The virgin birth, a rejected book, and the courage to be Jesus
Jim December 9th, 2011
The WWJD? question has always perplexed me. In Wide Open Spaces I pondered the insanity of Christianity incessantly binding people to this question as a principle for living life and at the same time establishing the impossibility of succeeding that Jesus is God and we aren’t. In other words, it’s a standard we cannot uphold. How can I do what Jesus did if Jesus is God, and I’m just a mere mortal. That’s like telling a middle school basketball player, “What would Michael Jordan do?” Umm… he’d jump from the free-throw line and power-dunk over some 6’8″/250 lb center. Little Johnny is not… cannot do that.
So, I set out to determine what specifically and practically made Jesus different from any of the rest of us. Jesus and I/you both have a human body. Jesus and I/you both have cognitive brain functioning. Jesus and I/you both have emotions. Jesus and I/you both live in a human context. Jesus and I/you both even have to work out our relationship with God or meaning of life within the context of life and living.
When it got down to it, what seemed to separate Jesus from everyone else, according to my Christian tradition, was Jesus’ virgin birth. That’s pretty different! According to this tenet of Christianity, “that Mary miraculously conceived Jesus while remaining a virgin.” In other words, Jesus has divine DNA and I/you don’t.
Of course not everyone subscribes to the virgin birth of Jesus such as Jews. If you did around in religion history you will even find the Ebionites, a Jewish Christian sect or sects that existed during the first centuries of the Christian Era who regarded Jesus as the Messiah and believed in his physical resurrection from the dead but did not subscribe to the belief of the virgin birth.
Like most theology, you can’t really prove or disprove religious beliefs in empirical terms. So, I decided to go a different route. I decided I was going to devote a year of my life to test the premise that there was no difference between myself and Jesus – that anything Jesus was or did, I could be and do too. The upcoming book, Being in Nashville, is that story. One thing I discovered over that year is that when I was trying hard to be like Jesus, it seemed off and didn’t work. But when I wasn’t really trying and just being Jim, extraordinary things happened. For example, I tried to heal a man on his deathbed in a hospital and failed. In a later circumstance, I it wasn’t even my intention but I saved someone from death.
This experience and story led to a discovery that turned everything upside down for me, and set me free in a way I had never known. I had two near-death experiences myself and survived to write the book and tell this story. I learned that Jesus is special not because he is more divine than any of the rest of us but because he was courageously more human than most.
The manuscript was rejected by my Christian publisher and my writing contract cancelled, because they felt the message of the book was too controversial and violated Orthodox Christianity. So I am self-publishing the book. I could use your help to do this. Find out more at my InidieGoGo Being Jesus in Nashville Campaign site. Thanks to everyone who has contributed to and sharing the campaign!
- Pondering
- Comments(2)
blogged, tweeted, facebooked. When is the deadline to raise the money?
hi sandra. there are 11 days left in the campaign.