There's a line from Brian Sanderson's novel Oathbringer I rather like: "One can believe in a story without believing it happened." It's a powerful statement that holds a lot of truth. I can't count the number of stories I've read that have deeply affected me over the years, many shaping the very person I am today because of how much I believed in it and its message. The story of Jesus is no different. While I believe much of the story of Jesus is true, I'm also ok if it's not because of how it inspires me to think and act, along with the hope it instills and the support of its teachings designed to help make us more loving to all of creation, even if we're not always loved back by it in return.
As I wrote on Christmas (I definitely like repeating myself):
When I read the bible, what I see is the story of a people who, on the one hand, are struggling with the world they live in, full of greed, oppression, and violence, yet dreaming of a world that's filled with equality, abundance, and peace. It's a story of historical progress towards something better and the successes and failures that a particular people found worth telling and remembering. And Jesus himself embodies the spirit of this dream. His name means "God liberates" or "God is liberation." His message was destined to be revolutionary, as Mary proclaims in Luke 1:52-53, "He pulls down the mighty from their thrones and raises up the humble. He fills the hungry with good things and he leaves the rich with nothing." His birth was announced to poor workers (shepherds), not the wealthy or kings. His life was spent trying to bring a new and more egalitarian world into being through acts like healing the sick, feeding the hungry, opposing economic exploitation, chastising the rich and distributing their wealth to those in need, and working to bring those on the margins back into the heart of the community. He opposed Roman imperialism, religious hypocrisy, persecution, and violence. He spoke of compassion, forgiveness, universal kinship, and loving our neighbours as ourselves, making concern for others the entry fee to the kingdom of heaven. And he did all of this because he was inspired by universal love and compassion for the human condition.
It's a dream that I share, and just as this revolutionary spirit helped guide the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt, I believe it'll also help guide all of us out of the bondage of our current system that's idolized and globalized greed, oppression, and violence. And for me, Christ is a living symbol of that spirit.
That spirit is also present in many other places, like social and political movements and monasteries—the former reflecting the active aspects of revolution and the latter reflecting the contemplative aspects and desired outcomes of equality and community. I think Ernesto Cardenal touches upon these contradictions and their synthesis when he wrote In Cuba:
At breakfast some Marxists asked me about our community at Solentiname. I explained that we try to lead a life in common, with no "thine" or "mine," a life of voluntary poverty—free from the desire for money and from the demands of a society of consumption. We live in brotherly union, all working for the community. We are all equal. And then I stopped. I understood that what may seem very novel in the capitalistic world is a daily reality in Cuba. (I couldn't talk to them about prayer because it would be misinterpreted, and I wouldn’t know how to explain mystic union to people who don't believe in God.) I was afraid that they were going to ask me what need there is for such communities in a socialist society. At that moment I would not have known what to say.
I kept thinking of the question that the young Marxists might have asked me. It seems to me that in a perfect socialist society it would not be necessary to "flee from the world" in order to live the Gospel. In any case, the material life of those communities would be the same as that of all the others. And I remembered what St. John Chrysostom said (in a letter to a rich man): "If cities were Christian, monasteries would be unnecessary."
For me, God is love. God liberates. God is the spirit of revolution. And Christ loves. Christ is a liberator. Christ is a revolutionary. And as Marcus Borg wrote, Christ "revealed what can be seen of God in a human life" through his words and actions. So I consider myself Christian because I follow Christ's example—not the Christianity of imperialism, wealth, white supremacy, etc., but the revolutionary Christianity of Jesus and the liberation of the poor and oppressed.
All that said, God is also the ground of being and the laws of nature underlying the causal relationships present throughout the universe—i.e., mental and physical actions and results, causes and effects, etc. And historical materialism is simply the study of the material causes and conditions that shape human society and the ways we're encouraged (and forcefully prodded) to think and live, as well as who benefits from and suffers under those social relations. Here, Jesus is clearly on the side of making those social relations egalitarian and challenging the authority of exploitative classes, while his story emphasizes the ways in which God works with us and through us if we truly know and embody love.
There are undoubtedly mystical and supranatural elements to his story that point towards something that lies beyond our material world — to what we call God, transcendence, ultimate reality, the divine, the unconditioned, etc. — and our ability to achieve union with the divine, from his contemplative and intimate connection with God and frequent times of solitary prayer to the miracles he performed such as walking on water, healing the sick, multiplying food for the hungry, and raising the dead, including his own resurrection after being executed by the state in a method reserved for those who opposed the authority of Rome in some shape or form. His own resurrection story may have been literal or simply expressing the resurrection of what he lived and died for in the lives of those who carried on his message, but many seem to miss his mission here on earth and the way he represents God manifest in human form, acting within history. As David Inczauskis, SJ writes, "Many Christians, jumping straight to spiritual reality, transcendence, and the afterlife, forget that God reveals in matter, in this world, in history. They look to the sky for a God who came to earth." Whichever way we may choose to view the resurrection narrative, whether as history or myth, the story of Jesus is ultimately the story of a human being embodying the presence of the divine on earth who bridges the gap between the transcendent and the concrete by centering their spiritual message on how we treat one another (particularly the poor and marginalized), and hence the rift between humanity and itself created by our tendency to, in the words of Feuerbach, "suppose the essence of nature outside nature, the essence of humanity outside humanity, the essence of thought outside the act of thinking."
Jesus' life and teachings stress unequivocally that our beliefs and convictions in a 'heavenly kin-dom' should be reflected in our actions; and our actions shouldn't cause harm, but act as seeds for happiness and liberation. That to me is what matters most. Because whatever happens after this life is over, if we live righteously right here and now, then not only will this world be left a little better than we found it after we're gone, but we've also served to store up treasure in heaven.
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