A Continuing Problem
When I consider the Christian narrative, it strikes me most clearly as a tragedy. The Gospel of Mark, perhaps the earliest and rawest account, conveys this tragic tone unmistakably. Jesus ascends the mountain of transfiguration, rising in vision and clarity, yet he inevitably descends into betrayal, isolation and death on the cross. It is the story of promise confronted by an immovable reality; of light glimpsed, only to be swallowed by darkness. To me, it reads as a deliberate tragedy, stark in its honesty and resisting the temptation to soften the blow with reassurance.
However, the authors of Matthew and Luke seem to have been dissatisfied with such unrelieved bleakness. While retaining the crucifixion, their narratives weave in moments of glory, triumph and fulfilment. The tragedy is reframed so that it is not the final word: genealogies establish Jesusâs place in divine history, miracles confirm his authority, and resurrection appearances expand the narrative into a drama of victory. While Markâs Jesus dies with a loud cry and abandonment, Matthew and Luke depict a more composed and purposeful fulfilment, shifting the narrative towards glory rather than sheer tragedy.
Meanwhile, Paul spiritualises the cross. His vision evokes the brazen serpent lifted up in the wilderness, which was a symbol of healing when gazed upon. He applies this image to Christ, suggesting that the crucifixion itself is the paradoxical source of life. However, Paul never seems to consider the deeper implications of this symbol: that the cross is not only a mystical conduit of divine power, but also a brutal political reality: The Roman Empireâs instrument of terror and domination. Theology, with its speculative structures and prooftexts often taken out of context, further abstracts the tragedy into a system.
As long as I remained in the church, the tragic story resonated most deeply with me. The idea of a man envisaging his people as a light to the world, leading by love, compassion and freedom of spirit rather than domination, only to be crushed by entrenched power, seemed honest and redeeming. It revealed the fragility of vision in a world governed by coercion. However, over time, I found that most Christians contradicted this understanding by clinging to the narrative of glory, triumph and metaphysical victory. Unable to reconcile these divergent visions, I left the church. To me, the tragedy still speaks not as a failure, but as a truth about the cost of love in a world that fears it.
But this tragedy is not confined to the first century, it speaks to the world we know all too well. It mirrors the reality of hope being crushed by violence, visions being suffocated by power and love being confronted with indifference or fear. The crucifixion becomes not just a one-off historical event, but a recurring pattern wherever idealism collides with the machinery of control. In this sense, the story exhorts us: if we recognise the cost of such tragedy, we must prevent its recurrence. We must stand against the forces that perpetuate cycles of oppression and safeguard compassion from being extinguished time and again.
The deepest tragedy
Yet the deepest tragedy, the âtragedy of tragediesâ, is that the supposed followers of Christ, those who inherited the memory of his life and death, fell into the very trap he himself had resisted. The very power he denounced proved too seductive; as the Church gained influence, its structures began to mirror those it had once opposed. Authority became hierarchy, service turned into domination, and the message of freedom became cloaked in dogma and coercion. As the Christian community grew in power, so did its corruption. It was as though the cross had lost its warning and had instead been transformed into a banner of conquest. Thus, the tragedy repeated itself and deepened, as the movement that began with a call to love became embroiled in the same cycle of violence that it had once exposed and condemned.
The modern Church cannot ignore this, for the same dynamic continues into our own time. Christianity, which began as a voice raised against domination, is still all too often enlisted in the service of suppressing and oppressing dissidents, minorities and other traditions. Rather than being a refuge for the marginalised, it has aligned itself with structures of exclusion and control. What makes this all the more jarring is that many Christians, while exercising power in this manner, also claim to be victims of the worldâs resentment. They claim to be persecuted even as they perpetuate systems that silence others.
This dual stance of exercising authority while lamenting victimhood reveals how far the Church has strayed from the tragic honesty of its origins. The cross as tragedy should remind the Church of the dangers of power, the cost of resisting it and the solidarity owed to the oppressed. Instead, however, it is all too often turned into a shield against criticism, a justification for privilege or a rallying symbol for cultural dominance. In order to regain its integrity, the Church must honestly confront its complicity and return to the tragic truth that genuine discipleship is not about grasping power, but about giving oneself away in love, even at the cost of rejection.
We need to worship Jesus less as God and follow him more as a visionary prophet. Elevating Jesus to the status of an untouchable divine figure has placed him on such a high pedestal that his lived example is obscured. When he is primarily adored as a supernatural being, his humanity, the radical choices he made, the risks he took and his vision for a new way of living together are left unexamined. Worship can become a way of avoiding the harder task of discipleship.
If we see him as a visionary prophet instead, his life challenges us directly. His words about love, mercy and justice are no longer distant ideals to be revered, but rather practical calls to action demanding our participation. His resistance to entrenched power and his solidarity with the poor and marginalised are not merely episodes in a divine drama, but a model for how to live in todayâs world. Such a vision restores the tragic depth to his story and reminds us that discipleship is not about believing in his divinity in an abstract way, but about embodying his vision in our own lives, even when this puts us at odds with those around us.
By following him as a prophet rather than worshiping him as God, we reclaim the radical, unsettling, and redeemable core of the Christian story. It becomes a call not to glorify from a distance, but to engage intimately with the demands of conscience and self-knowledge. To know oneself in this context is to confront the ways in which we participate in injustice, to recognize our own capacity for both harm and compassion, and to act with awareness in a world that often rewards conformity and power over truth and love.
Living differently, then, is not a matter of ritual or dogma but of practical transformation: choosing empathy over indifference, integrity over expedience, and courage over fear. The prophetic Jesus challenges us to step out of complacency, to see clearly the structures that oppress and divide, and to embody a vision of community and care that mirrors the possibilities he revealed. In this way, the Christian story, stripped of mere worship, becomes a guide to ethical living, a mirror of human potential, and a compass for navigating the tragedies and complexities of our own time.
