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Jesus not Redeemer but Redeemer

I don't count as a Christian in any mainstream sense because I don't buy Redemption or any status for Jesus higher than that of other "prophets", ie people who lived very close to God and shared what they learned for others' benefit. But I really buy the Crucifixion and Resurrection as momentous-- and as a package, each pretty pointless without the other.
Thus I need an account of what it was all about that make it crucial or very nearly crucial (nice pun there) but will not rely on Jesus as Only Son of God.

 I think God is shared-awareness-that-prizes-all-creatures-but-is-not-all-powerful. I think access to that shared awareness may be the birthright of animals but humans lost it by relying too much on speech. It can be cultivated and is cultivated by the prophets, perhaps especially Jesus. He felt God felt he could do something very momentous and "instructive" by getting crucified, and so he did it. 

 The Romans tried, up to a point, to give the Judaean Jews special status in the Empire, in letting them practise their religion with limited interference. If a prophet were killed for his witness, that could implicate both Jews and Romans and make both think hard about what he stood for. Plenty of subjects of the Roman Empire were already interested in Judaism. God "knew" that people who publicly give their lives for something give that something a Halo. 

 The Halo that I think Jesus gave was to inclusiveness. The more out-group you are, at least according to Luke, the more God cares about you. (This could make sense in terms of benefit for all of us, because outgroups don't get a chance to pull their weight for the benefit of us all.) And although Paul, the great Christian publicist, got it wrong about women, he got it right about slaves. 

 So my guess is that Jesus tapped into God's awareness that the Kingdom (or Republic) of Heaven is for all; and his willingness to be tortured and executed by Jews and Romans jointly, and then to demonstrate that the end is not The End, gave that inclusiveness a Halo throughout the Empire and beyond.

 (I hasten to add that I really do not know enough to know where the holes are in my argument. Others please pitch in.)
This is meant to be the conversation on the road to Emmaus. I haven't mastered the art of showing pictures without gratuitous surrounds.

Comments

  1. Margot Lunnon19 August 2017 at 11:40

    Nb Tim Peat Ashworth thinks that ALL the misogynistic stuff attributed to Paul got inserted after his death. He cites Paul's lists of colleagues and benefactors in which women are every bit as likely to appear as males. After Paul's death the church will have been trying to keep its collective head below the parapet and may not have been up for such aberrant behaviour as giving women equal status.

    ReplyDelete
  2. cameron29 January 2018 at 02:29

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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  3. cameron29 January 2018 at 02:30

    why assume there is a God?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Margot Lunnon29 January 2018 at 02:49

      Thank you for adding your name! Because it fits with my experience. The most showy bit of evidence I have is of sitting in Quaker meeting in a place where I did not know the people. We are told not to add spoken ministry towards the end of the hour, and this Meeting had already felt to be very unified and spiritual. But I was being nagged from inside "Get up and say what the Alternatives to Violence Project thinks are the 3 causes of violence." Eventually I gave in and did as I was told. After a moment the man sitting in front of me stood and said "That ministry was for me. My nephew attempted suicide and I have been sitting here stewing about it. That ministry was for me". Thus there is one bit of evidence of a form of telepathy which can and does also think "Person P needs to know this, and Person Q sitting behind knows it, so I will make person Q say it for P's benefit". Only one piece of evidence, though.

      Delete

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