Jesus without Christianity makes a lot of sense

Wow. Atheist me is sharing a USA Today opinion piece about Jesus. That's because the only problem I have with Jesus is his connection with Christianity. Take that away, and we're left with the teachings of a regular human being.

This assumes, of course, that Jesus actually existed, and the New Testament contains at least a somewhat accurate description of what Jesus said and did -- two debatable assumptions.

Nonetheless, I like the general thrust of this opinion piece. I've added some comments on it in red. 

Jesus doesn't need Christianity. His example is powerful without any religion at all.
Tom Krattenmaker, Opinion columnist

In the Christmas story being told in households and churches across the land, Jesus was born in a manger. Although romanticized in tales and hymns, the bed of hay and company of livestock do not constitute an ideal setting for birthing a baby. But Mary and Joseph had no choice. There was no room at the inn.

Will there be room at the inn for Jesus in our setting as we become more of a post-Christian society in the years and decades ahead?

We can hope so, whether we are Christian or not.

Not sure I agree, but the author does make a decent case for this.

Potent cultural forces are vying to crowd him out, of course. Chief among them is secularization, which has advanced to the point where roughly a quarter of Americans  — and upwards of 40 percent of younger Americans — belong to no church or any other kind of religious organization. Many who have left organized Christianity, or were never part of it to begin with, throw out the baby (Jesus) with the bathwater.

Yay! Churchlessness is on the march! The times they are a'changing. Less religion, the better. 

Along with that, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat sees paganism seeping into the vacuum left by the recession of traditional Christianity. In a recent column, Douthat, who is Catholic, notes that a kind of this-world spirituality is gaining ground as more people eschew the transcendent God of the Bible. Not atheistic, this spirituality seeks meaning and succor in nature, ritual, even in supernatural forces. Douthat predicts, gloomily, that this pagan “religion” might be on its way to becoming Christianity’s successor.

What's gloomy for Douthat sounds like cheerful news to me. I'd prefer paganism to shun supernatural forces, of course. But paganism is any form is way better than traditional Christianity. 

Jesus gets no mention in Douthat’s piece. That’s telling. Because in the traditional religious formulation, as in the secular one, Jesus plays little if any role in the world other than the Christianized one that frames him as the divine son of God, the savior in whom we must believe and whose divinity we must accept, if we’re to avoid hell and reach heaven’s gate.

I'm fine with embracing hell and rejecting heaven, since there's no evidence either exists. The Big Bad Wolf can't scare us if it is a fantasy. 

But is it really such an either/or? Can’t Jesus have a future beyond Christianity as we’ve known it?

He can. And should.

Law professor and blogger Bruce Ledewitz was quick to pick up on the omission of Jesus in Douthat’s column. Doubtful that paganism has much of a foothold or future, Ledewitz writes that there’s another possibility: the emergence of a “secularized” Christianity built around the values of Jesus.

Intriguing idea. 

The professor gets it right. Just as the person of Jesus came before Christianity, so might the figure of Jesus — philosopher, teacher, moral exemplar — outlast American Christendom. If secular people can focus on the values and teachings of Jesus without getting tripped up by the religious context — which comes naturally for some, not so easily for others — they might find a surprisingly relevant source of guidance and uplift.

OK. Like I said, I'm fine with Jesus. It's Christianity that I reject. 

Here is a figure who, with his unwavering commitment to honoring the dignity and humanity of all people, has much to say to the issues that roil society today: Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, the arrival of traumatized immigrants at our border, and the despair in our bursting-at-the-scenes prisons and forgotten rural communities.

What would happen if our moral and policy evaluations were injected with the ethic of Jesus, who taught that the ultimate test of our character is how we treat those with the least power and status, those we can most easily get away with abusing and forgetting?

Jesus sounds like a progressive/Democrat/liberal -- just like me! Not an original observation, of course. Quite a few have pointed out that the Jesus loved by conservatives isn't the Jesus of the Bible. It's a made-up Jesus who hates gays, abortions, and other right-wing obsessions.

