I've told you before. I believe Jesus was a good rabbi, who became somehow enlightened, and gathered disciples and preached a gospel of peace and love, eventually reaching out beyond his Nazarene sect, encompassing more and more peoples, including Jews, and Greeks, and Syrians, and Ethiopians, and Romans. I believe he became increasingly disturbed. Imagined himself something -- a prophet (which he surely was), the son of God, the Son of Man, or the equal to his father God. His words as reported are totally inconsistent on this question. He came to Jerusalem and stirred up trouble, whipping the money changers from the Temple yard, arming his followers and when seized surrendering and calling for an end to violence (his followers only had two swords and wounded on one man.) He was tried before the Sanhedrin and sentenced to death for blasphemy in what many experts consider an unfair trial. He was taken by the Jews before Pilate, who made every effort according the Gospels (which may lie here) to save him, but was forbidden by Jews of the High Priests (official) party.
He was taken hence to be crucified, and his followers (all but John and the Maries anyway) abandoned him. He was executed.
At this point my belief runs out. Some people whom I do not know claim to have seen him resurrected and to have spoken to him. This does not increase my belief at all. I once knew a man who was convinced he was Xenophon and had talked to Socrates. The first part wasn't true. The second part seemed impossible to me since it depended on the first.
I will admit that I am religiously impaired. I am incapable of believing in Divine Revelation. Everything everyone claims to have had revealed has nothing that smacks of truth to me. If Jesus had revealed the differential and integral calculus to Newton or Leibniz, it would almost have convinced me that there was something divine. If god had revealed the answers to the calculus tests -- then I would have believed.
It getting very late in my life. I remember kneeling as a youth while the bishop called down the holy spirit to indwell in me. I knelt there waiting. Nothing happened. Something was wrong. Either the bishop was an unclean vessel or the holy spirit was a hoax (or maybe both). There was nothing wrong with me. I was ready to writhe on the floor in religious ecstasy if only the holy spirit had descended. I got up, walked out, and have never had a shred of believe in any religious idea ever since.
Each person, I believe, must work at making up his or her mind about what is going on. I have read physics and mathematics and chemistry. I see only mindless, unconscious physical and material forces in the universe. I know that life is different, something dictated by the complexity of the carbon atom and carbon-carbon bonds. Nearly all life seems autonomous and internally programmed. Nothing but man has a choice. Man is free to explore the universe and has an unfettered mind. Many people believe what they have been told. I only believe what I can touch, and feel, and see, and measure, and describe. I have no sense of mystery. Everything can be discovered if we explore. I look at the trimphs of science (the human genome project tells me more about mankind than all the religious scribbling in history).
I see the spiritual and religious community mired in intellectual failure. They have learned nothing in 2000 years. I see scientific man departing for the stars filled with adventure and dreams and I want to go with him. I see religious man whining about his unhappy soul and other peoples' unhappy souls. I am sorry for him. But he refuses to be helped. |
