A Word About This Blog and Its Purpose

First things first: my identity is not crucial. If you've reached this blog, it's because I told you it existed, and I thank you both for your interest in my writing and your silence about my identity. (Much of what I say in this space will be controversial and may meet with much vitriol from religious communities who believe that the subject matter is blasphemous, which is not my intent, and my working relationship with these communities could suffer as a result of knowing I wrote it. Again: thank you for not outing me.) Given the URL, a self-appointed descriptor on numerous occasions, I want you to know the perspective from which I speculate about the historical basis for the New Testament.

(And while we're on that subject... it's okay that you know that perspective, and what may influence it. You should ask that from anyone who writes about this topic. You should know all about my predispositions. You have the right to know everything about me that can affect my thinking. We each come at this from our own point of view. I have different emotional influences and biases than a Christian, a Jew, or someone of another faith writing about these things. Nobody is neutral about any of this.) 

I don't remember hearing about God, Jesus, or the like before a certain age. I was about 4 when I first started becoming aware of religion. Something related to Christendom spawned a cover story in Time magazine, and they had this beautiful traditional artwork of Jesus on the front that caught my eye. I became obsessed with religion in general and the Christ story in particular. (Even now, a lot of my extracurricular reading is devoted to religious fiction and non-fictional religious studies, and the shelves of my film collection are strewn with biblical epics, both Old Testament and New. I'm not invested in the Abrahamic faiths, but I won't deny that I'm very knowledgeable about them.)

I glibly dismissed all that during my teens with something on these lines: "In hindsight, I realize I didn't have a father figure in my life growing up in a single-parent household, so I was looking for one, and who's a bigger daddy than (the traditional Christian concept of) God?" I no longer feel it was so cut and dried, but regardless, that fascination with the story stayed with me, even into present-day atheism.

Ah, yes. Atheism. In the words of George Carlin:

…when it comes to believing in God, I […] really, really tried. I tried to believe that there is a God who created each of us in His own image and likeness, loves us very much, and keeps a close eye on things […] but I gotta tell you, the longer you live, the more you look around, the more you realize, something is fucked up. Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed. Results like these do not belong on the résumé of a Supreme Being. This is the kind of shit you'd expect from an office temp with a bad attitude. And just between you and me, in any decently-run universe, this guy would've been out on his all-powerful ass a long time ago. [And, by the way, I say "this guy" because I firmly believe, looking at these results, that if there is a God, it has to be a man. No woman could, or would, ever fuck things up like this.] So, if there is a God, I think most reasonable people might agree that he's at least incompetent, and maybe, just maybe, doesn't give a shit […] which I admire in a person, and which would explain a lot of these bad results.

I differ from the average Christian in that I don't think the importance of the stories or the teachings diminishes if Jesus didn't exist or if the Bible is not a literal recording of historical events. Yeah, yeah, I know, "But St. Paul said that if Jesus didn't rise from the dead, then Christianity is worth nothing!" Wake up. The words of Christ and the basic tenets of Christianity represent more than a set of pious platitudes. Rather, they map a social and political program to bring about the kingdom of God "on earth, as it is in heaven." Whether or not Jesus actually rose from the dead, his teachings changed the world. We didn't throw out the morals of the Grimm fairy tales just because they never actually happened, did we?

Indeed, I remain utterly fascinated by the mythology surrounding the person worshiped as Jesus Christ. For being, arguably, a composite character created from the stories of other dying-and-rising gods, demigods, solar deities, saviors, and other divine or historical figures, I'm amazed that this particular example of the mythic hero archetype -- which may or may not have been based on a real Jewish rebel with a mystical side -- survived and went down so well with so many people. It bemuses me that there are so many prisms to view the character through; he has a universality that allows many people to see themselves in him.

So, why am I sharing my speculation about the historical basis for the events recorded in the New Testament? Honestly, I couldn't tell you. Am I reminding myself that it's okay to have nostalgia for belief now and then by re-exploring a faith I've long ago left behind? No one can say, least of all me. But I'm here, and I'm writing, and you're reading, and if nothing else, I hope it's food for thought.