The Nature of Jesus and the Point of Christianity

Something that's bugged me on and off for a few years now is a theological question upon which I'd like to receive Jane input . . .

What is the appropriate name/label for someone who generally believes in the teachings of Jesus and tries his best to follow them, but who cannot for the life of himself buy into the physics of the literal Resurrection? Someone who can't bring themselves to believe in the joint divinity/humanity of Jesus, and who thinks the Holy Ghost concept is strictly symbolic?

Since the early followers of Jesus were simply Jews who followed an eccentric Gallilean preacher and the Gnostics (an early Christian sect) thought that God's divinity shone within us all, is it possible to have a modern interpretation of Christianity that does not involve the divinity of or the literal physical resurrection of Jesus?

I've asked this question of intelligent people over the years who are well-educated in at least one Christian denomination (some in several). The interesting answers I've received over the years include:

I don't know what to call him, but he's not Christian. Jesus is nothing if not the Son of God.

An apostle.

The whole point to being a Christian is that your path to Salvation is given, not earned. To profess with your mouth and believe in your heart that Jesus was born in the flesh died on the Cross and, most importantly, rose from the dead to ascend to Heaven to take the right seat next to the Father is Salvation. No man may enter Heaven but by accepting Christ as their Savior, and any other interpretation is disinformation.

We'd probably call him an Episcopalian. ;-) Seriously, such a person technically still wouldn't be any sort of Christian. Belief in the Resurrection of Christ as a historical event is an entry requirement. He'd be closer to some Jewish splinters than a Christian of any sort. If you want big-tent Christianity as a warm fuzzy blanket of humanism and optional belief in the tricky bits, go US Episcopalian, not Anglican.

A secular theological scholar.

Anyone interpreting the teachings of Jesus and the rest of the Bible as simply some sort of New Age-y handbook of how to be a good person or some Ghandi-esqu guru instruction manual about being nice to your fellow man is dramatically misinterpreting the larger point of the Bible. There is no Salvation without the Resurrection. They go hand-in-hand.

An agnostic.

There's always been a healthy amount of room in certain parts of the Church for people who don't eat the dogma right up without a side of crow. I firmly believe that God loves nothing more than a doubter, and it's documented all throughout the Old and New Testaments -- from Job to Doubting Thomas. This is probably where we inherited our very human need to say, "I told you so!"

The very nature of Christianity involves the fact that no other religion has a "risen" Saviour. It is not a "works" based message -- You can't do anything to Save yourself. Only faith in Jesus Christ, who, through the power of God, was raised from the dead, can you be Saved.

I believe there is a higher power that we mere mortals will never understand, but if such power exists, why would it care whether we worship it or not? I do know darn well that whether I am happy / sad / rich / poor has nothing
to do with God.

As you can see, there's a dramatic variance among American Christians (not all do to sectarianism) as to the answer to the root of my above question:

Is it possible to have a modern interpretation of Christianity that does not involve the divinity of or the literal physical resurrection of Jesus?

I'd welcome your interpretations, thoughts, comments, and discussion.

~Riot.Jane

Woman "Not Guilty" should Son Rise from the Dead

Baltimore, MD -- A former religious cult member has agreed to an unheard-of plea deal: She has plead guilty and will testify against four others in the starving death of her 1-year-old son but reserves the right to rescind her plea if her son rises from the dead.

Ria Ramkissoon, 22, a native of Trinidad, is the prime witness in the Maryland's case against Queen Antoinette, 40, who purportedly lead the now-disbanded One Mind Ministries religious cult out of a Baltimore row house. Prosecutors allege that Antoinette instructed cult members, including Ramkissoon, to deny the child, Javon Thompson, food and water as punishment for the child not saying "Amen."

Prosecutors allege that Antoinette, believing that Ramkissoon would be weak and feed the child or give him water, instructed Javon be given to another cult member who followed her food-and-water-denial instructions. After the eventual death of the child, the cult members prayed over the body and the mother danced around it. When that didn't succeed in raising the child from the dead, two cult members purchased a wheeled suitcase in which to carry the child. Ramkissoon's attorney said that the cult believed that the child could be raised from the dead at a later date if they could carry the body with them. The cult moved to Philadelphia and asked a men they'd befriended there to store their luggage, and police found the body in a shed behind the man's house.

Javon's father, Robert Thompson, did not attend the plea agreement hearing due to illness, and is reported to have been incarcerated at the time of Javon's birth. Court documents indicate that Ramkissoon joined One Mind Ministries after Javon's birth. Ramkissoon left her parent's home with her 7-month old son, joined the cult, and moved into their house at the age of 19 because (according to her attorney) she didn't want to work or go to school but wanted to raise her son full-time, in Christianity, and the cult offered her this opportunity. At the time that Ramkissoon joined the cult, it had approximately a dozen members. Reportedly within the cult, cell 'phones and discussion of one's family were banned and marijuana smoking was common.

