As a child I attended a Catholic church and I went to Sunday school. In addition to this, I attended extra religion classes once a week that were taught to the public-school kids so that we could still receive the sacraments.
As an adult, I have left the Catholic church but I teach Sunday school and help to lead a group of men in a non-denominational church in the city I live in.
In the middle however, I left the church for nearly 20 years.
The common thread linking these times of my journey toward understanding is the stories. The stories of the Garden, the Flood, The Parting of the Red Sea, the Walls of Jericho, Jonah and the Whale and Daniel and the Lions Den. As I child I read these in my children’s bible as historical fact. In class, I was taught these as historical fact. Even as a Sunday school teacher I have taught these as actual events.
As I’ve gotten older however and begin to think more critically about these things, I begin to question it.
Am I supposed to believe that God flooded the whole earth and only saved a few people and as many animals as he could fit on a boat? I’m supposed to believe that a man lived in the belly of a whale for three days? I’m supposed to believe there was a talking snake that doomed mankind?
If I’m being honest, it’s easy for me to simply not believe these stories while still maintaining my faith. Flood narratives and origin stories in the Garden are almost a dime a dozen when you go back to ancient times. Stories were passed down for generations and probably tweaked a little along the way like the children’s game of telephone. They are common stories of human history and teach us lessons about trust and faith but I don’t believe they were ever meant to be taken as literal.
But what do I do with the stories of Jesus? The stories about him and the miracles he performed. How do I reconcile those if I’m willing to take Old Testament stories as simple allegory?
Historical Jesus is someone that I struggle with and I think I always will. I don’t do well with blind faith or stories; I like written history and non-biased accounts. I will concede however that history is written by the victors so the portrait of events is often sunnier than it may have been at the time. With that being said, I wanted to dig in a bit more on Jesus of Nazareth and if such a man existed.
As a child, the image of Jesus was almost as mystical as the image of God or the Spirit (yes, I subscribe to the trinity but that’s another post). I would chalk this up to the fact that it never felt that a relationship was a possibility and I still struggle with that. Jesus was seen as an “other” and spoken in the same breath as God and the Holy Spirit; and the Virgin Mary in the Catholic church. He wasn’t really presented as a man who felt human emotions; at least not in a way that I understood.
I carried this feeling into adulthood. I spent some time as a Deist where I was quite certain of intelligent design but as my father-in-law may say, that designer doesn’t care what I did last Saturday night.
I think it was Greg Boyd’s book “Letter’s from a Skeptic” (link below) that made me believe that the Jesus I was told about was an actual man. Historical records and accounts show Jesus well beyond the Christian faith and presented as “generally reliable” based on other records of the time, that Jesus did in fact exist.
So, what now? Jesus existed but what about the rest? I have infinite questions that I am positive will not be answered in my time on this earth and potentially never will but I wonder how many of the things that Jesus did were in fact miraculous or if they could be explained and how many were more games of telephone?
Did Jesus turn water to wine or was everyone already drunk? Did he heal a crippled man or just convince the man to do something he had the ability to do all along? Did Jesus actually raise Lazarus from the dead? Jesus himself said that Lazarus was only sleeping and as Thomas Jay Oord stated in a recent podcast (link below) perhaps Lazarus was only “mostly dead” (see: The Princess Bride).
The crucifixion is usually where this breaks down and if I’m being honest, it breaks down there for me as well. The reason for the crucifixion has been debated and will continue to be debated for as long as there are Christians. I maintain that while Jesus may have known he was going to die, it was us who killed him and there was no reason he had to die. Think of the good he could have done with more than a three-year ministry? I can’t believe that was God’s plan (if God’s plan exists…again, a different post).
With all that being said, based on historical accounts, the man that was called Jesus did die on the cross and he did appear after. Could he appear to a few people and everyone run with the story? Sure. But he appeared in front of hundreds. If you’ve ever done a group project in school, you know that getting that many people to fall in line on something is pretty much impossible. Based on this, I do believe in a physical resurrection but beyond that, I have no idea.
If you’ve gotten this far, you may be asking yourself if this guy has so many doubts about the bible and all we know of the ancient world, what kind of faith does he really have?
I think that is a valid question.
Since I started on this journey five years ago, I’ve read more than in the entirety of 35 years prior. I’ve listened to books and podcasts from women and men far smarter than I. I’ve actually changed the type of person I was to become a better version of myself.
If I’m asked about my faith now, I will tell people that I’m trying to follow the ways of Jesus and what he taught.
I don’t know if any of the stories I heard as a kid are true or if I can even rely on the “red letters” to be the truth but what I do know is, it draws me in. It draws me to love and kindness toward others. It draws me to examine my actions and try to be better.
So, while I don’t believe that the world was once covered in water but humanity was saved because of an old man and a boat, I do believe there is a God who loves us and walks with us. I believe He sent his son, a piece of Himself, to show us the way. I believe that we saw that way as a threat and we killed him. I believe that one day we’ll be able to make sense of all of this, but until then I read, I listen and I write.
Letters from a Skeptic – Gregory A Boyd
https://www.christianbook.com/letters-from-a-skeptic/gregory-boyd/9781434799807/pd/799807
The What If Project Podcast
https://whatifproject.podbean.com/e/episode-113-thomas-oord-teaches-us-to-pray-to-a-god-who-cant/
Whatever you do, *don't* read "How Jesus Became God" by Bart Ehrman.
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