It All Comes Back to the Resurrection

It's interesting to see how conversations develop organically, often within an unexpected context. This conversation between Jim Reed and me (aka reuster) originally happened in the comment thread of an article on Religion Dispatches about Pat Robertson's statements on the Haitian earthquake.

RD Reader: ...Understanding isn't about "who is persecuting whom". It's about loving people, regardless... Jesus did that, didn't he? So what's [Robertson and his followers'] excuse?

Jesus did that what's their excuse?
Posted by Jim Reed on January 14, 2010 at 1:26 PM

Religion evolves like all other life on earth. That which can propagate to the next generation and in larger numbers will survive, and might eventually dominate. Jesus was teaching something more like a humanistic philosophy. His methods could never compete with the more traditional forms of religion that have evolved over time by being able to out-influence the others. Jesus never really stood a chance in the long run. All that is left is a name.

RE: Jesus did that what's their excuse?.
Posted by reuster on January 14, 2010 at 3:00 PM

How does Jesus's teaching qualify as a "humanistic philosophy"?

Why do you say that his methods failed to compete with other religions? Christianity spread throughout the Roman empire within decades of Jesus's death and resurrection, to the extent that the Romans started to get anxious and violent about it.

RE: a humanistic philosophy
Posted by Jim Reed on January 14, 2010 at 4:05 PM

Jesus was about an approach to life, love others, treat them well, help them. It was not about a system of judging people according to how deeply they profess belief. Christianity is just a religion, and it works like other religions. It teaches belief in the name of Jesus, and belief in the scriptures. The scriptures are not there so that people will believe them. They are stories that you might find can help you see something about how to live. It doesn't matter if you believe them. God is not going to judge you by whether you have the proper system of beliefs.

RE: a humanistic philosophy
Posted by reuster on January 14, 2010 at 5:54 PM

"Jesus was about an approach to life, love others, treat them well, help them."

Jesus did not come to earth simply to tell us to love each other. Such a message would have been redundant, since God had repeatedly told his people in the Law of Moses to "love your neighbor", in so many words. In fact, Jesus went out of his way to emphasize that his teaching was the exact same as the Torah. But Jesus did not come primarily to teach, even by example. He understood that the people's problem was not that they didn't know how to love others, but that they didn't have the power to do so. Instead of simply telling them for the 100th time to "love their neighbor", Jesus came to do something about the root of the problem.

Jesus saw his execution and resurrection as central to his mission. He predicted his death several times, calling it necessary and moving towards it of his own free will. When his death finally came, Jesus was not executed for reminding people of what they already knew; he was executed for blasphemy. He was executed because he claimed to be God, and claimed to offer direct access to God through himself (thus circumventing the power of the religious authorities, and upsetting them). That's why he told his followers that they needed to eat his flesh and drink his blood in order to have eternal life. That's why, whenever someone came to him for healing, he praised them for their faith in him. Nothing excited Jesus like faith, and nothing disappointed him like a lack of faith. Jesus wanted people to trust him, to follow him to his death and resurrection, and to gain access to God through him. Only then would they be able to love others.

So no, Jesus's message was not primarily "love others" but rather "I am God; have faith in me, ingest me, come to the Father through me, die with me, rise with me! Only then will you have the power to love as I love." Jim, Jesus was the polar opposite of a humanist because he knew that humans could do nothing on their own.

I agree that God does not judge by belief, if belief simply means intellectual assent. But God does judge us by our faith, because trusting in him is a prerequisite for loving him, and for truly loving others as well.

RE: a humanistic philosophy
Posted by Jim Reed on January 15, 2010 at 4:39 AM

Bill, that sounds overly complicated. Jesus was born when he was born because that was when he was born. He was born where he was born by the luck of the draw. He dealt with the people of the area where he lived, who are much like the people of the world today. Americans might be a little different because we might be more like the people of Rome. Jesus' life was recorded in many gospels that were written in the several decades after he died. They were selected and rejected and collected by the church over the course of a few centuries. The story evolved along with the church, and in fact a primary purpose of the story was to meet the needs of the church. Don't try to read more into this than is actually there.

History begs to differ
Posted by reuster on January 15, 2010 at 6:54 AM

On the contrary, when you take the gospels and strip away everything that contradicts your preconceived notions about Jesus, you're not talking about Jesus anymore, but rather a figment of your own imagination. You're not looking at what is actually there; you're looking at what you want to be there. And you don't want to find a dying and rising God who will change your life; you want to find an ordinary guy who preached exactly what you already believe.

A point of fact: you claim that there were many gospels written in the decades after Jesus's death and that some were selected and others rejected from the final canon. This is misleading. The only gospels that scholars and historians have reliably dated to the 1st century AD are the four canonical gospels. Other gospels like the those of Thomas, Mary, Judas, Philip, Truth, etc. were written no earlier than the 3rd century, 200 years or more after the events they describe. Many gospels do not even claim to be eyewitness accounts of Jesus's teaching and ministry. These two criteria: early authorship and Apostolic (eyewitness) authority, single out Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as the only trustworthy sources on Jesus. They were not simply selected because they happened to support some theological agenda of the church.

A more interesting question is: why was there even a church in the first place? The century before and after Jesus was rife with charismatic individuals who opposed the political order and attracted groups of followers. These failed Messiahs would be imprisoned or executed, and their movement would fizzle out as their followers dispersed and fled, for fear of a similar fate. The same thing should have happened to Jesus's followers. He opposed the authorities and hinted at his Messianic identity, attracting large crowds of followers. Then he was executed, and his Messianic movement should have fizzled out like all the others. In fact, in the days after Jesus's death, the gospels report that his disciples were in hiding, probably out of fear of being similarly executed.

However, history (even secular sources) tells us that these same disciples went on to spread the message of their failed Messiah throughout Palestine and the larger Roman world. Especially interesting is that they established a vibrant church in Jerusalem by preaching boldly in the backyard of the same authorities they had earlier feared. Indeed, all the disciples except John paid for their boldness with martyrdom. Against all odds of history, the cult of yet another failed Messiah exploded into a major religion overnight (Nero was persecuting Christians on the other side of the known world just 30 years later). In the disciples' own explanation, this phenomenon was entirely the result of Jesus appearing to them - in bodily form: eating, talking, walking, and touching his wounds - 3 days after his execution.

Other interesting facts of history: i)in the Jewish authorities' polemical attacks on early Christians, the emptiness of Jesus's tomb and the disappearance of his body are taken for granted. ii) Saul, the zealous persecutor of early Christians, became Paul, the Apostle of Christ, after claiming to have seen and talked with the resurrected Jesus. iii) James, the begrudging brother of Jesus who wanted nothing to do with Jesus's ministry, became one of the leaders of the Jerusalem church after claiming to have seen his brother risen from the dead, in the flesh.

Whether you believe in the resurrection or not (and if not, I challenge you to offer a consistent explanation of all of the above), Jesus was anything but ordinary in the effect he had on people, and his mission cannot be understood in ordinary terms, as you would like. His life doesn't fit into an overly simplistic paradigm; he shatters everybody's ideas about who he should be. For my own part, he has surprised me many times over.