Who Do You Say That I Am?

Because I grew up in Indiana and went to a Christian college, I have a lot of good friends who are Christian, conservative, and/or both. Even though I don't agree with them, I still like them. I can't say that I value their opinions, because I think their opinions are wrong. But I'm glad they're around. As another friend of mine--who is neither Christian, nor conservative, nor from Indiana--says, "I'm a progressive pluralist. I don't need the Messiah, but I do need the people who need the Messiah." 

I recently got into a discussion about faith (well, his faith and my lack of it) with an old friend from high school who grew up Pentacostal. When we were kids, he dragged me to a tent-meeting revival where some guy in a shiny suit stomped up and down the stage, shrieking and bellowing and howling and getting everyone all worked up--kind of like Hitler--and then people started jabbering in tongues. I suppose he was trying to save my soul, but I grew up between Judaism and Presbyterianism, and thus used to rather more restraint in religious expression. Plus I was already entertaining doubts about Christianity. So the experience pretty much just scared the shit out of me. 

So my pal's attempt to save my soul--or save it more, since I was still, I guess, nominally a Christian at that point--sort of backfired. Being stuck out in the wilderness in a gigantic tent with a bunch of people who are having seizures and babbling in some kind of weird unearthly language is just... well, it's fucking scary, is what it is. 

My pal is now a Baptist minister, which means he's calmed down a little from Pentecostalism and speaking in tongues and snake-handling, but he's still way too nuts for me. But we're still friends. 

Anyhow, we were having this discussion, and he said, "Okay, who do you say that Jesus was?" 

Now, anyone who grew up Christian or has read the New Testament knows that this question is code. There's a verse--I think it's in Matthew--where Simon Peter is sort of hemming and hawing about who Jesus is--"Well, some people say you're this, and some say you're that"--and Jesus calls him out and says, "But who do YOU say that I am?" At which point Peter acknowledges that Jesus is the son of God. 

But the question is even more coded than that, as anyone who grew up Christian in the 80's can tell you. There was a guy named Josh McDowell who claims that he used to be an atheist, but then he applied Logic (!) and Reason (!?) and Critical Consideration of the Evidence (!?!?!) to the Gospels, changed his mind, and wrote a book called "Evidence that Demands a Verdict!", which I read. 

There was a sequel, called, presumably, "More Evidence that Demands More Verdicts!" but I'm not sure about that because I didn't read it. 

The central argument of the book turns on that question that Jesus asked Peter and runs like this. Based on his statements, Jesus was one of three things: Lord, Liar, or Lunatic. Either he was crazy, or lying, or he really WAS the divinely-conceived Son of God. And certainly he wasn't crazy, because he did all these miracles that crazy people can't do. And certainly he wasn't lying, because he rose from the dead. And we know he wasn't lying because there are eyewitness accounts of people who saw him walking around! So he must be God. QE frickin' D. Now repent and be baptized. 

Well, the Lord, Liar, or Lunatic argument is clever. I'll give it that much. And ol' Josh McDowell has a gift for alliteration. But the argument is flawed. It doesn't work. It's based on a faulty premise, as a short parable (see, I'm giving Jesus his props by ripping off his teaching tool) should show us. 

It would be eminently possible for someone who was not me to write a letter that says that "I, JP, do hereby solemnly swear that I am a werewolf. And I'm really sorry about all those people I ate." They could then slip it into my file cabinet, where I assure you, I would never find it. And then, years after I died, someone might find this letter, read it, and say, "Oh my God... the late lamented JP said he was a werewolf!" 

Which would then inevitably lead them to one of three conclusions: that I was nuts, lying, or was actually a werewolf. Except that none of those would necessarily be true, because I didn't write that letter. 

Modern tools--the Historical-Critical Method, scientific textual analysis, archaeology, the study of comparative religions, etc.--have given us very serious reason to doubt that Jesus of Nazareth ever said, or did, many of the things that are attributed to him--more specifically, the supernatural elements of the story: the virgin birth, the miracles, the death and resurrection, and, most importantly, the claims to divinity. 

Those all seem to have been added later. We'll never know for sure, since we no longer have the originals. But all the indications are that those elements were put in there at, probably not coincidentally, the point at which the early church was changing from a Jewish sect to a Gentile religion. This is a crucial distinction that bears repeating: a Jewish sect versus a Gentile religion. 

And it would have made very good sense to put them in there, especially if you're trying to attract Gentile converts in the Roman-era Levant. The Greeks--who were all over the eastern Mediterranean at that time (and still are, actually)--were no strangers to the idea of the gods coming down and impregnating human women. Zeus did it all the time. He'd look down from Mount Olympus, see a chick he thought was hot, and then he'd go plank her. Greek mythology is absolutely full to burstin' with stories of half-human, half-divine beings--Herakles, Perseus, Pollux, Castor, Dionysus, Helen of Troy, to name a few--who performed these acts of heroism impossible to mere mortals. 

Sound familiar? 

Central to the Egyptian cosmology is the story of Horus, the god who dies and is resurrected. Bill Maher in "Religulous" does a very good job of elucidating the Jesus/Horus similarities. He also does it with "Walk Like an Egyptian" by the Bangles playing in the background, so it's even cooler. 

The Jesus story, when considered in the context of its place and time, emerges as just one of about a zillion of the Near Eastern mystery religions--the syncretistic cults that combined elements of Persian, Greek, Jewish, pagan, Roman, Egyptian, and other religious cultures. 

I've heard it argued that, "Of COURSE the Jesus story resembles the other religions of the time! God specifically designed it to do so! That way, it would have made sense to the people who were hearing it!" 

