Category: Christ

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Belief Christ Finding God Jesus

What Happens When the Wire Snaps?

What kept nagging at me — after the rush of religion and feeling like I had found a church and a faith I could work into my own belief system — was the ultimate question of the Divinity of Jesus.

I want to be very clear: A man named Jesus — or Yeshua, or Immanuel — lived. He was a Jew, likely with an affinity for the Essenes* (through his cousin John the Baptist**), who preached a gospel of social justice***. He was seen more as a political irritant and agitator than an important religious figure during his lifetime, and he was ultimately found guilty and executed by the state.

[* There are some scholars who doubt the existence of the Essenes entirely, believing they were actually renegade Zadokides — sons of a Jewish priest named Zadok. I’m agnostic on this.]

[** It’s unclear what the relationship was between Mary, the mother of Jesus, and Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist. A blood relationship of some kind is hinted at; however, ideas of family and allegiances were sorted and settled in ways that are not common to us. Cousin seems to fit; but it just as easily could not.]

[*** He’s not consistent about social justice all the way through — or, his biographers and recounters, at least, were not consistent. Jesus, after his death and with no way to counter or correct, became the necessary catalyst for a variety of faith understandings that continue up through today.]

How can a religion that tries to emphasize love and caring be based on the violent death of a single man? Why does our religion require that violence? Why did ::God:: require that violence? I have not yet been able to reconcile these ideas in a way that makes Christianity loving and welcoming. “Please come to our murder cult! We wear the object our savior was killed on; you can get one bedazzled if you want.”

As with all religions, there are schisms, and Judaism is no different. By the time of Jesus, there was a desperation for the Messiah to come as a warrior and right all the wrongs committed against God’s chosen people. Followers of Jesus, especially those writing some years after his execution, used Jewish writings to point out how Jesus himself was the Messiah.

(This proved to be hard to sell to the Jews of the time, who had their own myths and accounts of what the messiah would be and do, and Jesus fulfilled none of those things.)

And this is, I think, a key point to keep in mind: The Jewish Bible and the Christian Bible are two ::entirely:: separate collection of documents — but in a curious way. Judaism has no interest in, or need of, Christianity. It stands on its own*. The Christian Bible is reliant on the Jewish Bible because it is what underpins and proves the Divinity of Jesus as the Christ. For those curious about or fascinated with the evolution of religious belief, the Book of Mormon shares the same reliance on the Jewish Bible that Christianity does. It also needs the Christian Bible, too. These are appeals to authority. Neither holy book needs the Book of Mormon.

[* That’s actually a bit of an oversell: Judaism comes out of the crucible of other ANE (Ancient Near East) cultures and religions. In some ways, the Tanakh — the Jewish Scriptures — is attempting to correct the beliefs of the other cultures around it.]

So, the more I thought about Christianity — and especially the way it has evolved (or, less charitably, metastasized*) — I began to really put my whole heart into working out what, exactly, Jesus’s role is in salvation.

[* When Europeans began stealing land from Native Americans, they brought with them their most holy dictum: The earth was made for man to subdue. So the wilderness of North America symbolized the chaos out of which God brought order and goodness. Christianity was used extensively to justify and encourage slavery. And it is used now to attack more than it is used to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. #NotAllChristians]

I remain a theist. I continue to believe that what we are all participating in is some sort of Great Divine Mystery, one that we’ll either never solve, or we’ll solve, but not in our current existence. I don’t believe there is a place where people are punished for whatever we want to believe sin is. I also don’t believe in some limitless field of perfect with streets of gold and everyone somehow living eternity in perfection*.

[* Reading the Bible through a lens of poverty, the ridiculousness of heaven starts to make more sense. Streets paved in gold; everyone wearing a crown; jewels everywhere: heaven is filled with the things denied to you in this life.]

But I believe we do go on. I just don’t know how. Or what it looks like. And I will either die, and know the answer; or I’ll die, and stop asking.

