My Struggle with Jesus

I think that for many of us, Jesus is perhaps one of the most challenging figures in history.

I know in my own case, he’s often been colored by my negative connotations with Christianity. For that reason, I’ve often done all I could to all but ignore him.

I don’t believe I’m alone in that. Most of us have probably had a difficult history with Christianity to say the least. I know personally I’ve had a love/hate relationship with it, leaning largely to hate.

And yet Jesus has often shown up for me in the most unexpected, sometimes the most unwanted ways.

I don’t often discuss it, but Jesus showed up in a vision back in 2010 while I was meditating, to let me know that my path would be walked alone. I’d often think of those words over the following decade, which turned out to be very true, as I found my beliefs and realizations not quite syncing up with any set spiritual system out there.

Then after an awakening experience in 2011, he would show up in order for me to channel certain messages, which I did for almost a year. Unfortunately those messages no longer exist, and they may have just been meant for me and Christine — who knows.

As the years went on, I did my best to ignore his very existence. That attempt culminated last year when I read The Pagan Christ by Tom Harpur, which aimed to show how Jesus’ life really just reflected various other mythologies throughout history, and therefore it was doubtful whether he existed at all.

And I was pretty happy to leave it at that. Life would certainly be a lot easier if he hadn’t existed, and I could scoff at all the Christians who took his existence so seriously. I thought he was likely just a thought form created by the collective belief of billions of followers, with no more substance than that.

Heck, you may be wondering why we need waste time on this subject at all. Everyone will have their own belief about him — whether he existed historically as described, existed but was mythologized, or didn’t exist at all.

Part of this is a healing post for my sake. This area has been such a landmine, full of scary surprises that I’d rather shove off in a corner somewhere and forget about.

Of course it doesn’t help that I’m married to a Christian (sorry Christine), so it’s often been brought suddenly and painfully up to the surface. Christine of course doesn’t care what I believe and just wants me to be happy, but just her very fact as one who does believe in a literal Jesus would challenge me.

But I also think it’s an important topic for all of us. There’s a lot of pain and confusion around this figure in the collective unconscious, and it certainly doesn’t all come from me. 😛

I think his very existence (or lack thereof) is a challenge of sorts. In the spiritual community, we haven’t known what to do with him. Do we ignore him altogether? Do we channel him and update his message for a new age? I’ve certainly seen some cringe-worthy channeling out there, no disrespect intended to anyone who might believe in them. It’s just that many of the ones I’ve come across didn’t resonate at all for me.

Of course if you’re reading this, that’s no accident and perhaps there’s a message in it for you as well.

Or perhaps not, and this is just my way of making sense of a difficult subject.

My Fear Around Christianity

I mentioned above that I had a love/hate relationship with Christianity.

I grew up more-or-less christian, often attending a local Methodist church until I was about 7 years old. Then when I was about 9 or 10, I got introduced to Wicca and basically left Christianity in the dust.

Wicca, Paganism, and then eastern religions, would come to define the next several years of my life.

But then when I was about 13, one of my mother’s coworkers essentially badgered me into at least reading the Bible. This would prove to define my teenage years almost exclusively — for better or worse I really don’t know.

On one hand, I loved the Bible. I got an audio version of the Bible, the NIV I think, on CD, and would listen to it every day. I think I had listened through the whole thing in a few months.

The characters of the Bible — especially the Old Testament — really came alive for me.

In particular, the God of the Old Testament, though I know many people see him as angry and vengeful, was always intriguing for me. The OT really made God come alive in a way that would call back to me again and again over the years. Just read some of the Psalms, and their depiction of God is simply beautiful. Even the story of Exodus, where he was said to lead his people through the impossible, to escape Egypt and find the Promised Land, was incredibly moving.

The New Testament was a bit of a different story. I enjoyed the gospels, but remember being confused why everyone focused on Jesus’ crucifixion, when like 99% of the gospels were him just teaching about love. The rest of the New Testament didn’t really resonate as much.

After reading the Bible, I remember trying to find a church that captured what I had found there. I went through many different churches, starting at the Methodist church I had once attended, and even checking out a pentecostal church for a while (don’t. even. ask), but nothing quite captured it for me.

That period of my life culminated in becoming a Jehovah’s Witness (yes, no kidding). It was a very bittersweet time of my life, because I felt super welcomed like I never had before. It gave me a sense of belonging. But then once I started to question, I was tossed aside like none of that had ever mattered.

