Who Is This Christ Jesus?

Why do the really big questions only arise in the middle of the night? I woke up at 4:00 this morning and began to ponder exactly who was Jesus Christ and where did his message go wrong? Is the message wrong or did the messengers screw it ip?

My conclusion? Well, I don’t think his message was flawed. I think those that knew him didn’t have sufficient consciousness to interpret his message correctly and the true meaning of what he was saying was lost and convoluted into something completely different. This distortion has created more suffering than any of us can really fathom.

Let’s start with his name- his name wasn’t Jesus Christ. Christ is tacked on at the end like it is his last name. His name was Jesus and if you want to get it correctly, his name was probably Yeshua or something similar. Since folks didn’t have family names back then his name might have been, Yeshua Ben Yosef (Yeshua son of Yosef), however people could have known him just as Jesus of Nazareth.

He is Jesus The Christ. The term Christ means savior, or messiah. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about the term Christ:

“Christ is the English term for the Greek Χριστός (Khristós) meaning "the anointed one".[1] It is a translation of the Hebrew מָשִׁיחַ (Māšîaḥ), usually transliterated into English as Messiah.

The word is often misunderstood to be the surname of Jesus due to the numerous mentions of Jesus Christ in the Christian Bible. The word is in fact used as a title, hence its common reciprocal use Christ Jesus, meaning The Anointed One, Jesus. Followers of Jesus became known as Christians because they believed that Jesus was the Christ, or Messiah, prophesied about in the Tanakh (which Christians term the Old Testament). The majority of Jews reject this claim and are still waiting for Christ to come (see Jewish Messiah). Most Christians now wait for the Second Coming of Christ when they believe he will fulfill the rest of the Messianic prophecy.”

I have been reading the Acts of the Apostles, and in my mind, Paul has done all of humanity a grave disservice with his teachings. In Galatians, he berates the people of Galatia for falling back and living once more within The Laws of Judaism, calling them idiots at one point. They had begun to practice circumcision again and they were not eating with the Gentiles. Paul wanted them to give up their laws and embrace the spirit of Christ. According to Paul the way you do that is to throw out all of the previous laws and live only from the spirit from within.

Except he then laid down all of these new laws that would lead a person to get to that spirit within and the Catholic church was born. These new laws became over time more dogmatic and complicated than the original Jewish laws handed down from Abraham and Moses. Then the most damaging of all was the insertion of a mediator between a human being and God. No longer were we able to commune directly with our creator, but we needed to have someone speak for us. No longer were we directly connected to the God within, but God was removed completely from us and placed in this hard to attain and far away place called Heaven. God was up there looking down on us and judging us favorably or unfavorably.

Jesus spoke of the Kingdom of Heaven within us. Jesus told of God’s love for us. He told us not to worry about where our next meal was coming from, or what clothes we wear. God wants us to love each other; not to strive against our neighbors, but to live in peace. Paul pitted the Gentiles against the Jews. He berated people because they clung to their customs.
Jesus didn’t die to save us, or to become our personal savior. He didn’t die for our sins, he died because of our sin. If we had listened to his message he wouldn’t have been crucified; he would have died an old man. But, each side was pitted against the other. Each side believed that their side was the righteous side. Jesus taught tolerance, love, peace, surrender, and to honor God.
Paul had a mystical experience and then inserted his ego directly into it. Instead of gently leading the people toward the message of Jesus the Christ, he ranted and raved against them. He single-handedly set up adversarial polar opposites.

Jesus was a fully enlightened being. He really did sit at the proverbial right hand of God because he understood it all. God flows through all of us, every minute of every day. We miss this presence because we are so caught up in our striving and our personas that we miss this spark within us. Each of us can be as Jesus was. We need to let go of this insistence of dogma, ritual and spiritual practice. Live our lives. Be in the moment, feel the delight of God moving through.

The Kingdom of God is at hand. It is in your hand right now, but don’t reach for it. There is nothing to reach for. It is all present, right here and right now. Sink into God, be still and know. That’s all Jesus was teaching, it is all just within your grasp.