I take no issue with anyone's choice of faith and belief
to follow, and I celebrate their having found what fits
for them in that way -- unless and until they try to make
that *my* way of doing so and, in that case, we will have
a big problem. Seeing the GOP religious fascist agenda
trying to make Christianity the only "right" religious
path to follow by forcing its values into legislation,
pieces like these that make it abundantly clear that the
arguments they're using have never had anything to do
with Jesus/Yeshua Himself become very important, imho...
These important points of differentiation raised were
literally created by a group of human men at the Council
of Nicaea in the 3rd century to insert their agenda of
fear-based control over people. And while many clearly
have no issue with regarding them as sourced from
Yeshua/Jesus, for me they've always been glaringly
misaligned with His message of unconditional love and
compassion...
***
"There is one very important thing that religious
deconstruction taught me about Jesus: With a few
exceptions, modern Christian churches have tangled Jesus
up in a huge wad of unhistorical beliefs, doctrines, and
practices. I learned that by doing a sound, non-sectarian
study of history, we can disentangle him from these
religious falsehoods. The following 10 facts about Jesus
help us do that. Once we know these historical facts, we
can start to see Jesus outside Christianity, the church,
and religion. I unpack these facts in my new book,
Breaking Bad Faith (also my previous book, Craft Brewed
Jesus). What I share here is just the tip of the iceberg.
I summarize the reasons I believe these are true below.
There are many resources that support this and you can
find most of them in my two books and their
bibliographies citing a host of other authors.
Here’s the big idea: Once you understand things like the
history of the early Jesus Movement, how Christianity
developed into a full-blown religion, Jesus’
historical/cultural/religious context, and how the Bible
was compiled and viewed, and in many cases mistranslated,
the real message of Jesus emerges. And it is distinct
from Christianity in general and evangelicalism in
particular. You can extricate Jesus from religion and see
the real deal.
1 – Jesus did not start a new religion called
Christianity.
Jesus was not a Christian but a universalistic,
progressive Jew who opened up Judaism to all (Gentiles
and the “unclean”). He rejected Second Temple Judaism,
strict adherence to the law of Moses, and practicing the
sacrificial system. A person didn’t have to convert to
Judaism or a new religion to embark on his path. You
could be a hated Samaritan, Roman, Gentile, or a woman
and still enter the community as equals. His intention
was never to found a new faith, but merely open up Jewish
thought to a belief in a universalist God who abhors
corrupt religious systems—priests, sacrifices, temples,
or discriminatory religious codes of conduct are counter
to true spirituality.
2 – Jesus did not found an institution called “Church.”
Neither did Jesus (or Paul or Peter) found “the Church.”
The Greek word we translate “church” is “ekklesia,” which
simply means a gathering of people. The same word is used
in Acts to describe a mob that came after Paul. When
Jesus said, “I will build my church,” he simply meant he
would build a following of people. He never instituted
any of the following: Christian priests or pastors who
are top leaders of a church, professional clergy, church
buildings, church hierarchy, ordination, clergy
vestments, statements of faith, creeds, tithing to a
church, or other church rules. The only admonition for
his students or followers was to embrace the love ethic
he taught. This doesn’t mean all “church” is bad. It
means it’s a model foreign to the original model and it’s
problematic. So going to church today is optional for
anyone who says they follow Jesus or his ethics.
3 – Jesus did not believe in the inerrancy of the Bible.
This takes a while to deconstruct and I suggest reading
my book, Breaking Bad Faith, to get the long version. But
basically it boils down to this: Jesus saw the Jewish
scriptures like most of his fellow Jews did. In the first
century it was a compilation of sacred writings with no
definitive list of books. The Jewish people did not
decide on a “canon” (a finally accepted list of books) of
scripture until the second century. So, at the time of
Jesus, there were debates going on about what books
should be considered “sacred text” and which shouldn’t.
That’s why the Sadducees only recognized the Torah.
Probably most other Jews recognized the prophets and some
of the wisdom writings as well. The Septuagint, the Greek
translation of the most popular Jewish scriptures (it was
the “Bible” that the early followers of Jesus used),
included 14 books that never made it into the later
Jewish canon or Protestant Bibles! The Essenes had
additional scriptures they saw as divine, one of them I
Enoch, was even quoted in the New Testament book of Jude.
Jesus entered into these debates about divine scripture
and quoted texts he saw as reinforcing the true nature of
God. He acknowledged that the Bible actually critiques
itself and he did the same. He contradicted the
reciprocal violent narratives of contemporary Jewish
sacred texts. He did not believe in, nor teach that the
Bible was infallible. I like to say he saw the scriptures
as a set of human writings with some of God’s
fingerprints on it.
4 – Jesus was not condemning everything that is non-
religious in the “world.”
Rather, he was condemning the “world” of mercilessness,
violence, retribution, corrupt sacrificial religion,
selfish greed, control over people, and authoritative
notions of political power. Jesus was not condemning
partying, celebrations (he turned water into about 800
bottles of wine if you do the math), and nontraditional
sexuality; he was condemning anything that harms other
people. For example, he condemned casual divorce, not all
divorce (see Instone-Brewer, Divorce and Remarriage in
the Bible and The Source New Testament). He never
mentioned homosexuality. He condemned the corrupt
religion of the day as well as any religious or
government or economic system that hurt the poor, the
“unclean,” and the marginalized, and anything that made
people wealthy at the expense of the poor. Or, that
imposed a violent, retributive system of control on
people. That was “the world” for Jesus.
5 – Jesus did not believe in the traditional heaven/hell
paradigm.
