(no subject)
Things with Joel are going pretty well since we reconciled. On Saturday afternoon after work, he brought to me the idea that one way we could restore our connection is to go on more actual dates. We never really dated, per se -- we did things together, sure, but they never had much of a "date" feel. Lately most of our time together has consisted of hanging out in my apartment in our pajamas, watching movies and eating leftovers. Which can be fine, but yeah, I think doing that as our default did cause our relationship to suffer because it made our time together seem less special and more blah. So I'm glad that he came to me with that idea; I think it's a good one. Yesterday I brainstormed some ideas for things we can possibly do together on dates, and I'm going to share them with him next time I see him. Just talking about these things, I feel like our connection is already coming back and is stronger than ever. Our love for each other feels more tangible than it has in a long awhile, and it's a great feeling. I'm still so happy that I decided not to close the door on us after all. I think we still have a lot to learn from one another and many good times to have together.
Today after work I hung out for about an hour with Stephanie, a girl I used to work with. We always got along great at work because we had a lot in common, but for some reason during that time we never hung out. She's now married with a three year old little girl, and they're expecting another daughter in a couple of months. She brought her daughter with her to the coffee shop where we hung out this afternoon, and even though the kid was acting crazy and climbing all over her, which caused Stephanie to have to leave early, it was really nice. We exchanged some books -- I lent her The Moon Under Her Feet by Clysta Kinstler, and she lent me Living Buddha, Living Christ by the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. We started our little book exchange a few months ago when I recommended to her The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley, which she fell in love with (as I knew she would). I love having friends I can talk with about both literature and spirituality.
In many ways, I feel the same about Jesus (who I prefer to call by his real Hebrew name, Yeshua) that many mainline Christians feel about him. I aim to follow in his footsteps in terms of how I treat my fellow human beings. I believe that he died and came back -- although I view his resurrection as metaphorical, in the sense that, as the religious scholar Marcus Borg has posited, his followers continued to experience him in their lives after he died. I think that he is risen every time we follow his example: as long as we live like Yeshua, Yeshua lives. I think that this interpretation actually makes the resurrection more meaningful than looking at it literally, because if we interpret it figuratively then the resurrection happened not just once thousands of years ago, but it continues to happen again and again.
What I struggle with is the idea that Yeshua was divine, the Son of God. This is, of course, in large part because I don't really believe in God. I'm agnostic because so far, I have seen nothing nor had any experience that made me say, "Wow, this is definitive proof to me that some kind of divine creator/ruler exists." This has nothing to do with science or evolution, which I do believe in. I've never thought that religion and science needed to be at odds with one another. I don't think I'm closing myself off from any proof of God's existence, either, since I try to keep an open mind. I just simply don't see it. And, rationally, I have to admit that there's probably more evidence against the existence of deities than for it.
But Yeshua obviously believed in God, believed in Him/Her quite deeply and passionately. Can I still follow Yeshua if I don't believe in God? I want to say "yes," but I don't know. Of course, it could be very well be that Yeshua was mistaken in his belief in God, but that he was still a great moral teacher whom we have much to learn from. I can look up to him in the same way I look up to Queen Elizabeth I, Mohandas K. Gandhi, Joan of Arc and many of my other heroes.
I definitely don't believe in the literal virgin birth. My theory is that Joseph was actually his father (which is why I usually refer to him as "Yeshua ben Yosef"), or that Mary was impregnated through rape and that being married off to an older man was her way of keeping her respectability and avoiding the shame that would come to an ancient Mediterranean Jewish rape victim. It would go a long way toward explaining why Joseph is not named as Yeshua's father in the Bible, but only Mary's husband. And it would make sense for a rape victim to reclaim her virginity, since she never gave it up willingly; in her view and in God's eyes, she would still be pure. I don't know how much it even matters, since it's not very relevant to Yeshua's message, but this is the idea that makes the most rational sense to me.
I also think that Yeshua might have meant that he was the Son of God in the sense that we are all sons and daughters of God. Again, it seems to me that a figurative interpretation actually gives these ancient stories much more power and resonance in the modern age.
All in all, I prefer to emphasize Yeshua's humanity, not his supposed divinity. The more he is divine, the harder it is for us to emulate him. When I was reading John Dominic Crossan's book Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, I came across a passage blew me away and made me really take seriously the idea that I could consider myself a liberal/progressive Unitarian Universalist Christian. It basically said that all the passages in the Gospels that described Yeshua curing peoples' diseases actually meant that he cured their illnesses, which is a very different thing. He didn't touch them and make their leprosy or blindness literally disappear, like some kind of cosmic/divine E.T. Rather, by loving and associating publicly with diseased people whom society viewed as "unclean," he made them clean again. To use terminology from the Hindu caste system, his associating with them made them no longer Untouchable. That is how he healed people. And that is how we can follow in his footsteps and heal people today, by loving and accepting people with AIDS or drug addiction or learning disabilities, or any number of physical/social diseases that cause them to be viewed by today's society as "unclean."
