Jesus the Jewish mystic
To those that have mystical experiences, they are as real and unassailable as a slap in the face. What you do about it and with it is another question. You may have had a mystical experience and not known what it was. Or you may have chosen to pretend it didn’t happen because “all that stuff is bullsh*t” – or, you may not have had a mystical experience at all. But one person who undoubtedly did was Jesus.
Jesus was a Jewish mystic – imbued with the Spirit of God at his baptism. This is what made him an “anointed one” – a Christ. Note that I say he was an anointed one, not the anointed one. He was not the only one. There have been other mystics throughout the ages, and Jesus would likely have melted into relative obscurity if it had not been for Paul.
Paul (Saint Paul, Saul of Tarsus) picked up a few nuggets of the story of Jesus and packaged it together with some Neo-Platonic beliefs and “sold” the package to the gentiles (non-Jews) throughout the Roman Empire. It was a slick bit of marketing, but it had little to do with Jesus’s[1] original message, as evidenced by Paul’s vehement disagreements with Jesus’s original disciples[2].
So, am I a heretic if I don’t believe in the “standard model” of Christianity? I don't think so. Because, from all accounts, neither did Jesus! What we have received as the orthodox[3] model of Christianity was defined by humans, mostly from Paul-started churches, in 325 CE.
And so, why even bother to repurpose the term Christianity the way I do here? Why not call this “Jesusism” or something? I believe that one should not abandon two thousand years of honing the message. Yes, there were a lot of false starts and wrong turns, but clearly there is a divine spark in the overall Christian movement, and to throw this away in a childish temper tantrum is a huge mistake.
More soon...
[1] There is some small controversy regarding whether this should be written as Jesus’ (as I learned it) or as Jesus’s (as is more common today). After much soul-searching I decided to go with the one that is more common these days.
[2] As evidenced by a fresh reading of Acts and 1 Corinthians. Also, check out the book James, the Brother of Jesus by Robert Eisenman
[3] Throughout the blog, I'll differentiate between “orthodox” (small o) and “Orthodox” (big O) Christianity. The first refers to the model of Christianity that was developed through the first seven councils; the second refers to the Orthodox Church, which in the USA is often referred to as “Greek Orthodox.”