I Wanted to Write About Jesus, But…
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I Wanted to Write About Jesus, But…
By Jane Tawel
August 7, 2023
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I wanted to write about Jesus, but….
I wanted to write something about Jesus,
but then I kept asking myself, “Which Jesus would that be?”
I still think a lot about this person,
known to history only by the name “Yeshua”,
and maybe you have heard about him,
and later, people added on the title, “Christ”,
and I think about that,
even though I don’t think about him the same way I used to any more.
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I no longer wanted to write about
the Jesus that people had invented from their need for a new god,
because they didn’t like the Jew’s God (or the Jews).
And I no longer wanted to write about a Jesus that died,
so that I never had to face what was expected of me,
by that same Jesus, expected of me in order to live the right way.
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I didn’t want to write about a Jesus that wasn’t human at all,
but whose myth conspired and morphed
into weapons used by millennia of power-hungry people.
I didn’t want to write about a Jesus who came not to heal the broken,
but one who oppressed the very ones Jesus said he loved;
the weak, and poor, and judged, and hungry,
the very ones he said he came to save from oppression and greed.
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I didn’t want to write about the Jesus who
supported gas chambers or inquisitions
or “detention centers” in places like Guantanamo Bay,
or greedy, polluting pipelines on sacred land.
And I didn’t want to write about the Jesus,
that was hidden away in people’s hearts,
