Spinning Jesus

Is Jesus important to Christianity?

This would seem to be a strange question. "Christianity" is about "Christ", which reflects the belief that Jesus was (or is) the "Christ", the saviour. So Christianity must be about Jesus and it must be about the belieft that Jesus is our saviour.

Oddly, the history of Christianity reflects a constant drift away from the relatively simple teachings of Jesus. Paradoxically, a constant thread in the history of all religions is the recognition of this drift and the desire to return to the "true" teachings. Of course, the problem is that these teachings are "spun" out of all recognition by each generation.

The drift started before the New Testament (NT) came together. While it is the only record we have of the life and teachings of Jesus, the NT also reflects a generation or more of theological reflection (spin) on His life and teachings. What is more, it's notoriously difficult to separate the "facts" from the spin. Almost any crazy theory of what Jesus "really" taught can find a foothold in the murky mix of spin and fable of the NT.

Even so, millions of people have been captured by the personality of this man that somehow manages to shine through all the fog. For me, at least, a few things stand out:

• Jesus used the religious language and assumptions that were prevalent in the time and place where he was  born. Of course, he believed in God and saw all the moral challenges in terms of Man's relationship to God. How could he otherwise? This is also true of all the other writers in the NT, who interpreted His life and teachings in terms of the Old Testament and the mythical, magical thinking that prevailed in Mediterranean cultures at the time.
• The central message of Jesus concerned the coming of the "Kingdom". This was not about "heaven", but about the need to be "born again", to leave behind our sinful lives and submit to the will (rulership or "Kingdom") of God. This is one of the few instances where translation (or mis-translation) of the original has made a huge difference over time. "Kingdom" conjures up a land ruled by God in some other dimension or the distant future, but idea is more about "rulership", more in tune with the Islamic idea of submission to the wil of God. At its core, the idea is to make a personal decision at one point in time to abandon the past and give over your life to doing what you know in your heart is best.
• The call to the "Kingdom" was individual and personal. Jesus stressed the need for personal, inward reform and not the natural human tendency to campaign against the wayward ways of others.  
• As a Jew, Jesus probably believed in the idea of the Messiah. His followers believed that he was the Messiah and that is, arguably, what got Him killed. It is even possible that Jesus Himself believed that He was the Messiah. In my view, there is no way to know about this way or another. To the modern perspective, it really doesn't matter. Really. This is because the Jewish concept of the Messiah which Jesus may or may not have accepted has been "spun" into a tangle of mythological concepts that would not have made sense in the time of Jesus. The craziest of these underlies the book of Revelation in the NT, which is all about the hoped-for fall of the Roman Empire in a battle with heavenly forces. We can file all this away in the drawer with all the other colourful mythologies of dead civilizations.
• Jesus was a shit-disturber and a Skeptic in the context of his own culture and surroundings (another thing that may have gotten Him killed). Along with other prophets of the Old Testament (OT) he put the obligation to care for others ahead ritual. In modern terms, his theme was, "Come on, think for yourself. What really matters?" He took it upon himself to boil interpret the OT down to the central message "Love one another". It's worth noting that this is only one way to boil down the OT and that his own message got "boiled down" in many bizarre ways which were used to justify the slaughter of millions over the next two millennia. To cite just one example, it is hard to imagine that Jesus Himself would have endorsed the centuries-long persecution of Jews by "Christians" in His name. Jesus was a Jew.

Like all religions, Christianity is almost all "spin" -- a hurricane that has sucked up vast swirling clouds of riff-raff over the centuries. Flying by in these powerful winds, we find truly great ideas being levitated along with some of the very worst. At its centre we find a calm centre, paradoxically and mysteriously powering all the chaos around it. Most of us, being blasted around by the winds far from the centre, can only speculate about what it's like in the eye of the storm and only dimly perceive where all the energy is coming from. If you ask me, I'd say that the energy comes from the real life and actual teachings of Jesus: "Stop. Think for yourself. Hang on to each other because nothing else matters".