looking for Jesus

"[my husband and children] are the best thing that ever happened to me, besides knowing Jesus!!"

(a status update on Facebook of my H.S. prom date)

Somewhere along the line, Jesus lost me. Or maybe I lost him. Regardless, I'm not sure that I get the whole "knowing Jesus" thing. I'm pretty sure I don't know him, but I'm also pretty sure that I wouldn't mind knowing him, though I'm not sure if I think of this in the same way as many of my contemporaries. I'd like to follow Jesus around the streets of an inner-city, take his lead when a beggar asks for some spare change. I'd like to brew a batch of beer with the guy, see if he preferred more or fewer hops for the duration of the boil or if he'd save them for the last five minutes. I'd like to have Jesus sit in on a class of mine and give some feedback, and maybe even show up for our conference. Although, just like anyone else, he'd have to contribute a paper -- and I wonder what that would be about. (What Vexation and Venture would Jesus propose?)

Lately I've been collecting a variety of status update quotes on Facebook, giving me reasons to quit or stay subscribed to this "social network." Among them have been various statements that either affirm or question my choice of network "friends". An acquaintance from high school whose status describes being able to fire off his 50 caliber machine gun, followed by "God bless America! Woot woot!" is one of those question marks. A variety of references to Jesus, Church, Blessings, etc. give me less pause, but also gives me a peek into others' psyches that I never really asked about nor imagined. For example, placing the "besides knowing Jesus" as a qualifier for the blessings of having a loving family on a status update strikes me as . . . something. It's more than odd to me, it's disparate. In some of my research about science misconceptions, we see learners mixing up the ontologies of concepts -- in other words they mischaracterize a certain thing with the wrong class or type. If, for example, you think of "heat" as a kind of material or goo -- some kind of matter -- then you can easily misconceive and mispredict outcomes of some heating process. But it's easy to miscategorize "heat," because we talk about its "flow," and there's so many other material things that we use to relate to heat. So, when someone compares "knowing Jesus" to the occurrence of a loving family, I think that they must also predict that a ceramic mug with coffee will be better insulated than a foam mug. They seem to be lumping multiple ideas into the same bins. I don't know what to do with that when it comes to Jesus.

But -- and this is the big "but" -- I myself don't really know what Jesus is. I understood it better when I was a 10-year-old altar boy, I suppose. Since then, I've gone back and forth about Jesus and any deity in general. In my youth my dad had a record of the Oak Ridge Boys with the song, "Rhythm Guitar," in which the chorus suggests:

Nobody wants to play rhythm guitar behind Jesus

Everybody just wants to be the lead singer in the band

I never really got that, because if Jesus ever wanted to be a part of my band, I'd gladly welcome him and let him play or sing whatever he wanted. I'd happily play piano behind him. Similarly, if he showed up on a Tuesday night (curling league night), I'd happily let him step in, and we'd go out for beers after.

My best impression of the concept of Jesus comes from "Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff" by Christopher Moore. There he was someone who was fallible, lovable, generous, and himself trying to figure shit out. I also took a class in college on the New Testament, which did wonders for me and my sense of cultural relativity.* Since that time and since a lot of reflection, I've figured that Jesus was a good guy, a good friend, and a social activist. In this sense, I'd like to be more like Jesus. If he gave money to that guy on the street corner, I'd probably do the same. Moreover, I would love to have him as a keynote speaker for some event on social or scholar activism.

I guess I should envy those who have so "found Jesus" -- they have some things figured out and have a guide for how to think about the world's problems and what to do next. I'd stand in line except for the fact that people have killed, maimed, secluded, segregated, and ignored, all in the name of Jesus. If I were Jesus, I'd be pissed. And maybe that's my own best evidence that Jesus, the spiritual side, does exist: He is too mad at us and too human to pay attention to it all anymore.

So, Jesus, if you're reading, feel free to comment below. Or, if you have your own blog (there's too many of them out there for me to figure out which one you're writing), please just send me the link. Stop by when you have a chance. We'll have a beer.

_____

*From the perspective of a cultural anthropologist, Jesus was not so much God's creation as he was society's, so that when he asked the apostle's, "Who do you say that I am," he was sincerely asking for the answer, an identity as given to him by that culture. For Peter to say, "You're the Messiah," should have been quite the 'oh shit' moment. Quite the contrast to how Fr. Polsinski described it from the lectern when I was growing up.