Many people have debunked the doctrine of hell. I have
here and here. Suffice it to say, Jesus’ talk of the
“kingdom” was hardly about the afterlife at all, but
rather about the here and now. The “kingdom of heaven” or
the “kingdom of God” is at hand, in our midst, and within
us. It’s good news now and was to be fleshed out on
earth, as it already is in heaven. What’s more, his talk
of judgment was primarily about judgment on earth, not
the afterlife. He spoke of “Gehenna,” the garbage dump
outside of Jerusalem, which was commonly known as a
metaphor for judgment for the present, not after one dies
(Jeremiah 7). If people did not change their evil and
violent ways, he said, they were at risk of being killed
by their enemies and their bodies thrown into this fiery
garbage pit. That’s literally what the Romans did to
criminals and insurrectionists. His talk of “eternal
punishment,” was not that at all. The phrase has been
badly mistranslated. Hart and Nyland in their New
Testament translations rightly translate it “chastening
of the age” and “rehabilitation for a set period of time”
respectively, whether that meant in the here and now or
in the afterlife.
6 – Jesus was a non-religious progressive who called for
a new way of life.
A life that treats everyone the same and pursues social
justice. Once you understand that Jesus did not start a
new religion and was not instituting a religious church
movement, you can see this clearly. He called people to
“repent” (which means change your mind), about the
religious and imperialistic ways of the world and start
to believe and act on the good news of the kingdom. The
“kingdom” is not religious or political, but simply the
reign of a loving God who desires an egalitarian society
and tells us to start to love one another including our
enemies and have compassion on the poor and the
marginalized in our midst.
7 – Jesus was nonviolent and restorative, not
retributive.
I make this case in Breaking Bad Faith. Once we see his
view of accountability was not to punish people for
punishment’s sake or to follow the reciprocal violence of
the Torah or to send people to hell if they don’t measure
up, we see he pointed to restorative justice as the
solution to wrongdoing and evil. He won over Roman
soldiers, tax collectors, and violent offenders (Paul).
He welcomed anyone who responded to his love. He forgave
all without conditions. He told God to forgive his
torturers and murderers “for they know not what they do.”
He did not retaliate when unjustly arrested, told his
students not to take up the sword, and did not call for
revenge after his resurrection.
8 – Jesus taught accountability for evildoers but not in
the way you may think.
According to the gospels, Jesus often challenged the
corrupt teachers of the law, Pharisees, the rich, and
anyone who harmed their neighbor. But his accountability
was always restorative. He said those who refuse to
change their minds and hearts would face some kind of
trial or judgment, but for the purpose of correcting
them. Street workers and tax collectors enter the kingdom
of God before corrupt religious leaders. But the latter
will still enter one day once they learn to say “blessed
is he who comes in the name of Lord.” Judgment for some
who didn’t help “the least of these” among his brethren,
will be the “rehabilitation of the age,” not eternal
conscious torment. The lost will be found. Jesus didn’t
come into the world to destroy people but to rescue them.
9 – Jesus did not die as a substitute for our sins.
This is another one that takes a while to deconstruct. I
do it in chapters 2 and 6 of Breaking Bad Faith. The
penal substitutionary atonement (PSA) view was not fully
articulated until the 16th century by John Calvin.
Earlier, a man named Anselm taught a similar view called
the “satisfaction” theory in the 11th century. History
tells us the earliest followers of Jesus had other ideas
about the atonement or the meaning of the cross, but
those did not include this notion. The most common was
the view that Jesus died to show how a God of love
handles the violent wrath of humankind with forgiveness
so that sacrifice and a transactional view of God is no
longer necessary. PSA was not part of the original
meaning of the cross. The Eastern church and today’s
Eastern Orthodox never taught it.
10 – Jesus did not believe, or teach, that he would
return to earth thousands of years in the future to judge
the world and set up his kingdom.
No early followers believed this. “The idea of a second
coming of Christ in a far distant future was alien to
early stages of Christian thinking.” (Shanks, Partings:
How Judaism and Christianity Became Two, 21.) Nor did he
teach that he would physically return within the lifetime
of his followers. Jesus used very common cosmic imagery
from the Jewish prophets to describe the end of the
Jewish sacrificial age (Second Temple Judaism). He was
not speaking about the end of the world, but rather the
end of an era. His language describing the “coming of the
son of man” was not about some far-off futuristic-yet-
primitive form of space travel in which he would embark
upon his return to earth (nor a “rapture” of believers
who would join him in the sky). Instead, it was a
statement that he and his good news of peace would be
vindicated. The word “coming” is more properly translated
“appearing.” It does not mean a return to earth (See
DeMar, Last Days Madness and N.T. Wright, Jesus and the
Victory of God) because, in fact, it doesn’t stipulate
what direction one is going. It fits better that Jesus is
“appearing” at the “right hand of God” as he stated once
in this context, similar to other apocalyptic imagery
used in the Old Testament, that wasn’t literal (e.g.,
Isaiah 19 says God rides on a cloud). As for the
tribulation time he predicted, he said it would happen
within the generation of his hearers, which it actually
did in the late 60s CE up to 70 CE when the Romans
destroyed both Jerusalem and the Jewish temple in
response to the Jewish revolt.
Now what do we do with Jesus?
So, after learning these historical points, now what do
we do with Jesus? If we start looking at him this non-
religious way each of us can decide whether to follow his
love ethic. If you have deconstructed evangelicalism,
it’s your choice and Jesus does not condemn you for
erring on the side of avoiding abusive religion. What
matters most to Jesus is how we treat other people and
how we follow the path of restorative love and
peacemaking. I argue it doesn’t matter if we do this
inside or outside of church or Christianity. Why? Because
Jesus never was about that.
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