J is for Jesus

Jesus (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Who is Jesus? What did he do? How does a Naturalistic Pantheist view him? Last week I wrote about my journey away from Christianity and now I want to explain how I see the man at the centre of that religion and who’s teachings guided my life for a decade.

Lets start with how I think his original followers would have viewed him. It is a fact that Jesus never actually claimed to be God. The closest he came was suggesting he was chosen by God. He consistently called himself the Son of Man and now and again Son of God. The fact is that Jesus was a Jewish man and to claim to be God would have caused even his followers to consider him a blasphemer. If you read the book of Acts it records that the disciples saw Jesus as “a man chosen and exalted by God.” He is a human being chosen by God to die and then rise again. He is chosen to rule over the universe until the end of time when he hands it all back to God. He is seen as a mediator (the role Mary currently takes in Catholicism) and is worthy of veneration and praying to, but he is not portrayed as God. Verses teaching the Trinity like Matthew 28 are not found in the oldest records of the Bible.

Over the past century, as people have finally been able to express their religious views more freely and question orthodoxy, there has arisen a movement called the Jesus Seminar. This

Jesus seminar includes brilliant historians like Albert Schweitzer, Marcus Borg, Bart Ehrman & John Dominic Crossan. These men were key influences in changing how I viewed Jesus. The Jesus Seminar looks for the historical Jesus, it attempts to tear away the fantasy and later additions to find the truth that lurks behind the stories. It looks at the historical and cultural situation at the time he lived and tries to view him through similar eyes. There have been various theories put forward for what he was – a political and economic revolutionary, a wandering faith healer, an apocalyptic teacher and so on. I believe he was probably a bit of all these things – he was socially and economically revolutionary – believing in establishing a kingdom of god on earth which was egalitarian, peaceful and inclusive. He undoubtedly believed that the world as they knew it was about to change significantly and end. He had a reputation as a healer and miracle worker, he taught in parables and paradoxical statements and he was executed for causing a disturbance at the temple during Passover. I think he believed that he had come to change things, to help create a new society where the poor weren’t treated badly but he would do it non-violently. His teaching was good but hardly original as many of his sayings can be traced back to others before his time, and there is at least one account where he refers to people of another race as “dogs” so we should be careful about viewing him as some kind of super nice-guy. He was human not divine and I think it’s unlikely that he performed any miracles unless they are similar to the fake tricks of today’s so-called miracle healers.

He is undoubtedly a massively influential guy. More has been written about him than probably any other human in history. He has influenced art, culture, law, religion, social action and so much more for the past 2000 years. He continues to influence the world through his followers today. For all these reasons he is a person worthy of respect and reverence, but as for the claim that he is a god….I think even he would disagree with that one.

There is a concept in Druidry of venerating ancestors. This includes not just ancestors of our blood lines but all who lived in the same place as we currently inhabit or, in this case, influenced our culture or lives. Jesus has had such a big influence on western culture and the history of our nation, he has had such an influence on my own life and the lives of many of my blood ancestors, that I wonder whether giving him a place on my altar might be a good idea, to show respect and reverence for the influence he has had. What do you think?

Can We Save The World Without Religion?

I came across this post by one of my favourite bloggers, John Beckett, today discussing things we value. He has recently been writing posts about developing a sacred relationship with nature and writes the following:

“There are practical reasons why we should live sustainably and respect other species and ecosystems, but no intellectual argument is strong enough to override the basic evolutionary instinct to do what’s easiest and most satisfying for me and mine, here and now. Overriding that instinct requires valuing what we preserve more than what we exploit, and developing that requires a relationship with what we would value.

This is not an intellectual matter, it is a religious matter. Only by developing a sacred relationship with Nature will we find the inspiration to change the way we live and build a society that is both compassionate for the present and sustainable for the future.”

I think he speaks a lot of truth. If we are going to really live in harmony with the world around us then it requires deep and major change in our lifestyles. Most people will do small things to help the environment, but few will make the necessary sacrifices just because they are told they need to. If there’s one thing the last decade of religious fundamentalism has taught us, its how vital it is to win the hearts and minds of people. Intellect is not enough – the heart must be involved too. And that’s what religion does. When we truly see Nature as something sacred, deep within our very being, only then will we truly be able to override the instinct for ease and make the sacrifices necessary for a life in harmony with the earth. Religion doesn’t have to mean a belief in god, but it does have to mean that we see some things as more important, more sacred, than ourselves and our own self interest. When we develop a sacred relationship with Nature, then we will have the motivation, the inspiration that will save our land. When everyone has it, we will save the earth!

 

The Greatest Source

The Soft Fascination of Nature

(Photo credit: Madison Guy)

Hey everyone, I came across this really interesting article in the Ecologist about the benefits of Nature for humans. Here is an excerpt…

A walk in the park can calm and restore you. This is something we take for granted in parks and recreation, because we have known it to be true ever since we started spending time in nature. But new research reported in the British Journal of Sports Medicine now provides scientific proof that walking in nature and spending time under leafy shade trees causes electro-chemical changes in the brain that can lead people to enter a highly beneficial state of “effortless attention.”

It’s very interesting and well worth a read. You can find the article here.

J is for My Journey and Jesus

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

At the age of 12 I became a born again, Evangelical, Pentecostal Christian (try saying that fast 10 times!) Christianity became the most important part of my identity and I took it very seriously. Many would consider me a fundamentalist as I went around school “preachin’ the gospel” to everyone who didn’t want to know. It took me an embarrassingly long time to realise that telling people not to swear, but to believe in Jesus or they’d end up in hell does not work and just means you have few friends.