Jesus said extraordinary things about caring for the poor and the “least among us.” But I do not believe he was the Son of God. I’m more squishy about some of the miracles — a good miracle is a good miracle — but I absolutely do not believe his arrest, torture, and execution by the state was the mechanism of salvation. I think it was just the murder of a man who caused too many problems.

So where I find myself now is uninterested in Christianity, but very much a believer in God. I think Christianity is an attempt — I think ALL religions and philosophies are an attempt — to explain various experiences of the Divine. I just don’t know what form God takes, and I don’t pretend to understand God’s likes and dislikes. I think God is simply delighted by everything. “Do it again,” G.K. Chesterton imagines God saying.

(“It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them.”)

I’m less worried about how to label myself. That seems a waste of time. But I don’t think I can, with good conscience, say I am a Christian any longer.

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Belief Bible Study Christ Gospels Mark Matthew New Testament

What Happens When Jesus is Racist?: The Syrophoenician Woman

We are spoiled for choice when it comes to reckoning with Jesus of Nazareth. For atheists, he was just another Jewish apocalyptic preacher. (I think there was a time when “Did Jesus exist?” made the rounds as a question and almost all historians of the Ancient Near East (ANE) agree that a man named Jesus actually existed; the miracle stories they leave to theology.) For believers, that flow chart branches a lot. Was he wholly divine? Was he wholly human? Was he both? Was Jesus also God, or was Jesus next to God? Your New Testament will be no help on this by the way.

For me, at this moment right now, Jesus of Nazareth was a Jewish apocalyptic preacher who worked on behalf of the poor, the cast-aside, the hungry, and the needy. (I will no doubt have completely changed my Christology the next time we meet.) I, personally, don’t need him to be the Son of God, but would not be dismayed if it turns out he is. I don’t need him to be divine. How any of us think about Jesus — if you think about Jesus at all — is what you get to do with your one wild and precious life and no one should stand in your way*.

[Except don’t be a dick? If your belief in Jesus compels you to gatekeep Christianity, silence women, preach a Prosperity Gospel, and harm queer people all across the spectrum, then I feel comfortable saying your belief is bad and it is doing bad things to your soul.]

Both Mark and Matthew understood that there was a divine component to Jesus. Mark locates it at the baptism by John. Matthew (and Luke) locates it at Jesus’s very conception. John is way out on his own with the suggestion that Jesus of Nazareth was ever-present from the beginning. (One of the reasons why I say your New Testament will not help you is that none of our gospel writers really agree on the fundamentals of what Jesus’s purpose was. And that’s even before we get to the letters of Paul — the earliest Christian writings we currently have. What is interesting in Paul, though, are these glimpses of the oral traditions passed around these newly forming Christian communities after the crucifixion. In one of his letters, Paul quotes a creed that we have never seen anywhere else, in the Bible or any other ANE writings, that suggests that the very first Christians located Jesus’s divinity at the resurrection. All of this is called Adoptionism, and the Adoptionism argument is: was Jesus actually God, or did God adopt Jesus because of his righteous ways.)

The above is a long throat-clear/level-setting for what I really want to write about, which is the exorcism of the Syrophoenician (or Canaanite woman’s daughter. Because I think it captures an actual event (minus the exorcism), and shows us Jesus as a human being.

The story shows up in Mark (Mark 7:24-30) and Matthew (15:21-28). They are almost the same story; however, Matthew adds some stuff that Mark doesn’t. (In fact, all the gospel writers after Mark in the New Testament use Mark as their rough draft and add their own bells* and whistles.) The bones: Jesus is among the Gentiles in Tyre and Sidon***. A Gentile woman (Mark calls her Syrophoenician; Matthew calls her a Canaanite) begs Jesus to heal her demon-possessed daughter. Jesus initially refuses, and his reason isn’t super explicit, except he uses a racial slur against the woman (likening her and other Gentiles to dogs). But this woman isn’t easily cowed. She argues back, insists that even a Gentile is worthy of healing, and Jesus changes his mind. In Mark he says, “Go; the demon has left your daughter.”

