Jesus

We must remember that Jesus was a brown-skinned Middle Eastern Jew who defied the power structure of the Romans and the Pharisees (a terrorist?). He grew up in the household of a carpenter. He lived and chose his lieutenants from among the common folk. 

Whether he was divine or not is less important than that he lived among and understood human beings with wisdom beyond his age. Independent of issues of resurrection and redemption, he left enduring lessons of the importance of love and the difficulty and rewards of loving.

Did he know that his teachings would fragment into Catholics, Protestants, Calvinists, Lutherans, Baptists, storefront churches and on and on? And that they would come to mistrust and even hate one another? Did he know that dogma would obscure true human need? Did he know that some would claim to be “the one true’” or “the chosen”? Did he know that church would become mega church and mega bureaucracy? 

I don’t know the answers. But I do think he knew that the love he taught could not be extinguished, and that that’s where the divine and the human meet.