About 40 years ago, I read a new book entitled, The 100, listing in order (with full explanation) the top 100 most influential people in history. I liked the author’s challenge and connected with it in a number of ways. After all, the daring fellow had to be able to argue that #86 (Vasco de Gama) was just slightly more influential than #87 (Cyrus the Great). In other words, it made the reader think through what “influence” really means, as well as learning more about the significance of these historical figures. Full Disclosure: I didn’t recognize all of the names, although I did pretty well. Maybe 90 (but history was my field.) 🙂

The thing that struck me the most at the time was that he didn’t place Jesus at the very top. He reserved that spot for Mohammad, which I found curious. #2 went to Isaac Newton before slotting Jesus as #3. In his explanation, he directed us to #6, St. Paul, and said that Christianity as a religion was the most influential of the world’s faiths but that was largely attributed to the life and mission of the apostle Paul as well as Jesus. In other words, they split the ticket. This precipitated other lists and when I just checked, Time Magazine has Jesus as #1, Napoleon #2 and Mohammed #3. Interestingly, Time follows those with Shakespeare, Lincoln, Washington, Hitler, Aristotle, Alexander (the Great) and Jefferson. Just goes to show how there’s no perfect system.

So, I bring this up partly as fun trivia but also as a lead in to a topic I write about all of the time. I just felt called this morning to continue.

As I’ve mentioned before, all sorts of people consider Jesus in all sorts of ways, while plenty of people do not consider him at all … or even have any idea who he may have been.

As of 2017, people identifying as Christian in the world number 2.3 billion, or approximately 31% of the total world population of over 7 billion. That presumes at least one third of the world believes Jesus is significant. But that means two thirds of the world either doesn’t know of him at all or has heard of him but believe he doesn’t make the first tier. Another way of putting this is that a whole lot of people think he is God, a whole lot of other people think he is a great prophet or one of many incarnated holy men, a whole lot of people think he was a great teacher, a whole lot of people don’t pay him any attention, an untold number of people think he’s a fraud who never existed and more than a few think he’s a swear word.

So, this raises two questions in my mind: One, did he actually exist and, two, if he did exist, who was he and how is he significant? As I’ve mentioned a number of times, some form of these two questions rattled me for many, many years.

With respect to the first question, there are very, very few people who think about these things who believe that there was no such person as the historical Jesus. There can be all sorts of debate about who and what he was but it’s pretty outlandish to argue he never existed. Legitimately, historians use all sorts of means to determine if this or that person existed or whether an event actually occurred. Interestingly, there is not much debate about whether there was a Julius Caesar, who purportedly lived between 100 and 44 BC, in the century before Jesus. Or a Nero, who purportedly lived between 37 and 68 AD, just following the lifespan of Jesus, who purportedly lived between 4 BC and approximately 30 AD. All of these famous men left track records and legacies that hold up to intense scrutiny. For obvious reasons, the life of Jesus if far more enigmatic, given his claims and the claims of those who chose to believe him. I find it interesting that in the west, the very small minority of people who think he was a figment of some collective imagination don’t apply the same reasoning when it comes to Mohammed or the Buddha. I may be wildly wrong about this but I have to wonder if it’s due to the nature of the threat level. Jesus presents quite a threatening figure. I’m serious. It’s easier to just make him go away.

For the longest time, I placed him in the category of holy man and great teacher. I had read enough history to be convinced he actually did exist but, having not grown up in a Christian house or having any real exposure to the Christian worldview, I was really uninformed about the true nature of his teachings and claims, nor the teachings and claims of his followers. I was far better informed about the role of the broader Christian church throughout its two millennia of existence. And that history was enough proof to me that the whole thing was rather corrupt. It was really very easy to get lost in the various heresies (viewpoints outside of the mainstream), abuses of power, wars of conquest, persecutions galore, more divisions than one could count and so on. Interestingly, I never attributed any of this to being the fault of the historical Jesus. You’ve never had to convince me that mankind fails the purity test.

So, I read Gandhi and King, Dostoyevsky (his Crime and Punishment is in my top five books of all time and is, essentially, Christian), Hugo (Les Miserables, also in top five books and, essentially Christian), the great western Enlightenment philosophers (who so impacted our nation’s founding fathers) and so many others who either pointed directly at Jesus or drew from his teachings in one way or another. In my 20s, I read most of the New Testament and found it interesting and helpful to organize my perspective on the world and all that it contains. And, so, I formed my view of Jesus and he sat nicely on a shelf as a very influential person who probably had some connection with a God, whoever or whatever that meant. Certainly, Jesus got social justice right and that was preeminent in my mind.