After about two years as a Jehovah’s Witness, I started to drift and fall away. The restrictions were too much. Not to mention, they didn’t want me to take school seriously, because, you know, the end of the world could be any day now. I was a junior in high school at the time, and knew I wanted to go to college.

I also realized the harm Christianity had done to me. My study of magic and meditation had opened up infinite vistas of possibility to me. I had been awakened to the existence of energy, psychic abilities, the power of the mind, and the very nature of our reality. Then it felt like Christianity tried to squash all of those new-found insights, to call them evil and of the devil. I felt very repressed, very small, in Christianity.

I had actually had my first awakening experience when I was 13, not long before my foray into Christianity.

That glimpse allowed me to know that there was much that Christianity didn’t account for and did its best to ignore — or if it couldn’t ignore it, to demonize.

The thing is, I couldn’t suppress the beauty I had initially seen in the Bible. The manifestation of it in Christianity left much to be desired, but over the years, something in the Bible always called out to me.

And that’s why I could never quite ignore it I think. In college I actually became Catholic, which is how I met Christine.

But every time I would make another attempt at Christianity, I’d feel that old sense of repression, of restriction, and the need for my freedom would require me to once again leave it behind, a bit more jaded than before.

Every few years this would happen. The beauty of Christianity would call out, then its ugliness would repulse me.

The last time was towards the end of last year, 2020. I was at one of the darkest periods of my life and just needed to feel safe. Not knowing where to turn, I returned for a time to the Catholic Church, and the comfort of knowing God would protect me.

It did help: I climbed out of the pit I found myself in, improved my circumstances, then found I no longer needed that comfort, and once more was repulsed by the uglier aspects of the faith.

That was, as I mentioned earlier, around the time I read The Pagan Christ, which convinced me that I could safely leave this whole mess behind.

What was it exactly I hated so much about Christianity? Besides the hateful behavior of many of its adherents, which definitely was a huge part of it, I think at the end of the day it was its tendency to oversimplify things.

For example, how on earth could believing in the existence of a random person in history do anything to “save” my soul? How could someone’s death forgive sin? If God is all-powerful, why would he set up such a system in the first place which would back him into such a corner?

And it really did often sound like he was backed into a corner. The only way he could forgive our sins eternally was to kill his son, really? And if we didn’t believe in that one very specific person, we’d burn forever in hell — but you know, he really actually loves us. Really? He couldn’t just, you know, decide not to send anyone to hell? Did no one think of that option? But because he was backed into a corner, billions of souls would have to burn for eternity? It should make us feel better that he’d much rather not do that, of course.

With no offense intended, it sounded like something children would come up with. The whole thing obviously crumbles under the least bit of scrutiny, but in a perverse sort of way it also had the potential to bring comfort. It made the universe make sense, if you didn’t think about it too much — which they don’t want you to do of course.

And I think its very fragility, its very tendency to crumble when you look at it long enough, is why many Christians don’t believe in many of the actual tenets of their religion.

How many Christians, for example, actually believe in hell? In my experience, not very many. But the thing is, the whole religion falls apart without the central belief in hell. Otherwise, what did Jesus save us from? The belief is that he died so we wouldn’t have to be condemned and go to hell. After all the Bible literally says:

Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on them. (John [3:36] NIV)

If you don’t have hell, you have Jesus who died, for nothing, to save us from nothing. If God could always just overlook our sin anyway, then the whole thing was just a farce.

Sure you could just see Jesus as someone who came to teach a beautiful message, and I think some Christians revert to this way of seeing him. Then sin, crucifixion, hell, and all the rest can comfortably be removed.

But then you have Jesus saying certain uncomfortable things like:

“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6 NIV)

So then such Christians have to see the Bible as not literal, or maybe even metaphorical. And by that point, roughly 90% of the actual religion has been stripped away. It becomes more-or-less, “Jesus was pretty cool.”

Another Way

Roughly 11 years ago, I came across A Course In Miracles. Studying that book helped me to escape the thought system of the Catholic Church.

After a while I left it behind, preferring to have nothing to do with any Christian language at all.

I picked it up again a few years later, but quickly left it behind for much the same reason.

If you aren’t aware, ACIM was written by a psychology professor, Dr. Helen Schucman, back in the 1970s.

At the time an atheist, she claimed that Jesus began dictating a message to her, which she wrote down, and which subsequently became A Course In Miracles as we know it today.

The Course uses quite a bit of Christian language, but redefines it in a way that means something completely different.

The Course teaches, essentially, that this world is an illusion — a dream that we made up, to make us feel separate from God. In so doing, we fell into a state of guilt and fear, which we then project out upon the world in an attempt to escape from it.

