Sunday Sermon [Who Was Jesus?]

¡Hola! Everybody…
Many People from fundamentalist Christian backgrounds will find the following offensive and even shocking. Their traditional view of Jesus as the redeemer who died to save humankind from eternal damnation is what holds their whole world together.

I have no quarrel with religious beliefs, especially beliefs that help make people kinder human beings. My advice for people who think they may be offended is to leave this blog immediately. Others may find what I have to say eye-opening or maybe even refreshing (or not think of it at all). Whatever the case, the choice to read is yours. However, the choice to think critically is yours… and mine.

* * *

-=[ Who was Jesus and What Did He Say ]=-

What shall it profit a man if he gains the world but loses his soul?
-- Jesus of Nazareth

Contrary to current popular opinion, Jesus wasn’t a Red State Republican. ::grin::

Jesus was born and raised a Jew. He lived and thought of himself as a Jewish teacher. All of his direct disciples were Jews. He felt that his job was to teach Jews about God and about the right way to live (though his teachings are truly for all people).

He did not intend to begin a new religion. He wouldn’t even have known what the meaning of Christian. In fact, Christian is a word that appeared after he died to describe people who believed some things that he himself never believed.

He wouldn’t have recognized the name Jesus Christ. His name was Yeshua or Yeshu (rhymes with day shoe), which is Joshua in English and Jesus in Greek. He didn’t have a last name. No one did in those days. Men were called “So-and-so son of So-and-so,” or “So-and-so from Such-and-such a place.” Whatever the case, Christ isn’t a name, it’s a title. It’s the Greek word for mashiakh, which is a Hebrew word that means “The Anointed One.”

Jesus once or twice referred to himself as a prophet. But he never thought of himself as the Messiah. The Messiah is a figure in Jewish legend that will supposedly appear one day to make the world perfect. Jesus never thought of himself as the son of God. True, he called God father, but that was (and still is) common in Jewish prayer. He didn’t mean that he was literally a son of God. He knew that he had a human father. He didn’t think that a male God had come down to earth and impregnated a human female, who had given birth to a hero, as in Greek and Roman mythology. What he meant by “son of God” was someone who takes after God, just as a son takes after his father. What he intended to teach was that if you truly love God, and treat your fellow human beings with respect and compassion, then you are a child of God.

Jesus knew he wasn’t the only son of God. On the contrary, he wanted everyone to become a son or daughter of God. His message was that no matter how poor, stupid, or confused we think we are, all of us are capable of becoming children of God. He explicitly stated that anyone that acts with unselfish love is God’s beloved child. The second part of his message was that it is equally true that everyone is God’s beloved child and that God’s love is always present for us, no matter how selfishly we act.

The composition of the Gospels is an extremely complex subject, but what follows are some brief discoveries.

Jesus never wrote anything himself. The earliest account we have of him is the Gospel According to Mark, which dates about 70 years after Jesus’ death. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke probably date 20-30 years after, and the Gospel of John probably a little over a 100 years from Jesus’ death. None of these books were written by a direct disciple of Jesus. Jesus did have disciples named Matthew and Mark, but they weren’t’ the authors of the Gospels attributed to them. The Gospels were written in Greek, a language Jesus may, or may not, have known. His language was Aramaic, which is related to Hebrew. His original words, in original Aramaic, may never have been written down; if they were, they have been lost.

Seventy years is a long time; ninety or a hundred years is even longer. During those years, many stories were told about Jesus, and there were many reports of what he said. Some of these were handed down orally from Jesus’ own disciples, who lived with and knew him, even if they always didn’t understand his teachings. Disciples of disciples, who never knew the actual Jesus, made other stories and reports up much later.

Some people faithfully attempted to repeat the words he taught, and others added very different teachings, according to their own interpretation of what was true.

When the Gospels finally came to be written, their authors inherited a mixed collection of teachings and stories, only part of which originated in the life and teachings of Jesus himself. Thomas Jefferson, a deeply religious man and author of the Declaration of Independence, once said, “There is internal evidence that parts of the Gospels have proceeded from an extraordinary man, and that other parts come from very inferior minds. It is easy to pick out the diamonds from the dunghills.” Imagine a president saying something like that today! Eventually he would spend a winter distilling what he thought was contradictory and created what is now called the Jeffersonian Bible, or The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth.

