Can We Talk About Jesus?

Can we talk about Jesus?

My expe­ri­ence with orga­nized reli­gion has left me leery of canon and reli­gious code. I have no trou­ble using the word “God,” but for me that term is non-dogmatic.

I was raised in the Presbyterian Church, but my pro­gres­sive, hip­pie folks read Ram Dass, prac­ticed tran­scen­den­tal med­i­ta­tion, and dis­cussed the Five Precepts of Buddhism at the din­ner table.

The Presbyterians are a fair­ly open-mind­ed bunch, but the litur­gy was writ­ten by a bunch of old, white men that seemed to have lit­tle under­stand­ing of the inte­ri­or life of an ado­les­cent girl. The hymns are depress­ing dirges writ­ten in minor chords and the read­ings are too often from the Old Testament, with the Angry God con­stant­ly smit­ing some poor guy over a tiny infrac­tion. God seemed like a remote, uncar­ing jerk. The ser­mons rarely seemed rel­e­vant to my angst-filled, pubes­cent life.

So while it may seem that I have dis­avowed myself from Christianity, I have wel­comed Jesus into my heart. I tried for many years to dis­re­gard Jesus, as he was so tight­ly wrapped up in what I con­sid­er the over­ly nar­row dog­ma of Christianity.

But Jesus kept boomerang­ing back into my life. When things fall apart, I turn to words and nature, scour­ing the texts of all the wis­dom tra­di­tions and then tak­ing long hikes to process what I read. And for the last four decades, every time I sought wis­dom, the teach­ings of Jesus popped up across all faiths and doc­trines. And darn it if his the­ol­o­gy didn’t strike true.

Accept every­one, for­give expan­sive­ly and, above all, love as hard as possible.

It seems like my col­umn ruf­fles the feath­ers of a local evan­gel­i­cal con­gre­ga­tion. I have received let­ters from var­i­ous mem­bers, and they always sign their name and then add the name of their church. In these let­ters, I am chas­tised for all sorts of “extreme” behav­ior, from lov­ing homo­sex­u­als to prac­tic­ing mind­ful­ness (which they see as an affront to God and a kind of Buddhist mind con­trol). They scold me for my “fringe” the­o­ries, like believ­ing that every­one deserves health­care, that America isn’t the only coun­try that mat­ters, that all reli­gions are equal­ly valid. My world­view that the plan­et is served by human diver­si­ty has some­how labeled me as a mem­ber of the “extreme left.”

I don’t care that peo­ple dis­agree with me; vary­ing beliefs add spice to life. My prob­lem is when they invari­ably end their let­ter by telling me how my soul is at risk of eter­nal damna­tion, and they will pray aggres­sive­ly that I come back to the light.

Pray aggres­sive­ly is an oxy­moron. We can­not adopt nar­row, unlov­ing ideas and make them accept­able by couch­ing them in Jesus’ name.

Here’s what I know about my friend Jesus. He val­ues life, accep­tance, diver­si­ty, and com­pas­sion. We can­not spout fear­ful, hate­ful ide­ol­o­gy and attribute them to Christ. Because we – all of us – already live in the light.

Heterosexuals and mem­bers of the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty live in the light.

Caucasians and peo­ple of col­or live in the light.

People of every faith live in the light.

Trump and Biden live in the light.

White chil­dren of priv­i­lege and brown-skinned chil­dren in cages live in the light.

Pro-lif­ers and pro-choicers live in the light.

Climate chang­ers and those who reject evo­lu­tion live in the light.

We might find it incon­ve­nient, but Jesus loves us all equal­ly (though I sus­pect he is often dis­ap­point­ed in us).

Stop dress­ing fear and hatred up in holy doc­trine. When you say come back to the light, what you mean is think exact­ly like me. Your white, patri­ar­chal, exclu­sive, nation­al­is­tic reli­gion is spite­ful, mean, and inhu­mane and Jesus was none of those things.

We see this more and more on social media. Someone posts thin­ly veiled hate speech under the guise of being a Christian (my favorite is “it’s okay to be white,” which is unimag­i­na­tive at best and straight up racist at worst). Adding the hash­tag #Jesuslover doesn’t excuse your ugli­ness. Jesus taught us to seek more human­i­ty, not less. He did not approve that message.

When did love, accep­tance, and com­mon decen­cy become an act of extremism?

Jesus wasn’t threat­ened by diver­si­ty. In fact, his father must have cre­at­ed us dif­fer­ent­ly for a rea­son, yes? Perhaps we need to look deep­er into our hearts to find it.

As for me, I guess I’ll stay rad­i­cal by choos­ing to love.