Just Like Jesus

Months have passed, yet the world still did not calm down. And how could it? A miracle had happened, something impossible, something so deeply profound and mysterious that it threw all our understanding of reality out the window.

And more importantly, all our understanding of belief and ideology.

On May the second, 2020, Jesus Christ had been reborn.

Not in the sense of some parent naming their child that way, like naming a kid Facebook or other such idiocies, but the real deal. The man whom many claimed never existed, while others worshiped him reverently, appeared one day on the streets of New York City, strolling down Fifth Avenue.

At first, people mistook him for another homeless madman or a religious fanatic in a costume. They said he was an imposter and a trickster. But when Jesus provided irrefutable proof that he was, indeed, the one and only, the world stopped moving and balked in shock. Jesus walked on water and then turned it into wine in front of thousands of rolling cameras. Everybody saw him within 24 hours. Everybody. From one of the busiest streets in the world to the farthest reaches of the jungles, everyone heard of this impossible occurrence.

There was panic. There was fear. Was the end coming? Was God real?

There was also joy and anticipation. Did Jesus return to help mankind? To end suffering?

Righteousness and religious upheaval broke out in a maelstrom. So, was Christianity the one true thing and all others were false? Or did this mean everything was possible?

People, being people, became frantic. Some prepared for an end, praying day and night. Many converted to Christianity and many atheists started believing. Those that were firmly entrenched in a different religion or belief tried to suppress, deny, and reject the fact that Jesus was walking the earth. They tried to kill him, but they had failed, for Jesus had an air of acceptance and peace about him that melted any and all hatred. 

Even guided missiles seemed to be unable to lock onto him.

The government, as you could expect, tried to capture Jesus and bring him in. They wanted to see if they could use him to their own benefit - a man with such status and mysterious powers would be a great asset to the white house. The fact that he appeared in New York gave America all the confirmation it needed that they were ‘the chosen people’, USA - the nation to lead man from darkness. But similar to those who tried killing Jesus, the government and the army couldn’t touch him. As soon as they got close, he simply looked at them and they crumbled in tears at the love he radiated.

Finally, science decided to tackle the problem. Of course, the scientific community rejected the existence of God as if it were the most fundamental and obvious fact of the universe. God wasn’t rational or logical and therefore could not possibly exist in a rational universe. They scanned and analyzed Jesus, took samples of blood and brain scans, performed mental and psychological analyses, and a hundred other tests and experiments. Jesus agreed on making all of them. He allowed scientists to amuse themselves.

What they found was that Jesus was a normal human being. Well, he was not like the majority of humans in the 21st century, who were stressed out and had toxins in their bodies, Jesus was physically and mentally an extremely healthy subject. But that was all the anomaly they could find. They had no idea where his powers came from.

Yet, Jesus performed miracles daily. Healing people, levitating, playing with the molecular structure of things. He stopped walking on water and turning it into wine because people demanded it from him every time and it became a running meme. Jesus didn’t seem to like memes.

Finally, when the initial shock passed, when the world reacted in its most unconscious way - with fighting and denying - the time came for a talk. It became apparent that Jesus was real and that he was really there. It was not someone in a costume, it was not swamp gas combusting, and it was not a mass delusion caused by the coronavirus social distancing.

Jesus Christ was real. 

And when the world calmed down just enough to accept that, they invited him to a talk show, a global interview, where he would explain why he came and how that was even possible.

Jesus replied to that immediately, almost as if he was waiting for it. Here is what happened…

***

“So, Mr. Christ-”

“Call me Jesus.”

“Alright, Jesus,” the host cleared his throat, sweating in streaks. “Being the founder of Christianity, how do you feel seeing-”

“Wait,” Jesus cut in. “Founder of what?”

“Um, Christianity. Your... religion?”

Jesus frowned, thinking for a moment. Then he shook his head. “Is that what you think?”

The host looked at the camera, not knowing what to say. “I… Yes?”

“Oh, you poor fools…” Jesus looked up at the ceiling, an expression of pity on his face. “What have you done with the world? What have you done with yourselves?”

“Um,” the host tapped the earpiece, receiving the next words he was supposed to say. “We’ve made quite the progress in the world, until you showed up and shattered all our understanding…”

“You speak of progress, yet your children are neurotics,” Jesus kept shaking his head. “I didn’t start this religion you speak of. You did that. Your frightened minds constructed it, twisted and corrupted my teachings and turned them into an ideology. Oh, you poor, simple fools. What have I done to you? I should have kept my mouth shut.”

