To Believe in Jesus or Be Like Jesus, Which is More Important?

Nettalyce

If Jesus is not worthy of your belief why would you desire to emulate him.  I think of Jesus as a person remotely similar to other people I encounter.  I have to ask would I ever approach another person and say ,'I don't accept characteristic a, B, and C about you, but I am real comfortable with d, e, and F.  So I'm just going to ignore those qualities because they don't work for me."  I think in this postmodern time we tend to subscribe to a humanistic philosophy that we can dictate who and what God is.  doesn't it stand to reason that whatever you conveniently construe will at best be no more powerful, good, or purposeful than you.  Maybe other people are more noble than I but I really don't have a use for a god that is no better than I am. 

So again I posted yesterday on the same question,  Is god and Jesus who they have defined themselves to be in the bible or can we as mere mortal beings presume to define them  for ourselves whenever and however we choose.  And, if we do redefine it for ourselves how useful can that be?

Your words are so beautiful to read, thank you for sharing them. Do you write a blog? I would definitely read it! Thank you too for your spirit, which I can feel from across the room and even down the street.

Carol Marie Ramsey
Finding balance and peace in parenting at Graceful Parenting

Thanks for your comment! Good luck in you and your husband's search for a church!

I think Bob and Sue have a lot in common and they both believe in following the teachings of Jesus. I think the one thing that keeps them from getting along the most is the concept of hell. Bob thinks Sue is going to hell, which makes the mutual understanding and respect thing harder for both of them. So, can they both share the same church? I'm not sure.

Carol Marie Ramsey
Finding balance and peace in parenting at Graceful Parenting

For writing such beautiful thoughts. It is a blessing to know you. Sid, just typing your name makes me smile. You are the best of our generation. Well I got all ready - signed up and logged in - ready to 'post' something for the first time ever and i realized i had absolutely no idea what to say. So i went to the other side of the church and looked at the sunset for a few minutes. Thank you for taking me to that moment. I long for many like it - when the impossibility of my ability simply stands aside and lets me appreciate a gift, take a breath, eat a piece of chocolate cake (which i did) and then get back to work at a place - where Rilke says, we try to "be patient with all that is unresolved in 'our' hearts, and try to love the questions themselves."

Thanks for the comment! I love the quote. Yeah, I think Jesus did pretty well with that one.

A favorite quote of mine also came from a Jack Nicholson movie, As Good As It Gets (which is weird because I don't like Jack Nicholson or As Good As It Gets). When Jack Nicholson's character is having dinner with Helen Hunt's character, she asks him for a compliment and he says "you make me want to be a better man." That was good.

Carol Marie Ramsey
Finding balance and peace in parenting at Graceful Parenting

I'm one of the rare kids of my generation that still worships within the faith of my childhood. I was baptized by my mother in a Methodist church at age four, but I've always attended Unitarian Universalist churches. Granted, it's not a perfect religion, but it has instilled in me a sturdy kind of moral self-reliance. I never ask WWJD? I have never feared God nor welcomed salvation.

My compass is people. When I was very young, I looked to my family to show me how to be human. My family of origin gave way to college friends, then Sean, then VOYAGer folks and now school colleagues. I sometimes imagine repeating a behavior in front of someone I respect as a test of whether it is "right" or "good." And I believe that I'm constantly evolving and learning, but I know, in my gut, whether my actions are just and noble. I need not ask, "What would Jesus do"? Because, in a sense, it's irrelevant.

So, to answer your question, I do not accept Jesus as divine, nor the Bible as literal truth. (I suppose I could have just come out and SAID that!)

I believe in Jesus, the archetype, the humanist and the healer.

Thanks for all of your thoughts. Maybe the Christian Sues need a Tom Cruise to help explain our ways to the world. Someone who can get on Oprah, that would be good.

Carol Marie Ramsey
Finding balance and peace in parenting at Graceful Parenting

A lot of life was in my rear view mirror before I found what clicked spiritually. For me, it wasn't a church, it wasn't any organised belief, it was a connection, an interface... that best fits what I feel inside.

That result was a progression from Catholicism to a private set of Christian belief and then again onward. Both just never felt right...

that said, there is much to admire in what Jesus advocated. Too often that advocacy is lost in pomp and circumstance, twisted and distorted by translation, rewrites, and various agendas. Distilled back down to its simplest form, the message crosses into most all belief, and is probably universal to all spirituality.

Guess that is a roundabout way of answering which matters most.

nelle ( http://www.nelle2nelle.org/ )

Interesting post. I love it.

Being a pastor's wife who is now in the 'searching for a church' mode makes me really think about this one.

My answer is, yes that I believe to be a Christian, I have to take the Bible to be literally true.
The reason is that if I didn't take it to be literally true and Jesus divine, then I would have to pick and choose from it what I believe, and I believe it was written to be taken as a whole, and who am I to seperate one chapter or verse from another.

At the same time... do I "get" it all ....no. I am still hashing the thing out and love to do that with believers and unbelievers alike.

I definitely think that we all need to work on being more like Jesus and doing the things He did. Let's live it!
I am frustrated with much of what I see in churches today.
I think we need to get back to the basics and leave the smoke machines behind!

So am I a Christian Sue??? :)

Sue
www.praiseandcoffee.com ( http://www.praiseandcoffee.com )

There's a great line in The Bucket List ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0825232/ ) where Morgan Freeman's character notes "You measure yourself by the people who measure themselves by you." Love that line. And boy, did Jesus do something right, eh? Ultimately, of course, I think this is what Jesus preached about when he spoke about bring forth the "Kingdom of Heaven". If everyone lived with the notion that their actions would in some manner be reviewed on 'judgment' day (i.e. death) and that our measure would be based on the number of people who measure themselves against us, we'd get closer to creating the vision. So my vote, spend more time being like Jesus and less time believing in Jesus. Teach less that belief brings about redemption and more that our actions do.

