Jesus is a rad guy, no doubt. He made the blind see. He mended the broken. He healed the sick. He beckoned to the forgotten and unwanted. He is embodied forgiveness and atonement. Most of all, he was self-sacrificial. He’s a messiah for a reason, and the reason for the season (Merry Holidays to all ye celebrators and grievers). Understandably, throughout my Christian upbringing the idea of following and pursuing this was certainly the Way to Belong.
But, I don’t want to be like Jesus in the way that he is the most Jesus that ever Jesus-ed. That is, I’ve had enough of believing that I could be remotely close likeness of this guy, or what I’ve been taught of this guy. I will never, in my nature, have the self-sacrifice and holy generosity that Jesus claims. I like living my life. I want to pursue myself, not give that up. I’ve lived my life for other people, and have had a fair share of co-dependency and inferiority issues to say otherwise. Plain as it is, I can’t, I don’t want to give up who I see and who I want to be in that way. I’m just not that selfless.
Moreover, I can’t begin to understand what kind of identity shit that Jesus had to go through. Can you imagine? “Being 100% human and 100% divine”? I can’t even wrap my head around being Asian hyphen American hyphen Adoptee in an nearly all-white town. When someone called me a chink in my high school parking lot, it fucked me up. When Jesus was called a “human being”, was it a trip for him too?
Being 100% + 100% of something sounds like too much. And possibly, not what Jesus should have been, which is probably the point. I think, anyway, that’s more than he could have been, more than he should have been. Plus, we don’t even fully understand what that meant. Were you alive to see it? I wasn’t. Plus plus, any kind of postulizing and identifying that we do down here only gets us into more trouble.
I want love, compassion, and healing to be very near to my core identity, of course. But being “like Jesus”? I’ll pass on that. And I’ll be done pretending that I can or could ever be so. I just want to be me. Which, I’m still figuring out anyway. Leave Jesus to the scholars and religious.
belong_ng 