Now, this is going to be pretty straightforward to many of you, for me there was a few cascading epiphanies before I properly figured it all out, but - let me explain.
I mean, I was raised Catholic, and they make nothing straightforward, the abundance of ritual is designed to obscure the truth until you're ready to figure it out.
At which point it's classed as some form of "Enlightenment", which - well, given how they've raked it over and insisted upon a blind vs reasoned faith, is amongst one of any number of their shortcomings (to be addressed).
We'll come back to that. All their errors aside, Catholicism is still the main trunk of the religion, with most of the others merely spinoffs or branches of the main tree. By this I mean Protestant, Evangelical, Lutheran, Etc. The errors merely multiply as they get further from the trunk.
But before we even get to Jesus and the Bible we're going to start with an understanding of Myth and Fairy Tales.
Fairy Tales are not merely stories told to amuse children, they're moral instructions and ideology slipped into their subconscious to prepare them for their later experiences in life. Proof of this lies in their wide distribution and their adherence to clear-cut themes and symbolism. Hence Jack & The Beanstalk, which I've previously laid out here.
We can add to this Cinderella - 500 versions in Europe alone, with other versions found as far away as China.
Cinderella - to briefly dissect - is a girl kept in abject circumstance, as a servant to her grasping & evil stepmother and older step sisters. Fairy Godmother comes, gives her a night out, she shines at the Ball, meets Prince Charming, the incident with the glass slipper, and she assumes her rightful place as Princess soon-to-be-queen.
In this, we have every child's feeling of being put upon, we have their chance to shine (usually by friendly and occasionally supernatural forces), we have the discovery of "Sex" (the foot is sex), we have her triumph and validation via comparison to ugly, less worthy contenders. It reveals and conditions the child to her ideal social place.
Objections to the Patriarchy - while they must arise, and are just - are not to be discussed here.
In Snow White we have the same, evil stepmother who poisons daughter in guise of wicked witch, child falls into a slumber -the slumber of adolescence - hence the ridiculous names of the dwarves (Doc, Sleepy, Dopey, Grumpy, Happy, Bashful, Sneezy) - as anyone who's raised one knows they are for the most part not only descriptive but accurate.
Come Prince Charming, who discovers her - the leaving of the dwarves behind - the natural rebellion of the parents, the overcoming or winning of the prize or Bride, and again - Snow White prevails to become Queen of her own kingdom.
So what we see here in all these instances is the conditioning of the child's mind, through fairy tales, to what will become some form of their ideal reality or place in relation to the world around them. Now this - as I've dissected above - is the simplest of interpretations and if you'd like a more in-depth (and fascinating) analysis I'd refer you to read Bruno Bettelheim's "The Uses of Enchantment".
From here we look at Myths, and to understand any Myth we must understand it's relation to the socio-political world that surrounds it. A Myth may be thought of a grown-up fairy tale, to instruct people in the taboos, morals, and expectations of the society in which they find themselves a part. Myth - by it's nature, it's essence, MUST BE PERSONAL!!!!.
Prometheus, therefore, discovers fire, shares the boon, and is punished by the Gods. Prometheus is the man who UNDERSTANDS THE MYTH!!!!
Prometheus, the ancient explanation for fire, is only a part of it. He must be understood at some level to be the hearer of the tale.
And so on and so forth down the line.
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Now, to Church, and to Jesus. We'll start with the historical evidence, and - having considered it from an unbiased perspective - neither for nor against, BUT - from a historical perspective, with over 140 contemporaneous sources recording no evidence of his existence, it seems beholding that we should conclude that he - or at least the singular version of Jesus of "Walk on Water", "Water into Wine", etc, etc, did not exist.
This is, however, a very unpopular point of view. One best kept to oneself, as you'll find yourself dealing with people who've done no pertinent reading on the subject opining to you endlessly. It's not worth the trouble. And - more, and MOST important - it doesn't matter. They have come to their own understanding of the myth on Blind Faith.
