Jesus: Reimagining Christianity

If someone were to ask me, “What’s your relationship with Jesus?” I’d probably laugh and say, “It’s complicated.” And honestly, I suspect I’m not the only one. For many of us who have wandered beyond the fences of evangelical orthodoxy, the figure of Jesus is not so easily defined, not so easily claimed. But still, he lingers. There’s something about him—some persistent gravity—that keeps drawing us back. And maybe that’s the mystery.

Do I believe Jesus existed? Yes, I do. I believe there was a man named Jesus of Nazareth—a mystic, a teacher, an itinerant preacher who walked the hills of what was then called Palestine. But I don’t think he fit cleanly into the categories the Church later imposed on him. He wasn’t born into a system that had the conceptual framework for what he carried. His teachings, his presence, his vision—they all seem radically ahead of their time, even transcendent of time altogether. He spoke in metaphors, in paradoxes, in symbols. Not because he was trying to confuse people, but because the truths he embodied couldn’t be captured by literalism or dogma.

Sometimes I imagine him journeying eastward in his so-called "silent years," perhaps traveling with traders or spiritual seekers. I find it entirely plausible that he encountered Eastern mystics, sages who were exploring the same eternal questions from different cultural angles. Perhaps it was there that he deepened his awareness of union with the divine, of the illusory self, of the inner light. Whether or not history will ever confirm it, the idea resonates with something deep inside me. It gives me a Jesus who wasn’t a closed theological system but an awakened soul, a man who remembered who he really was—and by extension, who we really are.

And that, to me, is the crux. Jesus didn’t come to make us grovel or fear the fires of divine punishment. He came, I believe, to wake us up from our forgetfulness. The forgetfulness of our divine origin, our shared spark of the cosmic Parent. He came to pull back the veil, not impose a new one. His words were never about exclusion, but expansion—about going beyond tribe, temple, or tradition and realizing that the kingdom of God was within us all.

So what do I make of the cross? Of the resurrection? I don’t need Jesus to be a substitutionary sacrifice for my sins to believe that his life and death had power. The idea that he died to satisfy God’s wrath always struck me as the theological version of cosmic child abuse—untenable, unjust, and deeply misaligned with the Jesus I sense behind the veil of dogma. What if, instead, the crucifixion reveals something about us—our fear of change, our violent reaction to divine truth—rather than about God’s character? What if the resurrection isn’t about biology, but metaphysics—a symbol of transformation, transcendence, and the soul’s ability to rise beyond even death?

In this sense, I find it meaningful to believe that Jesus did ascend—not in some literal way into the sky, but into a higher vibrational reality. That he exists now in a more ethereal dimension, as a spiritual helper to those attuned to him. Like other enlightened beings in various traditions—Buddha, Krishna, or even the bodhisattvas of Mahayana Buddhism—Jesus might be present to guide, inspire, and awaken. You don’t have to call him “Savior” in the penal substitutionary sense to be blessed by his presence. You just have to be open.

But here’s where things get messy. Has evangelicalism ruined Jesus for people like me? Has orthodoxy hijacked the man and the myth so thoroughly that what remains is a hollow caricature of control, fear, and exclusion? I think for many, the answer is yes. The Jesus they’ve heard about in church is too small, too angry, too tribal. And too many of us were told that unless we subscribed to this narrow vision—complete with hellfire and legalistic hoops—we were damned.

So the question becomes: Can we take him back?

Can we reclaim the mystic Jesus, the cosmic Christ, the wisdom teacher who pointed not to himself as the object of worship but to the divine within us all? Can we disentangle the man from the myth—not to destroy the myth, but to redeem it, to let it breathe again? I believe we can. I believe we must. Because buried beneath centuries of theological scaffolding is a spiritual revolutionary who whispered truths that the institutions couldn’t contain. He told us we were light. He told us we were gods. He told us the kingdom wasn’t somewhere else, someday, but here and now.

So yes, my relationship with Jesus is complicated. It’s layered, nonlinear, full of both reverence and rebellion. But I still walk with him—not behind him as a sheep, but beside him as a fellow soul trying to remember. Trying to wake up. And if that makes me a heretic in some eyes, so be it. I’d rather be called a heretic with a living connection than a saint with a dead creed.

In the end, I believe Jesus still matters—not because he fits into any box, but because he breaks them. And maybe that’s the best kind of relationship: not tidy, not tamed, but transformative.