Jesus was a man. Jesus lived. We love Jesus because we were taught as children how kind and nice and powerful and miraculous he was. While I sang in the Episcopal choir, I was still confirmed and had the good fortune to be given a bible with a new testament with an apocrypha where all that Jesus was reported to have said is written in red.
When I write songs about the words in red, I always mean the apocrypha, for it was an experience to read those red words. To me it said Jesus was all those things I had been told and that he was to be considered a teacher/mentor. He gives us the beautiful and succinct golden rule to live by: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." A quick check with the golden rule, and you can make up your mind about how to behave in any given situation. It teaches us compassion and thoughtful living and gives us a check and balance to live by. I love the golden rule.
But I also distinctly heard him say he is our brother and that we could emulate him but that we should not exalt him but our mutual Father. He tells us there is life after death. He is powerful. He is a social nobody. He is growing in strength, not by military strength, but through love and miraculous works. He has lost years. He befriends the outcasts. Jesus is a rebel. Jesus had a temper.
Still I cannot swallow the idea of drinking Jesus' blood and eating his body because he died to save our sins. How does that work exactly? I don't see how it computes.
I think it was a political murder and people added some zing to control the potential uprising of the masses.
If I am wrong, I am down the chute to hell and I bet my 3 children's immortal souls in the bargain.
The only way I can recognize the Jesus I met through those red words is to proceed with love and compassion, guided by the golden rule. It is a beautifully organized chaos in this world from the spiders web to the cosmos. How could our existence have a trick ending? For surely it is a trick if only the people who parrot the right words are destined for heaven like the Christians say.
Even in the Episcopal church where hell is not often mentioned, I was afraid for my Jewish friends, until I kicked the religion habit and branched out to my own personal Church of KD where all beautiful souls go to heaven because that only makes sense.
I feel brave for shutting my ears to bible-thumping-men-in-white-shoes. I only did it because I vowed to never tell my children anything but verifiable truth. If I didn't know so, we'd look it up (a librarian-ish tendency I've had all my life)
Having very intelligent, genius children, I decided to approach religion like some people think this and some people think that, introducing them to a range of religious ideas instead of indoctrinating them with the faith I grew up with.
This surprised me, although I remember thinking maybe my children would give me insight to my questions someday if I just gave them the facts. We did have a church for awhile, because I thought they would like the social aspects (but they didn't) So we quit and took nature walks instead.
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