The Three Societal Stories that Jesus of Nazareth Ignored; and the Big Story He Tried to Replace Them With
And what if there is no single, all encompassing story?
Trapped Inside a Story
We recently explored the power of story, and how the big stories of money, nations, and religion organize and hold societies together.
It’s no surprise therefore that whoever masters these stories wields tremendous power within a society.
And while we may think we are experiencing reality, most of us are really just trapped within these stories.
Therefore seeing through these stories can be an important part of our spiritual journey and progress.
And do you know who else saw through all of these cultural stories?
Jesus of Nazareth.
Jesus Rejected the Big Three Stories
Jesus wasn’t impressed by the power of Herod or of the Romans. He wasn’t lured by the riches of the wealthy. And he wasn’t impressed by the guys who knew all the ins and outs of his local religion. And this last group I’m referring to, the local religious leaders, they weren’t just wealthy; even better than that, they were also what we’d now call famous.
Jesus was wicked smart, but he saw through the illusions. He saw all of society for what it was—a series of stories to organize humanity. And in seeing through the stories that organize humans, he could see humanity; all it’s absurdity, striving, and suffering.
And Jesus, as smart and as shrewd as he was, could’ve dominated any of those stories. Or all of them.
Jesus had skills: charisma, persuasion, storytelling, wisdom, and a deep understanding of human psychology.1
Can you see Jesus as smart enough to become a wealthy merchant? Or clever enough to achieve a place of power? Did Jesus know the scriptures well enough to secure a role as an expert on religious law?
Of course, and all with relative ease.
That’s what Jesus’s time in the wilderness was all about. Who was Satan but none other than the human ego of Jesus himself—or at least what us Jungians would call the shadow side of Jesus—tempting him towards the things it would be easy for a man of his skills to acquire.
Many of us grew up with the idea that the Gospels were beamed down into the minds of those who wrote the narratives, and are therefore so Divinely inspired as to be a perfect historical account. But of course the only way anyone would’ve known about Jesus’s time in the wilderness would’ve been because he told that story. He shared how he wrestled with himself and his own powers and the decision of what he should do with his life.
Jesus of Nazareth could’ve become anyone he wanted. (Maybe not literally, no, Jesus almost certainly couldn’t have successfully seized the position of Emperor, although it’s fun to think how he might have tried.) But if he’d chosen to, Jesus could’ve easily massed enough power in his lifetime to make it into a proper history book.
Lesser men certainly did.
We might admire many spiritual teachers, but how many of them throughout history passed up the equivalent of Goldman Sachs or the White House to get there? Only a few.
What would Bizarro Jesus Do?
Drinking or stealing or drugs might tempt some people, but once you make it past a certain level of consciousness and implement a life of wisdom it’s power that becomes the true temptation.
Want to rule the world? Just ask yourself, “What would Jesus do…if Jesus hadn’t chosen the higher path.”
And while Jesus was able to set aside the big power stories of humanity, maybe he had an even bigger story of his own.
Jesus’s Big Story
According to most of the historical records we have, he did have an alternative story, and that story starred him as the “one and only” main character who would help usher in a new reign of God.
But what if that’s also a story, created by some of the surviving members of Jesus’s crew in the years following his death?
Why did some streams of Christianity ultimately prevail while others eventually died out?
Because some of those Christian streams had more attractive stories than others.
While I personally prefer the stream that follows the Gospel of Thomas, where the Kingdom of Heaven is a state of mind available to us now if we know how to find it, that stream is difficult to digest and has very little mass appeal.
Most people prefer the story where Jesus methodically planned to get himself killed because it was the only way to keep our angry Dad from the Old Testament—I mean GOD—from burning us alive forever and ever. And as a bonus, everyone who believes in this story gets to live in a big fancy mansion with a solid gold driveway once they die, even if we were mostly jerks while we were alive.
And why are we still so confused about the actual story Jesus was trying to tell?
I think it’s partially because the Gospels were written 2-3 generations after his death, by folks who never actually met him. There’s reason to believe that later apocalypticists misinterpreted and then co-opted part of his message.
