What Do You Do With a Chocolate Jesus? (5 page)

While he trekked through Greece and Rome, Paul sent his epistles to the early churches back east in order to hash out various issues. In so doing, he established the foundations of Christian theology, turning a faith aimed at local Jews into an international religion. He also managed to throw in a lot of puritanical ideas about sex, for which we are eternally grateful. Though he never claimed to have met the earthly Jesus, he wrote with great authority because he believed he was in communication with the resurrected Christ. Paul was a piece of work.

The Pauline epistles include
Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians
, and
Philemon.
These are followed by more letters by other authors, though some of them are traditionally attributed to Paul.

The Bible’s final book,
The Revelation to John
, almost didn’t make it into the Scripture because it’s so damned weird and depicts a more militant Jesus than the four Gospels do. It was written by a very angry man named John living on the Greek island of Patmos around A.D. 95. It’s a cosmic drama of war between Jesus and the devil at the End of Time, concluding with the establishment of God’s eternal kingdom on earth. This is summer blockbuster stuff and people still write reviews about it when they’re not using pages from it to wallpaper their bomb shelters.

Scraps of Scripture

There is no definitive edition of the New Testament. Each church has its own preferred version, and each is assembled from selected scraps of ancient manuscripts from many different places. And
all
of these scraps are copies of copies of copies of the originals. When editors decide to publish a new Bible edition, they rummage through these copies, cherry pick which manuscripts they like best, and then translate them the way they see fit. This is how the sacred, inerrant, eternal word of the Almighty ended up in your hotel nightstand. It makes you wonder—was this the
best
God could do to preserve his timeless wisdom? He couldn’t have waited for videotape? Or at least the Xerox people?

The picture we get of Jesus today is based primarily on the four Gospels that gained the most popularity in the early years and were used most frequently by “the Church”—by which I mean the early, centralized, mainstream sect of Christianity that claims it was founded by Peter, one of Jesus’ own disciples. Today, we call it the Roman Catholic Church.

Eventually, as the Church won the contest of defining the faith (and you’ll see it wasn’t pretty), other Christian followings fizzled or were forced out of business, and their writings were lost. Or dispensed with. (Like I said, not pretty.) Only a few works by larger groups, such as the Gnostic sect, still survive. More on them later.

“They Ain’t Makin’ Jews like Jesus Anymore”

As the Kinky Freidman song suggests, Jesus was a different kind of Jewish holy man. He made waves by offering a new twist on traditional Jewish law. Judaism and Christianity have a co-dependent relationship. Without Jewish history and the messiah movement it produced, Christianity would never have existed. On the other hand, the only reason most of us know about Moses or the Ten Commandments or Charlton Heston is because all that material was carried forward by a more widespread religion—one that ultimately turned against its parent faith.

Well, what chip off the old block doesn’t go through a period of rebellion? The problem was that Jesus didn’t grow up to be the kind of messiah the Hebrew Bible anticipated—a warrior prince who would overpower Israel’s oppressors and rule the world. Instead, they got a charismatic hippie kid who wandered the countryside with no visible means of support, performing faith healings, and preaching love for everyone from your deadbeat brother-in-law to Roman tax collectors. You can understand why people were confused.

Even more baffling was what Jesus said about God. He recast the Almighty from the wrathful, moody, law-and-order cop of the Old Testament into the ethereal, forgiving spirit of the New Testament (except for the part about non-believers burning in hell). Hearing about this touchy-feely deity, Jewish priests must have reacted like a divorced woman listening to a description of her ex-husband from his new trophy wife. “You say he’s what?
Sensitive and forgiving?
Are we talking about the same
guy?”
Then there was the part about God being Jesus’ dad. That was even harder to swallow.

Jesus also surprised everyone with his uncompromising rejection of Mosaic Law—including the circumcision requirement, which was a big deal back then. Actually, it’s no small potatoes today, especially if you’re on the receiving end. It’s probably why they do it before you’re old enough to say, “You gotta be kidding me with this.” Just a little off the top, please.

Finally, few expected their messiah to be executed. That’s not what messiahs are for. The big disappointment, of course, was that Jesus left his followers before doing what everyone hoped their savior would do—save them. When he died, they were still stuck living under the Romans. Why bother having a messiah drop in if he’s going to leave things pretty much the way he found them?

Well, there are a lot of complicated, migraine-inducing rationales for all this. (Almost nothing in Christian theology is simple, and a lot of it is just excuse-making.) But let’s give it try.

One explanation was that, before God judged humanity, he had to update the Jewish religion to give more people a chance to avoid damnation. Evidently, the Laws of Moses didn’t do the job, or were just a stop-gap. So, Jesus wiped the slate clean of all those odious rules and rituals, and preached a basic philosophy of love, charity, and repentance. He focused on the heart of the law rather than the letter of the law. Judaism got a warm, fuzzy makeover.

As for why Jesus didn’t vanquish the Romans and establish a Jewish world government based in Jerusalem, as the Hebrew Bible foresees…well, some argue that it’s already in the works. By leaving his message behind, he changed the course of history in his favor. After all, you don’t see any Romans walking around these days, do you? (And, no, your Italian grandmother doesn’t count.)

Furthermore, when Jesus spoke of establishing a Kingdom of God, he wasn’t necessarily talking about a castle surrounded by cow pastures. It was more a state of being. By dying, he’d be free to “prepare a place” for his followers to enter on Judgment Day, when “they will see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.” [Matt. 24:30]
Then
they would get their utopian kingdom. At least, that was his story. Frankly, to regard this mere promise as the fulfillment of that prophecy is setting the bar rather low.

