I sat with a woman who had this picture in her personal journal. She saw the same photo on my book shelf, so we discussed its resonance and why it is important to us.
She was distressed. In her work with children, she sees many family atrocities and cries about the pain and frustration that is part of all humanity. She wants to make a difference. She wants to change things. I went to bed thinking that she shares all our concerns.
I woke with the idea that perhaps, this is the face of change.
History shows us that people resist change. Anything out of normal existence in the physical world was feared or denied, causing great strife for those trying to teach higher truths. People have always wanted change, centuries of prophecies and visions passed as people yearned for something different, something to save them.
Enter The Christ. Whether you believe he is the son of God or not, he was a teacher who came as a role model for a different kind of behavior. Contrary to the warring first half of the Bible, Jesus came to show another way. Did God just decide, “ gee, I’ve been throwing around a lot of fear, dominion, rules and annihilation in the first half of my book, maybe I better send a peace maker to give hope to all mankind for the second half, ...warm things up a bit."
People were not so receptive to that. Hundreds of male children were killed out of the threat of such change, not to mention the slaughter over memorializing Jesus in the form of Christianity. Is this what Jesus had in mind?
Sounds like man, once again, has stuck his greedy little hand in the pot, stirred it and said ,”My what good boy am I”, as he still tries to control the masses with fear and archaic belief systems.
The marketing of Jesus seems like a constant bad crop rotation of reaping what is sown.
In my humble opinion he came to reflect mans greatest divinity, that we too are connected to the fathergodthesource, and though Christ and his teaching we might recognize this, but once we understand this, you think he wants us to create more separation by preaching that we are right and others are wrong, then cut them out of our lives, deny them love, and threaten them with the cruelest of punishments?
I doubt seriously that Jesus wanted to be split into factions of card- caring- club- members that exclude others and threaten the burning fires of hell for not knowing him.
Didn't he hang with the derelicts, the ill, the oppressed and the troubled? Was he not loving and kind toward those less fortunate? Who was it that started interpreting him to exclude those who did not agree or believe in him?
These restrictive belief systems make Jesus look like a snob. I say fire his PR person.
If he came back today, which “religion” would he join?
You think he’d shun the Jews, his own people, because they never got him?
Would he prefer the cute little Methodist church around the corner, the opulent Mormon temple, the gold studded cathedrals of the Catholic church, or would he be with one of the churches who abhor the gays and use his name as an excuse to dominate, kill and revel in club Jesus?
How do we heal or bridge such skewed beliefs and break this cycle of miss-interpretation and seperation? What is going to make a difference that promotes love and not fear?
What will be the face of change?