If someone asks you if you believe in Jesus what do they mean? That’s a pretty vague question. Do you believe that he existed? Do you believe that he is the son of God? What information do they wish to acquire with that question?
To understand the question we probably ought to see what Jesus meant when he talked about belief. Jesus said, “You believe in God, believe also in me.” Try making that statement to an atheist and you will get quite the argument. But Jesus makes this statement without qualification. He would make the statement to an atheist. That is because Jesus’ idea of God is that God is evident in nature. The apostle Paul said, “The eternal power and divine nature of God are plainly apparent in the world so that they are without an excuse.” Nature functions in a certain way and can be counted on to operate in a certain way without question. All of Jesus’ teachings of God are about the function of nature; seeds, vines, harvest. Jesus wasn’t talking about existence. Jesus is standing right in front of them. They can’t question his existence, he’s right there. They can’t question the existence of God, His power is all around them.
So if Jesus isn’t talking about existence what does he mean when he says “Believe in me”? Every day the sun comes up, gravity keeps us planted on the ground, plants and animals live and die. The outward functions of God are always apparent and operating. They can be counted on, trusted. This is the sense that Jesus is using. “You trust God, trust me, too”.
Trusting Jesus is trusting what he says, what he taught. That’s the whole point, do you accept his teaching?
Religion is about establishing authority. All the miracles, all the theology, are about establishing the authority of Jesus so you will accept his teaching. Jesus said, “You have seen the miracles and believe, but more blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.”
In that statement Jesus negated the need for religion. If you accept the teachings of Jesus as the principles by which you guide your life, then the establishment of authority to compel belief in the teachings is irrelevant. According to Jesus you are more blessed than those who accept the teaching on the basis of the authority of miracles. Even the existence of Jesus is irrelevant; the teachings exist, they are where we should put our faith and love. As Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”
So the teachings ABOUT Jesus are completely and totally irrelevant. The existence or non-existence of God is totally irrelevant. It is the teachings OF Jesus that are important to salvation, as Jesus said, “My words are spirit and they are life.” This opens a whole new idea as well; how Jesus defines the spirit. If his words are spirit, then the spirit realm is the realm of words. In fact, Jesus says, “God is spirit and them that worship Him, must Him in spirit and truth.” This agrees with John 1:1, it says, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”
What is a word? It is a construct of intellect that represents an idea or principle. What if we translate spirit not in a superstitious way, but as Jesus describes it? Let us substitute “principle” for “spirit” and see if these scriptures make more sense. “My words are principle and they are life.” “God is principle and them that worship Him, must worship Him in principle and truth.” See, this is starting to make sense. So God, in Jesus’ definition, is the principle which governs the natural world.
Let’s try another scripture, “The Spirit of God is the Spirit of Truth.” Now re-translated as, “The principles of God are the principles of truth.” Does that make more sense? It does to me. Paul says, “Be renewed in the spirit of your mind.” That doesn’t make any sense. Do I have a ghost in my brain? But, “Be renewed in the principles of your mind”, that makes sense.
So how do the principles of truth relate to God? Let’s define the principles of truth. If we want to find the truth in a criminal case, what do we do? We examine the evidence without bias. If we want to discover the truth of the natural world, what do we do? We experiment and evaluate the data without bias. What is the primary principle of truth? We must be without bias.
Bias in intellect is the favoring of an idea to benefit yourself. A biased judge is one who has a personal interest in the case before him. A judge with a personal interest in a case must remove himself from the case to avoid even the appearance of bias.
The primary attribute of God is that He is eternal. All other life that we know of is temporary. If we don’t eat we die. God doesn’t eat, but he doesn’t die. Bias is a natural function which ensures that we continue to live. We see food, we eat it. All of our food is based on other life. We are biased in that we count our life as more important than their life, we don’t want to die, so we eat. Natural bias is simply a condition of non-eternal life.
What are the attributes of God? 1. He is omnipotent. 2. He is self-existent. 3. He is immutable. 4. He is omniscient. 5. He is alive. Romans 1:20 says that the eternal power and divine nature are plainly apparent in the cosmos. If we look in the cosmos and plainly see an entity with these five attributes then I think you will have to admit that I have proven that God exists.
1. Omnipotence. Do we see a plainly omnipotent force in the cosmos? Yes. The laws of physics are plainly omnipotent. No one has ever demonstrated that any power exists outside of the laws of physics. ALL power means all. No other power is possible. God cannot be supernatural or his power would not be plainly apparent. God must be completely natural. As Paul says, “In him we live move and have our being”.
2. Self-existence. Are the laws of physics self-existent? Yes. The laws of physics exist without dependency on any other being or entity. They are self-sustaining. The laws of physics have no known beginning and no projected end.
3. Immutable. Are the laws of physics immutable? Yes. No one has ever demonstrated any ability to change any of the laws of physics.
4. Omniscience. Are the laws of physics all-knowing? What exactly do we mean by omniscient? Most people think that God would be like them, only much more intelligent. A really super smart person. But there is a problem with that assumption. The problem is that the first three definitions of God exclude intelligence as we practice it from being an attribute of God.
