There have been a lot of important figures in history, to be sure, but imagine being so famous some people don’t believe you ever existed. Your life changed how we have chosen to count the passing years for two millennia. People turned you into a demigod, but your loudest followers are so far from your original message that on the other side, your name is now a side smirk for all sorts of snide jokes.

Well, what would Jesus do?

Grabbing hands and screaming pleas for your time and love and healing and grace from every corner of the world, from now to probably the End of All Time. Your name invoked in hate and violence and destruction and murder.

Having two selves- the person everyone expects you to be, the path that cannot ever be deviated, the Living Example, and the actual man, full of passion and rage and sensuality and grace and laughter.

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I used to be so smug, one of those people who couldn’t wait to tell people that Christmas wasn’t really Jesus’s birthday. That the whole immaculate conception story was a centuries old Egyptian ripoff. Like that proved something, like it invalidated anything.

Yeshua will get to you, though. His energy is like a wildfire. Even as an atheist, “Footprints in the Sand” made me sob uncontrollably. There is something about that level of Divine Energy that if you embrace it with no arrogance, no pretense, no jaded overeducation or smug skepticism, it will change your entire soul.

I’ve studied a lot of the Bible but not all, because let’s be honest- it’s painful to wade through at times. I prefer the KJV to the NIV because I think the NIV is too watered down, yet another translation of a translation of a translation.

But KJV is dense, archaic. Like swimming in mud. It gets tiresome.

Also: is it not interesting that Aramaic no longer exists? Of all the languages to lose.

I actually really like Psalm, too- there is so much agonized wailing at what a sadist the Universe is, and it’s so comforting. Spiritual journeys are so lonely and soul-rending at times, and it is a salve to hear someone say the words you’ve been wrestling with in the dark.

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I believe The Crusades weren’t just about converting the heathens- it was also about destroying anyone who wasn’t on Peter’s side of history. Peter the rock, the fool, the loudmouth, the bully, the coward. Jesus is so over Peter’s shit sooo often in the Bible, which is why it is such a tragedy that he’s the one who got to control the narrative after his murder.

Peter is much more evil to me than Judas ever was. I agree with the historical theory that Judas was making a power play when he gave up Jesus’s location, thinking it would start a holy war. He was sure it would finally show publicly the things they’d all seen privately, that it would give greater glory to the teacher he was so proud of.

This is a man who had just recently witnessed his mentor braiding a whip by hand, then using it to attack an entire temple of people in a blind rage. He had no reason to believe that Jesus would just give up, agree to suffer a death of unimaginable terror, humiliation, and agony.

I don’t know what any of you know about crucifixion, but it’s a nasty, vile, brutal death. Not only are you nailed to the wood, the position of your body causes you to slowly suffocate. The Romans added a few extra inches in the give of the nails so people could wriggle up to gasp for air for hours, for days. To prolong the agony.

No one in their right mind would assume a person who they believed could easily get himself out of trouble would willingly sacrifice himself to this kind of death.

On the other hand, Peter is a backwoods, bitter, short-tempered, illiterate fisherman, later in his years than some of the others, and very set in his misogynistic, closed off, judgmental ways. He hates Mary and doesn’t make a secret of it, and is the one that caused her to flee for her life. He can’t even admit he knows Jesus in a moment when owning his faith was of paramount importance. When he was told to his face that he’d be the neutered bull he always had been.

And then he asked to be crucified upside down like a groveling ass bitch, too, because he wasn’t worthy of the same death as his teacher.

And he wasn’t.

Peter is the worst because he is insidious, secret, harmful with the pretense of helping. Popular Christianity as it is today is Peter’s church, to be sure. Joel Osteen and Billy Graham are Peter’s perfect preachers.

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I love but am not sure of the theory that Pontius Pilate had Jesus drugged and faked his death so he could escape with his wife. So they could start a resurrection rumor, something else to be stolen from an older faith, from a place Jesus likely visited and studied in.

But I also believe that Jesus is one of the oldest souls of all time, and that lifetime was to show people what can be possible when you have gratitude and grace. I believe he has the brightest soul in the Universe, and wanted people to understand that there is life after death. What true nirvana looks like.

A simple political martyr, son of a carpenter from Nazareth, does not change the entire line of time. Something happened.

I also think his life also had larger Universal implications through his relationship with Mary Magdalene, one of the secret power players of spirituality, who I am absolutely obsessed with on every level, like a sickness.

I am a fan of the generally accepted theory that Mary Magdalene is actually Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, who you may recall is the one who made Jesus cry the one of only two times mentioned in the gospels, when he didn’t come to heal her brother and she fell to his knees to ask why.

The same woman who anointed his feet with spikenard oil and took down her hair in front of him, which was an enormous scandal considering the fact that women of that time shielded their hair from any man but their husband. Some still do.

The same woman who was the first person to see his (possibly) resurrected self. Or perhaps the self that was coming to insist that they run for their lives. Start all over as ghosts.

It certainly doesn’t seem to be fitting with what I know about Jesus that he would suddenly just give up, die so willingly. Yeshua is very much like the element of air- invisible power. A unseen force that can tear the roof off of someone’s house. And if you ever can see the rage in the air headed towards you, you will be lucky to live through the leveling.

To quit? It seems strange.

How many secrets are buried in the Bible? Newton (yes, that one) spent the last years of his life obsessively trying to decode it, sure there was a hidden message.

When you read it deeply and with reverence, it’s hard not to feel like you are reading a cipher full of misdirection. All the most important women in the New Testament named Mary. All the shady characters called Simon. The Lost Years of Jesus. (He wasn’t really lost, just being found elsewhere, but.)

I cannot stop this obsession, and I don’t want to. Once I take a break from constantly spending money, I’m going to buy some more Biblical research books.

Clarity.

I am who I am, entirely.