Have you found Jesus? Yeah, He's Over There, Behind the Couch!

Most people have probably been approached by the street evangelists or well-meaning Christians trying to save their soul from eternal damnation! The usually asked, "Have you been saved?," "Have you found Jesus?," "Do you know where your going when you die?," or the any of these garden-variety questions concerning intellectual assent in this life so you'll go to heaven after you die...

While these folks may mean well, most of them are severely mislead by their attempts to convert people to Christianity. They think following Jesus (the) Christ is about to going to heaven, but it's certainly not.

Jesus had very little to say about the afterlife and so does the scriptures of Jesus' faith (Old Testament = Hebrew Scriptures = Scriptures of the Jewish people). The majority of the text concerning following the ways of God in the Hebrew Scriptures is directly correlated to benefits in this life and not in the afterlife. See the Wisdom texts (Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job) for great examples of following God benefiting this life with no concern for the afterlife.

When the rich young man asked Jesus, "What must I do to be saved?" Jesus didn't reply that he must believe "x,y, and z" but that he must go sell all his goods and give it to the poor. The proper Greek translation of John 3:16 (I owe this translation to Marcus Borg) is not everlasting life, but eternal life with eternal emphasizing that the life that is to come is to be lived now in this life! But how do we do this?

Well, as those attempting to convert everyone suggests, perhaps we should "find Jesus." Well, where is Jesus? According to Matthew 25, he's with those who are poor, naked, hungry, sick, and in prison. That's where Jesus is and that's where the radical grace of God drives us to if we really read the various texts found in the Bible! This is the essence of Jesus' message in the gospels and of the prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures!

The ethical and theological essence of the prophets can be summed in one verse from Micah:

"He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" (6:8)

So, what is required of humanity? Do justice, live kindness, and walk humbly with God, the term we use for the "more-than" or sacredness outside of ourselves but that is crucial to our existence.

So yes, we must intellectually assent to live this way but we are not asked to intellectually assent to absurdities that the mind rejects and that is based on superstitious fears of the afterlife.

So, how does one do this in a manner that can be considered "Christian?" This will be addressed in my next post but keep in mind, whatever religious tradition you choose, may it be life-affirming and not destructive or deluding of this life.