Now, you can guess my views on Blind Faith. No one is trying to persuade a child that the fairy tales they hear are true. The child accepts the "truth" of them on a very different level. And Cinderella - while on no level can be true - the aggregate and summed experience of thousands and millions of children give it it's truth.
Thus the fiction surpasses the lies and - ideally, becomes the Truth.
Adulthood, however, demands a reasoned faith, and while a Fairy Tale puts no obligations upon the hearer, Myth very much does. It's an idealized telling of the social contract. It's an outline - however unpopular, as to what should be your ideal life.
The purpose of this myth is to create an idealized template for your own existence. God - in the Old Testament - is largely represented as the Will of Man, an expatiation for all his grubby deeds. It is highly symbolic and the countless translations and telling's of it - before it was written down - have largely obscured the truth from all but the most ardent and skeptical of inquiries.
The New Testament - however - breaks from that. It provides a Messiah. It lays forth the truth, so to speak. And properly understood - again - translation errors and attempts to simplify it for the masses have largely dumbed it down. Jesus - the fiction, the Messiah, the aggregate of 100 zealots poorly remembered wandering, proselytizing around Jerusalem some 2000 years ago - must be understood as a PERSONAL MYTHOLOGY. Not a relationship, he is YOU.
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So you go to these Church meetings, and they talk about Jesus in the Third Person, and you know, you know, they didn't get it.
The Jesus of the Cross, the Jesus of the Resurrection, guys, guys, guys, ladies, lay off...
Now here are a few of my thoughts.
First of all, if you don't get the gist of what the gospels are telling you than you are going to end up as the thieves on the crosses next to Jesus, just beginning to figure it out, too little and too late. The people that like the Jesus on the Cross, what they're liking is the "He died for our sins", not realizing, no, no, it wasn't him, it's YOU that will be crucified for YOUR SINS - and resurrection is only possible when you realize that.
Jesus, he was crucified for Speaking Truth to Power. Mythically speaking, of course.
People, ex cons, AA, junkies, that have been through trauma and seize upon the myth as their salvation, zealots, talk about him as if he were their personal friend, argue about him, talk about him constantly, the "Other", who loves Jesus More? I DO I DO, the biggest argument for undiagnosed mental illness and a complete lack of understanding, for it's always easier to put the sins on somebody else, to abdicate personal responsibility, to find a scapegoat, and this "Gratitude" for Jesus being your personal Scapegoat, well...
You didn't get it.
But they, the Churches of so many, they don't want you to know. The Crucifixes on the wall, the countless tutelary Saints - breaking both the first and second commandments - explicitly; and the prohibition when understood makes perfect sense. The Mohammedans have the same. This is for a reason - YOU ARE GOD, TAKE SOME FUCKING RESPONSIBILITY. Look within yourselves, not without. Purify your own thoughts and actions.
Consider the Catholic Ritual of Communion. "This is the Body - This is the Blood of Christ". Of course it's not, it's wine and bread, the transformation occurs in you, the wine becomes blood, the Host becomes the body, because - that is what your body does!!!! You EAT! You're not becoming Christ - YOU ALWAYS WERE!!!!
Of course, there is always the hopes that - when you realize this and strive to become a better "Christian" - ie: "MAN' - and this - given all the nonsense they've put you through to get here - this is the Miracle of Transformation. This is where the Mundane becomes the Sublime.
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So, when I hear people talking about Jesus in the Third Person, (He-She, not YOU-ME), I'm reminded of Oedipus and the riddle of the Sphynx. If you don't know, The myth of Oedipus is that he goes off to conquer a kingdom and meets along the way a Sphynx, who under pain of death riddles him with the question: "What Has 4 Legs when a Child, 2 as an Adult, and 3 in Old Age". The answer, easy enough for Oedipus, is Man, in his youth he crawls, as a man he walks, and in his old age he requires a cane.
He has answered the question, and is allowed to pass, but - in consequence of his answer he is subject to terrible punishments (Killing his Father, Marrying his Mother).
You see, when he answered "Man" he failed to generalize from the abstract to himself - he answered "Man", where he should have answered "Me".
And so it goes with Jesus.