Jesus taught: “The kingdom is at hand.”
(Mk. 1.15) Christians believe: “Jesus is risen.” Therefore, Christian belief is
not Jesus’ teaching. Why not? And what is the kingdom?
To prepare for the kingdom, people had
to “repent and believe the good news” (Mk. 1. 15), to change their lives and to
accept that a global change was imminent. Thus, for human beings, the kingdom
meant a new way of seeing things and a new way of relating to each other. It
meant both a new consciousness and a new society.
Jesus inherited the belief that God
would initiate the new consciousness and the new society. He came to believe
that God would act when he, Jesus, had suffered vicariously for Israel. When his
impalement had resulted not in the kingdom but in his death and burial, his
disciples believed that he had somehow returned to them. Paul who came to share
their belief taught that Jesus had returned in a spiritual body. The
Evangelists, believing that the “resurrection” had been real, described it as if
it had been physical although the disciples might, like modern Evangelicals,
have experienced the risen Jesus as an inner certainty, not as a tangible
person. Thus, three questionable concepts, divine intervention, vicarious
suffering and resurrection, whether spiritual or physical, transformed Jesus’
teaching into Christian belief.
A new consciousness can be approached
through meditation. A new society can be approached through revolution.
Therefore, Jesus’ teaching is fulfilled not by Christianity but by Buddhism and
Marxism.
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