A Christian's Plea: Let's Disrespect The Boundaries of Religion

     Many of the evils committed in the name of religion are a result of drawing lines according to belief.  Jesus came to the Jewish people who were so burdened by the lines drawn in their belief system from the teachers of the Law. The Pharisees and Sadducees helped develop a complex system of restitution for sin that designated people as either "right with God" or "sinners."  In order to keep from being a sinner, one had to offer certain sacrifices to God in the sight of other men. It was a line drawn between "us" and  "them" and excluded people from many parts of communal life until they did certain things.  There were also groups of people who were designated sinners by their profession, such as prostitutes or, conveniently, tax collectors for the Roman Empire like Zacchaeus.  And there were the "unclean" (which often equated with "sinner").  A group of people who were considered unclean were people with Leprosy because the teachers of the Law said they or their parents had committed a sin.  Their entire lives were sad examples of exclusion.  I also feel that people with mental illness, though there was no such designation then, were considered unclean.  The Garasene demoniac, I believe, was one such person. A summary of the account in Mark's Gospel (5:1-20) is, "Jesus goes across the lake to the "country of the Gerasenes", that is: the territory of the city-state Gerasa. There, a man 'possessed by a demon' comes from the caves to meet him. People had tried to tie him down but he was too strong to be bound, even with chains for he would always break out of them. Night and day among the tombs and in the hills he would cry out and cut himself with stones. Jesus approaches and calls the demon to come out of the man, who replies 'What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you in the name of God never to torment me!' Jesus asks the demon for his name and is told 'My name is Legion, for we are many.' The demons beg Jesus not to send them away, but instead to send them into the pigs on a nearby hillside, which he does. The herd, about two thousand in number, rush down the steep bank into the lake and are drowned. The man is now seen, dressed and restored to sanity."  Jesus railed against the Jewish religion's system of exclusion.  In fact, Christians believe his death and resurrection restored all people who believe with a right relationship with God.  This is the atonement: Jesus was the sacrifice that made all people right with God.

     So I think it is a cruel irony that many people use Jesus to exclude others.  Many believe that "I have a relationship with Jesus and you do not,"  therefore you are a member of the group called "unbelievers."  And all unbelievers are of course, then, going to hell. I believe that all the evils in history done in the name of religion are, in fact, a result of this kind of thinking.  This is the dark side of faith.  We see it painted on our television screens every day as wayward Muslim men take out their anger on the infidels.  Infidels, of course, are people who don't share the Muslim belief system. Infidels are the "them" in "us and them."  They are the outsiders.  And as a sad result, many people outside the Muslim religion, including Christians, re actively relegate Muslims to "them."

nbsp;    God doesn't work this way, as we see in the example of Jesus.  If you believe he was divine or not, I think everyone who believed in God would say Jesus was close to God, constantly in communion with Him.  And I believe, whether or not you believe Jesus was divine, it benefits us to follow his example. I believe his teachings and his example show people what a right relationship with God looks like. I believe that Jesus showed us the character of God because he was so close to Him, not necessarily because of a virgin birth that proves his divinity. Because I don't believe it is necessary to believe Jesus is divine in the common sense to have a right relationship with God. That would be drawing a line in the sand.

     I like to think of Jesus as "as close to God as any person can get."  I don't necessarily believe there had to be a virgin birth to prove that he was close to God.  And I think people can approach this level of closeness to God.  I think that this was Jesus's whole point and the reason behind his ministry.  He was trying to get everyone closer to God.  Some people believed him and others thought he was off his rocker. Some people believe he was sent by God in a way that was outside nature's parameters.  Others of us believe he came through natural means but is no less than the pinnacle of closeness to God.  I was talking to a pastor friend and she suggested that "natural means" are only our current definition of natural.  Science is always pushing the boundaries of what is considered natural.  For instance, when I was in school they believed that genes were not affected by environment   If a Giraffe stretched its neck further during its whole life, his offspring would not be able to have this ability.  But now we know it does make a difference and it is passed on through the genes, making the speed of adaptation through successive generations more akin to what we actually see.  Another one is that we have more like 16 senses, not just the 5 we learned as children.  Some of these allow us to react to things that may seem out of the natural, like low frequency sound.  Perhaps Jesus simply operated in ways that were unexplainable to the people of his day, and unexplainable to us.  I don't

think that is any reason to draw a line between those who believe he was divine, and those who think he was something akin to divine, and those who think he was just a man.  That kind of distinction, I feel, would really irk Jesus if he were here in the flesh today.  In fact I think it would make him downright angry.  I believe it was this attitude in the Jewish religious system that he raged against in the temple.  Lines in religion are not God's lines.  From what I know of him from scripture, He doesn't obey the lines and boxes drawn by man.  So why would we pigeon hole people into categories when God would not.  Religion in our time needs reconciliation, not artificial boundaries.