After having written several post on the need to recalibrate certain aspects of traditional Christianity that are considered foundational to its existence, I am going to attempt to describe how recalibration can be done. I ended with the topic of theology and introduced a new approach which strictly treats Jesus as a human rather than the "only-begotten" Son of God. To be a human being is the result of a universal power that enabled life on this planet, a power that in Christian circles is called God. As such, I am calling this new approach to understanding Jesus, Jesology, a humanological approach to understanding Jesus from the perspective of his being a Jewish man living in the 1st. century C.E. Palestine.
As mentioned in other posts, I feel it is vitally important to understand Jesus as a devout 1st century Jew and what he was telling his fellow Jews about their relationship to God and each other and by extension what he is telling us today. Jesology strips away the divine veneer that Christianity has given Jesus, while accepting that this veneer was given to Jesus' story to make Jesus more appealing to the polytheistic mindset of the Roman Empire. As such, Jesology is not a theology but a type of humanology.
Theology is a highly speculative navel-gazing activity based on premises that have no basis in fact; like his supposed virgin birth, the intended purpose of his existence to be a sacrificial victim, his resurrection, and his ascension. Christian theology has been and to a large extent remains resistant to historic and scientific discoveries. Historically speaking, anyone within the ecclesial realm who possesses an inquiring and open mind like Galileo and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and are perceived as contradicting Christian dogma are likely to be treated with suspicion if not viewed as heretical. Christian theology; in particular, Christology offers a narrow perspective of Jesus based on the premise that Jesus is not only the Messiah that Jews fail to recognize but also that Jesus is the "only-begotten" Son of God. What Christology tends to sidetrack is the teachings of Jesus that were relevant to human life in his day and remain so today.
HUMAN JESUS
Jesology sees treats Jesus solely as a human. Period. If Jesus believed he was a child or a son of God as portrayed in the Synoptic Gospels, he didn't keep that to designation himself. Human Jesus did not see himself as the only made-to-order child of God. If we take the account of the vision he experienced at his baptism in the Jordan in which he heard God say, "This is my son, the beloved, in whom I am well pleased" as a factual experience, Jesus likely did not take it to mean he was the only one, but that what he personally felt and experienced applied to everyone; namely, that if everyone had a vision in which God spoke to them like he did, they too would have heard the same thing, "This is my son... this is my daughter... ." Jesus applied his experience to everyone he met.
Human Jesus saw Samaritan lepers, a Roman Centurion, and a Syro-Phoenecian woman as worthy of his attention. He marveled at the amount of trust they gave him. In fact, I would say he was surprised on their willingness to approach him. Miraculous healings attributed to Jesus appear to have involved deep-seated intentionality and faith, which is particularly evident in the story of Roman Centurion asking Jesus to heal his slave, the Syro-Phoenecian woman asking Jesus to heal her daughter, and the father at wits end on how to heal his epileptic son.
While being seen as a healer would have undoubtedly drawn people to him, his teachings were aimed at mending their interpersonal relationships which would deepen their relationship with the being-ness of God in which we find ourselves living and being loved. Human Jesus did not see himself as a divine offspring of God, but rather in a human relationship the creator of our being, "Our Father," which opened him to the understanding that every person is his sibling by virtue of being a child of God like himself. That was the primary focus of his ministry, to reestablish within the context of his Jewish faith this fundamental relationship amongst his fellow Jews. Not only are Jews a chosen people but also each Jewish person is a child of God chosen for a broader mission to the world of God's other children, their gentile siblings.
Jews understand that gentiles are also made in the image of God and thus God's children. The focus of Jesus' ministry was not to save the world en masse by being sacrificed for the sins of the world. If the world is to be saved it would be because of the ethical teachings he was giving to his fellow Jews. It would be due to the deeper relationship that Jews had to each other as God's chosen children by reaffirming their mission to be a light to world; that the world would be saved through their embrace of his teachings.
BEING HUMANE
People know God. They might call God by other names, but they know or suspect that there is a power above any human power that is responsive to our needs. Call it Being, God, or the Universe, there is a personal sense of something in us and around us that cares for us. Jesus had an abundance of that sense. Jesus called God Father to identify God as a loving and caring parent.
People can lose this caring personal sense rather easily. Perhaps the most important task of religion is to keep reminding us of this sense. Jesus defines in himself what it means to be human and (in a reversal to Chrstian theology) what is human about God. As a result we understand that being made in the image of God is what makes us humans.