[* For one thing, because Matthew is pushing an Incarnation Christology — God came to earth in the form of a human baby — he has the Canaanite woman say, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David.” (Matt 15:22)

[** LENNY: I can’t help it! It gets me mad! It gets me upset! Why, Meg’s always run wild–she started smoking and drinking when she was fourteen years old, she never made good grades–never made her own bed! But somehow she always seemed to get what she wanted. She’s the one who got singing and dancing lessons; and a store-bought dress to wear to her senior prom. Why, do you remember how Meg always got to wear twelve jingle bells on her petticoats, while we were only allowed to wear three apiece? Why?! Why should Old Grandmama let her sew twelve golden jingle bells on her petticoats and us only three!!!

BABE: I don’t know!! Maybe she didn’t jingle them as much.]

[*** There is some geographical parallelism in Mark. Jesus will offer a teaching or a feeding to the Jews, and then he’ll be taken by boat to the Gentile communities to work a miracle, teaching, or feeding there, too.]

What do we do with this passage? What do we do when Jesus is racist?

My study Bible used to be a New International Version (NIV), though I prefer a New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) now, and the modern editors of the NIV have added a heading to the Mark account, “Jesus Honors a Syrophoenician Woman’s Faith,” and in Matthew, this story is labeled, “The Faith of a Canaanite Woman.” The NRSV does a little better. (Though it’s important maybe to point out that these section headings do not appear in the original texts. Also not in the original texts: chapters or verse numbers. Those all came later.) For Mark, the NRSV labels it “The Syrophoenician Woman’s Faith” and in Matthew it’s “The Canaanite Woman’s Faith.”

The NIV is an Evangelical Bible, and is translated with a theological purpose. The NIV doesn’t want to focus on Jesus’s racism and his human crankiness. Jesus doesn’t “honor” the Syrophoenician woman’s faith at all. In fact, a better heading for this section might be, “Jesus is a Jerk and Regrets It.”

(I will absolutely be executed as a heretic when our country finally settles on theocracy as its main governing position.)

I think, as believers anywhere along that path, it is our duty to sit with this story. Not smooth it over. Not erase this flash of cruelty. Not make it about the Syrophoenician woman’s faith — which is strong — but about Jesus’s humanness. I am far more comforted by a human Jesus than I am by a divine being who hasn’t fucked up. This passage, in both Mark and Matthew, is often used to describe Jesus’s conversion of the Gentiles to…well, we can’t call it Christianity yet because Jesus is still alive. But essentially, he’s converting/convincing people to his way of thinking about God’s laws and what is required of people here and now on earth. But that’s an Evangelical reading, which never sits well with me. It takes the focus away from what the text literally tells us.

One way New Testament scholars decide if something was actually said/done by Jesus is to see if it’s something that goes against what the gospeler is trying to get across. (I haven’t said this in a while, but: The Bible — the WHOLE Bible — is a political document with differing points of view and a variety of biases.) Mark’s purpose is to write a gospel that can be used in concert with existing Jewish liturgy and to announce that Jesus is the Christ/Messiah. The Syrophoenician woman’s story is a strange interlude, and shows Jesus acting in a way that is unusual and uncomfortable. So — I feel this maybe actually happened, because it’s an uncharacteristic portrait of Jesus. (And by “actually happened” I believe a Gentile woman approached Jesus and begged for a healing. She believed her daughter was demon-possessed, and she was in a time/culture that allowed for demonic possession. Mark is absolutely obsessed with demons. Did her daughter have a demon? I don’t know. I don’t think so? But that’s my own bias. Did Jesus heal this girl in some way? Again, I don’t know. These are issues of theology rather than textual investigation.)

And if Jesus is wholly human AND wholly divine — he is just being his Father’s son here. God throughout the Hebrew scriptures calls for outright genocide, not the “mild” racism on display with Jesus here. God is often cranky. He is jealous and vindictive and absolutely picks favorites. Why wouldn’t Jesus, too, have some of those traits?

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Bible Study Christ Jesus John Luke Mark Matthew New Testament Old Testament Tanakh

Are Jesus and Christ the Same Person?

Maybe! But also maybe not! Let’s dig into the differences. (They definitely are two distinct things.)

