Who is Jesus?

Image by Airgil Daviss from Pixabay

 Most scholars today agree that there once was a man named Jesus. In his time, Israel was occupied by the Romans who were mostly concerned with keeping the peace and collecting taxes. The local leaders, on the other hand, had a variety of agendas. People in general were mostly concerned with scraping together a living under very difficult circumstances. Some placed a great deal of hope in a number of rebels who claimed to be the Messiah, the anointed one, a savior sent by God, someone who would be a leader, a priest or king who would free them from the heavy yokes of Roman taxation and the corruption of their own leaders. Jesus was just one of several such liberators except his approach was radically different.

Jesus didn't seem to be concerned with Roman occupation all that much. His focus was more on the leadership among his own people criticizing them for their preoccupation with power and wealth rather than the condition of the poor and the sick. Large crowds began to follow him and the leaders became nervous that he might actually succeed in challenging their position of power. They wanted to kill him, but did not have the authority to do so themselves. That would look bad anyway, so they made up some charges about overthrowing Cesar knowing that the Romans would not take that lightly and do the dirty work for them.

Jesus' approach to speaking out against the deplorable living conditions of the people differed from conventional wisdom then as it still does today for most people. Turn the other cheek, he said. Now, go turn on the news. The first thing you will learn is that in today’s world, a small fight quickly turns into a major war resulting in death and destruction. Violence is not the answer.

Another thing he talked about a lot was wealth distribution. Give to the poor, he said. That would solve the Roman tax situation. If you don't have anything, there is no tax to collect from you. I believe the advent of private property when hunter/gatherers settled to grow crops is the source of much misery in the world today as it was then. It is for this reason we at New Covenant House, like the first church, have everything in common. We believe that there is more than enough for everyone. Everyone can and should have all their needs met if only the resources were justly distributed.

Jesus was also big on healthcare. The gospel writers have him heal people with magic. He even brings people back from the dead, they claim. The thing is that, despite scientific advances, disease is somewhat beyond our control and if no one cares, we will possibly die. Healthcare should be available for everyone just like food, clothing and shelter without any individual being able to profit from it.

The gospel writers go to great lengths to make Jesus look like God. He wasn't. He was just an extraordinary man who challenged the understanding of God the rich and powerful wanted people to have. He didn't invent a new religion. He simply re-interpreted the ancient scriptures to mean that God is fundamentally for us, not against us. God only wants the best for us including those who are against us. Jesus made it possible for us to see God as he really is.

Who is God?

Image by Vilma Terezinha de Andrade Vilma from Pixabay

 If we accept religion as a way to transmit values from one generation to another, God becomes the great connector for the communities we belong to. In a sense God is eternal, we are not. Although some still cling to it, the idea that God is an entity outside the universe who knows everything and who controls everything has long since been abandoned along with the afterlife idea. Jesus uses the image of a father to explain God for us. Now, Jesus was a Jew and he lived in a time and place very different from ours in some respects, but also very much the same in others.

The role of a father in his time was someone who would be responsible not only for his wife, children and other relatives, but often also for an extended household of slaves, servants and livestock. Everyone would look to the father for leadership. No doubt there were abusive fathers in his day as well, but a father is generally someone who takes care of you, someone who only wants the best for you. 

Our English translators use the formal, neutral word father. Jesus actually used the Aramaic word abba which also implies affection and that, I think, makes a considerable difference for our understanding of God. Jesus was a Jew speaking to other Jews. They would understand what he was talking about. If we were to try to explain the concept of God to someone today, we probably would not use the father metaphor. Some of us might think of God as spirit, something that exists between us or among us, but not within us. In this case God would be an it, not a he. Some of us might think of God as part of human nature, something internal, our natural tendency to connect with one another and not live in isolation. That could also best be described as spirit. I think God is both in us as well as among us. In this view, God would be more like an us.

