Christianity Without God

 The following was posted today (28 January 2010) on AlterNet by fellow blogger,  "christianhumanist"
I think that it is very good, and am re-posting it here, without change or addendum:

Christianity Without God   by christianhumanist

There is no serious doubt among contemporary historians regardless of their religious faith that Jesus was a real person who lived in Palestine in the First Century. Historians agree that Jesus was an itinerant Jewish teacher who traveled and taught throughout Palestine, gathering disciples around him through the force of his personality and the compelling nature of his message. There is general agreement that Jesus was perceived by the Roman occupiers of Palestine as a dangerous religious radical and a disturber of the peace in consequence of which he was arrested by the local authorities and summarily executed by the Romans by public crucifixion, the standard method used by the Romans to deal with political troublemakers.



There is considerable disagreement among historians about how much of the New Testament record can be relied upon as history in the ordinary sense in which we understand history, given the fact that a fairly long time passed from the days in which Jesus lived and taught in Palestine until the traditional stories about him and his teachings began to be collected from the oral tradition and eventually acquired their present form as the gospels of the New Testament.



It is clear from the surviving historical record that something happened following the crucifixion of Jesus that led his followers to continue his message and teachings. When their leader was arrested and executed by the Roman authorities Jesus’ followers were discouraged, disappointed and frightened. They feared for their safety as they contemplated the fact that they too might be arrested and executed. They abandoned Jesus to his fate and ran. However sometime after his arrest and crucifixion, the crushing sense of disappointment, frustration and defeat the disciples experienced at the death of their leader suddenly gave way in the face of what is called “the Easter Event.”



That “something” that “happened” after the crucifixion is described in the Gospels in mythological terms as Resurrection. We have learned to demythologize these accounts so that we can understand and interpret their significance to us. Once we get beyond the mythological language, it is clear that the disciples had a life-transforming experience that resulted in a re-ordering of their priorities and a new way of thinking about what was seriously important that led to their commitment to carry on with Jesus’ teachings.



They interpreted this life-transforming experience to mean that the spirit of Jesus did not die with him but was alive in them challenging them to continue what he had started. It was a life-transforming awareness. They understood this to mean two things: they were to model their lives after his life and they were to carry on his teaching.



Once we have worked our way through the mythological and theological baggage that has accumulated through the ages, we are left with a fundamentally important truth that those who met this itinerant teacher and who heard his teaching were sufficiently captivated by his personality and his message that they were compelled to follow him and his teaching. At its core, being a “Christian” means exactly the same thing for us as it meant to his first disciples: consciously choosing to be a follower of Jesus and his teachings. It does not necessarily involve a belief in gods so much as it involves commitment to the values of Jesus. It means to live as Jesus lived and to teach as he taught, to honor truth and show compassion, to stand with the victims of this world against their oppressors, to stand with the weak and the powerless against the abusers and the comfortably powerful, and to maintain one’s integrity no matter the cost. In short being a follower of Jesus meant then and now to be faithful to the spirit of Jesus and his teachings.