By the age of 16 I had become interested in politics thanks to getting involved in community projects and campaigns and this led me to investigate left wing Christianity (I had always thought of it from a Conservative viewpoint before). I read books like “God’s Politics” by Jim Wallis and “The Irresistible Revolution” by Shane Claiborne and through their influence I began to develop an interest in contemplative Christian traditions. I started to research other denominations and realised that they had good reasons for believing what they did – even though that was different to what I believed. This led me to begin questioning the doctrines of the church and I spent months and months researching. The problem is that when you start questioning, you just can’t stop. By the time I got to university I was researching Messianic Judaism, Armstrongism and Unitarianism and trying to work out what the original Christianity would have been. I realised how much of Christianity was based on Paganism (something I saw as bad at the time) and how its “contamination” with Greek philosophy had changed it into something completely unrecognisable from what Jesus would have known. I finally understood the implications of Jesus being Jewish - that he would have believed in one god not a trinity (and never claimed to be god), that he would have celebrated Jewish festivals like Passover not Christmas, and that most of the other doctrines of the Church were completely unbiblical – including the doctrines of hell, going to heaven when you died, Jesus’ sacrifice as an appeasement of an angry god and original sin.

Through discussions with friends at school and university, I began to realise that I needed to take science seriously and try to work out whether the creation story of Genesis could conform to science (yes I was a creationist in my teenage years). I researched the evidence for Evolution and came to the conclusion that it stood up to scrutiny. Further research online helped me understand that it was possible for the two to be in agreement (however I knew at the back of my mind that I could no longer take the Bible completely literally to do so.) I also began to research alternative ways of viewing the book of Revelation and that reduced the influence on me of the dangerous and frankly frightening obsession that many western Christians have in the apocalypse.

By the age of 22 I had come to the conclusion that most of Christianity was false, but I still believed strongly in the existence of God, as well taking Jesus and the Bible seriously. However, two events in early 2010 would change that drastically. The first was that I watched a TV programme which included a gay couple and it looked so normal. As quite a fundamentalist Christian, I had spent all my teenage years struggling and resisting the truth I knew inside about my sexuality. After seeing that programme I began to research homosexuality in the Bible and came to the conclusion that, like most other things, the Church had got it wrong on this one too. I was finally able to come to terms with being gay and soon after I came out to my friends and family. Thankfully, and despite the shock and challenge to their faith, they accepted me.

However, a month later one of my best friends was killed in a car accident. Although I didn’t realise it at the time, it hit me very hard. After his death I began to look for answers within Christianity and it led to me reading books by liberal Christian authors like Marcus Borg. They showed me how historians viewed the Bible and that destroyed what was left of my literalism. I began to see the contradictions in the bible, the fact that it didn’t fit the archaeology and from watching many videos on the internet, I realised that there was a lot of immoral stuff within it that I couldn’t accept would come from a good god. I also realised that if god was real he could have stopped my friends death but he either wasn’t real or wanted it to happen making him evil. Either way, any faith in a loving god was gone. The final piece of the jigsaw puzzle came about six months after my friend was killed. I came across a video called “my spirituality as an atheist” which made me realise that its quite possible to be spiritual without believing in a god. That it was ok. From that point on, I was no longer a Christian and my journey away from Jesus was complete. Next week, I’ll explore how I see Jesus now.

The Quieter You Become

Place Magic

It’s the first of the month so its time for the Animist Blog Carnival to return. This month the theme is “Place Magic” and is hosted at Adventures in Animism. Please check out that blog for more posts on place magic from around the world.

If magic is the art or science of making changes in our consciousness and psyche so that we can change who we are as a person, and by extension our circumstances and the way we perceive life, then surely the magic of place is the ability of that place the bring about changes within us. Perhaps its deliberately spending time in a place because we know it will lead to these changes. Taoism talks of “internal alchemy” and for me that is very much what “magic” is about.

Places have a sense about them, a spirit, they are alive. They are patterns of existence that experience and perceive. They change and grow. They suffer and die. They affect the world around them and those who enter or spend time within them. And we can change them too. The boundaries between self and place are very much a fluid thing – trees and plants breathe out oxygen, we breathe it in and breathe out carbon dioxide, they breathe that in and the cycle continues. The place enters us and becomes part of us. It changes us. We are not an isolated individual but a mesh of dynamic relationships. There is no duality in Animism – no separation between spirit and matter, natural or magic. Our consciousness is forever influenced and comes under the spell of the magic of the places we live, the places we walk, the places we grow. The more time we spend in a place, the more we come under its influence, the more we open to its magic, the more we change, the more we learn and the more we grow in awe of the world around us.

Recently I have been doing the ADF Druidry course and as part of that I have to spend an hour a week in nature. I can honestly say that I have learned more about nature, the changes in the season and the way the world works in four weeks than I have in the past 10 years. Going back to the same place again and again over a period of time builds relationship with it and lets us see the magic of Mother Nature herself – in the changes and cycles of the seasons. What could be more magical that watching the birth of a new life? What could be more magical than seeing a tiny seed become a giant flowering plant? What could be more magical than watching the sunrise and seeing the darkness of night change to the brilliant light of day? This is the true magic of place.