A new Jesus, please!

Even after extricating myself from a blessedly short religious (Lutheran^TM) period in my early teens, I’ve often thought of Jesus as quite a likable guy – way misunderstood, but essentially very decent and well-meaning. A real Mensch.

[Quite frankly, and Dan Brown not withstanding, I think he was gay. The evidence is circumstantial, but compelling: a gentle, uncannily sensitive young man who surrounds himself with a dozen good-looking males (no mention of any girlfriends by any of them, ever), resists all heterosexual temptations of the flesh and cultivates a fag hag relationship with Mary Magdalene…]

Even if the historical Jesus never really existed I still understand the attraction of the idea of Jesus to his followers back then and now. Especially back then: he was an unconventional rebel who inspired a quiet but rolling revolt against the oppressive Roman Empire and the stilted religious order of the day, he talked of a god who was inside each individual human being and all around them in nature with whom anyone could communicate without mediation by a priest, and so on.

Granted, there was a lot of crap as well, like the concept that since Heaven is what really matters we can essentially fuck up the Earth without consequences, and of course the whole Jesus idea was quickly gobbled up as a marketing ploy to construct all manner of hideous religious institutions and hierarchies, but you get the general idea.

Anyway, I think we need another Jesus. Not a real person, but a new Jesus idea. The Jesus 2000^TM with extra wa-wa-woom, hold the goody-two-shoes and all the religious rubbish.

We need to be filled by a fresh spirit that makes us realise that we are each in control of our individual destinies, that we live in a world that is inhabited by other individuals (human and non-human) and that we can only exist together, as an interconnected community of autonomous individuals.

We need to be filled by a gentle yet fearless new spirit of resistance that will inspire us to fight the Evil Empire in all its aspects – patriarchy, wage-slavery, racism, homophobia, corporate globalisation, colonialism, sexism, capitalism, and this whole culture that is so utterly antithetical to sustainable life on this planet. One baby-step at a time, of course!

PS: OK, the New Jesus analogy may be a little forced… I’m just trying to get into the Christmas spirit here, alright!? Anyway for all those of you who want to (re-)affirm their status as wanting to have nothing to do with organised religion in general and Christianity in particular, there is always the Blasphemy Challenge!