Day 21: Jesus Christ

I had a lot of trouble even writing the title of this post without hearing the name Jesus Christ in my head as something other than a swear. Despite the fact that I’m trying really hard to be on my best Christian behavior, I still catch myself yelling “Jesus Christ!” multiple times a day (although I often use the slightly more colorful “Jesus H. Christ!”).

So, in the interest of furthering my understanding and appreciation of Christianity (and maybe making myself stop taking the name of the Lord in vain), I thought today would be a good time to look a little at the man behind the myth, so to speak. We frequently hear people ask, “What would Jesus do?” What I want to ask is “Who was Jesus, really?” Let’s try to find out.

According to The Complete Idiot’s Guide to World Religions (which is becoming like a Bible to me on this project—no pun intended): “‘Jesus’ is a Latinized form of the Greek ‘Iesous,’ a transliteration of a Hebrew name . . . : Y’shua. And ‘Christ’ is not, properly speaking, a name at all, but a description. It is a variation of the Greek word ‘Christos,’ which means ‘the anointed one.’” That is, the one described as the Messiah in the Hebrew tradition.

Christians believe that Jesus was both a real human being and the Son of God, completely divine. Historians generally believe that Jesus was, in fact, a real human being who preached a religious philosophy that emphasized love, faith, and being tolerant of all people. Because he claimed to be the Messiah mentioned in Hebrew scripture (what is now the Old Testament of the Bible), he had not only a lot of devoted followers but also a lot of enemies—and some of them were powerful.

But that’s the end of the story. The beginning is shrouded in myth, and all we really know is what’s described in the New Testament of the Bible, which isn’t exactly as reliable as a history textbook (although history textbooks can be pretty inaccurate, too—I would know, since I used to edit them).

The Bible says that Jesus Christ’s mother, known popularly as the Virgin Mary, was engaged to a guy named Joseph. An angel visited Mary and told her that she was going to become pregnant by the power of the Holy Spirit, and would give birth to the Son of God.

Mary explained this unusual turn of events to Joseph, and the guy agreed to marry her anyway.

Personally, if I were a guy and my fiancée came to me saying she was pregnant with God’s baby, I’d say, “Immaculate conception? Yeah, right. Get your trampy little ass back to your parents’ tent—and give me back my engagement ring (or donkey or ox or whatever a man might have given to a woman to signify betrothal in biblical times).” But Joseph went along with it—which is probably why he has since become a saint and I have not.

Anyway, we probably all know the Christmas story: Mary gives birth to Jesus in a stable because there’s no room at the inn (and yada yada yada). My boyfriend sent me this link that kind of sums it all up, from a slightly more modern (and pretty hilarious) perspective: http://www.flixxy.com/digital-christmas-story.htm.

Beyond the tale of how Jesus was born, the Bible only gives a few brief glimpses of his early years. The story of his life pretty much picks up again when he’s well into adulthood.

He goes and gets baptized by John the Baptist. He starts collecting followers, including the Twelve Apostles. He performs lots of miracles—curing lepers, making the blind see, raising the dead—good stuff.

And he tells people all about what they should be doing and believing—basically updating the rules from the Old Testament and adding a few choice new ideas like “Love thy neighbor as thyself” and so on.

The common people responded favorably to Jesus and his ministry, but the leaders of the old-style Judaism and the local Roman authorities weren’t exactly thrilled about how popular Jesus was becoming. And the stuff he was saying—like how he was the Messiah—could easily be viewed as blasphemy by Jewish leaders (and as sedition by the Romans). So they brought him up on charges and executed him.

The Bible goes into a lot of detail about the period leading up to the crucifixion: how Jesus was betrayed by one of his Apostles, Judas Iscariot; and how another Apostle, Peter, denied knowing Jesus at all for fear of being arrested, too.

But the point is, the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, condemned Jesus to death, and he was crucified. (Then, according to Christian belief, at least, he rose from the dead and returned to hang out with his followers for a while before ascending to heaven, where he’ll stay until some unknown time in the future, when he’ll return in the Second Coming to judge the living and the dead.)

The problem with all this information about Jesus Christ—even to Christians who know it all very well—is that we get very little sense of who Jesus was a person.

Obviously, the assumption is that he was a nice guy—forgiving, loving, treating everyone with respect and tolerance. But the stories give almost no sense of Jesus Christ’s personality—or, at least, that’s what I thought before I started reading the Bible so thoroughly this month.

But we’ll have to talk about that tomorrow. . . .