Confessions one through five were all meant to set the stage. I wanted to give you a glimpse into my story, my struggles, my questions, my beliefs and my spiritual framework. All that background was meant to set up this segment, which will act as the foundation for everything else moving forward. The purpose of this project is to dive deep into my Christian roots, to search for raw truth in the one place I feel most conflicted. I was once an alter boy. I once read at Catholic mass. I once felt the presence of God in my very bones. When I grew wise to the horrors and tribulations of life, I threw all of it away and labeled it as fake. My journey now is to see if I left anything behind, to recover those fragments of strength that once filled my spirit. There’s no better place to start than with Christ himself.
Who, then, is Jesus Christ?
The more I ask myself this question the more I realize there isn’t just one answer. For some he is everything. For others he is nothing. My only concern for now is what he is to me, and on that I am still unclear. By sharing this with you I’m hoping to unravel at least some of the coils of confusion wrapped up in my mind. I don’t expect all the answers to come at once, but all things must have a beginning…
I first want to look at the historical Jesus, the man who lived and breathed over two thousand years ago. On this point I am perhaps most clear. It seems rather unanimous that a man named Jesus did in fact walk this earth. Scholars for and against Christianity tend to agree (sans a few radical outliers), and there are enough non-biblical sources to confirm this. With this seed of belief I will begin the process of seeking.
Basically, there’s one of two options (I must give C.S. Lewis credit for this perspective). On one hand, this Jesus must have been a madman, a delusional schizophrenic who duped the entire world into believing his lies. Otherwise, if everything he said was true, he was something so unique and so incredible that words simply do not suffice. I know that presenting him in this way may seem radical, but hear me out. The third option, touted by many, goes something like this: “he was a holy man with a great message and that’s what’s important”. While that’s essentially true, it seems to mark him as a Buddha-like character, and that only works until a certain point. Point of the matter is, he said some crazy shit.
John 14:6
Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
John 10:29-33
“My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.”
The “good guy with a message” thing would work if these incredibly strong claims were not present. It’s clear that this Jesus truly believed himself to be divine, to be God, to be the Messiah and the fulfillment of prophesy. This brings us back to our original options - either he was a madman or exactly what he claimed to be. So, which is it?
Before we answer that, I think it’s important to bring another perspective into play, that of the mythicists. Their claim is that the story of Jesus is mostly myth, concocted through centuries in order to obtain followers and explain certain elements of reality. Some mythicists go so far as to break the story down into a Joseph Campbell “Hero’s Journey” saga that contains elements of various myths throughout human history. The virgin mother and the resurrection are perfect examples of this, as they show up in mythologies that well pre-dated the birth of Christ. I must say, the mythicist perspective is quite alluring, and it’s had me in its intellectual clutches for quite some time. Perhaps more than any other perspective, I have sympathized with this most of all.
As it goes, the mythicist perspective would claim that it is unlikely that Jesus actually spoke the words accredited to him in the bible. It is equally unlikely that Jesus performed any physics-defying miracles or actually rose from the dead. These elements were all just added into the mix by human authors to concoct the greatest myth of the Western world. The part of me that considers myself an intellectual eats this up with a certain snobbery. “Of course it wasn’t real, but it’s a beautiful story.”
Intellectually that may suffice, but here we crossover from rationality into something altogether different. Some would call it emotion, others spirit, others feeling - whatever it is it’s almost impossible to relay in words. It in fact lives in the spaces between the words, those areas of thought and experience that seep through the cracks of language. See, I can intellectually get behind the idea that the Jesus story is all a myth, but before long I begin to realize that something is off, something’s missing. For the first time in my life, I understand what that thing is. When the Jesus story is relegated to myth, it completely cuts off some deep part of me that yearns for something I can’t quite put a finger on, that longs for something I can’t explain. There’s a part of me that wants the Jesus story to be real. Naturally, I have to ask myself…why?
Here we arrive at perhaps the strangest, least rational part of this Jesus business - the personal element. Looking at the story from a bird’s eye view it’s easy to chock it up as myth or fable, but if we’re going to do this right we must take into account the experiential side of things. What exactly does this “myth” say and what happens when I apply it to my life? I think about the times when I’m at my lowest - when I’m frozen by fear at the very proposition of my own existence. I think about the times I’m reminded that one day myself and everyone I love will die. I think about the times when I’m in so much pain I don’t want to continue living anymore. When I think about these times, I recognize that there’s something inside me that wants to give this suffering away, that desires someone or something to take this incredible burden of consciousness off my shoulders. I just want to be taken care of and loved, in a way that no human being can provide.
This is exactly what Jesus promises.
Unlike the other great spiritual teachers of the past who provided answers to spiritual questions, Jesus presented himself as the answer. Our rationally-inclined brains (mine included) have trouble processing this, as it tows a unique line between reality and esotericism. It’s no wonder that in all the great magic and Hermetic schools, Jesus always shows up in some way (more on that in future segments). Sure, it’s easy to dismiss it all as “woo-woo” hogwash, but I can’t help but think back to all those times in my life when I’ve so desperately sought this unnameable, indescribable thing. If I allow myself to detach from my intellectual egotism, I see that it is Jesus Christ who names and describes it. Not only that, he offers himself as the solution. It’s like he already knew exactly what I longed for, and that in turn makes me long for him.
I understand that just because I want something to be true does not make it true, but what I’m trying to express is that this topic requires more than simple rational inquiry to get anywhere of significance. Sure, I can still feel all these things and the story could be made up, but it all feels too strange and perfect to be completely false. Another thing that’s always perplexed me are the Gnostic and apocryphal gospels and writings (more segments to come on these as well). I wasn’t allowed to read those as a Roman Catholic (something I find ridiculous), but I’ve read them in my adult life and I’ve found them to be some of the most complex works of literature I’ve ever read. There are countless contradictions and elements that just seem insane, but they continue to point to the fact that something extraordinary happened during the time of Christ. Not only that, they also show that the people of the time were just as (if not more) capable of intricate and introspective thought as we are. We like to pass ancient people’s off as brutes, but that’s simply not the case.
It’s clear to me that these musings to not create “proof” of any sort, nor do they directly disprove any of the antithetical theories against Christ. As a human race we’ve been trying to think our way into proving or disproving this story since it was first written, and we all know that real proof either way is impossible. What I’m trying to do is open my mind and my spirit to possibility, to quiet my rational mind for long enough to explore those places outside the material scope. Was Jesus a madman? A myth? A messiah? I still have no definitive answers to these questions, but there’s still much more to explore. What I do know is that rational inquiry alone is not going to be enough. I’m going to need to utilize all of my faculties - intellectual, creative, spiritual, emotional - in order to come to anything close to a conclusion. This is certainly not the last time I’ll be exploring the question on Christ, and I hope that I’ll have new thoughts and perspectives to bring to the table next time.
Let’s end today with the big daddy of all prayers, The Lord’s Prayer:
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name;
thy kingdom come;
thy will be done;
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation;
but deliver us from the evil one.
For thine is the kingdom,
the power and the glory,
for ever and ever.
Amen.