People in his time were used to being taught about a different God, someone all powerful who made you follow a bunch of rules that often made no sense. We still have that today by the way. We may have more government regulation and enforcement now than at any other time in history. In contrast, the God Jesus was talking about, was a God who would set you free from all the rules. Love would be the way to do that. If you had the same kind of affection for everyone else as the affection God has for you, then you would not need any laws. The law enslaves you. Love sets you free. Love one another, Jesus says. But first, you must love God. First, you must accept that the community is the most important thing we have. You must love God first. 

During his time of ministry, Jesus taught mostly through short stories called parables. Sometimes he would make a longer speech like the one we now call the Sermon on the Mount described in Matthew 5 and 6. Some consider that a manifesto for Christianity. The miracles like the resurrection, ascension and healings were made up by the gospel writers to convey to us how important Jesus was. They did this by painting a picture of him liking him to God himself stepping down to earth.

Origin of the Bible

Image by congerdesign from Pixabay

The invention of writing provided a reliable way to transfer religious practices from one generation to the next. Just about every religion now has some kind of collection of writings considered to be holy, held in high esteem or to be authoritative. 

For us Christians, it is the Bible except there is not just one Bible. Different people with different levels of power have had different opinions about which texts to include in the Bible. 

Somehow, many of the Bible versions we have today have more or less the same content anyway. Since about the 4th century, various councils, also called synods, of religious leaders have added and removed texts depending on what they considered important to know about God. More recently, as Christianity spread throughout the world disputes over interpretation in different languages also became a factor. As the church became more and more fractured, the number of versions increased. With the printing press it became easy to publish any version you preferred. I counted more than 50 versions in the English language alone.

As Christians we are mostly concerned with the 27 "books" we know as the New Testament because they tell us about the life of a man named Jesus who is the source of our particular interpretation of God. Jesus never wrote anything down himself. Everything we know about him and his message comes from people who either knew him or at least knew of him. 

Jesus was a Jew. Even though he was a revolutionary, the Christian writers made it a point to portray him as someone who was well versed in the ancient Hebrew scriptures. For our convenience they are included in the Bible as roughly the first 39 "books" collectively known as the Old Testament. What I think they were trying to say is that Jesus was not going to start a new religion. He simply re-interpreted the old one. He paints for us a completely new picture of God, a God of mercy, a God who loves us, a God who wants us to take him seriously.

Most of the Bibles you will find will have some kind of introduction explaining how that particular version came to be and why. What is this particular group of Bible editors trying to teach us about Jesus? 

Some scholars have spent a lifetime studying the Bible and published what they have learned. Every denomination has a list of books they think will tell the truth about Jesus. Some of it is scientific fact, but much of it is simply opinion; in some cases even outright lies. It is for us to know the difference. Reading all of them should help you construct a nuanced picture of Jesus and his relationship with God. 

Origin of Scripture

Image by LoggaWiggler from Pixabay

No other species pratices religion to the extent humans do. Without a doubt, this is due in large part to the unique capabilities of the human brain. We still have much to learn about language in animals, but none of them seem to be able to tell stories like humans can. Certainly, none of them can write. 

Archeological finds show that religious practices among humans may have started even before the ability to speak. The ability to speak must have accelerated such practices, but that is nothing compared to the emergence of written language. We are now in historic time and our knowledge is on much more solid ground.

The earliest writers must have had a vast body of stories from their oral traditions to work with. There are a few things all the stories have in common, but most of the details are different from place to place and from time to time.

For example, just about every religion has some kind of creation narrative and supernatural beings or phenomena. A lot of them also have an end-of-the-world narrative. They often have guides for practices on how to worship deities or rules on how to live such as the Golden Rule. At least a dozen religions have some version of the Golden Rule.

The ancients did not just write, they also traveled and their stories traveled with them. Sometimes they merged over time with stories in other places and formed new religious practices. Large volumes have been written about how concepts from one religious practice appear in others. 

