black jesus

If Jesus ever existed, I know in my heart he looked like this:


I don't know if Jesus was real. Just like I don't know if King Arthur was real. It's legend stuff. I never understood why people have to fight so much about it. The Bible is full of contradictions anyway. So why waste all this time and energy arguing with such ferocity over something that will never be resolved? How about, if you fucking love Jesus so much, you try to be more like him. The real him. The Jew. He wasn't a Christian. Christianity hadn't been invented yet.

And it really doesn't matter if Jesus ever really existed. We are way beyond that, now. Jesus is a myth larger and more powerful than anything else I know. It's sad, really, because most people don't even remember what Jesus was really about. They are too busy being hateful.

I don't like talking about my relationship with Christianity because I have a lot of issues about it. I like to pretend like I hate everything about it, but I don't. I just hate what it has become for so many people. Christian doesn't mean Christ-like. It means you want to save me because I am gay and agnostic and I look weird. It means you think there is something wrong with me. It means you are spoiled and have no idea what it is like to be a minority. It means you have this utterly disgusting attitude about helping the "less fortunate." It means you are not safe.

That is Christianity, for me. And there are those rare Christians (like my mother) who are truly Christ-like. They should come up with another word for the real Christians. And I don't mean like "true Christians" because that's just more bullshit hate talk so people can separate themselves from everyone who doesn't agree with them.

Jesus, to me, is a lot like the swastika. The swastika is a very, very old and widely used symbol. It was long used as a religious symbol in the East (and everywhere else, really) before it was ever co-opted by the Nazis. (I even have a tattoo of a symbol similar to the swastika, the triskele.) But now, it is very hard to separate (for Westerners, at least, because the symbol is still in use in India and elsewhere) from WW II and all the heavy, heavy baggage that carries. There is Jesus the (alleged) person, who was all about compassion and peace and love and helping others, and there is this mythic figure and all the horrible atrocities that have been committed in his name. How do you separate the two? I don't have the answer to that.

Except that now we have White Jesus and Brown Jesus. And we use them flippantly (as is our duty as the intelligent persons that we most certainly are), but there is something vital in the distinction. When we talk about Jesus, I need to know which one we are talking about. Is it real Jesus, or is it hatemonger perverted anglicized Jesus?

Religion is hard for me. I know why. I know so well. It makes so much sense, but I don't think I can change it. I don't think I can "come to terms" with my past and then "come back to the fold" and be a Christian because I have healed some part of myself and now I don't have hangups about men. You know what I mean? Like one day I'll fix my spiritually hurt parts and be able to embrace Christianity, and that would be a sign of how healed I am.

That's not how it works. First of all, I don't want to do that. In fact I feel claustrophobic and tight in the chest just thinking about it. (I think one day I may overcome the church-related panic attack parts.) Second, that's not who I am. I am a woman who loves women. Why the fuck would my god be a man? That's ridiculous. And I could never get with the Bible. And there's so many other reasons. But they don't matter because you guys aren't judging me so I don't need to be so defensive.

Heavy stuff. Talking about it helps, though.