In Jesus' view, God's divinity can only be comprehended in God's humanity, God's relating to the whole human condition with love, compassion, caring, forgiveness As such Jesus is our exemplar of this interrelationship between God and humankind. Throughout his life, Jesus was living into what he told us to live into, "Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect." (Matthew 5:48). Perfection in this case is not being a sinless do-gooder, but rather a humble person who knows one's faults and weaknesses as well as one's strengths and talents; a person who uses that information to foster a compassionate and caring approach towards one's fellow human beings.
Jesus does not need to be God to inspire goodness. Neither Jesus nor God never relegated the task of saving the world to only Jesus or God's self. We see in Jesus that it is relegated to all of us. If we want to save ourselves and the world we live in, Jesus points out that we have a major role to play that extends far beyond someone's (not God's) idea of being sexual moral, saying the right things, and being church-goers. It is about treating others as one's siblings, treating animals humanely, treating plants with respect because every single animal and plant species, including ourselves are dependent on each other.
Jesus was amongst the earliest environmentalist. He tells us to consider the lilies of the fields and the birds of the air. If we want to engage with God's perfect creation; God's perfection, we must protect and appreciate creation as God does. Jesus was not a doomsday sort of person. When people questioned him about the end times, he points to what we are doing in the present.
In the parable of the king overseeing the last judgment in Matthew 25, the king makes a profound concluding statement, "What you do to the least of my brethren you do to me." Generally speaking, most Christians see the King as God or Jesus, but being a parable invites us to see ourselves in the character of the king. What we do to the least of our brethren we do not only to everyone else, we do it to ourselves.
One can extend this line of thinking even further. Our brethren on this small speck of dust includes the plants and animals we share it with; the land we live on, the air we breath, and the water we drink. We humans historically have a terrible time treating each other humanely. We are just beginning to see on a larger scale an appreciation of the interconnectedness we have with all living things. We still have a long way to go as we continue to war with ourselves over things we don't really own and really don't matter.
Historically, Christianity has not done much to help with in saving ourselves and our planet home by relegating the full effect of salvation to an end time when those who believed that Jesus Christ died for their sins and kept their noses clean will get their heavenly reward. We tend to ignore the stories of Jesus conversing and communing with those who were considered sinners, the extorting tax collector, the prostitutes, and the unclean. Jesus was critical of the religious leaders of his day for their hypocrisy in applying a strict moral code on everyone they judged less than they, while giving themselves a pass because they considered themselves more righteous and deserving.
JESOLOGY
Jesus is a unique human and unlike the polytheistic mind-set of most living in the 1st century, Jesus does not need to be God. It is time to move beyond a theology that requires Jesus to be the "only begotten" Son of God and the Christianity of the Roman Empire which remains embedded in the modern Christian mind. Recalibrating Jesus back to his being a human like the rest of us and provides giving us a fresh look at what Jesus taught and why he taught it.
Jesology raises important questions. What are we make of the stories about Jesus? What are we to make of the stories of his birth, the miracle stories, and his resurrection story? Should Jesus be worshipped? How does one treat the Gospel of John, the Acts of the Epistles, the Epistles, and the Book of Revelations? Does Christianity have any relevance today?
The last question is the first question I asked at the beginning of this series on recalibrating Christianity. In my opinion, the term "Christianity" is problematic in that it implies from the start that Jesus is the Messiah Jews and Christians are still seeking within the context of their religions. Christians and Jews share this anticipation of a coming Messiah. In fact, much of Christianity is a remake of Judaism for gentiles, along with the inclusion of some Greek and Roman pagan concepts and rituals.
For most Christians in the Church today, its longstanding beliefs and doctrines about Jesus are not sustainable for the reasons I have explained in the preceding posts. People are leaving christian churches primarily because of Christianity's lack of relevance. It is hard to sincerely relate to a god/man; to someone who is not like us, who is more god than human no matter how much Christian doctrine stresses that Jesus is both true human and true God.
Human Jesus is relatable. Human Jesus' teachings are not only relatable but they are also applicable. He does not have to be God to be life-saving. He only needs to be one of us who has tried to make us understand that we are loved and cared for as children of God. It is up to us to embrace and put into practice what Jesus has taught; to allow it to inspire us in finding deeper meaning and understanding in and about our lives.
In the next post, I will begin a new series on the Recalibrated Church that is based on human Jesus.
Norm
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