It was all Greek to Them

The authors of the Old Testament came out of traditional Hebrew culture. But the New Testament writers were products of Hellenism—meaning Greek civilization and philosophy. As mentioned, they wrote in Greek and they used the Greek-language
Septuagint
as their Old Testament reference. Tradition says the author of Luke wasn’t even Jewish. Rather, he may have been a
godfearer—
a Gentile who had converted to Judaism before he caught Jesus fever. There are some who even regard Christianity as more of a Greek religion than a Jewish one.

Christianity’s biggest advantage over Judaism was the decision early on to not limit it to Jews. Anyone could sign on. It was kind of like Microsoft
Windows
, which runs on any personal computer, compared with
Mac
software, which only works on a kosher Apple processor. The results were the same: Christianity boomed while Judaism maintained a niche market.

In short order, Christian recruitment expanded to include non-Jews who knew nothing of Mosaic Law. So, they dropped the circumcision requirement, which was a deal-breaker for many Gentiles, and other rules as well. Let’s face it, if Old Testament rituals like burning goats and spattering bull’s blood at the altar were still in force, we’d be in constant trouble with public health officials, not to mention PETA. This had to stop.

Half of Everything You Know is Wrong

Before we explore what’s in the New Testament, it might be useful to review what’s
not
in there. Our culture is so saturated with stories, symbols, and sentiments of Christian tradition that even the non-religious among us credit the Bible with lots of stuff that isn’t in there at all.

Words or ideas you
won’t
find in the New Testament include:

Christmas

Easter

Original Sin

The Immaculate Conception The Catholic Church

Popes, cardinals or nuns

Monasteries

Mortal Sin

Stations of the Cross

Protestants

Mormons

    Jehovah, or his witnesses (“Jehovah” was a medieval mistranslation of “Yahweh”)

Angels with halos, harps, or wings

Guardian Angels

A physical description of Jesus

Jesus condemning homosexuality

Jesus condemning abortion

Jesus condemning slavery

Jesus advocating marriage

Jesus advocating a steady job

Jesus advocating money-making

Jesus advocating a male priesthood

Jesus advocating war

Jesus advocating the death penalty

Jesus advocating Christian government

Christians being fed to lions

Christians folding their hands and kneeling in prayer

Saint Peter at the gate

Seventh Heaven

Stigmata

Democracy

Science

Human Rights

Freedom (as in the right to speak or worship)

The Rapture

The Rule of Law

The Rights of Man

Family Values

Life Begins at Conception

Billy Graham

Tax-deductible Contributions

These are only some of the things people have shoehorned into the religion and then acted as if Jesus came up with them himself. It’s part of a long, tired tradition of people deciding what they want to believe and then creating a vision of Jesus to fit it.

Example: In the Gospels, Jesus comes off as a homeless, socialist, pacifist Jew who never married, never mentioned abortion, and opposed killing for all reasons, even good ones. Yet, for many in the United States, he’s a wholesome Gentile family man who puts banning abortion, the death penalty, and righteous warfare above assisting the poor. They’ve remade Jesus in their own image—the opposite of what they’re supposed to do.

These folks earnestly feel they’re conforming to the will of God. But their pastors, whom they rarely question, are sometimes crafty about which parts of Scripture they cite and which parts they ignore. What’s more, all pastors don’t agree, so there are endless variations on what it means to be a Christian. And then there’s the fact that the faith has done a 180 on every values issue from slavery and women’s equality, to free speech and religious tolerance, over just the past 500 years. This is somebody’s idea of Moral Absolutes.

With all this in mind, let’s begin our tour through the epic book that almost everyone says they believe in, and which most of us have never read.

CHAPTER TWO

The Amazing Adventures of Joshua the Anointed

If Jesus died for my paltry sins, he overreacted.

—Matt Decatur

Marketing the Messiah

Thomas Jefferson once described the philosophy of Jesus as “the most sublime and benevolent” ever heard by man, and it’s hard to argue with that. Even snarky skeptics have to admit western civilization has benefited at times from Christian wisdom.

Where we get into trouble, of course, is when certain folks (and you know who you are) take perfectly good ideas and harden them into dogmas that treat legends as history and metaphors as fact. As kids, we can gain insight from
Aesop’s Fables
. But as adults, do we really want to convince ourselves that a fox actually bitched about sour grapes? You don’t eradicate smallpox or land on the moon with that mentality.

Even worse is when the same folks who swear by every word of the Scripture manage to ignore so much of it. Attitudes completely at odds with what Jesus talked about somehow get his imprimatur. It’s false advertising and it’s been going on for a couple thousand years now. That’s not to say there isn’t plenty to learn from Scripture. We don’t want to throw the baby Jesus out with the holy bathwater. But when politically-active religion junkies use this stuff in an assault on history, science, law, and common sense, the rest of us need a little ammo to fire back. So here goes.

What’s in a Name?

As any Hollywood mogul knows, if you’re in the business of getting attention, you need a marquee name. So, Curtis Jackson III becomes 50 Cent, and Paul Hewson becomes Bono. Even popes don’t use their birth names. The late John Paul II was born Karol Józef Wojtyla, which was hard to spell and even harder to pronounce. From the earliest days, God’s top pitchmen have known the importance of name recognition.