I am only still a Christian because of the influences of historical-critical-literary biblical study, research into the historical Jesus, modern depth psychology (particularly the work of Carl Jung and other “Jungians,” primarily because of their lack of fear of “religion” and “God”), mythologists like Joseph Campbell, and, perhaps most importantly, personal experience that has helped me make sense of the Christian myth. I am only still a Christian because of the influences of historical-critical-literary biblical study, research into the historical Jesus, modern depth psychology (particularly the work of Carl Jung and other “Jungians,” primarily because of their lack of fear of “religion” and “God”), mythologists like Joseph Campbell, and, perhaps most importantly, personal experience that has helped me make sense of the Christian myth.
I don’t think the word, “myth,” will put off anyone reading this column, although I’m sure there are many in the Christian fold who would balk at that term, thinking it diminutive of the faith. I, however, hold “myth” as the deeper, more profound level of truth and understanding, an interpretive frame that includes the sacred as well as the [fact-based, or is it the “alternative-fact”-based?] secular.
If being Christian meant holding to certain beliefs that are belied by scientific understanding, like a Virgin Birth, a literal heaven or hell, or that the Resurrection of the Christ has to do with a physically-resuscitated corpse; or if it means believing in certain myths like “Jesus died for our sins” (yes, that is a mythologically-held belief), well, then, I’m out of here, and I can join the ranks of the Nones (or in my case, it would be the “Manys”).
As we enter the Holy Season for Christianity, there is such an awesome power in the myth forged in the life-passion-death-resurrection of Jesus that to reduce it to some literal historical series of events is the true diminution of the Christian story, even while knowing the historical evidence that the man Jesus was indeed crucified by the Roman Empire in first century Palestine.
The word that comes up for me this year in reflecting on this archetypal myth of the human Jesus is “completion.” To pass through the necessary passion of becoming vulnerable to divine love, dying to the self (while being crucified by the “worldly” authorities that would have us remain bound in a subservient conformity to an ego-structured consensual reality), willingly moving into this unknown darkness in complete innocence of expectation of release from this wilderness (Holy Saturday), only to be surprisingly “born again” as a new being (like the metaphor of the ignorance of the caterpillar in the cocoon as to what amazing transformation awaits), this is a path of transformation into a complete human being (and that’s “complete” without the sense of “finished”).
The very human Jesus uncovering his true divine nature by becoming as fully human as possible is the only way I can make sense of the Christian myth. The underrated, but prescient theologian, Walter Wink, also greatly influenced by Jungian psychology, describes it this way: “The Christological revelation, centered in Jesus, was that God desired to incarnate in humanity.”
I had recently renewed my engagement with Walter Wink’s works on “The Powers,” and so, picked up The Human Being because of its subtitle: Jesus and the Enigma of the Son of the Man.I’ve always been fascinated by Jesus’ self-description as “the son of the man.” (And, yes, you read that correctly: the son of the man; the Greek contains this second definite article that makes the phrase sound even more mysterious than it is.)
Walter Wink, may his memory be a blessing, says this: What a lean and pared-back Christianity has to give to the world is not its creeds, dogmas, doctrines, liturgies and devotions… It offers, simply – Jesus. If the [archetype of becoming fully human] is to carry out its transformative task, we will need to develop new theologies, liturgies, prayer forms and devotional practices that can help people tap that numinosity.
But I want to worship the God Jesus worshiped, not worship Jesus as God. All Christianity has to give, and all it needs to give, is the myth of the human Jesus. It is the story of Jesus the Jew, a human being, the incarnate son of the man: imperfect but still exemplary,
– a victim of the Powers-that-Be yet still victorious
– crushed only to rise again, in solidarity with all who are ground to dust under the jackboots of the mighty
– healer of those under the power of death
– lover of all who are rejected and marginalized
– forgiver, liberator, exposer of the regnant cancer called civilization [my word is empire]
That Jesus, the one the Powers killed and whom death could not vanquish.
To follow this Way is what it means to be Christian. An impossible task, except for the power of the Divine within us, within our fellow travelers and within and throughout the entire Creation.
Shalom,
David