We’ll get the easier one out of the way first: Jesus was a first century Jewish apocalyptic preacher/prophet. Some will also include “religious leader,” but Christianity as a religious movement doesn’t really happen until after the crucifixion.

And now all of a sudden I realize that it’s going to be as difficult to explain Jesus as it is going to be to explain Christ.

If we take religion/theology entirely out of the picture (by which I mean, let’s set aside all the supernatural claims of/about Jesus), Jesus is a man born in Bethlehem, a city in the Kingdom of Judah. He is Jewish, both culturally and religiously. We believe he was born roughly around 4 BCE and not much is known of his life in the Canonical Gospels* (the ones that made it into the Bible) until he is baptized by John the Baptist, an Essene.

[* We have something called The Infancy Gospel of Thomas, a Gnostic text from the 2nd century CE. We also have something called the Syriac Infancy Gospel, which borrows a lot of its elements from Thomas’s Infancy Gospel. Stories you’ll read in the Infancy Gospel that don’t show up at all in the New Testament: Jesus bringing a flock of clay birds to life; Jesus raising a boy from the dead who had fallen from a roof to be a witness on Infant Jesus’s behalf, since suspicion had fallen on Jesus as the shover; Infant Jesus killing a man who scolds Jesus and his friends while fishing, only to have to bring the man back to life when the kids tattle to Jesus’s parents.]

Ugh. Wait. We now need to talk about the Essenes. I promise this all fits together, but I thought it was going to turn out differently than this.

The Essenes were a Jewish sect from around the 2nd century BCE up through the 1st century CE. They lived in communes dedicated to poverty, daily immersion, and asceticism. The Dead Sea Scrolls that you’ve maybe heard something about are attributed to the Essenes. Unless they weren’t. There are some scholars — Dr Rachel Elior, Dr Lawrence Schiffman, Moshe Goshen-Gottstein, Chaim Menachem Rabin, to name those I’m familiar with — who don’t believe the Essenes really existed; that they were instead cast-offs from the Zadokites; and that these Zadokites are the ones who wrote the documents collected in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Whether or not John the Baptist was an Essene is a little beside the point; it’s accepted that he existed, and that he did baptise Jesus, and that John, too, was an apocalyptic figure. John preached an end-times theology that included the practice of baptising for the cleansing away of sin.

So, again, we’re going to set the religious stuff aside — or, rather, whether or not the religious stuff is “true” — and just hope to agree to agree that (a) Jesus as a man (not a supernatural figure) existed, (b) he was baptised by John the Baptist, and (c) both were apocalyptic proclaimers who believed that they were living in the final moments before God’s judgment.

Our best sources for biographical information on Jesus as a person come to us from the gospels, though other ancient historians of the time mention him, too. As far as the writer of Mark is concerned, Jesus had no especially supernatural birth, and Mark doesn’t include a genealogy. For Mark, the story of Jesus begins with his baptism in the River Jordan. Mark can also be read as a gospel of adoptionism: Jesus did not become the son of God until he was adopted by God after the baptism* (Mk 1:9-11). Matthew and Luke both give us genealogies, and both have elements of what we call the Christmas Story: the Annunciation, the manger, the Virgin Birth, the star, the shepherds, the wise men. John…is doing his own thing and we’ll talk about him another time.

[* The Gospel of Matthew also has an element of adoptionism to it, where Matthew suggests that Jesus doesn’t become the Son of God until the resurrection*.]

[* The gospels don’t agree on many details. And for a lot of theologians, this is actually of some comfort. If all four gospels aligned cleanly, then we might think that there is some coaching going on. But the fact that there are discrepancies within the gospel narratives actually suggests realistic “testimony.” It’s often discussed in terms of “No one describes an auto* accident the same way.”]

[* There are bumper stickers that say, “My Boss is a Jewish Carpenter,” and I challenge anyone who believes that, or has that sticker, to show me in the Bible anywhere where Jesus does any carpentry. And no, being nailed to a cross does not count as “doing carpentry” so much as it counts as “having carpentry done to you.]

