By Sharon St Joan
The message of Jesus Christ has little to do with some aspects of modern-day Christianity. His was a message of love and peace.
This extended to animals. In the final days of his life, he freed the doves in the temple from the cages where they were trapped, waiting to be sacrificed during a “religious” ritual.
He never established a church or set up a religion. Instead, he healed the sick and raised the dead. He didn’t advocate one religion over another. Instead, he said, “In my Father’s house are many mansions.”
He treated women as equals and — to the astonishment of some — had conversations with women even when they were alone. Those who remained faithful to him at the end – who stood at the foot of the cross and attended his grave were his mother and Mary Magdalen.
He taught us not to judge others, saying “Let he who has never sinned cast the first stone.”
In modern times, many who are disillusioned with the hypocrisy of some who call themselves “Christians”, tend to dismiss the goodness, truth and life essence of spiritual reality. They retreat into a bubble that restricts their awareness to a materialistic, physical level – with no God, no spiritual awareness, and no eternal truth.
The truth of Jesus Christ is the same transcendental truth that lies at the heart of every spiritual path.
It manifests as kindness, peace, and love.
© Copyright, Sharon St Joan, 2022
Excellent post!
Thank you, Dawn.
Most monotheists seem to insist upon creating their God’s nature in their own fallible and too-often angry, vengeful image; for example, proclaiming via publicized protests that “God hates ______”, etcetera. Personally, I, a believer in Christ’s unmistakable miracles, like to picture Jesus enjoying a very healthy belly-shaking laugh over a good [albeit clean] joke with his disciples, now and then. Imagine the divine with a good, open sense of humor!
Often being the most vocal, they make very bad examples of Christ’s fundamental message, especially to the young and impressionable. This is why I openly critique those in public life who claim to be Christian yet behave nothing like Christ nor his basic teachings.
Though no pushover, Jesus fundamentally was about compassion and charity. Therefore, Jesus may have been viciously killed because he did not in the least behave in accordance to corrupted human conduct and expectation — and in particular because he was nowhere near to being the vengeful, wrathful, and sometimes even bloodthirsty, behemoth so many people seemingly wanted or needed their savior to be and therefore believed he’d have to be.
I understand that Jesus’ nature and teachings left even John the Baptist, who believed in him as the savior, troubled by his apparently contradictory version of the Hebraic messiah, with which John had been raised. Perhaps most perplexing was the Biblical Jesus’ revolutionary teaching of non-violently offering the other cheek as the proper response to being physically assaulted by one’s enemy. [Many institutional ‘Christians’ may therefore find inconvenient, if not annoying, trying to reconcile the conspicuous inconsistency in the fundamental nature of the New Testament’s Jesus with the wrathful, vengeful and even jealous nature of the Old Testament’s Creator.]
Jesus also most profoundly washed his disciples’ feet, the act clearly revealing that he took corporeal form to serve, which of course included saving. As such a hopeful example of the humility of the divine, Jesus joined humankind in our miseries, joys and everything in between.
Followers of Islam and Judaism generally believe, however, that Jesus did exist but was not a divine being [albeit Islam teaches that Jesus was a prophet]. After all, how could any divine being place himself/itself down to the level of humans (and even lower, by some other standards)? How could any divine being NOT be a conqueror — far less allow himself to be publicly stripped naked, severely beaten and murdered in such a belittling manner?!
But, for me at least, all this makes Jesus even greater, not less divine.
He was/is meant to show to people that there really was/is hope for the many — especially for young people living in today’s physical, mental and spiritual turmoil — seeing hopelessness in a fire-and-brimstone angry-God-condemnation creator requiring literal pain-filled penance/payment for Man’s sinful thus corrupted behavior. Fundamentally, that definitely includes resurrection.
Thank you so much for taking the time to express your profound, very meaningful thoughts!
You’re welcome; and thank you for your thought-provoking piece.
That’s a very good point, Chinny!
Quite ironically, some of the best humanitarians were/are atheists or agnostics who would make better examples of some of Christ’s teachings and practices than too many institutional ‘Christians’ (i.e. those most resistant to Christ’s fundamental teachings of non-violence, compassion and non-wealth); and, conversely, some of the worst human(e) beings are the most devout preachers/practitioners of institutional Christian theology.
Sadly, Christ was the last Christian. All that we can do is strive to be Christlike in our behaviour.