(This is the seventh in my series of Bil’s ideas about ten misconceptions in Christianity today. This post suggests that the institutional church thinks Jesus came back to life. He didn’t!)
Before 1980, if someone asked me what Jesus’s main message was, I would have immediately said his crucifixion: he died for our sins, was resurrected for a few days, and then ascended. The end!
Then I became interested in Progressive Christianity and began to think critically about my faith and belief system. Suddenly, many of the things I had taken for granted no longer made sense, especially regarding resurrection theology.
There is no doubt in my mind that Jesus was crucified. I understand how organized religion operates and how leaders respond when their authority is challenged. I have seen it firsthand. The high priests in Jerusalem wanted to eliminate the troublesome Jesus and, in collusion with Pontius Pilate, plotted his death. (This does not mean “the Jews killed Jesus.”) If you read historical accounts of crucifixion, the versions given in the gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) do not come close to capturing the horror of this torture.
As far as I’m concerned, nothing in the New Testament about Jesus’s afterlife is true, and that’s okay because the idea of resurrection is a powerful metaphor, not factual history.
I won’t go into all the details, but Jesus was tried and executed for sedition, specifically for claiming to be a king, which he never did. That accusation led to his crucifixion. After hours of torment, Jesus died—and he was truly dead. No swooning, no body snatching, no fake Jesuses on the cross. As a traitor in the Roman Empire, the final punishment was to leave the body on the cross to be devoured by wild animals during the night. I suspect there was little left of Jesus’s body in the morning.
For those trying to portray Jesus as the Messiah or Christ, having an illegitimate birth and a criminal record didn’t sit well. To address this, the writers of the New Testament invoked God, and suddenly the illegitimate Jesus becomes the Son of God and the criminal Jesus becomes the Savior, the Christ.
Paul never met Jesus, but in his letters he describes Jesus as the Lamb of God who took the place of the Yom Kippur ram and died for our sins. (I’ll never buy into that idea!)
When the church became institutionalized, the leadership decided that Jesus’s dying for our sins generated more revenue than living a life of agape. I can’t help but wonder, Is Christianity more about Paul than about Jesus? I think so.
For me, the conflicting details in the resurrection accounts don’t bother me because all the resurrection stories are metaphors. (The original gospel of Mark didn’t include the resurrection; it was added more than one hundred years later.)
Dead people can’t come back to life, as the church wants me to believe. The decay process begins within minutes of death. The brain has stopped functioning, so nothing works.
However, a metaphorical resurrection is about transformation. I’ve experienced many transformations and resurrections in my life. (You can read about them in my books.) My Jesus has taught me how to make it happen. It works!
The main issue lies in the fact that the gospels were written by Jews. Unfortunately, Gentiles interpret the gospels literally. To truly grasp the power of the gospels, one must see them through Jewish eyes, which requires involving New Testament Jewish scholars. Until then, Gentiles will continue to believe that dead people can walk and talk, and they will confuse religious history with actual history.
What are your thoughts about the resurrection?
PeaceLoveJoyHope Kindness
Bil
Get my book at Bookshop.org, Barnes & Noble, or Amazon!
P.S. People often ask me provocative questions about current events, both religious and secular. I have found that some of these questions are being asked universally. I’ll be periodically alternating regular articles with one of those questions and my answer. I invite you to send me your question to bilaulenbach@yahoo.com.
Image by Reijo Telaranta from Pixabay