I was nominally raised as a Christian, though I don't subscribe to their doctrinal beliefs anymore. That being said, I have incorporated a good number of Jesus' teachings into my own personal spiritual beliefs and I'll attempt to explain some of my own interpretations and extrapolations.
I view Jesus (I give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he actually existed) as a shamanic/Gautama-like figure. I interpret his teachings as being those of somewhat of a New Age-type self-help figure for that particular period. For instance, I interpret the teaching "whosoever believeth in me shall have eternal life" NOT to imply that there is some eternal afterlife realm awaiting us upon our actual physical deaths (assuming we make the cut, of course), but that if one has faith in one's "God-self", one will experience perennial "rebirth" and renewal vis-a-vis the ability to forgive oneself for one's mistakes and cleanse oneself of the spirit-killing effects of excessive self-criticism and the judgment of others. Ideally, if one could experience the rejuvenating experience of "dying" (i.e., failing) and being "reborn" anew(and when I say that, I am NOT referring to the hokey fundamentalist Christian concept) every passing instant of one's actual ORGANIC life, shedding the skin of the old and rejoicing in that of the new, then what a wondrously vibrant experience that life would be.
When Jesus spoke of entering "the Kingdom of God", I believe he was really referring to something akin to the nirvana state espoused by the Buddha. Likewise, I believe Jesus' concept of "hell" referred to the state of spiritual death one experiences when one is overwhelmed by self-doubt and succumbs to that despair, rather than any actual realm to which one is sentenced on some eventual day of reckoning.
Granted, these interpretations are entirely contradictory to Christian doctrine...therefore, I don't consider myself a Christian. I believe that many of the problematic doctrines of the Christian faith were drafted on later by opportunistic self-promoters such as Paul and the early canonical leaders, corrupting Jesus' rather profoundly simple spiritual insights and wisdom. In fact, I think it's almost impossible to glean ANY insight into Jesus' life as a historical figure, since so much of it appears, imo at least, to have been mythologized for the purpose of making the religion palatable and sellable to the Roman Empire. Clearly, Christianity was dead in the water had it not been "sold" to the Romans, since the Jewish orthodoxy had already rejected it.
I also reject, as Thomas Jefferson did, the divinity of Christ and the notion of the immaculate conception.
So essentially I have attempted to remove the contradictions inherent in the Christian faith, while retaining and incorporating the insights in which I find personal spiritual meaning.
Basically, though, with every individual it comes down to this, imo...based on your own reflection and thought, either accept or reject Pascal's Wager, and then be comfortable with your decision either way...suffer "fools" gladly
(<---extremely tongue in cheek, as essentially we are all vain "fools" and should also suffer ourselves gladly).
I remember watching the movie "Event Horizon", in which a particular garbled Latin transmission from a foundering space station was translated as "Save Us". However, later in the movie the character translating the transmission realized that the message was properly translated as "Save Yourself"...I realized in watching the film that the movie's metaphor mirrored my own evolving spiritual beliefs.
Some people need spiritual structure, while others don't. As long as you are secure in your personal beliefs regarding spirituality (or lack thereof), then you are "free"...whatever gets you through the day, in other words. If it is necessary for a person to have an external source to which to cling, and that external source in turn empowers (by way of "commands") the person to better himself and live harmoniously with others, then so be it...some people are like children in terms of their spiritual evolution, and they need that external structure. Who am I to judge the relative spiritual and/or intellectual strength or weakness of another individual in terms of the intrinsic "value" of that person?
Imo though, you bear no responsibility for the securing of any other individual's spiritual "life". It is up to each one of us to "save ourselves".
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
