Saturday 6 November 2004

Pic of the day: No rez, no deal. Screenshot from City of Heroes, because of the lamentable lack of resurrections in the current version of Real Life. Still waiting for the major upgrade.

New Age Jesuses

I am not sure how to relate to all these Jesuses who manifest to a varying degree these days. How much is really Jesus, how much is ourselves, and is there maybe some overlap?

From time to time, someone claim that Jesus has manifested to them, either as a voice or also in visible form. If Lenin or the Bogeyman had manifested before them, medical help would have been the obvious choice. But these Jesuses generally come across as far more sympathetic. They are polite, even courteous, understanding and forgiving, optimistic, life-affirming and with a great sense of humor. Some or all of this tends to rub off on the people who meet them, so they too come across as better people than before. This does not really look like a medical condition. But is it the real Jesus?

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Of course, not all people agree that there even is a "real Jesus". Some think that the New Testament is simply a kind of novel, a good story made to earn money or gain power over simple minds. Others think that it was a collection of legends that were blown out of all proportion, about some guy who had lived a while ago and led one of the many small cults in the area. If I thought like that, obviously I would not worry much about the "real Jesus". In this view, the gospels are already pious fantasies, and more pious fantasies and delusions are just more of the same.

A related school of thought is Gnosticism, which believes that the Christ was a purely spiritual entity who was never truly human. He just descended to near Earth, possessed a willing human (Jesus) and said some deep things. Then when things went bad and Jesus was arrested, Christ left and ascended again, leaving the former host to his fate. By this view, it is certainly no wonder that the manifestations of Christ these days are purely spiritual. Bodies are a drag. The world is a failure, a flawed world made by a flawed Creator.

But this does not seem to resonate with the messages of these modern Jesus manifestations. They seem, as I said, life-affirming. The world is inherently good, they say, it is just a matter of noticing. Even sex isn't really dirty unless you make it so by diverting it from love. And they certainly don't tell their friends to sell everything and give it to the poor. No, the world is a nice place where we can all be happy together. All we need is love.

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But if we look in the Gospels, Jesus did not say that he was going to hang around after his death as a purely spiritual entity and appear to people in various degrees of auditory and visual hallucinations to keep the world informed of his further messages. Rather, he said that he was now going back to the Father, but would send them another spokesman, the Holy Ghost (or, in modern English, Holy Spirit). Jesus did not die and become a Holy Ghost. He died, was resurrected by the Father, and 40 days later ascended to Heaven, wherever that is. Then, 10 days later again, the Spirit came over the disciples (120 of them by then, including some relatives of Jesus) and they became his witnesses. The rest is history.

And yet, one of the most influential writers of the New Testament, St Paul, claim exactly this: He heard the voice of the Lord, first once while he was still persecuting the Way, and again later when he was told to bring the message to the world. This is not all that different from the modern manifestations. And St Paul's writings are some of the oldest that we know for sure to be authentic. There is hardly any doubt that this man, around the year 50, was utterly convinced that he had met the risen Lord. Not just "another spokesman" but Jesus whom he persecuted. Christianity as we know it would hardly have been where and what it is today without St Paul. So in a way, we owe modern Christianity to this exact same phenomenon. That is certainly a thought-provoking perspective.

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But these modern visitations don't exactly resonate with St Paul in all ways. While they both have good things to say about love, St Paul (like the original disciples appointed by Jesus in the flesh) has an aura of desperation about him. Satan is loose and meddling in the world. All you need is not love: You also need to fight against the temptations that constantly try to defile you and make you unworthy of the life you were called to. These temptations are not just inclinations, they are in league with an army of powerful spiritual entities who fight against God and have most of the world held captive. Only a few are able to accept the Word of God even when they hear it, and escape from under the thumb of the Devil. Christians not only have to take care to not fall in sin or be corrupted by insidious and highly intelligent evil spirits. They also must expect to be hated and feared by the humanity they try to save.

By and large, this desperation seems utterly absent in the New Age Jesuses. By now, Jesus seems to think that the old problems have mostly been eliminated. Satan is a non-issue. Yes, it is possible for Christians to make mistakes, but the answer is simply to return to the purity of love. Don't pay attention to negative energies, and they won't be much of a problem. Instead, Jesus is now concerned about the rain forests and such, which he earlier assumed would be wiped out along with the rest of the world at the end of history, when the face of the world was to change completely – possibly even to the point where his disciples might have to move to a new and improved planet. You don't hear much about that now.

The New Age Jesus still doesn't think highly about worry and greed, at least. Materialism is bad, although being happy in the world is good. If you stay focused in goodness, good things will happen to you in the world, but if you chase after riches you will just get in trouble and never be happy. There are no warnings this time around that people are going to beat you up, chase you out of town and eventually kill you.

Besides, most worryingly in my eyes, the New Age Jesus has given up on his original idea of resurrecting people. Instead, he has decided that people should be allowed to reincarnate so they can try again, retaining if not conscious memories then at least all their experience points so that they may start on a higher level than last time. This is, to put it bluntly, an entirely different game. Instead of letting saved characters from Real Life Beta be imported into the finished version of Real Life, it seems the beta has been extended indefinitely and is just being gradually patched with new features.

This is the timber in my eye that broke the camels back and doesn't get through the eye of the needle. No rez, no deal. If Jesus has changed policies, he better tell me personally and not just through people selling books. Of course, my chances of resurrection may be slim in any case. But even if I am faithless, I would like to see Him being faithful. That was, after all, how it used to be.