Did We Miss the Apocalypse? (Part One)

Saving Christianity From Itself

The fact that the word “apocalypse” would appear in the title of an article of mine is odd, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

Of course, zombie apocalypse is a thing. I did see Night of the Living Dead. Meanwhile, religious apocalypticism conjures images of doomsday cults. In the Bible, the Christian end-of-the-world story is contained in the last book of the Bible known as the “Apokalypsis” - the Book of Apocalypse or more commonly known, the Book of Revelation.

But this is not an article about zombies, doomsday cults, or biblical Armageddon. This is an article about what could be the greatest error made by the Christian religion, and its tragic consequences on the whole of humankind. Because this error relates to a grave misunderstanding of Christianity’s central figure, Jesus Christ, I want to begin by summarizing my own personal journey with Jesus.

Me and Jesus

I’ve never been happy with the Jesus that Christianity produced. I should qualify this by saying, the Jesus I learned at seminary and upheld in my former Christian life and ministerial career.

Jesus and I go way back. Growing up as a child, I walked past Jesus several times a day. He was there on the crucifix, hanging on our front-room wall. I attended Catholic Mass sporadically and indifferently, but left my Catholic roots in college and became an evangelical Christian, which continued through seminary and many years of professional Christian ministry.

A crisis of faith led to my questioning my Christian faith and ultimately I left organized church and my megachurch pastor career. It didn’t take long for me to deconstruct and discard most of my Christian theology.

But I was still left with Jesus.

Back in my professional ministry days, I was fond of unpacking the stories and teachings of Jesus. And even after leaving Christianity behind, I still held regard for Jesus in my heart and I tried to make sense of him outside of traditional Christian teachings. My third book, Being Jesus in Nashville, was embroiled in controversy. My Christian publisher leveled a charge of “heresy” against me, and my manuscript and book contract were swiftly cancelled. In my most recent book, Inner Anarchy, I present an alternative understanding of the life and teachings of Jesus, untangled from and in defiance of traditional Christian theology.

Jesus is significant to me but not in the ways I learned in Christianity. I don’t believe I need to be saved from myself or anything else, or that Jesus is the ticket to streets of gold in the afterlife. There are a range of views about Jesus, which include that Jesus never existed, Jesus was a lunatic, Jesus was only human, and Jesus is God. I think it’s all of the above.

In my view, the Jesus of religion, which Christendom manufactured, never existed. This is a “Jesus” that the Church has distorted and corrupted in order to serve its theology, politics and agenda. Christianity is not the fault of Jesus.

I see Jesus as one who had a touch of madness, a bit unhinged, and a renegade with conviction. He was also a man of deep love, tenderheartedness and compassion.

On the one hand, Jesus called the religious leaders of his day every name in the book, was basically one big middle finger to the establishment and their rules, and knew how to use a whip if necessary. But he also defended and stood in solidarity with the marginalized and oppressed, wept at the suffering of humankind, touched the untouchables with his own hands, and even straightened out a wine problem at a wedding because it upset his mother. It's the humanity of Jesus I admire. It takes guts to be human the way Jesus was.

Back in the day, I told people that one became a Christian by accepting Jesus into their heart. It was a legal contract, spelled out in the terms of substitutionary atonement and Christus Victor, which stamped your ticket to heaven. One’s heart didn’t really have much to do with it.

I feel a heart connection to the Jesus portrayed in the gospels that is far more meaningful that what I had in my religious days. The reasons I once believed Jesus was significant have all fallen away but other reasons unique to me have grown. I can identify with the madness, humanity, tenderness and moxie of Jesus.

Stories of Jesus come to my mind at the strangest times. I see him kneeling down in the dirt with the shamed woman, throwing in his lot with the least of these, and stopping church to point out the value of the widow’s mite. Sometimes the suffering of the world makes me weep, and I know someone has shed these same tears. Jesus wept. In many ways, I see that I am only now understanding the life, teachings, wisdom, and spirituality of Jesus, which were previously obscured to me by religion.

In my view, Jesus is divine in the same way that all of us are. The difference between Jesus and most others is that Jesus fully knew and embodied the truth of who he was. When Jesus said he was the way, the truth, the life, and way to God, he was indicating that it was unnecessary and futile to seek God through the mindsets, ideology, formalities, and rules of religion. Jesus lived and expressed the fundamental truth that sets you free, which includes the realization that there is no separation between us and God and everything God represents.

I consider the life, teachings, and wisdom of Jesus to be universally relevant, regardless of one’s religious, spiritual, or philosophical point of view. Traditional or orthodox Christianity does not hold unique and absolute claim to Jesus. Just because you are a Christian doesn’t mean you truly get Jesus. In fact, it may be the reason why you don’t.

Christianity is not the fault of Jesus and one should be careful not to associate the two together too closely or at all. You don’t have to be a Christian and could even be atheist and appreciate the life and legend of Jesus. As a symbol of liberation, Jesus has endured the ages in the hearts and minds of countless people. It’s not mandatory to find meaning in Jesus, but neither is it necessary to discard Jesus if he is meaningful to your spirituality.

I don’t identify as a Christian. I don’t equate Jesus with Christianity. I don’t try to persuade anyone else to find meaning in Jesus. I don’t think it is necessary to believe in or have some active interest or connection with Jesus. I’m only describing me. Truth is, after all these years I still carry Jesus in my heart. Not because I believe he saves me or that he is the only truth. It’s because I have this feeling in many of the most heartbreaking, confusing, saddest, and lonely moments of life… that in someway Jesus would have understood and cared. And somehow that feeling in those moments means something.

The Rabbit Hole of Unlearning Christianity

After leaving Christendom (25 years ago), I initially looked upon the entire enterprise with great suspicion, which included questioning the legitimacy of the Bible, traditional Christian theology, and institutional church. It was my study in areas such as the history of religion, biblical criticism, philosophy and the philosophy of religion that shifted the way I viewed Christianity. I began making significant connections between philosophy and theology, which opened new ways of thinking.