This is a figure who stands in stark contrast with the prevailing norms of a culture obsessed with the acquisition of status, wealth and consumer products. President Donald Trump promised that our “wins” would be so many under his leadership that we’d get sick of winning. No chance of that happening. Materialism’s hunger is never satisfied and its thirst is never slaked.

True. The United States is a supposedly "Christian nation" that acts in a very un-Jesus-like way.

How different would our society and lives be if we found real meaning and truth in a story that finds the protagonist racking up zero wins of the political or economic variety, but instead gets executed in the most humiliating way imaginable?

As Christians will quickly remind, the story does not end there. Resurrection anyone? But you will note that in the Bible telling, Jesus’ brief and ethereal appearances post-crucifixion continue to be other worldly. No thrones. No riches. No overturning of harsh Roman rule over Jesus’ people.

In this case as in many biblical stories, secular meaning is there for the taking, along with the religious significance. Can’t we take resurrection as a signifier that the story and values of Jesus endure and, indeed, trump the values of power and privilege?

Sure. This is a much more believable and appealing way of looking at Jesus than the whole fantastical Son of God thing.

Whether we celebrate it in churches or not, Christmas furnishes a prime opportunity to reflect on the meaning of this child whose family found no room at the inn. In his brief career, that child would go on to convey profound insights that remain as relevant today as they did 2,000 years ago: the value of philanthropic love, especially for those we find hardest to tolerate; the reality that we become truly strong only when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable; and the truth that we experience the fullness of life only when we stop living for ourselves.

Will there be room at the inn for Jesus in the years and decades to come? We really ought to make some.

Sounds good. But I doubt that most Christians will accept a secular view of Jesus anytime soon. Us atheists already do that. It just will take a while for fundamentalists to embrace our enlightened perspective on Jesus.

A member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors, Tom Krattenmaker is a writer specializing in religion in public life and author of "Confessions of a Secular Jesus Follower." Follow him on Twitter: @TKrattenmaker

Comments

[Jesse]

"the issues that roil society today: Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, the arrival of traumatized immigrants at our border, and the despair in our bursting-at-the-scenes prisons and forgotten rural communities."

Womp womp.

I think he meant to say "the topics used by a corrupt 5th column media to create disturbances and violence in the United States for the benefit of a small few who will retain power at the expense of small people's rights" since not a single one of those things "roiled" society until hundreds of millions of dollars were pumped into organizations who advocated for riots based on the instructions and persuasion of a 100% unanimous conglomeration of supposedly independent media.

But yeah, with or without religion, Jesus' values and way of life could certainly serve as good examples. I wouldn't say atheists are morally any better than Christians though. There has been a significant amount of underreported violence against Christians by atheists in the past year or two that I suspect most people never heard of due to that unanimous conglomerate of "independent" journalists. That one massive Church shooting by the atheist was memory holed in like 5 minutes, and that was not an accident.

Gonna have to ask Manjit though. He has all the coolest answers and is respected by all the great minds like the guys in the "intellectual dark web lol" who totally aren't on the payroll of corrupt foreign governments. Not at all. Maybe he can critique my massive run on sentence and Appreciative Reader will write 84,000 words about trolling and why science isn't reliable if the results offend his butter-soft sensibilities.

[777]

@jesse
This is simple and all of us agree - Perhaps Jim has a word at the trottoir of all this

What I missed is The Great Importance of the Holy Ghost,
christians have no clue that The Phenomenon can be heard
by every compassionate, without sacrament , without priest
or Guru

777

little ps for Sarah
After Brians performance in India Media, of course
Gurinder knows about this blog
But it was not very clear that you concluded he knew that you wrote
in here

7

[LB]

Blog host says:
"Jesus sounds like a progressive/Democrat/liberal -- just like me! Not an original observation, of course. Quite a few have pointed out that the Jesus loved by conservatives isn't the Jesus of the Bible. It's a made-up Jesus who hates gays, abortions, and other right-wing obsessions."

I say: First, I agree Jesus, whoever he may have been, is better without religion, but I don't think you need to hate gays, illegal border crossers, people of color, believe in Christian dogma, and have right wing obsessions to be conservative (that's a caricature of conservatives) . "Conservative" means to go with foundational norms that have been established and proven to work or to be true rather than an abrupt change to new or radical policies that have not stood the test of time.