And there are passages in the Gospels that seem to contradict the authentic teaching about God’s love, as in the end of Mark’s Gospel, “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever doesn’t believe will be damned.” Such sayings make Jesus sound ignorant and small-hearted. I think Jesus would have been amused to hear such words put in his mouth.

Another example, Jesus teaches us not judge (in the sense of condemnation) but to keep our hearts open to all people. Later scriptures have Jesus as the final “judge,” who will float down on clouds for the world’s final rewards and condemnations. Jesus cautioned against anger, taught the love of enemies, but the later “Jesus” calls his enemies “children of the devil,” and attacks them with savageness and contempt.

Which Jesus are we too follow? I think the task for an earnest spiritual seeker of any faith is to separate the diamonds from the shit. Like Jefferson, I don’t think it’s that hard to see through the political motivations of later interpretations.

I do not identify as a Christian, but I believe the real Jesus was one of the most beautiful men who ever lived. He himself would probably have not considered himself beautiful or even special. He would have said that we are all beautiful; we are all special because -- he definitely said the following:

We are all children of God.

Love,

Eddie

Taking Jesus Back

¡Hola! Everybody...
Okay, so pending confirmation from my sister, we might move the picnic over to her house. It’s closer to public transportation for those who don’t have cars. I’ll be sending an email later today, so stay tuned.

Today? I’m taking Jesus back!

* * *

-=[ Kidnapping the Baby Jesus ]=-

Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

-- Matthew 5:1-12 (New Revised Standard Version)

I have a friend, let’s call him Thomas. Thomas curses like a sailor, smokes cigarettes, occasionally enjoys getting his drink on, and is one of the funniest people I know. His commitment to social justice and the work he has done has done more to ease suffering than most people you will ever meet. He doesn’t “give a shit” about whether you accept Jesus as you savior or not. His main concern is your problem and how he can help you solve it.

Aside from the great work Thomas does what sets him apart from most of my friends is that Thomas is actually Father Thomas. He’s a priest and one of the most spiritually evolved people I have ever had the good fortune to meet.

One day I was speaking on social justice at a law school in Manhattan. It’s considered the top law school in the land (it competes yearly with Harvard for that distinction). After, during the question/ answer section, a gentleman rose and identified himself as being from the “faith-based” community and his question was to the point: “What can we in the faith-based community do to help stop the madness of mass incarceration.” My response was equally to the point: “Get up and tell the politicians to stop justifying these unjust policies in your God’s name. Tell them, ‘not in our name.’” I went on to explain that though I don’t identify as a Christian, I do know that a major theme as articulated in the life of Jesus is the concept of redemption.

This gentleman insisted we meet so that we could collaborate, and I accepted the invitation. However, when I looked at the program he was running, I immediately realized that this man wasn’t working toward social justice, he was pushing religion. A large part of his program involved coercing program participants into accepting Jesus as their savior, regardless of their spiritual backgrounds. When I visited some of his facilities, I knew I wanted no part of their program and let him know.

Two people, two Christians, each having a different impact on their communities.

I have no problem with another person’s faith. It’s none of my business. I do have a problem with individuals who, though they may like me, or respect my work in social justice, will continue to see me as incomplete because I will not accept Jesus as my savior.

As far as I’m concerned, this preoccupation with conversion experiences is a pathology. It is a plague on our nation and world.

As a young man, I remember learning from a Hindu teacher that all paths are valid. He taught that -- although they use different names and different religious methods -- they all point to the same goal. The poet Gibran described religions as fingers from the same hand.

For too long, we have allowed the neoconservatives to kidnap Jesus and twist his teachings to suit their particular brand of intolerance, injustice, and bigotry. We need to take back Jesus, developing a wider view of Christianity that includes respect not only for other religions but also for science, logic, and reason.

Many of you would think that the two, science and religion, could never be reconciled, but I dispute that claim. I believe spirituality speaks truths that are different from the truths of science. The bible should never be read literally. If you believe in a higher power, then you must certainly believe that higher power created human minds that could think critically and unearth the mysteries of the universe. Only a demented fool would stick to an idea even after it has been irrefutably dismantled. Still, many spiritual stories have metaphysical lessons to teach us -- truths that have nothing to do with science. Let science be science and spirituality be spirituality.

