I have always, some may be surprised to hear, had great
love and
reverence for
Jesus -- and though I have never felt the need to accept the '
virgin birth' or '
resurrection' elements of that
narrative, I feel those are almost incidental anyway. For, let us suppose Jesus had indeed been unquestionably the product of a virgin birth, and had indeed been resurrected following
crucifixion, but in between these events he had lived a life of
selfishness, worrying only after his material
wealth and having more
possessions then his neighbours, and only ever spitting
contempt and
bigotry against the
poor and the
sick and the
outcast. If that had been the case, then surely we wouldn't much feel for him no matter what the circumstances of his birth and death.
But then, suppose there was never any report that Jesus had been born through any but natural means, and that there was no belief that his death had been followed by anything but his remaining dead, and no
miracle was reported in between (such miracles being accounted for as being of no great import under the pandeistic model anyway), nor any supposed claim to any special
divinity -- but that Jesus had
still lived the life described of him in terms of his love for all man, his willingness to brave severe
punishment and outrageous
suffering for questioning harsh rules of law and for associating with those who broke them. Would we not, then, have sufficient reason to love the man and laud his example? Indeed, would such an example not be all the more remarkable and commendable coming from an ordinary, non-omniscient, non-super-powered man?
It is because Jesus lived an exemplary message that I love him, as I love the
Buddha and as I love
Gandhi, and as I love
Nightengale and
Einstein and
Socrates and
Salk. For Jesus did
not shy from contact with the
lepers, and he deigned to wash the feet of fellow travelers, he cared nothing for being tied by
wealth and
comfort and
vanity and material possessions, but made his way in the world seeking
knowledge and championing the most reviled and oppressed!! So it is, indeed, for these very reasons that I do not consider myself a '
Christian,' because I honestly find so much to be repugnant in the religion as it carries itself. I am repelled by the Church's
covetousness of ownership of land and ornate
buildings and like signals of material wealth, and by the unending
infighting between
sects over who has the right
interpretation of which
passage. I throw up my hands at the obsessive focus on those very ephemeral claims of virgin birth and miracles and resurrection, drummed to the point of drowning out the message of
love and
tolerance and the eschewing of personal desires in favour of uplifting our fellows, and the concomitant obsession with reviling a seemingly cherry-picked selection of 'sins' (while ignoring and even encouraging others). I never heard tell of Jesus
condemning a gay man or acting unfriendly towards an outcast, but he did put a beatdown on those
usurers, who harm the poor with their trade!! That is the example I prefer to follow, the actual example of Jesus, and strikingly similarly of the Buddha and of Gandhi as well.
But though I am no Christian, I do consider myself something of a
Jesusist (and I'd like to think many other
pandeists feel the same), because I do hew to those positive practices exemplified in his conduct of life. And I would like to think that if I turned out to be wrong about the miraculous claims, loving the practices would be sufficient, for surely
if there is a God who is as good and wise and merciful as the example set forth by Jesus himself -- exemplified when he saved from
punishment the
prostitute with his admonition that the mythical 'he who is without
sin' ought cast the first stone -- then indeed none will be punished who tried to do good, no matter what their beliefs!!