Prosecutors are charging Antoinette and three other cult members with child abuse resulting in death and first-degree murder. In a March 30 hearing, Ramkissoon plead guilty to the first charge (abuse/death) and agreed that she will testify truthfully against the other four. Should this occur, the prosecutor's office will recommend sentencing comprised of release from jail, a suspended 20-year sentence, five years probation requiring mental health assistance (including "deprogramming" treatment with a specialist in cult behavior). Sentencing is currently sheduled for August 11.

A prosecutor's office spokeswoman said that, regarding the child rising from the dead, the fine print of the plea agreement states, "This would need to be a Jesus-like resurrection. It cannot be a reincarnation in another object or animal."

"She [Ramkissoon] certainly recognizes that her omissions caused the death of her son," Ramkissoon's attorney said. "To this day, she believes it was God's will and he will be resurrected and this will all take care of itself. She realizes if she's wrong, then everyone has to take responsibility ... and if she's wrong, then she's a failure as a mother and the worst thing imaginable has happened. I don't think that, mentally, she's ready to accept that."

Ramkissoon's attorney also said,

"On one level, she certainly is competent to stand trial, because she does recognize that as far as her legal entanglements are concerned, this is a grand-slam resolution for her. On the other hand, she's still brainwashed, she's still delusional as far as the teachings and influence of this cult, and she certainly is going to benefit with professional help and deprogramming."

The current disposition of the four other charged cult members: (Leader) Antoinette, Trevia Williams, and Marcus Cobbs are currently incarcerated without bail. Steven Bynum is, for some reason, free on his own recognizance.

Source documents available for review.

~Riot.Jane

Sudanese Women Flogged for Wearing Pants!

KHARTOUM, SUDAN -- Journalist Lubna Ahmed al-Hussein was one of 13 women arrested in a restaurant for wearing trousers this past Monday. The usual Sharia punishment for wearing "indecent" dress is 40 lashes. 10 of the 13 women plead guilty and agreed to accept a 10-lash punishment quickly in order to resolve the situation quickly, the three others are fighting the charges.

Khartoum, in northern Sudan, is ruled by Sharia (Islamic) law. Southern Sudan is not. Sharia law is not supposed to apply to non-Muslims, but the public order police nonetheless arrested the women in a restaurant that is popular with foreigners and journalists.

"I was wearing trousers and a blouse and the 10 girls who were lashed were wearing like me, there was no difference," she told the BBC's Arabic service, "I didn't do anything wrong."

Al-Hussein and the other two women who contacted lawyers instead of pleading guilty are awaiting their fates. Al-Hussein has printed and sent invitations to public officials and other press representatives to attend the expected trial in order to publicize the wrongdoing.

~Riot.Jane

A Woman's Way Through the Twelve Steps

“A Woman’s Way Through the Twelve Steps”

Essay: Describe Myself as Sane

Step Two

“Came to Believe That a Power Greater Than Ourselves Could Restore Us to Sanity”

The question is “When you think of yourself as “restored to sanity” what picture of yourself comes to mind?

There are several view points from which I could approach this question. From what perception am I taking this snap-shot? Is it a physical vision of my future and my station in it? Or is it a state of being or an approach to life? Is it asking how do I look to others or a dissertation of my desired future worldly successes? Is it a feeling? Is it self-love? Is it what I offer to others? Is it all these things?

This brings me to the first part of the second step “Came to believe that a power greater than myself” My first inclination is to be defensive (imagine that!) and argue I do not need to come to believe, I already do. The challenge here is to admit that although I believe I do not continue “to believe” on a daily basis. My God declares I AM and he not simply who I wish Him to be. I do not have a God-du-jour, God-in-a-box, Santa-God or God-as-I-See-Him (which is only me playing God again!) or my favorite, The-God-Of-My-Own-Understanding (isn’t “my own understanding” how I ended up doing this work book in the first place?). Mine is the One True God. My God declares I AM and he is not simply who I wish Him to be. Only when I can embrace the truth on a daily basis will I allow God to kill that old man habit of only “believing” after some self-inflicted catastrophe levels me. To Yahweh Elohim I must turn. To Him I must trade my will for His.

Here’s the second part of step two: “could restore us”. I know that God could restore me. But I am not since I have never been sane…to restore me, to return to me a grant me my previous condition is still casting me into insanity. I have always been insane. I will need to reword this to “could give me”.....there.....now that make sense to me.