Interesting stuff...

Carol, it won't be a surprise to you that my understanding of Jesus is akin to your Christian Sue. And as you know, most folks at Trinity UMC have the same or similar perspective. One of the on-going jokes at Trinity is how often members report that they have issues about the word "Christian;" not just because of how its cultural meaning is shaped by fundamentalist preachers, but even in identifying it with the mainstream view articulated in your Christian Bob profile. When people ask our members if they're Christian, their reaction is often, "What do you mean by 'Christian'?" Perhaps most of our members are really Unitarians, Unitarians with a Christian myth. Still, I know there are some who probably believe that Jesus's miracles are historical fact, as well as his resurrection. Our folks who dabble in New Age philosophies are probably more comfortable with the idea of miracles, especially those who are disciples of Marianne Williamson. Many of our folks are principally liberal activists but like doing that within a religious framework. So we're a mix. My own theology, like most folks, is complex. I don't believe that Jesus had a virgin birth or a physical resurrection of sorts, nor to I believe that the miracles attributed to him are events outside the realm of science, even if we don't yet understand the physics that accompany what people call miracles. I do pray for people, though I confess that after all these years, I don't have a clue how prayer works or does not work. I certainly don't believe it enables us to manipulate the divine or (as New Agers say) "the Universe." For me it is more related to the eastern religious idea of being awake--awake to what is already here but may not be apparent. Yet we know from physics that the way we observe things can determine their actual outcome. So when I pray I don't just meditate on being awake to life, but I actually ask for things. I guess I'm comfortable with the ambiguity of that exercise. Since I don't believe that God is a being or thing, but perhaps the collective energy that is in all things and is greater than the sum of all things added together (what Tillich called "panentheism") I still put my prayer "out there" to be absorbed into that collective energy. Maybe sometimes it makes a difference.

Christianity is principally myth to me. Core to that myth, is being a part of a community that shares common stories, values, and action. By myth, I don't mean fiction, but a collective story that shares common themes, values, and history, some of which is true and some of which is not true. Because I value things like wholeness, liberation, working for justice, compassion, radical inclusiveness, etc., I recognize that Christian myth--particularly that part which is wedded to institutional structures--often is living out a very different value system than my own. While I am an ordained minister in the United Methodist Church, I feel like I am in a life-long struggle as to whether it would be more effective to be IN the church or OUTSIDE the church. I don't know the answer but for reasons that are complex, I have chosen to work from within. For instance, while I may share common stories with fundamentalist or conservative Christians, I have much more in common with liberal Jews, Buddhists, or Pagans in terms of values and objectives than I do with those who claim the same name of Christian. Can you do spirituality without a myth? Maybe. I've never been able to figure out how to do it. Is one myth, one religious tradition, better than another? No. There are problems within each and beauty and integrity within each as well. Is not having a myth a viable option? Yes, especially those who have been so wounded by traditional forms of religion. But even no myth is a myth of no myth, of sorts. So we can't escape having a mythology, I think. If that's the case, I want to use as my measure the words from Irving Greenberg, a Holocaust scholar, who wrote (criticizing a Christianity that could remain "faithful" to Jesus while also remaining complicit during the Holocaust). He said, "No statement, theological or otherwise, should be made that would not be credible in the presence of burning children." In other words, no matter how orthodox and well-accepted your mythology is considered (or unorthodox for that matter), if its logical progression leads to liberation, wholeness, beauty, inclusiveness, compassion, etc., it is a good path. But if your theology or tradition leads to oppression and the diminishment of people or the earth itself, it needs to be questioned and possibly discarded if it is unredeemable. I'm a Christian, not by many people's definition, I know, but as Christian, I want my Christian mythology to live up to Greenberg's standard or to what I think (mythologically of course) was Jesus's standard, which is quite simply: "If you've done it unto the least of these, you've done it unto me (justice-making and love). If you've done it not unto the least of these, you've done it not unto me (complicity and silence)." In that light, the WWJD aphorism is poignant and is damn hard to live into.

To sum up, I don't "believe in Jesus." I don't even know what that means. For that matter, even the idea of "believing in God" leaves me cold. Since I don't "believe" that God is a Thing out there or even just something within, faith is not so much a belief for me, but a dance, a participatory dance in all that is, was and will be. Nietzsche said rather cynically that he could only believe in a god who dances. I guess I believe that God IS the dance and I'm doing my best not be a wall flower. There is a wonderful Zen koan reportedly by the Buddha himself: "If you meet Buddha on the road, kill him." I love that. It isn't about killing. What it means to me is that to be a Buddhist you don't stop your life and bow down and worship or believe in the Buddha if you meet him on your life path. The Buddha says that you don't need the Buddha. Instead, Buddhism teaches that through practice and commitment, we become the Buddha. When Jesus's disciples called him "good teacher" he responded by saying "Don't call me good. Only God in the heavens is good." He wasn't diminishing his personhood; he was simply saying (I think),"Don't set me up to be the hero. When you do that, you get to opt out." If, like Jesus said, the Kingdom is in our midst, and it is realm where the peacemakers are blessed, where the poor have all they need, where the meek inherit the earth--then we have to get off the couch and get to work. I think if Jesus were here speaking to us, he might say, "If you meet me on the road, kill me." Then it's up to us. Calling myself a Christian is not about BELIEVING in Jesus; it is about BECOMING Jesus; that is, making it my life work to embody or manifest Jesus in heart and in action.