So, yeah...that is the Yeshua I aim to follow. It is a Jesus I can look up to far more than the image of him that was forced upon me as I was growing up. I still don't know if I ever will or can believe in God(s), but I'm pretty sure Yeshua will always be meaningful to me, now that I've come to know who he really is for the first time.
Today after work I hung out for about an hour with Stephanie, a girl I used to work with. We always got along great at work because we had a lot in common, but for some reason during that time we never hung out. She's now married with a three year old little girl, and they're expecting another daughter in a couple of months. She brought her daughter with her to the coffee shop where we hung out this afternoon, and even though the kid was acting crazy and climbing all over her, which caused Stephanie to have to leave early, it was really nice. We exchanged some books -- I lent her The Moon Under Her Feet by Clysta Kinstler, and she lent me Living Buddha, Living Christ by the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. We started our little book exchange a few months ago when I recommended to her The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley, which she fell in love with (as I knew she would). I love having friends I can talk with about both literature and spirituality.
In many ways, I feel the same about Jesus (who I prefer to call by his real Hebrew name, Yeshua) that many mainline Christians feel about him. I aim to follow in his footsteps in terms of how I treat my fellow human beings. I believe that he died and came back -- although I view his resurrection as metaphorical, in the sense that, as the religious scholar Marcus Borg has posited, his followers continued to experience him in their lives after he died. I think that he is risen every time we follow his example: as long as we live like Yeshua, Yeshua lives. I think that this interpretation actually makes the resurrection more meaningful than looking at it literally, because if we interpret it figuratively then the resurrection happened not just once thousands of years ago, but it continues to happen again and again.
What I struggle with is the idea that Yeshua was divine, the Son of God. This is, of course, in large part because I don't really believe in God. I'm agnostic because so far, I have seen nothing nor had any experience that made me say, "Wow, this is definitive proof to me that some kind of divine creator/ruler exists." This has nothing to do with science or evolution, which I do believe in. I've never thought that religion and science needed to be at odds with one another. I don't think I'm closing myself off from any proof of God's existence, either, since I try to keep an open mind. I just simply don't see it. And, rationally, I have to admit that there's probably more evidence against the existence of deities than for it.
But Yeshua obviously believed in God, believed in Him/Her quite deeply and passionately. Can I still follow Yeshua if I don't believe in God? I want to say "yes," but I don't know. Of course, it could be very well be that Yeshua was mistaken in his belief in God, but that he was still a great moral teacher whom we have much to learn from. I can look up to him in the same way I look up to Queen Elizabeth I, Mohandas K. Gandhi, Joan of Arc and many of my other heroes.
I definitely don't believe in the literal virgin birth. My theory is that Joseph was actually his father (which is why I usually refer to him as "Yeshua ben Yosef"), or that Mary was impregnated through rape and that being married off to an older man was her way of keeping her respectability and avoiding the shame that would come to an ancient Mediterranean Jewish rape victim. It would go a long way toward explaining why Joseph is not named as Yeshua's father in the Bible, but only Mary's husband. And it would make sense for a rape victim to reclaim her virginity, since she never gave it up willingly; in her view and in God's eyes, she would still be pure. I don't know how much it even matters, since it's not very relevant to Yeshua's message, but this is the idea that makes the most rational sense to me.
I also think that Yeshua might have meant that he was the Son of God in the sense that we are all sons and daughters of God. Again, it seems to me that a figurative interpretation actually gives these ancient stories much more power and resonance in the modern age.
All in all, I prefer to emphasize Yeshua's humanity, not his supposed divinity. The more he is divine, the harder it is for us to emulate him. When I was reading John Dominic Crossan's book Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, I came across a passage blew me away and made me really take seriously the idea that I could consider myself a liberal/progressive Unitarian Universalist Christian. It basically said that all the passages in the Gospels that described Yeshua curing peoples' diseases actually meant that he cured their illnesses, which is a very different thing. He didn't touch them and make their leprosy or blindness literally disappear, like some kind of cosmic/divine E.T. Rather, by loving and associating publicly with diseased people whom society viewed as "unclean," he made them clean again. To use terminology from the Hindu caste system, his associating with them made them no longer Untouchable. That is how he healed people. And that is how we can follow in his footsteps and heal people today, by loving and accepting people with AIDS or drug addiction or learning disabilities, or any number of physical/social diseases that cause them to be viewed by today's society as "unclean."
So, yeah...that is the Yeshua I aim to follow. It is a Jesus I can look up to far more than the image of him that was forced upon me as I was growing up. I still don't know if I ever will or can believe in God(s), but I'm pretty sure Yeshua will always be meaningful to me, now that I've come to know who he really is for the first time.