Questions about Christology

Well I am continuing in my struggle with liberal christianity, no real suprise there right. This past week I had the opportunity to speak with a liberal christian that I highly respect and value as a friend. In the course of our conversation Christology came up. For those of you that don't know Christology is the study of Jesus as God (thats the short of it.) I had grown up with the automatic understanding of Jesus being God, I was a classical trinitarian and loved being it. However as I critically examined that facet of my religious belifes I found that Jesus being divine didn't hold up to close scrutiny. The Roman government didn't kill people for claiming that they were divine, they killed people who threatened the stability of the Empire. Also I began to doubt the "Jesus died for the forgiveness of sins" concept. This is the most closely related peice of doctrine for why Jesus needs to be divine. If Jesus does "save us from our sins" than there are a lot of sins that he either isn't correcting or just chooses to ignore. Not to mention what is a sin changes with each generation within the church. I also have come to belive that Jesus was fully Jewish, now what does that mean? Quite simply it means that he wasn't trying to start a new religion and that he never intended for a convoluted idea like the trinity to come into exsistence. For Jesus there was only one GOD the GOD of Isreal. All of these Ideas have weighed heavily upon my conception of the Divine and whether or not Jesus is apart of that. Because of my tradition in evangelical/fundamental groups my belife system needed to make sense and it wasn't. Any way the short of that part of the story is that I pretty much don't need Jesus to be divine and as such generally don't belive it.

Going back to the origional conversation now that you know where I stand I asked my friend to please explain to me the need for Liberal christianity to keep a divine Jesus. The main historical need for a divine Jesus is that Jesus is divine so his death can atone for a persons (or communities) sin. Most (I would say 95%) of the liberal christians that I know don't belive that. So when I pointed the question at my friend he did the best he could to explain it to me. The main convincing point for his own belife is a personal revalatory experience. While this is great for him and I will support him in his own belief, it does nothing to convince me. The problem for me comes into the fact that in liberal christianity you still have to use the language of a divine Jesus (and even a saving from sin Jesus) even if you don't belive in it. I don't understand this even if it is a "historical tie" with the christian past. It is all well and good but poses for me no real solid reason for continuing in out moded beliefs.

I am continuing to explore this and what it means to be a liberl christian and as I do I find myself drifting more and more toward Unitarian Universalism (UU) and religious humanism. In my belief system you are better off being a "born again" conservative christian or a Unitarian. This may seem like opposite ends of the spectrum (and in some ways they are) but both take stands based upon reason and the need for things to make sense. I find myself drifting toward the UU because of not wishing to live in the guilt that evangelicalism/fundamentalism propogates within its doctrine. To speak honestly this is a scary time for me but one that I think is nessacary for my continual spiritual development as well as the future spiritual development of my family.