"Conservative" doesn't include hating gays, believing in supernatural religion, wanting the environment destroyed, and the poor to die miserable and unassisted, and, of course, pushing granny off the cliff because conservatives, after all, are essentially evil, mean and want to prosper at the expense of others, right?

Conservatism has more to do with law and order, limited governance, self and national defense, personal freedom and free market economics. It has more to do with individual rights than blanket statist control. Many of the founding fathers were Deists rather than Christians. In this country conservatism and the Constitution have nothing to do with religious dogma and more to do with freedom rather than oppressive rules, bureaucracy and centrist, dictatorial control . Those values are what formed this country.. Leave me alone and I'll leave you alone.

California, the opposite, is an example of progressivism/leftism gone awry. There, they are broke and it is where everything is either mandatory or prohibited. The bureaucracy is so thick you can't even put out a fire. It is where a city has ordinances prohibiting watering lawns due to drought while the state makes it mandatory to water lawns to prevent spread of fires. What kind of criminal do you want to be? In California it's easy to be one and not even know it.

Merry Christmas and Freedom!

[Norm Baxter]

The actual teachings of the great spiritual leaders have nothing to do with most of organized religion. Organized religion is man’s way of distorting the teachings of the great spiritual leaders such as Jesus, Muhammad, and the Buddha to increase their power, wealth, and sensual pleasure. No wonder that organized religion is being abandoned by young and old alike. If this means that humanity will turn to and actually begin to follow those teachings it would be a wonderful turn of events.

[Osho Robbins]

@Norm baxter

If you think religion belongs to the past and we live in a new age of reason, you need to check out the facts: 84% of the world’s population identifies with a religious group. Members of this demographic are generally younger and produce more children than those who have no religious affiliation, so the world is getting more religious, not less – although there are significant geographical variations.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/aug/27/religion-why-is-faith-growing-and-what-happens-next

[Vinny]

Most of the Christians are cunning people, their contribution to humanity is zero. Contrastingly, the modern world is work of Christian Innovators. They are not cunning, instead their work overshadows the work and life of many Christian Saints including Jesus. They are Sufis with elevated purity of heart.

[Jesse]

"The actual teachings of the great spiritual leaders have nothing to do with most of organized religion."

Norm, what you've written there is the must be adhered to party line of all new age organized religions. Everyone from the RS groups, to random believers in "ascended masters" and everyone else has been saying this for years now. It's a marketing ploy.

Religion might be absolutely idiotic, irrational and superstitious. It may be untrue and self contradicting in every way conceivable, but it doesn't go away even when atheists kill millions upon millions of religious believers, which is the prominent theme of the 20th century. Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, whoever the f*** in Vietnam who thought killing all the Buddhists was a good idea... there's a long list of atheists murdering everyone they can and yet failing to achieve their mission of eliminating religion. Christianity is growing fast in China, and I'd guess that the great atheist state of China will soon be adopting Christianity as a state religion.

If seeing ones loved ones brains pushed out of their head by bullets doesn't convert them to secular humanism, what will? At some point we're gonna have to accept that for reasons beyond explanation, spiritual beliefs are a core aspect of the human experience. Most people couldn't be rational if they tried, anyway, so why force them to try? Let them practice voodoo.

I reckon places like Salem or Portland Oregon are great, but I also suspect those sorts of societies have short lives. The people there likely don't breed much and the population is dependent on migrants who will increasingly be less liberal as the supply is limited. And being that another eternal aspect of human nature is that of war, there's no way i can believe that a bunch of artsy bohemians could survive a financial recession,or an overwhelming mass of aggressive low quality migrant workers let alone an outright military (conventional or otherwise) invasion which is sure to happen sooner or later. Maybe the resurgent aztec movement will gain enough strength to start human sacrifices again, and it's doubtful they'll respect the safe spaces on Oregon university campuses when seeking people to sacrifice.

So, enjoy the age of Aquarius while it lasts I guess, cause it's just a short blip in time before ugly realities of humankind become unavoidable.