Questioning Some Assumptions about Jesus...

Do any of y'all have any clue how long I've sat on this post ...? Yeah, I've shared tidbits, but not put it all "out there" in one fell swoop like I'm about to do (both today and tomorrow) ...

Recalling yesterday's recitation of the Spirit-led paradigm shifts I experienced over the past few years (and go read 'em now if you didn't yet!) ... HOW does all of this affect how I see and understand Jesus Christ..?

Backing up a bit, my previous view of God and Jesus was somewhat of a "bad cop/good cop" perspective. God was the angry "bad" cop ... and Jesus was the placating "good" cop. And they had this shtick down pat. God was pissed, and ready, even eager, to smite folks ... and we were all sitting ducks. The solution, was to get Jesus to be between me and God. Y'know, keep my entire being behind His holy silhouette. No arms, legs, or (egads!) head sticking out, like a smite-target. As I've heard Paul Young say, "quoting" God, "Y'know I love You, Son, but some of Your friends ...!" (envision God frowning, with arms crossed)

Yeah, my previous view of God was that He was rather schizophrenic ... never knew where I stood with Him ... was He mad? was I ok? should I hide? anybody got any spare fig-leaves..?

I don't know about anybody else, but I had to fire that old "god" ... so that the real God could emerge. Turns out He was always there ... always in everything, using it all to continue to draw me to Himself, and into all truth.

So, what about Jesus...? What do I do with Jesus? The old story of "God's justice must be appeased, someone's got to die ... so you'd better accept Jesus as your savior, or else pay for your own sins in endless torment/separation" just doesn't hold up for me anymore. And yet, I knew I had to come to terms with who Jesus is ... and who/what the Christ is. So, I asked God to show me. Y'know, when in doubt, go to the Source...!

Here are some things I just cannot ignore about Jesus:

~ He says He came to show us the Father ... and yet, I notice that we prefer to focus on Jesus. It's like we look at a sign to a destination, and focus on the sign, rather than going to the destination.

~ He said He's the WAY to the Father (I see this as an example - showing us that the Way to the Father is to realize that we are connected to the Father)... and yet we focus on Him, instead.

~ He said it would be *better* if He goes away ... and yet we continue to focus on His historical personality.

~ He speaks of the Abundant Life for all -- and we prefer to create an exclusive club of Christianity (have we not noticed how He came against the exclusivity of the Pharisees? And have we not noticed how Christianity resembles the Pharisees far more than Jesus?).

It seems to me that we've created a cult that focuses on the personality of Jesus, rather than hearing & heeding what He actually taught.

I just no longer believe that God had to kill God, in order to appease God. Doesn't pass the straight-face test for me.

Here's how I think we got to that:

~ Israel came out of the pagan practices of human sacrifice. It's not a far cry to go from tossing first-borns and virgin daughters into "angry volcano gods" to keep them from destroying your fields and villages, to thinking you heard God say, "sacrifice your only son." (Actually -- as Tim King said during this conference, the god that told Abraham to do this was "El" -- the generic god. As in, I have an El, you have an El, everybody has an El. This would be the god Abraham was familiar with, back in Ur. BUT -- the God that provided the ram, and who said to not kill Isaac, was Yahweh -- the Creator God -- the one who was revealing Himself to Abraham, as he could bear it.)

~ Moses gave forth the commandments from God -- very simple laws. Practically kinder-garten level rules -- how to be nice. Here's how you love God, and here's how you love other folks. Be nice.

~ When Israel returned from Babylonian captivity, the priests/scribes wanted to get the folks in line ... to obey in order to make the Messiah come, and return them to the Davidic glory days (short-sighted view of the Messiah, huh? Abraham was told it would be as a blessing to ALL people on earth). So, the priests/scribes added to the text (this wasn't seen as wrong) ... heaping on minute details to the law ... complicating a simple set of guidelines into achingly stringent requirements and an entire measure-up system (the Spirit is simple - the ego is complex). I mean seriously, read Leviticus. Does it even sound like God to you? Sounds more like a bunch of power-hungry egoic men sitting around, devising ways to make folks straighten up ("Add this abomination!" "Oh, wait, we have to make that forbidden!" "Let's not forget that women are uber-unclean - make them go away while they're all PMSy." "Don't forget this requirement." "Wait, we already mentioned that." "No problem -- say it again!").

~ And so, a complicated and blood-saturated sacrificial system was developed over time ... as a way of "atoning" for the sins committed by those people (as IF they could keep from violating various laws, just by waking up and breathing!). Here's where we get the "scape-goat" ... the animal that had everyone's sins transferred to it, and then it was cast out of the camp, to die. And the guilt-absolution lasted until the people felt good and guilty again ... had to be repeated every year (though there were numerous daily sacrifices being made ... scores of animals were slaughtered over guilt).

~ But then, speaking through the prophets, God later says, "I desire mercy, not sacrifice!" What if the sacrificial system was never God's idea, but man's? What if God met them where they were, in their egoic insistence that "something's got to die!" What if God led them from human, to animal sacrifice, as an improvement ... and eventually to letting them devise a "final" sacrifice to end all sacrifices for once and for all? But, what if that wasn't God's requirement, so much as man's insistence..?

~ What if we humans interpreted Jesus' death as God's sacrifice for us? What if we framed it in our egoic insistence of needing a scape-goat?

~ What if God always forsaw this happening -- for the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world. I see that it was always done -- we were always reconciled.

~ I see that Jesus didn't come to accomplish anything, but to demonstrate what had always been..! I see that this is part of the "much more" that Jesus wanted to show His followers, but they couldn't then bear it. I see that most cannot bear it now. And, if we think that we've already arrived at all truth, then we're not going to be open to the much more. May we be willing to increase our "bearability."

Next, I'll go into what I've come to believe, about Jesus ...

Shalom, Dena