Evolution is a scientific theory like gravity, which has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. Leave the child’s understanding of a universe created in six days behind, people. Personally, I do to believe in a Divine Hierarchy that must be prayed to in order to curry favor and so many of you would consider me an atheist or an agnostic., I am neither. I quite literally don’t give a fuck. My spirituality is more closely aligned to what would be called an evolutionary spirituality and no -- please! -- don’t come at me with that bullshit Intelligent Design! That’s not what I’m speaking of when I say evolutionary spirituality.

But I digress. What I want to talk about is a Christianity where science and religion are compatible. A Christianity that allows one to read the bible metaphorically rather than literally and respects the scientific method. Doubt, my friends, is the handmaiden of faith and love is the primary Christian value, and it is directly related to the promotion of liberty and social justice. There are many valid paths to the spiritual mountain and Christianity is only one of them.

I will address three hot button issues in the coming days and make a case for Christianity for those who identify as progressives or liberals. I will say this much, if you think what I have written above to be a pipe dream, please know that there at least 60 million Christians who identify with what I have written here today.

There is, after all, hope....

Love,

Eddie

Sunday Sermon: American Taliban

¡Hola! Everybody…

Here’s hoping my Houston readers are well and safe. I have family in Texas (believe it or not) and fortunately, they are doing well. No one’s hurt and today they all have juice. Hope all those affected by Ike can say the same.

* * *

-=[ The American Taliban’s War Against Freedom ]=-

News Item: Back in 1996, when she first became mayor, Sarah Palin asked the city librarian if she would be all right with censoring library books should she be asked to do so. According to news coverage at the time, the librarian said she would definitely not be all right with it. A few months later, the librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, got a letter from Palin telling her she was going to be fired.

I recently had to fire an employee for unethical behavior. In actuality, she was beyond unethical, she was demented. I will be conducting interviews for the now open position. I can tell you in full confidence that any job applicants listing “being tortured” as a qualification for the job will not be considered. In addition, any applicants claiming not to have any experience as a qualification will be similarly dismissed. I believe any readers who own their own business would behave in a similar matter.

Why then, do we accept these as “qualifications” for the most powerful office in the known universe?

::blank stare::

In the same way, I will not be entertaining any applicants who cite a holy mandate as a qualification for the job. Let me put it this way: if you ask why you should submit to my desire to sodomize you and my response is “God wants it that way,” would you then bend over? (If you r answer is yes and you’re female, please PM me right away!).

Why then, would you accept this from a politician?

About half the people who voted in the last elections (roughly 20-25% of the population) accept these as qualifications for the office of the presidency of the United States of America.

Would you allow a doctor who dismissed the most important, most concrete theory of biology to treat you? I doubt it. And whatever your “beliefs,” if a cure using evolutionary theory would save your child or loved one from disease, you would use it without thinking about it. In fact, most of us do benefit from such a theory everyday of our lives.

As a young man, I would read of the Dark Ages and wonder how such a world could exist. It was hard for me to imagine a world in which religious superstition would eradicate knowledge, discourage the technology of how to build aqueducts, construct indoor plumbing, and practice sophisticated herbal medicine.

Today, I not only can better understand such a thing -- I believe I am seeing it. As I write this today, science in the United States – once a leader in virtually every research field – is under an intense assault from the extreme religious right – the American Taliban.

No matter how broad the scientific consensus that fossil fuels constitute the principal factor in climate change, conservatives have applied enough pressure that the current administration wouldn’t sign the Kyoto Protocol. The conservative movement will most likely have succeeded in convincing you that oil-drilling in the Alaskan wilderness will be good for you (ignorance is strength). You will vote for that though it will have at best a negligible effect on your pocket and will continue our dependence on fossil fuels when we should be leading the world in alternative fuel sources.

In 2006, the National Institutes of Health budget was cut – for the first time in thirty-six years. As a nation, we educate fewer scientists every year, and we now import more high-tech products than we export. Pressured by wild-eyed extremists such as McCain, Bush administration policy dictates that one third of all government HIV-prevention spending – literally hundreds of millions of dollars – must go to “abstinence until marriage” programs, while government funding for programs supporting condom use have been gutted. This, despite the tragic fact that failure rates for abstinence only programs are many times higher than for programs that are more comprehensive.

The Federal Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have both been forced to take unscientific positions in order to please religious forces. For example, they have had to bow to conservative pressure on the “morning after” Plan B pill and on condom use, provoking a mass exodus of scientists from both agencies.