The only solution is what it calls “the atonement,” which is to heal our own perception of this world — to realize that we were never separate from God and thus were never under threat at all.

It basically uses Christian language to express a non-dual vision of the world.

The course simply describes itself thus:

What is it training our mind for? To see the world with corrected perception, and thus to end our own suffering.

All that is well and good, but who cares?

I went for years without really thinking of the Course.

But recently when I was preparing for my new program, The Inner Path to Outer Transformation, something made me think of ACIM.

I was just writing down some notes, and something about what I was writing just reminded me of a concept from the Course.

Now you might be thinking, earlier I scoffed at those who claimed to channel Jesus. So why would I take ACIM seriously at all?

And the answer is, at one time I didn’t take it seriously. But with fresh eyes, with my current understanding, something just resonated.

I’ve been studying the LOA for 6 years now, and have realized a lot of things in that time. I’ve been obviously exploring spirituality for a lot longer.

And something in the words of ACIM just reflected right back to me all the realizations I had already come to myself.

I put it off for days. I had done just enough research to find the similarity between ACIM and the notes I had written, and I thought about maybe beginning to study it from the start.

But I put it off. I really, really didn’t want to study ACIM. I didn’t need the Christian language, I didn’t know if I believed Jesus dictated a message to a psychology professor in the 70s, and I didn’t want to figure out what all of that meant.

And then a crazy thing happened — in one way just a small coincidence, but in another, a validation.

I must have been subscribed to the mailing list of the Foundation for Inner Peace, the organization who publishes ACIM. And just a couple days after I started thinking about the Course, I got an email from them that they had just released the entire Course online, for free.

I don’t remember the last time I received an email from them, so this was quite a surprise to say the least.

So I started studying it. And the words just came alive to me. Every word reflected that which I already knew, but also went far beyond it to things I had never even thought of before.

It’s like if you had figured out addition and subtraction on your own, and then a math teacher came along, validated your understanding of this basic mathematics, and proceeded to teach you calculus.

It included all that I had already realized, but went lightyears beyond.

For example, look at this brilliant passage about the power of the mind:

There’s obviously quite a lot buried in that single passage. But keep in mind this is years before Abraham-Hicks existed or the law of attraction became popularized. And this was channeled through someone who professed to be an atheist before these events took place.

But I think this is one of my favorite quotes:

Our spirit, who we truly are, yearns to share its being. It wills to create. I can’t think of something more beautiful.

OK, there are a few other quotes that come close, but I won’t inundate this post with those. My point is simply to show the beauty reflected in the course, and how it says exactly what I’ve been saying for years, but much more.

A New Understanding of Jesus

Of course, let’s not get sidetracked. This post is about the figure of Jesus.

At first, everything was OK. I really connected with these words in ACIM, which purportedly came from Jesus.

The thing is, I believed it. Though he sounds far more intellectual in ACIM than in the Bible, I account that to the channeler, who must obviously have been very intelligent. But otherwise, his words rung true, and sounded like exactly the kinds of things the Jesus of the Bible would have said.

He did not claim any special position for himself. In ACIM he calls himself our equal, like an older brother — someone who figured out this stuff first and can guide us along our own path.

This reminds me of exactly the kinds of things Jesus said in the Bible.

The difference is, in ACIM it says that this is just one of many ways. This comes from the preface:

So then why did I say everything was OK “at first”?

Because though ACIM does say Jesus was just like us, it also gives him a special function of sorts.

Before I get too deeply into this, I want to define some basic language the Course uses, because if you read what follows without knowing how it uses the language, it can sound almost scarily Christian, along with all the associated meanings, when that’s not really what it intends.

Now don’t get me wrong. It also says that we all help with this process, as we ourselves find our own awakening. For example it says this (speaking to us):

So obviously Jesus isn’t alone in this. But in a sense, he was first. And it says he was first because he first completed this process of awakening perfectly.

“All power” here I believe simply means that we will share in the responsibility with Jesus to help bring others out of the dream of separation.

It reminds me in a way of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Someone had to be the first to realize their state. And once awakened to it, they went back in to free another. And once others were freed, they, too, could help to free others.

Nothing was special about the first except that they were first.

And so similarly, nothing is special about Jesus, except that he was first to complete this process.

ACIM does indeed say there are other “helpers” of God besides Jesus:

And there is also this paragraph, which is another line I think is one of the most beautiful in the Course:

So in other words, there are many other helpers. But if we choose, he’s also all we would need to guide us. We can benefit by just reading his words, but to work with him directly, he could help us even more.