The host struggled to restrain himself from running away. “You’ve… you’ve done a lot of good. There are millions of Christians all over the world, they-”

“They are all lost, thinking they believe in truth, while they are actually believing in their own lies.” He looked into the camera. “World, is this how you remembered me as? Is this what I am known for? Credited for creating a belief system I had no intention of creating? You’ve projected it all on me, oh how could I not see this coming?”

The holy man looked as if he was going to cry. The host’s face was as red as the carpet under his trembling feet. “Are… are you saying, Jesus, that Christianity is not your religion? But, it’s named after you…”

Jesus shook his head. “So is Parkinson’s disease named after the man, but did Parkinson come up with the disease? Did he create it? Of course not! I did not create a religion around me, you did! Humanity did that. And now you suffer the pain of dogma, which I never taught. All I ever wanted was for you to realize the truth about yourselves, which is that you are god. But is that what I accomplished? Heavens no…” Tears began to gather in his eyes. “I… I am sorry, world. I didn't mean to cause you such pain. Though you caused it to yourself, by twisting and misinterpreting my words - I’m still the one who thought mistakenly that you were ready. And I see now, from the world that you live in, that I was wrong. Very wrong. You are far from ready. You’re still in your adolescence, drinking and whoring yourselves to death, uncaring to discover anything true about you. I…” He paused. “It was a mistake coming back here.”

The host quickly grabbed onto that, ignoring everything the man said, suppressing a panic attack. “Why did you come back, Jesus? And how?”

“I thought I would return to paradise. See how human beings have grown, learned to love, and accept each other. But all I see is more hate, more suffering, and more pain than even in my own times.”

“Well, surely there is less of that now, Jesus. The nations are at peace-”

“But your hearts are not,” Jesus said, compassion flowing out from him, crushing the host’s mask of calm into tears. “You think you know so much about the world, yet you’ve never been more lost than you are now. You think this, this modern-day and age, this is how humans are supposed to live? You think this is optimal, that you are progressing? No. You are just getting more and more lost in the dark corners of your minds and hearts.”

He sighed, standing up.

“I’m sorry for coming and causing you more pain. You’re clearly not ready. I will tell the others to halt their coming back.”

The host, being screamed at by his supervisors through the earpiece, forced the tears away to ask one more question. “The… others?”

“My fellow teachers,” Jesus said. “Buddha, Muhhamad and the others, gurus and mystics - men and women who’ve tried to teach humanity how to live, but ended up being turned into a religion, a dogma. You’ve got teachers like that alive in your time as well, in 2020. And there are many of them, more than have ever been, actually. But you do not listen to them. Which, I guess, is better than to turn them into another religion, as you did with science. Again, I am sorry. Perhaps I will be back in another two thousand years. Maybe more.”

With that, Jesus simply vanished. No flash of light, no fancy magic trick, he simply was there and then he wasn’t, faster than a blink of an eye. The host’s heart finally gave out and he collapsed on the red carpet in front of all the cameras, while still being screamed at through the earpiece. 

***

Jesus’s words shook the world to its core. But the ego was there to stop the shaking and it went to work diligently at entrenching the established status quo, scheming to use the miraculous event to further justify its position.

Though, amidst all the confusion, there were a few individuals who broke through the lies and deceit. A few noticed the truth about what had happened and they could not return back to their regular lives. 

They realized that Christianity - as well as every other religion - had a good intent at heart, but was later corrupted by individuals seeking power. And by ego itself. Thus, the lesson became clear to these individuals; no idea, teaching, or ideology can be considered the truth because all it breeds is war and hatred - and prevents an individual from experiencing new and different things. You cannot help people if they do not want your help. If a person isn’t ready to realize who he or she is, you need to give that person time, and not pretend like you know what is best for them - you don’t even know what’s best for you, let alone trying to predict what’s best for another.

Armed with new understanding, these individuals set to work, sharing their newfound knowledge through books, seminars, and informational videos. They wanted to change the world for the better.

But little did they know, they were only constructing another belief system… If not directly, then through the minds of their audience.

Just like Jesus.