Which, leaving aside the obvious question of how in the hell the preachees would have known which Mystery Religion to choose, is a little like saying that God put oak trees in Massachusetts, just like there are in England, so that the pilgrims would feel a little more at home there. 

But higher criticism aside, the most compelling reason that I can think of to doubt that Jesus of Nazareth ever claimed to be the divinely-conceived son of God is this: because it would have been absolutely impossible--unthinkable--for a Jew of the Roman period to have made that claim, and to expect to have been believed by anyone. Here's why. 

If you could boil the Jewish Bible--the Old Testament--down into one, single, solitary, concise point, that point would be, simply, that God is not physical. God is not material. God is not wood, stone, or clay. He's not gold, silver, iron, wind, water, or anything else. God is not physical. That's the Jewish Bible in a nutshell. 

The Jewish Bible is, essentially, a history of one people's struggle to come to terms with this concept. It's the story of one people's struggle against the temptations of idolatry. Because, as the story goes, time and time again, those stiff-necked, thick-headed, stubborn Sons of Israel (of whom I am proud to call myself a partial descendant) turned away from the one, true, non-physical, non-material God to worship idols. Physical things. 

Or, as the Good Book more pungently puts it, they went a-whoring after strange gods (as Joseph Heller has Bathsheba ask King David, "Ours is not so strange?" "At least He's ours," David snaps back. "God Knows." Great book. Highly recommended). 

And every time they did, they got their lunch handed to them. They got their clocks cleaned. Every time one of the idiot Kings of Israel and Judah (and really, based on their actions, you've got to wonder if they weren't as inbred as any other royal family in the world) strays and throws up some altars to those Canaanite deities, they were subjected to fits of divine rage so intense it's a wonder there are any Jews left today. Their lands were invaded and conquered. Their kings were humiliated, tortured, blinded, and executed. Their cities and temples were burnt to the ground. And huge chunks of them were marched off into exile as a completely defeated, dispirited people. 

It gets tiresome after a while, really. Again they worship a chunk of something. Again God gets mad. Again come the Assyrians or the Hittites or the Amalekites or Philistines or the Egyptians or the Babylonians or the Arameans or the Edomites or the Moabites, or the Persians or the Greeks. Take your pick. 

And, after thirty-seven books of this, they finally got it into their heads. And they got it into their heads so thoroughly that they enacted prohibitions not just against worshiping idols (that had been in place for a while), but they decided to take the Second Commandment literally, and forbid drawing pictures or making sculptures of any kind, because it could, conceivably, lead someone into the sin of idol worship. 

Now. In this context--against this backdrop--can you imagine a Roman Era Jew coming along and saying, "Surprise! Turns out God actually IS physical, after all! And, oh, by the way, I'm him,"? 

By the way, if Jesus actually was the Son of God, then it's without question the nastiest practical joke in the history of the cosmos--and the Chosen People were chosen in the exact same way that Moe is chosen when Curly grabs a cream pie and looks for a victim. 

So. Who do I say that Jesus was? 

I say he was a first-century Jewish teacher who probably saw himself in the tradition of the Classical Prophets, from whose message his does not differ too much. I say that he was one of a long line of Jewish teachers and preachers, and the spiritual (and who knows, possibly physical, too) ancestor of Israel ben Eliezer, the Baal Shem Tov, or, in the Hebrew acronym, the BeSHT, the 18th-century mystic, philosopher, and founder of Hasidism. 

Think of the similarity of their messages: the Kingdom of God is within you. Who said it, Jesus or the Besht? Give up? Well, they both did. They both preached a radical message that said that the love of God is more more important than the outward observance of the religion. They both advocated living out the precepts of the Torah by helping those in need--and, surprisingly, neither differentiated between Jew and Gentile. And both of them were opposed by the religious authorities of their time--Jesus by the Pharisees and Sadducees, and the Besht by the rabbinical authorities in Lithuania. 

I also say that he, or whoever wrote his script if it wasn't him, was one of the most profound and beautiful and liberating thinkers who ever lived. Really. Right up there with Socrates and the Buddha and Zoroaster and Spinoza. 

But I do not for a moment think that he was the divinely-conceived Son of God. Nor do I think he ever claimed to be. Matter of fact, I bet Jesus of Nazareth would be appalled if he knew that his followers would, one day, claim that he was half-divine. 

Believing Christians will have all kinds of problems with this. "Why, if Jesus WASN'T the son of God, then our faith is meaningless! Why, if Jesus DIDN'T rise from the dead, then being a Christian is pointless! Why, our whole way of belief depends on Jesus being God!"

To which I say malarkey. 

Jesus' message is powerful. Love your neighbor as yourself. Take care of widows and orphans. Feed the hungry. Take care of the sick. Being good to people is more important than being religious. Pay your taxes because it ain't like it's your money anyhow. There are things in life more important than money. And the selfish and greedy rich, by the way, are screwed like housecats. 

Jesus doesn't have to be God to make those sentiments powerful. 

Moreover, insistence on the divinity of Jesus is a dangerous smokescreen. It allows people to obsess about what he was and forget about what he taught. And that allows some truly evil sons of bitches out there to call themselves Christians and completely ignore what the man actually said. It allows them to act in a manner completely opposite of what he taught. It allows them to say, "I don't have to act like a Christian, I don't have to follow his teachings, I don't have to do anything he said. I believe he was the Son of God. That gets me off the hook." 

Jesus of Nazareth didn't have to be some kind of cosmic half-God superhero. His teaching is powerful enough on its own. I don't agree (entirely) with the late lamented Douglas Adams' atheism, but I do love this quote of his when applied to Jesus of Nazareth: "Isn't it enough to see that the garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"