Ok, my family and I were in Church this morning and I couldn’t help but think of a series of podcasts that I have been listening to lately.
The podcasts are available from Stanford University (see iTunesU at the iTunes Store for free downloads) and are called the Historical Jesus by Professor Thomas Sheehan (he’s very interesting to listen to so I highly recommend this series of lectures). Over the last 15 years or so, I’ve actually followed a bunch of the research into the historical data over Jesus’s actions, stories, and words so me listening to this isn’t as out of the blue as it might seem.
In my wondering thoughts, it occurred to me that in the centuries that it’s taken the many different groups to create the widely inconsistent myth that has become Jesus, that the religious institutions have overlooked perhaps the biggest of his (Jesus’) teachings. As most of the historians who’ve covered this topic seem to agree, Jesus (or more accurately Yeshua) primarily taught inclusion. This meant inclusion of all including those who society would like to exclude; those who parts of society would like to exclude; those who groups in society would like to exclude.
Quick aside: it seems based on my listening to this podcast that one of his other main teaching themes was about the “Kingdom of God on Earth” which centered on living life as if we were with God now – “do unto others…”. A subtext to that also seemed to be that God did not need our attention but rather we needed his which was a big change from other deities of the time who required constant worship. Of course, we’ve totally ignored this last bit.
Instead, these religious institutions have locked onto parts of the myth that are not truly part of history (as generally agreed upon by historians) such as whether the end of the world is near and we need to prepare (apocalyptic teachings) or resurrection or whether Jesus is the son of God. Again, all of these were added later by people/groups who wanted to build up the mythos of Jesus rather than report accurately on the history of Jesus.
I’m not saying that running through these mythos elements are either good or bad. Mythos as separated from the actual history is fine. The mythos elements are fabulous teaching tools, in fact.
My big issue, point of this post, is that the Church’s and religious institutions have missed (or maybe more accurately, way under utilize) maybe the one key element that is from history and also fits wonderfully into the mythos. Include all. Don’t exclude anyone!