“What is “sanity”? It is defined as “the state of being sane; soundness of mind, good judgment, reason, rationality, sensibility, reasonableness”. I am asking myself “How will I know when I have it?” How will I know when I am ‘in the state of being sane? See this is always the problem, when I am in my insanity I don’t feel insane! It is only after the fact, when things are once again quiet that I look back and say “boy was that crazy!”, or perhaps better put “boy, am I crazy!” Even though I do not always recognize when I am shifting from the world of sanity into the desperations of insanity I know I must be able to discern these changes. In my case, my very life depends on it.

Sanity some-times me when I some-time God. Mine is a spiritual malady so I must look to very core of my being. God is my creator and it is from him that I am. Every creation flows from the heart of The Creator. All expressions of my life, everything it bears, spiritual, mental, psychological, relational and physical all begin here and my inward worth and outward expressions all come from this. My usefulness to God, myself and others all begins here.
The question is “When you think of yourself as “restored to sanity” what picture of yourself comes to mind? : For me I guess it is when I willing turn to God on a daily basis and allow Him to reveal areas in which I am operating out of my insanity and letting Him teach me His ways.

~Barbara Rhyne-Tucker

My Childhood God

Riot.Jane has shared this piece of touching artwork she created:


As with any submitted artwork, click the picture to see the full-sized version.

"Dead Hooker Barbie" Makes all the Difference

I've been with my boyfriend for going on three years. At the year-and-a-half mark, we flew out of state to spend the Christmas with his religious family. You know, the family that is always twittering, "When are you moving home?" in his ear. Our relationship, which he treasures, is but one of many reasons he gives him.

I'm not religious.

This was judgment time.

I was petrified.

His parents are divorced. I found the time at the mother's house awkward and stressful, especially when undercurrents of parental abandonment broke through the carefully-maintained surface at dinner. The time at the father's was less stressful, as the father's second wife has a hell of a lot less invested in my boyfriend and, to be blunt, is a lot friendlier than the mother. The father is alexithymically neutral. The brother is a chronic partier and at the time was recovering from a bacterial inflammatory condition that can take a year or more to cure and that often leaves its victims chronically depressed and simply feeling like crap until it's cured. The sister is married with, I think, 5 children living in a 3-bedroom row house. This, I found out, was where The Main Event (a.k.a. Christmas dinner) would be held.

The sister's house was a madhouse.

Five kids, one an adult with her own kid, their two parents, the mother, the brother, and me. All crammed around this table that's too big for the room it's in, wedged between a staircase and the Christmas tree. These people are broke - Broke, broke, broke, and they put out a spread of food the likes of which I've never seen. I wasn't even aware that a private individual could purchase a mutton that big.

After having gotten to know the family a little, I was was petrified for the future of their female children. I've seen too many females who were strictly raised and home-schooled in strict religious households who ended up ruining their lives with teenage childbirth, drug and alchohol issues, abusive marriages, and other dramatically bad choices because, once they were set free of their parents, once they had the power to make their own decisions, they had no idea what the world was about, what the repercussions of certain mistakes might be, and no idea how to function independently.

These thoughts were swirling around the back of my head during the Christmas visit, especially regarding my boyfriend's middle neice. Approximately 14, she was confident, well-spoken, comfortable in her own skin, disgusted by our culture's fixation on beauty and thinness (even though she's remarkably thin naturally), and obviously intelligent. My heart was breaking for her, because, as far as my judgmental and paranoid mind could see things, this girl had no chance at all to be anything besides a hyper-religious breeder like her mother.

I just hope that's what she wants, I thought.

At some point after the dinner, during social hour (when I was desperately wishing for booze), my boyfriend's middle neice noticed her little sister showing my boyfriend and I her favorite Barbie. The little one became distracted and wandered off, leaving the Barbie on the table between my boyfriend and I. The middle neice appeared out of nowhere, stepped up between us, bent over at the waist, looked back and forth at each of us with a twinkle in her eyes and whispered to us, intentionally making sure that no one but my boyfriend and I could hear, "Look at this."

She grabbed the Barbie, straightened her out flat with her arms at her sides, threw one arm up over her head, tipped her head to one side, splayed the legs just a little, and tossed her back on the table.

"It's Dead Hooker Barbie!" she whispered, still with the glint. She giggled, looked around to make sure no one but us was paying attention, then scampered away.

(Anyone who's ever seen a CSI-type television show, a true-crime documentary, or movie involving a discarded female body found in an alley, field, etc. should recognize the " classic dead hooker pose" she set the Barbie in. It was instantly recognizable and a bit shocking because, even though I'm a fan of CSI-type and true-crime television, I hadn't yet realized there was such a thing as the "classic dead hooker pose," but there it was, staring me in the face.)

