My Hero

As I said earlier, I think the Bible is a work of art, part poetry, part narrative. As in any great narrative, there are characters, and, likewise heroes. I think that, at least in western tradition, there is probably no more valuable a hero than Jesus Christ.

My take on Christ is that the Man Jesus lived and taught and was crucified. For whatever reason, then, mankind was ready to take this story of this man Jesus and turn it into the story of Christ, he who "was of the spirit" or "not of the world." The story of someone who said that he must die to his body to live fully as spirit.

I think this is everyone's story, everyone's struggle. Over and over again in our lives we are asked to die to our body, to make some choice that does not seem to have our immediate, earthly needs in mind. And I am not talking just about the 30 year-old firemen of the world who rush into burning buildings to save 85 year-old women. Why risk another fifty years of life to save a life that could easily die tomorrow of natural causes? I am also talking about something so simple as leaving a job you have held for twenty years that pays every bill and your insurance and your retirement because you want to go back to school to learn to write music.

We all define safety in our own ways, and at some point we are asked to make a choice that, in the immediate moment, puts this safety at risk. We put this safety at risk, usually, because we say, "We have to be ourselves," or "It just felt like what I had to do." This is the spirit talking. But the spirit offers no guarantees beyond a direction. It is that hand that points, it cannot paint a picture of where you will be or how you will get there, it can only point.

And so we are all Christ at one time or another. And thus we created the story after 300 some odd years and then wrote it down once we'd got it right. Because we needed it, just like we've needed all art, which reduces life down to its essence, so we can see it clearly, stripped of dull extraneous stuff, and remember again why the journey is worth it.