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

Question

nettalyce — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 12:32:47 -0500

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 beautiful to read

Graceful Parenting — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 22:20:19 -0600

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

Can Bob and Sue Get Along?

Graceful Parenting — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 22:08:03 -0600

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

Carol, thank you

bkjones — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 18:42:13 -0600

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!

Graceful Parenting — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 17:29:16 -0600

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

WWJD?

uujenna — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 17:29:13 -0600

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, Sid!

Graceful Parenting — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 17:22:55 -0600

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

Guess this is a very personal thing...

nelle2nelle — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 16:22:06 -0600

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

I think I'm a Christian Sue...

Praise and Coffee — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 16:02:02 -0600

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

1 Vote: Be like Jesus

SeanRmsy — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 15:35:07 -0600

There's a great line in The Bucket List 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...

Jesus

sidhall — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 13:03:37 -0600

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.

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

Graceful Parenting — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 10:07:07 -0600

Blue Eyes and I are church shopping for the family. Which is funny, I think, because in my parent's generation, you didn't choose a church. You were the same religion as your parents and you went to the church in your neighborhood. There was no exploration of your individual needs and searching the Internet for the perfect match. No going to a few services, kind of like dating, just to get a feel for the experience. No breaking up after six months because there weren't enough people your age or the minister was too serious. But now, we shop for for a church like we are buying a car, comparing features and costs, evaluating the test crash ratings, trying to get the best value for our money (time).

For better or worse, we are searching, and in our search, Blue Eyes and I wondered, is more important to believe in Jesus or to try to be like Jesus?

One definition of a Christian, I'll call him Christian Bob, is someone who believes that Jesus was the son of God who died on the cross for our sins. His Mother, Mary, was a virgin and after he was crucified, he rose from the dead. This faith in Jesus will lead you to heaven after you die, while a lack of this faith will send you to hell. This is the definition I learned in Young Life camp, just after High School. This is the definition that made it clear to me I wasn't a Christian after all.

I didn't believe that all the stories in the bible were literally true. I also didn't believe in a God who would send kind, warm and loving people who lived by other religious traditions to hell. More simply, I didn't believe in heaven or hell. I didn't believe that people could be divided so neatly between the good and the bad, with such extreme and final consequences.

More recently, I've been introduced to a different definition of a Christian, I'll call her Christian Sue. She is someone who learns from the teachings of Jesus and emulates his life. By this definition, I am a firm believer. The lessons Jesus taught are so much a part of how I try to live and how I hope I love my husband and parent my girls. I strongly believe in the value and power of the stories in the bible. I don't think they have to be literally true to have this value and power.

I had been attending a Methodist church on my own, St. John's in Austin, Texas. Before St. John's I attended Trinity United Methodist. In both churches, I found a community that embraced Christian Sue. We learned from the stories of Jesus and explored ways to live by his example. Was Jesus divine? Some people believed that he was and others didn't. Either way, this wasn't the main idea.

But now that Blue Eyes and I are looking for a church for the family to attend together, the definition of Christianity is an issue. Would we be hypocrites to attend a Christian church when we don't believe Jesus was divine? Who decides what it means to be Christian? Some times I think that maybe a lot of Christians are like Christian Sue. Other times I think that the idea is so radical that just mentioning Christian Sue out loud is enough to guarantee I can never run for public office.

(One thing is for sure, if both versions of Christianity are real, then they need better names than Christian Bob and Christian Sue.)

So, I'll ask ya'll. Do you believe that an acceptance of Jesus as divine and the literal truth of the bible stories are requirements to be a Christian?