Now the question is, why would he be the first? I mean, obviously there were previous “helpers” / masters, like Buddha for example. Why wasn’t the Buddha put in charge of the atonement?

And the answer is, I don’t know. Perhaps that’s just the purpose Jesus was chosen for. Or perhaps he completed a further stage of awakening than did the Buddha. It doesn’t really matter, as again, one isn’t “better” or “more special” than the other: they just have different functions. The Course makes that clear.

But I do find one thing interesting.

I developed a theory last year when I was trying to reconcile my own beliefs with a Christian worldview — which inevitably failed. Still, I wondered, what if Jesus wasn’t really different at all, but somehow he opened a door, performed some function, which made awakening easier and more accessible for all of humanity?

Certainly I didn’t, and couldn’t, believe that only those who happened to believe in his existence could go to heaven. But it also seemed almost cheap to say he did nothing except preach a nice-sounding message.

Now I abandoned that line of thinking and had since moved on. But imagine my surprise to see my thoughts reflected in ACIM thusly:

The Course is saying that in completely awakening to his true nature, Jesus thereby made the Holy Spirit, or the voice for God, more accessible to us. In so doing, this allowed this process of awakening to accelerate for us.

How many times have you heard it said that our level of consciousness is rising more rapidly than ever before? How many more people are there today, and in the recent past, who have been awakened, than at any other time in history?

How many more people are there today, who know about the laws of the Universe, the law of attraction and the like — who can indeed influence their reality in a greater way — than at any other point in history?

Is it possible that one of these “helpers” of God, in reaching his own awakening, accelerated the process for the rest of us, and indeed is now in charge of this whole process?

Maybe. If you could separate the figure of Jesus from all the negative baggage that has been added onto him, certainly it’s easier to see that this is possible.

The Course acknowledges how badly Christianity has damaged Jesus’ image, but invites us to relate to him anyway.

I think that’s more beautiful yet than anything else I have quoted here. Such a beautiful image it paints.

This whole section of the Course is so beautiful, so evocative, that I am going to quote it in its entirety at the end of this post. Reading it piecemeal like this doesn’t really do it justice.

My Conclusions

This has been quite a journey we’ve taken in this post. If you’re still with me, I thank you.

What do I take away from all this?

To be honest, I fought against many of the conclusions ACIM was bringing me to. Christianity has made me hate Jesus and want nothing to do with him. Even saying his name, or hearing his name said, would often make me uncomfortable.

And sure, I could say that this is a random text written by a psychology professor 45 years ago.

Except I can’t. I see too much beauty in its words. I have no choice but to believe that it reflects a deeper reality.

It captures too many of the realizations I have come to independently over the last 6 years and more. These are realizations I see very few teachers get right today. Even if you think Schucman may have had influences from other sources, such as Christian Science as some claim, that doesn’t mean it would result in the level of truth reflected in the Course. Our minds are very limited, and even from teachers like Abraham-Hicks who is supposedly a channeled source, I have never seen truth reflected so perfectly.

I’ve read far and wide. I’ve discarded about 90% of the sources I’ve read as totally useless. About 9% I’ve filtered heavily to get anything useful out of. Maybe 1% or less is so perfect as to warrant adoption unfiltered. The Tao Te Ching is really the only other source that has reflected this level of truth for me.

And heck, I’m a fallible human, too. You could totally disagree and think A Course In Miracles is drivel.

But, as for me, it evokes the beauty and truth that called out to me as a child, without all the ugliness created by humans in Christianity. I see the God I came to know, without the egoic filters placed on His message. I also see room for the knowledge I’ve come to in the awakening experiences I’ve had, when for a time I saw clearly.

Who am I? I don’t bother to label my journey anymore: none seem to fit. Despite my new-found respect for the figure of Jesus, I could never adopt the label of Christian, as it has gone way too far off the rails. I have Taoist influences, to be sure, but don’t see the point identifying as such. I get a lot out of the messages of Abraham still, but take their message with many grains of salt. At the end of the day, even ACIM was scribed by a human, though I believe it’s one of the purest channelings I’ve seen, but this doesn’t mean it’s free of error. Really, nothing could possibly be in this world.

So, I am simply who I am, ever shifting and ever growing.

Hopefully, this post has reflected well my own journey and how I got to where I am. None of this was meant to convince you, though if you walk away with deeper insight and a deeper connection with the Universe, that’s all I can ask.

And now, as promised, I want to quote the entirety of ACIM’s chapter on Jesus.