Boy, did I miss the mark.

In the recent past, I’ve had a couple of long conversations with someone who I’d definitely put in the “searching” category, although his spiritual searching is really secondary to his focus on his professional work, which is certainly more common than not. He is exceptionally bright and well informed on many topics, including religion. He has found my journey of the past dozen years interesting, even intriguing and puzzling. We have talks about the nature of truth and all of that. Anyway, in these recent conversations, he has shared that he believes, in his way, the Christian story. For instance, he said he could really identify with the persons of the Trinity portrayed in the bestseller book, The Shack. He said he has read and knows the Bible, including the four Gospels. When gently asked what he recalls from the Gospels, he said the Sermon on the Mount, which he said is at the heart of the faith. He had no real recollection of any other parts of the New Testament accounts and letters, other than a broad framework. He sees himself as flawed with little chance of changing but hopes God will eventually forgive him.

I share this not to be critical but to illustrate that this was I to a large degree. I used to make of Jesus what I wanted to make of him. Kind of like selecting the pieces that fit into my view of reality and that supported what I thought was important. The Sermon on the Mount (which, I might argue, is probably the most recognizable piece of Jesus’ teaching) may also be the most misunderstood. Perhaps I’ll write more on that at some point. Ultimately, I determined, this was fundamentally dishonest. I needed to investigate for myself, without layering in biases based on culture, era and all of that. Many “seekers” don’t like to do that because it’s very hard. It means dispensing with a whole lot of assumptions in order to peel away the layers. It’s, in fact, quite risky.

Of course, when it comes to Jesus, there is no corner on the market of tying him up in a neat little package. Both faithful followers and non-believers do it all of the time. Who is he, really? Is he the champion of the poor and disenfranchised? A first century social justice warrior? An itinerant rabbi? A failed Messiah like so many others in Israel’s tortured history? One of the great ethical teachers in all of history? A man with some radical ideas who married Mary Magdalene (which really means Mary from the Galilean town of Magdala) and established a lineage? Or, is he the Alpha and Omega, the Word before time, the second person of a Trinitarian God who is Love and Grace and Truth and Justice made flesh? Take your pick.

There is a solution. One can pick up the New Testament with a sense of resolve, starting with the four Gospels, and read it with an open mind. To imagine the “what if” it’s true? See if it passes the litmus test. Is it possible the reality he describes and lives is, in fact, the real deal? Thomas Jefferson, who belonged to a school of thought called Deism (they believed in a distant and largely disinterested God) famously sliced and diced the Gospels, cutting away swaths that he just didn’t like, which is an interesting approach. Sort of like those censors in the movies blacking out huge chunks deemed inappropriate to share. In other words, Jesus was reformatted in the image of the brilliant but arrogant Jefferson. When I abandoned this approach in order to give the accounts the benefit of doubt, thereby opening up my mind to alternatives, I discovered the extraordinary. Certainly, I struggled to interpret more than a few passages and that continues unabated. But both the depths and clarity to most of it simply blew my mind. When you’ve actually lived with and around love and grace, humility and honesty, good and evil and the nature of justice, brokenness, forgiveness and redemption, beauty, awe and wonder, suffering and hope, you have a sense of what it means to live in reality as a human being. Jesus speaks to all of these in a way that must cut to our most innermost selves. There can be no neat drive-bys, cherry-picking bits and pieces that comfortably reinforce our homegrown views. This is a messy and unsettling business.

But, oh, the rewards! Pick up the Book of Mark, which is basically a “give me the facts and nothing but the facts, ma’am” account of Jesus’ life and ministry: Who he really was and why he lived and died. (This gospel is really Peter’s account as told to Mark.) Or pick up the Book of John, with its powerful imagery that is almost like an Impressionist painting, connecting bits and pieces together in a tapestry of color. Read the Book of Luke that contains my favorite passage which, to me, is a summation of everything else. Luke actually wrote two books, the second being the Book of Acts which is the fascinating account of the early church and is rich in so many ways. Or pick up the Book of Matthew, the Jewish tax collector/sinner/disciple who writes of Jesus to a Jewish audience. All of these would be good starting points. But the key is to reflect on what is being shared. Does this sound like it is just moral teaching? Does it sound like it’s the ravings of a madman? Does it sound like a group of people just sat around and made this deep and intricate stuff up? Does it sound like that same group of people would make up a story about a failed Messiah, for which many would gladly give up their lives? Perhaps, you might say. Or, you could say, I wonder if it’s all true?