I once read a good book entitled "What Jesus Meant" by Garry Wills. I was enchanted by Garry Wills candor and open faith, poignant to me as a disillusioned but hopeful christian mystic. In the book, Wills expounds on various points Jesus made and puts his words into both spiritual and historical context--this kind of academic approach to the New Testament can certainly come in handy when reading a particularly vague or confusing passage, such as Jesus' statement that he did not come to bring peace to the world, but a sword. (Matthew 10:34) (A very loaded statement to be sure...and one that strikes terror into the hearts of most theology teachers at your average catholic high-school. Trust me, I know.) Wills' book was a good read, but it left me with a question that had already been growing in my mind. Are we missing something essential about Christ?
Modern Christianity seems to focus very much on Christ as a kind of two-dimensional savior. His life, death, and resurrection--this is the mantra often repeated by those of the evangelical lot. But isn't there more to Christ than that? If Christ is God manifest, in whatever way you prefer to look at it, then that same complexity that is inherent within the Divine Mind or Ultimate Reality should be manifest within the Christ. True, Christ may have appeared as a man, but what is he now? Is even a he? Does the personality of Jesus of Nazareth still exist, or is Christ now something completely different? Can Christ be experienced as a feeling? I don't want to go as far as to say Christ could be a "concept". This to me is the same over-simplification of Christ that Modern Day Christianity is guilty of. I am rather saying that while the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth is an amazing epic of spiritual enlightenment, perhaps in this day and age we should focus less on the "Jesus" and more on the "Christ"...that is, the Divine, Eternal nature of Jesus. Perhaps this is what many christians refer to as the Holy Spirit...but the Holy Spirit, of all the different parts of the Trinity, is the least understood and the most separate...we talk often of the unity of the Son and the Father, but what about the unity of the Son and the Spirit?