Evangelical CDC appointee and Focus on the Family co-founder, Reginald Finger has gone on record as saying that he would oppose an HIV vaccine if one were to become available: “With any vaccine for HIV, dis-inhibition [meaning freedom from the fear of sex] would certainly be a factor and is something we will have to pay attention to.” These same people attempted blocking approval for and successfully politicized a vaccine protecting women against a virus that causes caner of the cervix. His worry was that, “This vaccine may be sending an overall message to teenagers that ‘We expect them to be sexually active’”

At the same time, conservatives send anti-choice lobbyists as delegates to international conventions on women’s health, and pressure global conferences on AIDS to have religious zealots lecture on “faith-based solutions to AIDS.” I could go on and on: the religious right’s effect on stem cell research, for example, is notorious, despite the majority of scientists – and U. S. citizens, including evangelicals – supporting research that stands to have the largest impact on health in the history of humankind, particularly affecting research on cancer, Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, and paralysis.

We like to look down our collective noses at societies that ruled by “obsessed fanatics,” especially those in the Muslim world. The talking heads of the corporate media tsk-tsk about these societies and our political nominees love to fall back on the talking point that “they hate our freedoms that’s why they attack us.

Fair enough.

But what about our homegrown literalist, fundamentalist extremists? In 1997, a man named Gil Alexander Moegerle held a press conference in Colorado Springs. A cofounder of the group, Focus on the Family, he had just written a book, James Dobson’s War on America. Apparently taking his Christianity seriously for a change, Alexander-Moegerle offered a public apology to all women, men of color, Jews, Muslims, homosexual people, and others harmed by the “actions and attitudes on the part of the Christian Right in general and James Dobson and Focus on the Family in particular.”

The book is the first insider expose of a major religious-right organization that uncovers how the corrupt Christina Right operates behind the scenes and issues a warning to the American people.

There was virtually no coverage of his press conference (though it is still available in full: click here).

Many Christians will respond to my critiques of religion by pointing out that it applies only to a small number of vulgar, literalistic fundamentalists. But this is at best wishful thinking. The majority of Americans accept the Bible as a literal history, for example. A history which no rational person should treat as anything more than metaphorical myths. For example, a study using several different surveys found that a percentage of Americans believed:

• Moses literally parted the Red Sea: 64%
• God created the universe in six days: 60%
  

And some of us wonder why our educational system is in disarray? We have extremists running for office who advocate the censorship of books and discourage the teaching of sound scientific theory! How is that different form Europe’s Dark Ages, or the behavior of “radical Islamic extremists” today?

The decade of 1991-2001 saw a marked increase in multiple attacks on U.S. clinics and medical personnel providing contraception and abortion services, leaving 8 dead and 33 seriously wounded. Additionally, there have been more than 20 arsons and attempted arsons, 10 bombings and attempted bombings, and multiple clinics in 23 states have received threats of anthrax and chemical attacks. In fact, the American Life League (a Catholic Organization) ran an ad attacking Planned Parenthood, declaring “Abortion as the ultimate terrorism.”

How would this be treated if it were Islamic terrorists doing the bombing?

It’s time for us to reclaim this nation (or, for some groups, claim it for the first time). It’s time to return it to its original “patriotic” values. The Founders, flawed men that they were, knew they didn’t get it right. They realized that issues would come up, changes and discoveries would make some of their views irrelevant. They realized, that United States of America was (and still is) an experiment. The reason people want to come here is not because they want to shoot caribous in the wild or even buy plasma TVs. They come here because they want to be a part of that experiment.

After the first Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin was asked what type of government the Founders had chosen. His reply is as striking today as it was then: “We have given you a republic – if you can keep it.”

So... it’s up to us…

Love,

Eddie

Sunday Sermon [Who Was Jesus]

Hola! Everybody,
Many People from fundamentalist Christian backgrounds will find the following offensive and even shocking. Their traditional view of Jesus as the redeemer who died to save humankind from eternal damnation is what holds their whole world together.

I have no quarrel with religious beliefs, especially beliefs that help make people kinder human beings. My advice for people who think they may be offended is to leave this blog immediately. Others may find what I have to say eye-opening or maybe even refreshing. In either case, the choice to read is yours. However, the choice to think critically is yours -- and mine.

* * *

-=[ Who was Jesus and What Did He Say ]=-

Contrary to popular opinion, Jesus wasn’t a Red State Republican.

Jesus was born and raised a Jew. He lived and thought of himself as a Jewish teacher. All of his direct disciples were Jews. He felt that his job was to teach Jews about God and about the right way to live (though his teachings are truly for all people).