While my boyfriend and I tried to choke back our squeals of laughter and cover our mouths in the universal "Oh, my God!" motion, she shot us another twinkling glance from across the room and then sent her sister over to fetch the Barbie from us.

Well done! I thought.

Clearly this girl is already partially out from underneath her parent's religious thumb, being exposed to things that would give her mother a heart attack. Clearly this girl has the same intelligent and dark sense of humor that my boyfriend and I share, the one that I am convinced has kept me sane during some seriously nasty things I've dealt with over the years. Clearly this girl is a good enough judge of people to be able to spot her own in a crowd, regardless of the face my boyfriend puts on to be sure that he gets along with his family.

"Dead Hooker Barbie" was the flag that told me that this particular girl will be okay, that she'll make it, that she'll be doing and accomplishing anything she sets her sights on in 10 years. If what she wants is to be a hyper-religious breeder, I'll be okay with that, because that will be what she wants, not what someone else wants.

"Dead Hooker Barbie" makes all the difference.

~Riot.Jane

Universality of the Female Experience

Greetings to the Ladies Jane --

While reading a Newsweek article entitled "Tehran or Bust", by Iranian native Hooman Majd, about his visit to the Jamkaran mosque five minutes outside of the town of Qum (Iran's religious capital), I came across the following paragraph regarding the local tradition of dropping written notes into what is effectively a wishing well to ask the Mahdi for assistance:

A tall, slender and handsome young woman in a black chador, with the faintest hint of makeup, furiously scribbled at another counter, oblivious to the fact that she was in the men's section. She folded her note, walked up to the well and dropped it through the grate. "A special favor?" I asked her. She looked at me suspiciously for a moment, and I explained that I was a reporter. "It's private," she said, "but we all have problems, don't we?" She walked away, perhaps skeptical that I had no ulterior motives. Her answer and her demeanor, however, spoke volumes. She was purposeful and had no time for state-imposed gender segregation. Whatever her "problem" was she didn't want to take it to a mullah in Qum who might lecture her on the fine points of Islam or Islamic behavior. (...) And she felt she had a place to go, on a weekday when perhaps her family or husband were at work, to unburden herself.

This paragraph grabbed my attention to the point that I put the magazine down. I've been thinking about the universality of "The Female Experience" ever since. Cross-border, cross-culture, religion-independent, universal truths apply to us all.

"We all have problems, don't we?"

Yes, yes we do.

~Riot.Jane

Beauty = Full?

Let us talk about beauty.

I am beautiful. I am full of face and have eyes that men have fallen head-long into like a chasm of grief and pain and pleasure and have been lost. Forever. I have a mouth full and sweet like a rosebud, just on the cusp of bursting into a full and long flower that men have kissed and nibbled and sighed into. I have full breasts and midnight hair that tumbles down my back. Yes, it’s true, I am beautiful.

In our society beauty can be everything. Ever since I was a girl all around me have commented upon my face, later my body. I have held value because of these things. I have been lost and devoured and used because of these things. I recognize that I am beautiful, but what is that exactly?

I am visually appealing. I am easy to look at. I invoke pleasant feelings in those who glance in my direction. I kill myself slowly a little more every day to live up to the expectations that others have placed upon me and that I have made my own. I starve myself; I fill my body with chemicals in a desperate attempt to become thinner. Diet pills, laxatives, endless diuretics. This is some months. Then there are the months when I am so exhausted and spent that I just eat to fill the hole left behind. I am filled with guilt and pain and I am filled with more guilt. Every morsel is a punishment and I do this to remind myself that I must be beautiful to have worth. I obsess and the ones who love me the most suffer with me.

The funny thing is I do not believe that others must live this standard that has been set for me. I recognize the beauty in others I love so much. Fierce independence, self-assuredness, the ability to survive, spirituality, loyalty, innocence, worldliness, a loving nature, a protective nature; all are things of beauty and make the bearer beyond compare. I even recognize some of these qualities in myself.

Yet…

Yet, in my darkest hours it’s the ugliness in my psyche that haunts me. In my deepest of depths every pill, every morsel withheld, every graze of the razor across my arms and wrists and thighs is a secret message to myself; a message that says “You must do this to be loved.”

It seems boundless, this pit that I have dug for myself, but I have just written this down. I have acknowledged that it happens. This is my admonition, my cry for help, my pact with all of you and with myself to stop this insanity. I will stop this. I will write and maybe even talk and I will stop this.

I want to be free.