Jesus...

My family think Jesus is the business.  


They all heard the story of his life and thought, yes, that story was so profound and moving that it must be true - Jesus must be THE SON OF GOD!


I think the story is great too - but I can't extrapolate an actual physical reality from the story, a divine truth created by wanting to believe.  My mum quite openly says she likes believing because it's comforting - but what a strange reason to believe something.  


I would like to believe in reincarnation - I'd like to believe that I was a woman in all my other lives and I will be in all the lives to come.  This life I'm in is a funny episode in which I learn some whacky lesson then get back to a more normal life.  This is a 'What if' life.


Yes, actually I'm going to believe that because I like it.


Because I used to be a Christian too I know and understand all the answers to the obvious questions like what was there before God, why doesn't God just appear and make us all believe in him... yada ya...


Answer question 1 :   God is eternal - a concept we don't understand
Answer question 2 :   Because of freewill


There you go - there's your Alpha course.


As for Jesus - there was a historical figure called Jesus who was crucified under the aegis of the procurator Pontius Pilate.  I'll accept that.  But the son of god?  Nah.


Christians are very keen on saying that we all have to give up our human reasoning and 'feel' with our hearts.  Which is pretty convenient.


There is an enormous construct of sophistic logic which backs all this up - but is it just me?  It is all nonsense isn't it?   How can anyone really believe this ludicrous fairy tale?


I'm not necessarily anti-religion or Christianity.  There is no western culture without Christianity - you can't get away from that.  And religious works of art move me - although I think they're about us rather than God.


Anyway, I don't think God and Jesus and all those guys really like my sort - the different ones.  It seems very important to them that we're all pretty standardised.  So if God created us he ballsed it up a bit really because we all seem to be pretty different.


To be fair, most of my family don't think like that - but the loony Christians who run America certainly do and it's a pretty scary thing.


There's a wonderful joke in The Simpsons where the family watch a Christian film about 'the rapture'.  In this film a man floats by in a river of fire and laments :  'oh why did I CHOOSE to be gay?!'


That captures perfectly the fundamental flaw in the Christian view that we should all be the same - if we're different we're not just doing it to be annoying and disobedient - we can't help it.  And we can't really help not believing either.


Anyway we all know from Jerry Springer - The Opera that Jesus was 'a bit gay' himself.


Whatever - Jesus, as far as we can tell, was a rebel and an outsider and a forgiving, beautiful soul who utilised the power of love, gentleness and questioning.  He was probably a magnificent person.  But that's all he was, guys, sorry.