The Most Dangerous Story
Apocalypticism is an example of a small local story that eventually got so popular it might still get us all killed. It started out about 2200 years ago and revolved around the idea that the Jewish people just couldn’t catch a break.
Their once powerful Davidic Empire (also a story) had suffered defeat after defeat after exile after occupation. All this defeat and exile and occupation, century after century, required some real imagination on the part of YHWH’s chosen people to make them still feel like they were YHWH’s favorites.
And rather than questioning the rather narrow, low consciousness notion that YHWH loved people born in one country more than people born in another country, they doubled down with the story of Apocalypticism, which is the belief that the reason things are so crummy now is because evil has overrun the world and life sure feels unfair, but don’t worry because any day now the powerful Almighty is going to step on the stage and finally put an end to all of these bad, bad times; and He’s going to defeat all the evil and ultimately drain the swamp, I mean establish a new rule and reign on earth, making everything great again.
And if that tune sounds familiar now you understand why so many low-consciousness American Christians just can’t get enough of this story.
And so the story of Apocalypticism would’ve likely been buried alongside John the Baptist had not the most misunderstood book of the whole Bible, Revelation, been written.
Revelation is full of Apocalypticism. Fast forward a couple millenia and we now have at least a few examples of high ranking US government officials using the book of Revelation to justify pushing us closer to global nuclear annihilation.
Apocalypticism is a story invented by humans that could actually end the human race.
But as mentioned above, Jesus embraced a much simpler story. One about accessing the eternal Divine in the here and now.
As I said earlier I personally prefer this higher consciousness stream of Christianity, which aligns with what we find in the Gospel of Thomas, where the Kingdom of Heaven is a state of mind available to us now if we know how to find it.
I’ll be writing at some point about some evidence that Jesus’s parables were misinterpreted by the canonical gospel writers, which isn’t much of a stretch since even the gospels mention that no one could understand Jesus’s teaching. This stream also aligns with thousands of years of esoteric Christianity, although it has very little mass appeal in the West.
I’ve also found the teachings in the Gospel of Thomas to be like that of Zen Koans; mostly inaccessible except while in a state of non-duality. They often make little sense to the mind, only the heart.
What if There is No Story?
The story of Jesus is difficult to make sense of, even after two millenia of trying.
So that leads us to the question of what’s the real story that best represents the reality that we experience as humans?
The difficult truth, if I can even use that word without contradicting myself, is that the story may change depending on what level of consciousness are are at, as difficult or frustrating as that might seem from our current perspective.
The ultimate story may not be accessible to most humans at our current level of consciousness. As much as I’ve tried, my dog still doesn’t comprehend why it’s necessary for me to leave the house to earn a living so I can pay his mortgage.
And to be honest I found myself a bit destabilized even writing this post.
Maybe Not True, but Still Helpful
We’ll explore all of this more in future posts, but for now I’ll leave you with this…I once had a teacher who said that just because a story isn’t entirely true doesn’t mean it can’t be helpful.
It seems to me that living a life of wisdom, one that allows me to create a base of personal health and stability, is pretty helpful for navigating daily life.
I believe that as I do the work to love and accept myself it allows me to be more loving and accepting of others.
And when I can see myself as a tiny part of a greater humanity that stretches hundreds of thousands of years into the past, and hopefully hundreds of thousands of years into the future, I can begin to loosen the cravings of my ego and challenge the desires of legacy and individuality of my false self.
As hard as we may try to suppress it, there seems to be something insatiable within us that demands to know what the story is. I have further ideas and resources on this that I’ll share soon that you may find helpful.
And perhaps even if we haven’t yet discovered ultimate truth, it doesn’t mean we can’t find helpful stories to light our way.
More to come…
Are there any Big Stories you’re now able to see for the first time? Let us all know in the comments.
Thanks for reading and have an awesome week!! ❤️
Some might argue that we can’t know what the human personality of Jesus of Nazareth was truly like. I’d argue that while we can never know any historical figure perfectly, we do have plenty of evidence that the personality of Jesus was a very powerful individual. We have no accounts showing him to be weak, dull, or hesitant. He is consistently shown as wise, intuitive, and in-charge across our all of surviving accounts, both in the canonical gospels as well as the non-canonical records.