostly sayings of Jesus, though they are similar. The original manuscripts date back to the third century, long after the apostolic era, and are clearly not orthodox in their teachings.[11]
The Other Bible compilation, which on its covers says it includes ancient esoteric texts including:
- Jewish Pseudepigrapha.
- Christian Apocrypha, extensive sampling of both.
- Gnostic Scriptures (an oxymoron), with many Manichean works.
- Kabbalah, selections from the Zohar.
- Dead Sea Scrolls, including several short selections.
It also includes a sampling from pseudo-Dionysius and Plotinus.
We find fascinating the Infancy Gospels of pseudo-Matthew, which is the source for much of the iconography and art depicting the nativity of Jesus before the late Middle Ages, where Jesus was born in a cave with help from a midwife, and also the Infancy Gospel of James, and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, whose Gnostic Jesus both kills and resurrects his playmates. We may cut one or more videos on the non-canonical Infancy Gospels as videos for Christmas of 2022.
[1] Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh (New York: Penguin Books, 1987, 1982), pp. 80-82, quoting from AA Milne, The World of Pooh (USA: EP Dutton and Co, 1957, 1926), pp. 70-80.
[2] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke+18%3A16&version=NRSVCE
[3] The Pastor of Hermas, Book Two, Commandments, In the Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 2, translated by Rev F Crombie (Boston: Hendrickson Publishers, 1994, first published 1885), p. 20+.
[4] Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh, pp. 80-84, quoting from AA Milne, The World of Pooh, pp. 81-85.
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKumQCTNJOY
[6] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+12%3A16-21&version=NRSVCE
[7] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matthew+6%3A19-20&version=NRSVCE
[8] The Other Bible, edited by Willis Barnstone (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1984), The Acts of Thomas, How the Lord Sold Thomas to the Merchant Abban, pp. 465-470.
[9] The Other Bible, The Acts of Thomas, Concerning His Coming to King Gundaphorus, pp. 470-473.
[10] I cannot find my original source, this will do: https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/112276/jewish/Queen-Helena.htm and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monobaz_II
[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acts_of_Thomas and The Other Bible, The Acts of Thomas, Introduction, pp. 464-465.
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