Warning: Everything but what moves you to discipleship of Jesus is destructive of your health. jesianity.info/search/label/Jesus
00:01
Jesianity was a mistake.
00:07
Was it a divine mistake?
00:10
Is it what the original gospel writers intended all along?
00:23
Jesianity was a mistake that I realized last night
00:27
when the words and urgings of fundamentalist Christian Tim rang true.
00:39
James, you can't read the moral teachings of the gospels out of context.
00:47
I had just cited, as you do unto the least of these, you do unto me.
00:53
James, who was he talking about?
00:56
And I said, well?
00:57
The least of those among us.
00:59
And he said, no, James.
01:01
He was talking about the disciples.
01:05
as you do unto the disciples, you do unto me.
01:13
And I can't disagree that that's what the words indicate.
01:16
I can't disagree with Tim.
01:18
That is what the words indicate, I'm quite sure,
01:21
although my restudying has just begun.
01:26
But I accept it for now.
01:27
I suspect it's true for now.
01:29
How is it that since I was three feet tall,
01:36
my earliest memories,
01:39
I saw in Jesus the most alluringly humane person
01:49
that had ever walked the earth?
01:55
That humane, joyful, abhorrent,
01:59
abundant life.
02:00
How did I see that?
02:07
Jesus' teachings needed to make it through
02:10
empire after empire after empire.
02:21
Jesus' life and instructions,
02:26
whatever they were,
02:27
needed to pass,
02:29
through empire after empire after empire
02:32
after empire after empire,
02:34
as they still are.
02:39
Most notably, or most easily spotted,
02:43
Constantine,
02:45
and then King James.
02:55
What if Jesus was,
02:57
was,
02:59
the most radically,
03:01
revolutionarily humane individual
03:09
ever to walk the earth?
03:12
What if some of his initial folks living
03:20
at the same time saw that and adored it
03:27
and embraced it?
03:29
And lived it.
03:30
And it was worth their life to pass it on.
03:35
How could they get it past the centuries?
03:38
Not centuries, but yes, centuries,
03:41
but also the centuries.
03:45
The guards of empire,
03:47
how could they do that?
03:51
They would have to embed it in something
03:56
so that it might be,
03:59
seen some time in the future.
04:11
There would have to be a story within a story,
04:16
a way of being embedded in a religion
04:20
that was palatable,
04:23
in fact, desirable by empire.
04:30
I'm sitting here in front of some houses
04:35
on a side road,
04:37
because I had thought that it was rush hour traffic.
04:43
And two locals just stopped and kindly inquired,
04:52
very thoughtfully,
04:53
and I explained anyway that's why this video is more
04:58
challenging.
04:59
copy than normal. Do I know that Jesusianity, Jesus' way as articulated on the website,
05:12
Jesus' way as encapsulated in his moral instructions and moral example extracted
05:21
without any thought to the context of the paragraph before or after? Do I know that
05:28
indeed that is his way embedded? I don't. Do I know that it was intentionally done?
05:36
I don't, and I suspect that I never will, although it's a topic that given the time
05:43
I will do some research on. Do I know that some people have responded as though the moral
05:53
teachings, out of context, out of all the dogma, all of, out of,
05:58
all the brutal authoritarian God, do I know that some people have been inspired in their lives as
06:07
though that moral example and teachings was the whole story? I do.
06:16
Tolstoy, Dorothy Day, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi,
06:28
Schweitzer, among others. Does that mean that
06:35
this theory of James, that he has mistakenly discovered an artifact that was deliberately
06:46
hidden in authoritarian hell rubbish, is true, is correct? No.
06:58
Clouds can form something that people see as a face. The moon has structures that cause people
07:13
to see a man in the moon. Is that because it is deliberately created that way? Certainly not.
07:23
It's the way the human mind works. It sees patterns where patterns weren't intended.
07:28
It sees things in patterns where the things were never intended,
07:32
and that could be what's going on with James.
07:38
But the fact, as nearly as a person can know a fact,
07:44
is that this notion, correct or mistaken on the part of James,
07:50
has brought him back to life.
07:52
As 70 years of study, nothing else had.
07:56
Nothing else had, even closely.
08:01
This understanding of the moral example and the moral teachings of Jesus in Jesusianity
08:09
has done what no one else has been able to do,
08:14
bring James back alive in the humanity,
08:19
that DNA-given capacity that every human being has.
08:26
Tim, Fundamentalist Tim, is horrified
08:30
that my understanding is leading people into eternal hell
08:35
and away from divine whatever,
08:40
sitting with that bloodthirsty, authoritarian father
08:45
of the literal Jesus in the Gospels.
08:49
Hell for me.
08:52
I can't discount that.
08:56
And I can't be subordinate to that.
09:02
I cannot subordinate the clarity that I have
09:06
that the true man Jesus,
09:12
as craftily embedded in empire-pleasing Gospels as they could do,
09:22
is the real Jesus.
09:25
That it was...
09:26
It was worth his life.
09:27
It was worth the pain of the cross.
09:30
Probably a million times over.
09:35
If he might help us return
09:38
to the joyful, abundant life
09:41
that only comes with the reigniting of our humanity.
09:45
And I suspect that until my last breath,
09:50
I will put forth that Jesus.
Comments
Post a Comment