Thesis 6: (Your) Christ Doesn't Exist

(Or, uncomfortable truths about Jesus you probably won’t hear from the pulpit.)

(Your) Christ Doesn't Exist

Jesus is not your personal Lord and Saviour.

This misleading phrase is a postmodern creation put forth by men desperate for asses in pews, and never appears in the Bible. This isn’t news, of course, and your pastor probably knows. Yet it has remained one of those “yes, but…” conversations which gets begrudging lip service just before getting ignored wholesale. Yes, but the concept is all over the Bible, some’ll say. Yes, but it helps us focus on Christ. Yes, but it has turned scores of doubters into believers. And so on. The result has been the widespread masturbatory pursuit of individual gratification, healing, enlightenment, and spiritual fulfilment. Me, me, me, now, now, now. (See also: altar-calls, speaking in tongues, getting slain in the spirit, and personal intercessory prayer times.)

Jesus is not your friend.

Not in the way you know friendship, anyhow. Though he used the word friend when speaking with his disciples, that was an earned, hard-won friendship that cost all the invested parties everything. We can’t fathom the relationship he formed with his disciples because we haven’t given everything up to follow and love and live/die with him. We’ll never have coffee conversations with a sarcastic Jesus or long, poster-inspiring walks on the beach, or song-singing-skipping-hand-holding sessions at the park, or tequila-soaked tear-fests after a bad breakup. He isn’t Barney or Oprah or Taylor Swift. He isn’t your bestie. We can’t know him, not really; we can merely know about him.

Jesus was a dark-skinned Jew from Roman-occupied Judea (now Palestine).

We can (should) blame the Renaissance for many things, but one of the biggest offences is the Church-fuelled bastardization of Christ’s image. No, we don’t know exactly what he looked like, but we can certainly dispense with the blonde-haired, blue-eyed, aquiline adonises that have plastered Christendom for centuries. Don’t fool yourself: Church has long known that the imagery is problematic, but money and power always drive the conversation in its upper echelons. More damningly, Church has long suppressed marginalized and radicalized communities, so to adhere to the caucasian, Rome-driven version of Christ is colonialist and racist.

Jesus was a Jew, not a Christian.

This reality is another one that gets lip service: of course Jesus was a Jew. And yet our attitude to our saviour almost never reflects that he was an observant jew who practiced and observed all of the customs and practices that defined Judaism at that time. We warp his words and actions to fit into our contemporary version of Christianity, as though he’d hang out with us at our megachurch and bump fists as we leave (abandon) the building every week. We imagine him getting grumpy at migrants, condemning women who are forced with impossible choices, and painting protest placards against marriage equality. Just like us. But he isn’t like us. We work from a privileged, wealthy mindset that elevates individual achievement above all else. He preached from the tradition of ancient Jewish moral and social codes, especially those centred on compassion and helping those in need.

Jesus isn’t American.

Sure, we’ve seen ridiculous memes and claims online that are easy to dismiss, but there’s a dangerous reality that has emerged in recent times. The trappings of our faith have become tinged with the flavour of ‘Murica, and the faithful all over the world are consuming and emulating content that has been steeped in the excesses of the American dream. We are remaking Jesus, too, in this image: next time you’re in Church or doing faith reading online, watch for Jesus’ words being used to argue against something America has made a salvation issue. Analyze the lyrics of your favourite P&W songs, evaluate the tone of the devotional or online sermon video you’re engaged with, or have a critical look at the pamphlet wall at the back of your church. So many of these will be bloody with Amerocentric nonsense. What we consume from the cultural juggernaut that is the USA is continually changing Christ into something he never was, is, or ever will be.

Jesus was a social justice warrior.

The intellectual gymnastics that Church performs to escape this reality is mind-blowing. If you look at his life as a whole, you can’t deny with any great accuracy that he was constantly championing the causes of the marginalized and vulnerable. And yet Church is constantly downplaying the vast majority of what Christ stands for (i.e. love your neighbour as yourself and feed his sheep) because equality threatens the hierarchy that keeps itself in power. And keeping itself in the money: following Christ is supposed to cost us everything, including the materialistic stuff we’ve assembled. Helping the poor won’t pay for Joel Osteen’s private jet.

Jesus didn’t use scripture to prove a point.

He used the scriptures in his ministry, but not the way we do. He pointed people back to the whole of the text and to concepts and words that had context and meaning. We quote book and chapter and verse (with parentheses, even) because they’re convenient divisions. He never did. No one did back then. There were no chapters or verses, just scrolls you had to know in their entirety to use with any conviction. We’ve subverted the holistic use of scripture to our laziness and need for convenience: we can damn anyone with a few choice verses, and we often do.

The textual Jesus has changed.

“God-Breathed” isn’t the same thing as “Without Flaw.” There are very human fingerprints all over the Bible we know today (hello, red letters!), and they do more than just make the glasses a little smudgy: they’ve chemically altered the lenses. Whole universes of meaning have been changed (see, for example, the prosperity gospel or the existence of the pope). But again, if you step back and take the Bible in as a whole, the image gets clearer. The Bible is a story of humans seeking meaning and salvation and finding them through the example of a man named Jesus. And Jesus preached communal love and compassion for God and our neighbours, and to fight the things that obstruct these objectives. Even though authorship and edition and versions can and will change, Jesus’ mission and purpose never will.

Keywords: (Your) Christ Doesn't Exist; Faith; Deconstruction; Religion; Christian; Christianity; Church; Sin; Corruption; Scandal; Bible; Abuse