When we look at the story of Jesus Christ, it becomes hard to separate the fact from the fiction. Was he the son of God? Was he not? Was he just a man or was he more? Did he even exist? I find that a good amount of people today do question the existence of Christ and not without good reason. The whole concept of the holidays that the church of those days took from Pagans only serves as reminder that Christ’s birth date and day of resurrection did not occur on the dates mentioned in the modern interpretation of the bible.
The Bible itself, which we are to take on blind faith is the written word of God is even less trustworthy, for it contradicts not only itself but the intelligence of its readers. It is not to say that the bible does not have good values and morals in it and that is what keeps people hooked into what has been made of religion and it’s not their fault as far as non-religious people like to think it is. It’s not weak to want something to believe in, it’s not weak to see the possible truth of something even though we don’t understand it.
I believe that even if Christ did not exist in the sense that we think of him, something like him had to have existed at least once in our history for us to even have the concept of him.
Therefore, I wanted to take a look at Christ in a way that many have deemed it taboo to think of him as: a man and one we can understand full well.
To start, Jesus was born at a special time; whether this was winter solstice or not is up for debate, but that it drew the attention of others is not without merit. Whether the star in the sky that night was meant to guide those three men to the hut or not, They found their way and thought the child to be special. Whether or not they showed up or not at all, Mary thought her child was special, for she believed herself to have been visited by an Angel that told her that her son would be the messiah.
As much as one may try, that belief would have made its way out in her actions and her son would have picked up on it in one way or the other, especially if it got brought up often. Enter Joseph, a good, god-fearing man. As much as any of us may like to believe in the concept of God, who in their right mind is going to believe their wife when she winds up pregnant saying it was immaculate conception? I’m sure he loved her, as he did stay with her and helped raise Jesus, who he also loved; but there had to have always been that question in his head and if his paranoia got the better of him, as it often gets the better of people today, would he not fight with Mary?
I believe that they tried not to fight in front of Yeshua, and never fought violently, but that it was impossible not to overhear. Mary, for believing her son to be special and to be the messiah, would have ensured that he was well-raised and disciplined and received the best education at the time, which was only to be found in church. Yeshua was exceptional, whether due to divinity or natural selection or due to the specific combination of all psychological aspects that played a part in his life. I don’t believe either Mary or Joseph to have been stupid or to have been as blind as others, for they existed outside of society; a society similar in many ways to our modern one.
Therefore, what we have is a child who is curious about everything and has a mind that is fairly sharp and he begins asking questions in Church, something that before then was unheard of. He stood out and gained attention, which had to have caused the other boys, and probably girls some times, to tease and make fun of him and bully him. If this were the case, then I would imagine that he didn’t react well to this even if Mary and Joseph had thought to warn him of it. And, as often is with kids and discipline, the discipline is seen as a form of torture and unwarranted. He most surely would have rebelled, though not as much as other kids, for his strengths were in the love of learning and wisdom and love itself.
And, he would have certainly had more than that to rebel against. What would you do or say if you were told that you were the Messiah? How do you handle that much responsibility? How can you look at your faulty self and see the possibility of being such a thing? Your inner struggle would be so much more than anyone elses because there would be so much conflict between what you are and what you’re expected of being. You have this impossible picture of this savior of humanity; how do you deal with it?
The fact that there are years of his life missing from the bible only further cements this in; for if the church wanted to keep people subjugated properly, as it was so firmly tied into the state at the time, then it had to ensure that nobody became so much like this guy who almost ruined it for them. I believe that Yeshua made the mistakes of every man during this time and that he glut and lust and indulge in pride and sin until he realized that it wasn’t what he wanted at all. Cue where the story picks up again and we see a man ready to give up on life and kill himself and so he wanders into the desert and stays there for weeks.
During his wandering through the dusty winds and dunes, he finds a will to live to deny his wish for death and begins eating and drinking what he can, including a form of hallucinatory cactus fruit which amplified his own inner struggle and torment, his own fight between good and evil, to an epic level of confrontation. Most assuredly the devil did tempt him and most assuredly, Yeshua did overcome it by finding and rooting himself in to the nature of both himself and the world around him. And thus he entered back into the world of man knowing exactly what he had to do and what he could and what he would do: he would die to give people something to believe in and something worth fighting for. He would die to give people a path to the infinite that would endure even if it got twisted and corrupted; that people would see for thousands of years past his death; because he saw it.
He saw it in the midst of his fight with the Devil, because as the Devil tempted him and tempted him, he got more angry and mad and fought with passionate vigor for the people other than himself. All those people in willful ignorance that were lost and trapped due to the machinations of others. When he saw the goodness of his own self to be so thoughtless, he cast aside the worries and fears that had plagued him, because he knew what he was behind all of his mistakes and problems.
He began to fulfill the prophecies set by the bible; prophecies the church had made themselves to prevent people from becoming such a messiah, because they liked their power. ‘Nobody will do these things for the sake of all those other people,’ they mused. Though many did try and by trying directly to be like this messiah so they could have the glory that was in the bible and the attention of all people because they desired attention, they were never able to reach that point. And, it was because they went in search of it for those reasons that they never found it. By trying directly to be this messiah, even without ulterior motive, many have failed.
It was his own pain and suffering that drove him, not thoughts of glory or of having power over men: he truly wanted to save them and set them free. He traveled and found followers and healed those who could not hear the voice of nature any more and healed those who could not see nature any more and he caused those dead in spirit to live again. Not true miracles, you see, but metaphors. He did many great things for a lot of people just by being nice and humble and shared his knowledge freely. When he started his church because people wanted to hear more of what he had to say, the church got mad for he spoke against their power; the power they held over men. They called him heretic and spat upon him and he was not well-received.
But, he could take it because it was nothing he hadn’t dealt with before and he knew his cause and purpose. Looking at his friends, he knew what was in their hearts and souls and knew where their strengths and weaknesses lay because he paid attention to them; far more than they paid attention to him because they were still focused on their own problems while he had solved his. In this way, he knew Judas would betray him and he knew that others would deny even knowing him. He knew he was going to die because with all of the ignorance in the world by those in power and their control over the minds of the multitude in that false power, there was no other possible outcome. He did it anyway.
2,000 years later, he still lives in so many hearts and souls and remains impossible to kill and the world has been irrevocably changed by him, even if certain things have been falsified. That is the impact that one man can make. Just one man who lived life on the outside instead of the inside and found greater wisdom and strength of purpose through overcoming. Also, a great story for the properties of hallucinogenics, as they greatly amplify the power of the brain and its abilities. Jesus on drugs? pshaw. Moses did speak to a burning bush, though and we don’t think of that as odd. wink, wink.