by Starri Knight

Created on: January 04, 2007   Last Updated: May 11, 2007

Imagine you were Jesus then.

Walk in his sandals. Born a conscious spirit with a special life mission, from an early age you begin to teach and try and be heard. There is something special about you, a wisdom beyond your years and the fact that you claim to be a messenger of god becomes established, day after day, with your precocious knowing and otherworldly message. People find resonance in your words, they hear and are moved deeply. They begin to follow you. They ask for more. They want to know. Then there are miracles. You prove your otherworldliness to others by bending reality around them. Mystified and awed, they believe. Your light is a beacon, welcome in the darkness of spiritual despair.

Your mission here is to remind the human world of their true purpose in being. They've long since lost track and have degenerated into a life of politics, war and scandal. Debauchery and cruelty. They've lost their connection with the otherworld, have stopped listening, have ceased to believe. Have resorted to engaging their primitive drives.

You tell them that they're Spirit, and they are all one. You remind them of the Rule of Reciprocity. You show them how to love and accept each other, and say very simply: Now do this. See? This is how it's done. Just do this.

Unfortunately there is only one way to prove the existence of Spirit, and that is to die and return in Spirit form. And you do this, as well. You are executed for what you believed, a martyr. This is the exclamation point to a lifetime of belief - you are willing to die for it - and the line between right and wrong is now written in your blood. You take your last breath, and release it, believing that you give yourself to a good much greater than your pain.

It is done.

Now imagine you're Jesus today.

Your simple message turned into a giant industry of faith. Greeting cards and buildings and marble statues. Right and wrong converted to Us and Them. People killing each other in your name. People ostracizing each other in your name. People converting each other to your teaching by force. Your life of humility and kindness turned into a weapon. Chapels bedecked with extravagant glass windows, panels of beauty glorifying your life. That's your mother. And there you are bleeding. Your body broken.

The cross they nailed you to is now covered in precious metals and jewels. Even your own body, your agony gilded. Hanging, lifeless and tortured.

You watch people file into a church to "worship" you. The Church collects money from them in your name. They listen to your words, frozen in another time, over and over again. Most of them are thinking of something else. Most of them will leave without remembering a word. They recite prayers, comforting poetry of familiarity. A ward against trouble and a plea for help when they need it.

Your life has become a veneer of spirituality, dipped in gold and governed by patriarchy. An account into which attendance and donation is deposited in the belief that it is buying salvation.

And still the wars rage, and the cruelty and the scandal.

Now that you're Jesus, imagine: Did you save the world?

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