Let us take a simple thought experiment to highlight the problem. Suppose that there are two plants in front of you. One plant is poisonous and one plant is tasty and nutritious. Which plant do you eat? Simple, you eat the tasty and nutritious plant. Now suppose that you are God, you are self-existent, eternal and immutable. Which plant do you eat? Neither, of course. God is self-existent and doesn’t need to eat. God doesn’t need to process and evaluate the information presented before him because the information does not have any bearing on God. To the immutable God, the plants are neither poisonous or nutritious. We call the poisonous plant bad, and the nutritious plant good, but God does not need to label or judge the relative worth of either plant because the plants have no relative worth to God’s survival. It is when information is processed and evaluated that bias is introduced. Bias is evaluating the information in relation to its value to the survival of the individual making the evaluation. If the information has no survival value, it does not need to be evaluated and thus no bias is necessary or possible.
So if God does not process and evaluate information, how is God omniscient? John 1:1 gives us the answer. “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” What is a word? It is information. God does not process or evaluate information because God is information. God is omniscient not by evaluating all information, but by being all information.
5. God is a living god. I am a programmer. I use object-oriented programming. There is a rule in object-oriented programming, I call it the law of attributes. A parent object cannot pass an attribute to a child object unless the parent object possesses that attribute. In other words, I can’t give my children anything I don’t have. We are children of the cosmos. We are alive. According to the law of attributes, the cosmos must possess life in and of itself. Life must be an attribute of the cosmos in order for the cosmos to pass that attribute to us, its children.
Of course, eternal self-existent life is different than our temporary, dependent life. Just as computer intelligence is limited and diminished from the living intelligence of the computer’s human creator. If God does not eat or grow, how is God alive? God is alive because of the one defining characteristic of life, the desire and ability to reproduce. Our life and consciousness are not aberrations in this universe. We are not strange or unique. We are part and parcel of the whole.
God is the living information of the universe, a river of life flowing toward a destination. Every atom of information possessed of its own purpose and direction, each reacting in response to interactions beyond prediction for the individual, but every individual part of a great whole, flowing toward a single destination, uncertain in the details of the journey but certain in the final destination.
So, let’s tie this back to the teaching of Jesus. His most famous teaching is, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Also, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” The primary principle of Jesus’ teaching is treating others without bias. To treat them as you would treat yourself. To live in eternal life is to live a life without bias. So the principles of Jesus are the principles of God, and they are the principles of truth.
Here is the genius of Jesus; he figured out that God is unbiased, as nature is itself unbiased in its actions, and he deduced that we must be unbiased in our nature and actions even as God is unbiased in his nature and actions.
Jesus defines the new birth as being born of spirit. You must be born of water (natural birth) and spirit. He means being born of principle. Accepting Jesus isn’t something magic or superstitious, it’s accepting the principles of truth and immersing yourself in them. Being baptized in the spirit is immersing yourself in principle, the principles of truth. Honesty, integrity and being non-biased toward other people; these are the principles of truth, the principles of God.
Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, the life. No man comes to the Father but through me.” The way to God is through the truth. Jesus also said, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” Jesus is speaking as the prophet of truth, so he speaks in the first person as did the prophets of old.
He had to establish his authority. The scribes and Pharisees asked him, “By whose authority do you teach these things?” His authority is the authority that you can have, the authority that comes from knowing and understanding truth. The authority of truth is based on fact and unbiased reasoning. The authority of religion is based on tradition. The only authority that religion has is that it is old.
How much better is the authority based on facts and reason? The more facts you can demonstrate, the greater your authority. People who understand a subject completely are called authorities, simply because they have all the facts pertinent to the subject. Jesus’ teachings have authority based on their own inherent quality that has nothing to do with miracles or traditional religious authority.
I am grateful to my parents for bringing me up in the church. As a child I needed the instruction that authority provided. Religion served its purpose. But as Paul said, “When I was a child, I spoke as a child. I behaved as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things.”
As a grown man I don’t need the authority of the church to tell me right from wrong. I understand the principles of Jesus. I accept them on the basis of reason, not authority. So I have put away childish things. In accepting the principles of Jesus, the principles of truth, which are being non-biased toward my fellow man, I have accepted that which Jesus said was essential to life, eternal life, the God-kind of life. Living a non-biased life is eternal life even as God is non-biased because of his eternal nature.
Accepting and loving the wisdom of Jesus is accepting and loving Jesus by his own words. That is what philosophy is, philo=love, sophy=wisdom, the love of wisdom. So I am not religious, I am philosophic, a lover of Jesus’ wisdom. And not just the wisdom of Jesus, but the wisdom of Buddha, Lao Tzu and Spinoza. They all say the same thing in different ways because of the differences in their cultures and circumstances.
The good news is that anyone in any religion or culture or even atheists can love the wisdom of Jesus. It has nothing to do with accepting the beliefs or authority of any religion. It is loving and accepting the principles of truth, the principles of non-biased reason and action toward your fellow human beings, nature and yourself.
Paul said the fruit of the spirit, i.e., the results of a principled life, are “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, against such there is no law.” Living a life of principle based on the principles of truth produces these kinds of results in any one’s life. No religion prohibits this kind of character. Every religion’s intent is to produce this kind of character.
Jesus himself said he did not come to abolish the law and the prophets, but to fulfill them. He did not come to create a new religion or a new authority. He came to teach a new wisdom that fulfills the original intention of the religious law, that is, the unbiased treatment of your fellow human beings.
Be a better Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Atheist or any other kind of believer or non-believer, simply by accepting the principles of truth. This is how God reproduces, by means of creating life and evolving intelligent beings in an uncertain universe and then those intelligent beings become his children when they accept the principles of truth. Fill your heart with truth, live by the principles of truth and prove yourself a child of God.