Would I be bothered if Jesus didn’t really exist?

I was recently asked the following question in response to one of my recent posts:

THE QUESTION:

“Does it bother you that there is very little evidence that Jesus existed at all? It is quite possible historically he did not, as there are no Roman execution records or contemporary writings confirming his existence. I exclude the Gospels as they appear later sometime after 75 AD… I find the New Testament to be a poor moral compass and that rational thought and reason serve as better tools to solve moral dilemmas.”

MY RESPONSE:

First, I don’t base my moral judgments on what the Bible says. I, too, find many (but not all) of the moral recommendations found therein to be outdated and less than helpful. I see the Bible primarily as a resource, not a revelation. I have often said, the Bible tells me more about the humans who wrote it than the “God” it describes.

Secondly, I have considered the possibility that a historical Jesus may have never existed and, I’d like to think that, at this point in my life, my admiration of the character of Jesus would not be too disturbed should that be the case. I would still admire the wisdom to be found in the Jesus stories- even if most (if not all) of them are largely legendary or fictional. In fact, part of me thinks that the actual, factual truth of what Jesus may have said or done is a mystery forever lost in antiquity. It seems that all we can do, at this point, is to investigate the available evidence from reliable sources and speculate endlessly about the rest.

However, I am of the opinion that the Jesus stories are based on some historical figure, even if they are symbolic legends or polemical documents designed to communicate a certain community’s beliefs, values and concerns. I feel the same way about allegedly historical figures like Socrates, Moses, Lao Tzu, Confucius and Siddhartha Gautama. I suspect that historical versions of these individuals existed only to be “deified” over the centuries as stories were told (and retold) by their followers and admirers.

Can we really know for certain as to what any of these individuals have either said or done, considering that it is very likely that none of them ever wrote down or recorded any of their teachings? And, if they did write anything down, can we really be sure that those documents weren’t misplaced or amended by later generations?

I don’t place a lot of faith in the accuracy of human memory, and I have absolutely no confidence in the idea that there are such things as objective, disinterested historians or storytellers. In my view, when it comes to human beings: nobody is neutral.

I have jokingly predicted amongst my friends that, in the centuries to come, historical figures like Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King Jr. and Mohandas Gandhi will become deified in very much the same way.

Ultimately, I think our responses to history and legend will depend heavily on our own personal experiences, available information, cultural contexts and individual trust levels. Even when equipped with the same facts, we all seem to come to different conclusions as to how to interpret the information.

All we can do is make the best use our analytical tools, rational faculties, proven methods and our better judgment in order to discern reliable and meaningful information from errors and falsehoods.

When Explanation Meets Mystery

This is a post by Gordon Atkinson, author of one of my favorite blogs, Real Live Preacher. I resonate deeply with his hopeful attempts to draw meaning from the ongoing and creative tension between scientific explanation, on one hand, and what he calls "dark mystery," on the other. Along a similar line of thought, I've recently been reading the late psychologist Carl Jung's book Man and His Symbols which explores this tension throughout the collective human experience- affirming the human impulses to worship and explore while also critiquing materialistic movements that seek dismiss or devalue humanity's perpetual obsession with the unknown.

In January 2008, Atkinson wrote an essay for The Christian Century magazine exploring this theme. The essay was entitled "Brother Scientist."

"Life has always been most interesting for me at the rolling boundary between scientific explanation and dark mystery. Science is always moving forward, rolling up more data and triumphantly explaining old mysteries. At times it seems as though the ancient world of myth and dream has turned tail and fled. Not so. For every acre of forest that science paves over, myth and legend giggle and reveal ten more acres of untamed wilderness behind them. As our ability to understand the universe grows, so does our capacity for looking outward and upward and seeing all that we do not know. There is more mystery to explore now than ever before in the history of humanity.

Some people see the boundary between mystery and science as a battleground with barbed wire and trenches on either side. But I think that the place where our searching and empirical minds meet the mysteries of the world is the realm of worship and poetry. Before Adam and Eve, the world was chaos, like a vast unconscious mind with no boundaries and no definitions. The world itself hasn't changed, but our human perspective is continually solving mysteries and creating new ones as fast as we can.

Our love of answers has always been nicely balanced against our penchant for awe and worship. Reality is both a thing to be conquered and also something to be worshiped. This is the human way. I wonder when it was that science and religion stopped seeing each other as ancient twins of the human mind and started seeing each other as competitors.

While I and others like me slog it out in the worshiping world of mystery, brother scientist is observing, collating and solving mysteries as fast as he can. I don't want him to stop. I like the way he slays ancient gods. What I want is for us to embrace each other and walk though life together. He can solve old mysteries and I can celebrate the new ones."