I feel it important for this chapter to again remind you – I’m telling you the story of the Bible, as a story. What you believe is irrelevant, here. This is just the story that I got out of reading it.
When we left off, the Jews had gotten back to the Land of Milk and Honey and rebuilt the Temple. They weren’t free, though – they were occupied by one invading ruler after another, ending with the Romans.
During this time, God started working on his end game.
While it had previously appeared that segregating out the one group would work, he now knew that his special gift to humans – the higher ability to understand and respect his bad-assed-ness – was producing random results. Some in the special groups were ill-behaved, while others outside the group behaved just as he wanted them to.
All along, as humans died, God had been keeping them (their souls) in storage, marked according to how loyal and good they were. Eventually, at the end of the experiment, he’d take them all out, trash the ones he didn’t like, and take the rest into the house.
So, God gave some warnings to his prophets during the exile and rough years of the Jewish people – he’d be sending someone to lead them and fix everything.
And with that, God stormed into his house and didn’t come out until he had constructed a super-human human. This human, he named personally – Jesus.
At this point, I have to jump ahead – throughout the rest of the story, humans (that unfortunately includes you and me) have no idea exactly what Jesus is. This controversy will come up again. I like to think of it as part of humans’ inability to understand how God operates.
Also, suffice it to say, God didn’t have a wife and have a kid, who he named Jesus. The whole “son” business is a term of art, meaning that he’s LIKE God in many ways.
So, I’ll gloss a bit, here, though just the Jesus alone desrves explanation of what is in there, as opposed to how some people retell it. God artificially inseminated a human, Mary, with his new creation. She gave birth to him, and he grew up able to look over the heads of all human existence and see God, standing on the front porch, looking out over all of them. He could even hear anything God happened to shout to him.
Jesus bided his time, and at about the age of 30, started going around teaching humans how to be type that God would choose to bring into the house eventually. These lessons had been told to Jesus directly by God. Most of his message was simple: human rules of how to worship God meant nothing compared to just behaving the way God wanted you to and giving him the respect he deserved.
Part of the message included the whole “be decent to other humans” thing. Another part included giving up on all the human-constructed parts of life, given that they lasted only a moment in the grand scheme, and getting God to pick you out as one to be brought into the house was far more important.
The Jewish Temple leaders had some bad seeds amongst them, who tried to stir up the Romans against Jesus. He was going around disobeying rules that were hard and fast in the human perception of reality – healing people instantaneously, changing matter from one form to another at whim, healing bodies through sheer willpower, and even reinstating souls to their formerly broken bodies.
Jesus’ behavior simply didn’t fit in the scheme of those who’d given up on God and sought the only power they could see – power among humans. So, this group of powerful, ill-spirited folks conspired to have Jesus arrested and executed.
Jesus went along with the whole charade. He was told to by God. When he finished his teachings, he allowed himself to be executed. Then he rose from the dead, all on his own, showed himself to those he’d chosen to continue the lessons, and walked right out of human existence, back to God’s house.
For the rest of the humans’ existence, they debated what the point of this was. To keep it simple, I try to avoid the greatest theological debate in history, if I can help it. I’ll focus on Jesus’ teachings, which seem to be the most important part of his legacy.
Let’s also suffice it to say that, by rising from the dead and stepping out from the crappy human existence back to God’s house, Jesus legitimized that he was fairly badass, himself (though not to the full extend that God was). God was going to use him in his final plan for humans. Jesus had proven himself a very effective proxy.
Form there, a group of exceptionally well-behaved, understanding humans, Jesus’ disciples, spread his lessons, as instructed. Emboldened by witnessing Jesus’ ability to ignore being killed (not exactly something any regular human could do), they spread the word of the basic ways to be good humans who God would choose to bring to his house at the end of the grand human experiment.
From here, I have one last short post, which I’m just going to write right now – this has been heavy stuff, and I’m anxious to get back to posting stupid crap like cartoons and music reviews on my blog. I dare say that those of you who still read this will agree.
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