He did not intend to begin a new religion. He wouldn’t even have known what the word Christian means. In fact, Christian is a word that appeared after he died to describe people who believed some things that he himself never believed.

He wouldn’t have recognized the name Jesus Christ. His name was Yeshua or Yeshu (rhymes with day shoe), which is Joshua in English and Jesus in Greek. He didn’t have a last name. No one did in those days. Men were called So-and-so son of So-and-so, or So-and-so from Such-and-such a place. Whatever the case, Christ isn’t a name, it’s a title. It’s the Greek word for mashiakh, which is a Hebrew word that means “The Anointed One.”

Jesus once or twice referred to himself as a prophet. But he never thought of himself as the Messiah. The Messiah is a figure in Jewish legend that will supposedly appear one day to make the world perfect. Jesus never thought of himself as the son of God. True, he called God father, but that was (and still is) common in Jewish prayer. He didn’t mean that he was literally a son of God. He knew that he had a human father. He didn’t think that a male God had come down to earth and impregnated a human female, who had given birth to a hero, as in Greek and Roman mythology. What he meant by son of God was someone who takes after God, just as a son takes after his father. What he meant to teach was that if you truly love God, and treat your fellow human beings with respect and compassion, then you are a son of God.

Jesus knew he wasn’t the only son of God. On the contrary, he wanted everyone to become a son or daughter of God. His message was that no matter how poor, stupid, or confused we think we are, all of us are capable of becoming sons or daughters of God. He explicitly stated that anyone that acts with unselfish love is God’s beloved child. The second part of the message is that it is equally true that everyone is God’s beloved child and that God’s love is always present for us, no matter how selfishly we act.

The composition of the Gospels is an extremely complex subject, but what follows are some brief discoveries.

Jesus never wrote anything himself. The earliest account we have of him is the Gospel According to Mark, which dates about 70 years after Jesus’ death. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke probably date 20-30 years after, and the Gospel of John probably a little over a 100 years from Jesus’ death. None of these books were written by a direct disciple of Jesus. Jesus did have disciples named Matthew and Mark, but they weren’t’ the authors of the Gospels attributed to them. The Gospels were written in Greek, a language Jesus may, or may not, have known. His language was Aramaic, which is related to Hebrew. His original words, in original Aramaic, may never have been written down; if they were, they have been lost.

Seventy years is a long time; ninety or a hundred years is even longer. During those years, many stories were told about Jesus, and there were many reports of what he said. Some of these were handed down r=orally from Jesus’ own disciples, who lived with and knew him, even if they always didn’t understand his teachings. Disciples of disciples, who never knew the actual Jesus, made other stories and reports up much later.

Some people faithfully attempted to repeat the words he taught, and others added very different teachings, according to their own interpretation of what was true.

When the Gospels finally came to be written, their authors inherited a mix collection of teachings and stories, only part of which originated in the life and teachings of Jesus himself. Thomas Jefferson, a deeply religious man and author of the Declaration of Independence, once said, “There is internal evidence that parts of the Gospels have proceeded from an extraordinary man, and that other parts come from very inferior minds. It is easy to pick out the diamonds from the dunghills.” Imagine a president saying something like that today! Eventually he would spend a winter excising what he thought was contradictory and created what is now called the Jeffersonian Bible, or The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth.

And there are passages in the Gospels that seem to contradict the authentic teaching about God’s love, as in the end of Mark’s Gospel, “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever doesn’t believe will be damned.” Sayings such as this make Jesus sound ignorant and small-hearted. I think Jesus would have been amused to hear such words out in his mouth.

Another example, Jesus teaches us not judge (in the sense of not to condemn) but to keep our hearts open to all people. Later scriptures have Jesus as the final “judge,” who will float down on clouds for the world’s final rewards and condemnations. Jesus cautions against anger, teaches love the love of enemies, but the later “Jesus” calls his enemies “children of the devil,” and attacks them with savageness and contempt.

Which Jesus are we too follow? I think the spiritual task for any earnest spiritual seeker of any faith, is to separate the diamonds from the shit. Like Jefferson, I don’t think it’s that hard to see through the political motivations of later interpretations.

I am not a Christian, but I believe the real Jesus was one of the most beautiful men who ever lived. He himself would [probably have not considered himself beautiful or even special. He would have said that we are all beautiful, we are all special because – he definitely said this:

We are all children of God.

Love,

Eddie