When we talk about the classics, we really just mean ancient Greek and Roman literature. Today we also have classic symphonies, opera, evergreens or rock music. Certain movies also make the transition from one generation to the next. School curriculums usually include poems or novels we now consider classics as well. So who gets to decide what texts get labeled classics? Indeed, who gets to decide what texts are included in the Bible? Well, that is a whole study all by itself, so we will leave that for another day.

Human Nature

Humans are the only species to practice religion in any kind of significant way. Religion is closely linked to emotions and language. We don't know much about either in animals yet. What we do know is that in humans they have developed to levels far exceeding the capabilities of all other species. The human brain can do things no other species can. The development of language, especially written language, is the basis for most modern religious practices. "In the beginning was the word," says the gospel writer, John.

Humans have extraordinary imaginative abilities. They can use it to get answers to all kinds of questions. If they can't find a logical answer, they can make one up. The ancient Bible writers recorded things like the creation story or the nativity story we all know and love. More modern writers from Plato to Josephus, Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Marx and many others have produced works we continue to draw on for inspiration to this day.

Another aspect of human nature is our tendency to be social. A few species live mostly apart from one another, but most do not. The degree to which humans form communities varies. How we do that has changed over time. For example, Friedrich Engles writes in Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State about how the concept of family has developed over time. That helps us explain how religions change over time despite the efforts of a powerful priesthood to prevent it sometimes in alliances with powerful principalities.

Sometimes we refer to communities beyond our immediate families as churches or just plain communities, another religious concept that takes different forms in all times and all places. The human tendency for belonging serves to meet both emotional needs such as security and physical needs like food or shelter.

Origin of Religion

 In the Middle Ages, the crusaders used religion as a pretext for war. The Inquisition was a brutal way to punish people who questioned the teachings of the church. For some reason, religion seems to stir up very strong feelings in people. Conflict has always been prominently present at least in our Western culture.

In more modern times, some of the answers to conflicts in the church have changed. People began to simply leave. You Lost Me, wrote David Kinnamon back in 2016. James White spoke about The Rise of the Nones in 2014. Fed up with the eternal squabble, some people began to identify as “spiritual, but not religious.” What they probably really meant was “religious, but not that way.” 

There is no way to know for sure, but there is evidence that some form of religion has been around since the early humans began to walk the earth. Some will argue that religion is part of human nature. Others will say that there is no such thing as human nature. Either way, it is hard to deny that some form of religion is and always has been present in every human culture on the entire planet. 

If you have been around other Christians for a while you can probably already see that our understanding of religion in general and Christianity in particular is quite different from what you are used to. Some of the things we teach here at New Covenant House may rock some deeply held beliefs. For some it may be a painful process of unlearning. For others, it may be a relief to find that there is an alternative. It doesn’t change the core values of Christianity, however, quite on the contrary in fact. What we are trying to do is to return to the original meaning of the teachings of Jesus, but to apply them to our present condition.

Hello 2025

Clearly we didn’t reach all our goals last year, but that doesn’t mean we are going to give up. What we need to do is make a plan for what we will try to accomplish this year.

Our why is not going to change. The world is still broken and in need of repair. Our what isn’t going to change either. We are still going to love God and love one another. It is our how that can and should change.

First, our challenges:

• Our audience is spread out worldwide
• Our theology is unique even among other Christians

The big lesson last year was to become more clear about who we are so we can better communicate it to others. 

Therefore, although it may seem repetitive at times, we will continue to be posting Sunday morning service videos. In addition to videos about the basics of our faith, we will also add some about how we practice that faith here at our Christian intentional community, New Covenant House. 

You cannot practice community alone. I would like to make our time together more interactive with some time for discussion and deeper learning. The easiest way to do that is to join with others. Cultivating Caring Communities discuss intentional communities every Tuesday at 7:30pm Eastern and we are invited to join them. Let me know if you are interested.

We will leave the third discipleship level for the future when we have one or two more residents here. This is the one that prepares new leaders for replicating what we are doing now. 

Finally, our Foundations document needs to be updated with the lessons we have learned last year and what we have planned for the future. Let me know if you are interested in working with me on that project.