I wrote a little while back on Facebook about how the older I get, the more faith becomes important for me. Some really great questions were brought up in the comments. Those questions were also answered, but nonetheless, they have been on my mind ever since.
A few years ago, I wrote an article titled, “The Sacrifice of Jesus in a Non-Religious Perspective.” It was an article that meant quite a bit to me because it was Jesus, or more specifically, the study of Jesus, that made faith important to me. A bit of a background.
I grew up in a religious household. It was a large portion of our lives, and being the type of person I am, I studied Christianity a great deal by reading through the Bible at a young age, and reading through libraries of literature on Christianity. I would even read multiple translations of the Bible just because.
Then a movie called Stigmata came out, and it introduced me to the Gnostic Gospels, specifically the Gospel of Thomas. Then we got the internet, so a whole new world of resources became available. Coupled with an anger I had, I ended up becoming an atheist. In particular, I became what I would categorize as a militant atheist, or what is now often labeled, a New Atheist.
My thirst for learning about religion didn’t change, but I had the belief that I knew all about Christianity, and I could see it for what it really was. I also became a proponent for the Jesus myth, and actively argued that Jesus didn’t exist.
But I was a teenager. And I was wrong. The thing with the Jesus myth idea is that, at least for me, was that the more I continued studying it, the more it fell apart. And the more I studied it, the more I found out that there was a whole vast array of information about religion I didn’t know. I didn’t even have a solid grasp on Christianity. I had only scratched the surface.
Eventually, the anger I was harboring also dissipated. Which allowed me to look at religion through new eyes. It helped get rid of some of the biases that I had.
My main focus when it came to religion though, was largely the life of Jesus. I had went from being someone who was convinced that Jesus didn’t exist, to a proponent of the historical Jesus. In college, I even spent a semester just doing the background work to debunk the Jesus myth by going through the arguments often posed. My resulting paper was the size of a small book.
All of this led me to look at Jesus from not only a faith-based perspective, but also from a secular perspective. Mainly because Jesus, whether one views him from the Christian perspective, that he is the Son of God, or not, this historical figure had a massive impact on the world. Jesus, and Christianity, changed the course of history. We can’t talk about Western history without talking about Christianity. World history is also intrinsically tied to Christianity, at least since the last thousand years or so.
So disregarding Jesus wasn’t an option for me. Granted, from a historical perspective, there are things that can’t be proven. The miracles can’t be proven through the historical method, and if I’m writing a purely historical work on Jesus, I’m not going to touch them. However, they also can’t be disproven. I’m fine to leave that up to faith.
But there are things we can say from a historical perspective, such as points about his teaching, which was largely one of love and acceptance. And we can say that Jesus made an ultimate sacrifice for what he believed to be right.
For an atheist, or someone who doesn’t
subscribe to Christianity, I do believe that the life of Jesus can
still be of importance. I believe that one can strip him of the
miracles, and look at his overall teaching and find some merit to it.
One may find things they disagree with, but honestly, that’s going to
be true for any figure.
So if one can view Jesus from a
secular perspective, and can gain something of importance from that,
can the religion he is directly responsible for also have value to an
atheist? I’m going to say yes. This is a question that I will be
looking at over the next few months.