The Nature of Jesus

Exploring the nature of Jesus..

The last couple of years, I have been on a journey, learning about my faith and myself. I’ve realized two primary things:

1. Faith is a never ending journey of seeking, learning, asking, and knocking.
2. It’s okay to have doubts. Questioning is part of it and helps you grow and develop.

I’ve accepted these things and it has made my journey so much easier. I’m also thankful for all of the love, support, patience, and kindness from those who have helped me on this walk and who will continue to walk with me.

One thing that I have learned and explored deeply is the actual divinity and nature of Jesus Christ. I struggled with this for a long time, along with anger at the unfairness of my life- or the unfairness as I saw it, anyway.

But that is another story.

My Walk.

What my walk ended up showing me, though, was what I believe. I do believe Jesus was divine, and was the Son of God. I believe that we all have that divine spark inside of ourselves and that we are all the children of God. I came to find that dogma and tradition, while they can be lovely, should not be the ruling factors in our spiritual journey, but something to refer to and to help with understanding history and context. I don’t believe the Bible is the infallible word of God; that would be Jesus’s role.

What We Know.

We know the story of the Virgin birth, the teaching of the teachers at the synagogue, the beginning of the ministry, the death, and the Resurrection. People argue over whether or not this is stuff from other religions, or even real. It’s not focused on what the purpose of this could be.

Why would God need to become flesh to interact with us? Were we so bad and evil that it was necessary for us to be saved? Why did Jesus have to go through what He did? What is the purpose of this faith system?

The Purpose.

Fundamentalist Christians often preach that we are born sinful and that we must be saved, pointing back to Adam and Eve. This is not biblical, primarily because of,

“The person who sins will die. The son will not bear the punishment for the father’s iniquity, nor will the father bear the punishment for the son’s iniquity; the righteousness of the righteous will be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked will be upon himself.”

Ezekiel 18:20

 

“Fathers shall not be put to death for their sons, nor shall sons be put to death for their fathers; everyone shall be put to death for his own sin.”

Deuteronomy 24:16

The purpose of Jesus’s death and resurrection, whether it is allegorical, real or both, was because of the light needing to come back to the world, to the universe. We are interconnected with ourselves, the Earth, and the universe. Whatever we do affects everything else, just as the moon moving closer in its rotations affects the seas here, or solar flares from the sun affect our technology. While the sin in the garden is not visited upon us, it did open the door for more to come in.

Jesus as God.

Jesus presents to us the face of God, the nature of God. God, as a Spirit, as Creator, is solely energy- sexless, faceless, bodiless. but not voiceless and not without presence. God, as Creator, as Spirit, works on the atomic level that is invisible to the naked human eye. In the Old Testament, in a time when dominion was being fought for and religion was used for it, we are presented with a tribal, warrior God that wanted to convert everyone or kill them. Even breaking one law led to death, and there was no grace, no forgiveness. There was only death, fear, and war.

And then, in the New Testament, a new idea is presented, and a new movement begins. Jesus offers grace, compassion, kindness, and God in flesh. And Jesus even had to learn as we do; He could heal and had control over nature, but He acted through His relationship with God, but He still had to learn to walk, to talk, to get beyond prejudices, become enlightened, and grow. God experienced everything we do.

The Nature of Jesus

Jesus, whether metaphorical or real, has a unique nature.

The nature of God become flesh- love, compassion, mercy, kindness, and forgiveness. Jesus came to enlighten, to save- but not save in the fundamentalist sense, but to save what the darkness began to destroy by bringing light into the world.