What is true among all the gospels is that Jesus is referred to as The Christ. Or Jesus Christ, which makes it sound like Christ is a surname. But Jesus is a person, and Christ is a title that has been attributed to Jesus. (Is he the Christ? No! say the Jews. Yes! say the Christians. It probably doesn’t matter! says Mike Bevel.)

So, what is Christ?

Christ is the anglicized version of the Greek khristos (χριστός). And khristos is the Hellenized version of the Hebrew word māšîaḥ. Messianism as a concept originated in Judaism, and it essentially means either anointed or covered with oil. In Jewish eschatology, the final messiah — the Very Important One, who will bring about the Messianic Age — would be an anointed king from the line of David. (The term “messiah” has been used for others, by the way, even in the Bible. King David was considered a messiah. So was Cyrus the Great and Alexander the Great. These minor messiahs — men anointed with oil in a ritual ceremony — were never considered to be the Avenging Messiah. This messiah, whom the Jews were waiting for around the time of Jesus and John the Baptist, would come both to rebuild the Jerusalem Temple and to lay low all of the Israelites’ enemies.)

Claims of Jesus’s messiahship start with John the Baptist. It’s likely Jesus had been either a follower, or at least a close adherent, of John. In Mark, our oldest gospel, we hear John say, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” (Mk 1:7-8) Matthew adds to Mark’s story: “Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, ‘I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?’ But Jesus answered him, ‘Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.’ Then he consented.” (Matt 3:13-15)

And it’s at this point that the schism within Judaism starts. There are Jews who do not believe any claims of Jesus’s Christ status, and there are those who do believe Jesus is the prophesied Christ. On either side of that dividing line, however, both sets of Jews believe in The Messiah; one side just picked Jesus as that avatar, and the other said, “We’ll see what comes around on the next dim sum cart.”

Jews had a lot of reasons to deny Jesus the title of Christ. While the gospels, and The Book of Acts, and even the letters of Paul, try to paint a picture of Jesus as Messiah (mostly by just calling him Jesus Christ or Son of God), the Hebrew Bible describes the final messiah as a king sent to do battle and liberate the Jews. In fact, the Jewish messiah has no salvific mission at all. Which is what made Jesus such an alien figure to his own people: there was a claim of messiahship, but it was from a lowly carpenter and itinerant street-preacher who had no power to overturn Rome, rebuild the Temple, or deliver the Jews to the Messianic Age. The messiah that these separatist Jews (and Gentiles) were championing came almost as the Still Small Voice mentioned in 1 Kings. He heals the unclean. He eats with sinners. He performs work on the Sabbath. There is nothing about Jesus as a warrior or an organizer or even a political figure (though he is a political victim) in the New Testament gospels. And there wasn’t at the time, and there isn’t now, a lot of agreement as to how many Hebrew Bible prophecies the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus fulfilled. I mean, for one thing, immediately: THE MESSIAH WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO DIE*. This one did. He got better, of course, but he only hangs around for a little while longer before disappearing pretty much ever since. He appears on the odd piece of toast, or in a mildew stain on a ceiling, but Jesus incarnate isn’t walking amongst us. (Unless, like me, you subscribe to large segments of Gnosticism where the Christ part of Jesus exists in all of us; we’re all Jesus, or at least have the ability to be.)

[* He is also supposed to be named Immanuel, as the Book of Isaiah tells us: “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” (Is 7:14). The Gospel of Matthew is the only other place that mentions Immanuel, but instead uses Emanuel*, in Matt 1:22-23: “Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.”]

[* There’s a 1992 book called Out of the Blue by Patrick McManus and I don’t remember almost anything at all except there’s this delightful exchange among children in a preschool. One child asks for an “unraser.” A girl corrects him: “Eraser. E. My name is not Unlizabeth you know.”]

So: Christians believe that Jesus either became or was born the Christ. Jews believe the Christ hasn’t arrived yet. So, in a sense, Jesus and The Christ are not necessarily the same person, but also aren’t necessarily not, but it’s the way Christians worship, recognize, and understand the man from Nazareth.