The Third Jesus The Christ We Cannot Ignore

by Chopra, Deepak

• ISBN13: 9780307338327
• ISBN10: 0307338320
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-05-19
• Publisher: Harmony

Summary

Who is Jesus? InThe Third Jesus, Deepak Chopra provides an answer that is both uplifting and challenging to current beliefs. There is not one Jesus, Chopra writes, but three. The first is the historical Jesus, the man of flesh and blood who lived more than two thousand years ago. The second Jesus is a person who never lived but is a figure created by the Church to represent thousands of years of theology and Church teaching. Behind these two images stands a third Jesus, the radical, mystical teacher who taught his followers how to change the world. InThe Third Jesus, Chopra explores Jesus' original message, revealing a spiritual guide of profound depth and inspiration that speaks to anyone who believes in the importance of peace and love. By turning fresh eyes on the New Testament and returning to the essentials of Jesus' message, Chopra shows how the third Jesus can truly transform our lives--and humanity.

Author Biography

DEEPAK CHOPRA is the author of more than fifty books translated into over thirty-five languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers in both the fiction and non-fiction categories. Chopra’s Wellness Radio
airs weekly on Sirius Satellite Stars, Channel 102, which focuses on the areas of success, love, sexuality and relationships, well-being, and spirituality. He is founder and president of the Alliance for a New Humanity. Time magazine heralds Deepak Chopra as one of the top one hundred heroes and icons of the century and credits him as “the poet-prophet of alternative medicine.”

www.deepakchopra.com


From the Hardcover edition.

Excerpts

Redeeming the Redeemer

Jesus is in trouble. When people worship him today--or even speak his name--the object of their devotion is unlikely to be who they think he is. A mythical Jesus has grown up over time. He has served to divide peoples and nations. He has led to destructive wars in the name of religious fantasies. The legacy of love found in the New Testament has been tainted with the worst sort of intolerance and prejudice that would have appalled Jesus in life. Most troubling of all, his teachings have been hijacked by people who hate in the name of love.

"Sometimes I feel this social pressure to return to my faith," a lapsed Catholic told me recently, "but I'm too bitter. Can I love a religion that calls gays sinners but hides pedophiles in its clergy? Yesterday while I was driving to work, I heard a rock song that went, 'Jesus walked on water when he should have surfed,' and you know what? I burst out laughing. I would never have done that when I was younger. Now I feel only the smallest twinge of guilt."

No matter where you look, a cloud of confusion hangs over the message of Jesus. To cut through it we have to be specific about who we mean when we refer to Jesus. One Jesus is historical, and we know next to nothing about him. Another Jesus is the one appropriated by Christianity. He was created by the Church to fulfill its agenda. The third Jesus, the one this book is about, is as yet so unknown that even the most devout Christians don't suspect that he exists. Yet he is the Christ we cannot--and must not--ignore.

The first Jesus was a rabbi who wandered the shores of northern Galilee many centuries ago. This Jesus still feels close enough to touch. He appears in our mind's eye dressed in homespun but haloed in glory. He was kind, serene, peaceful, loving, and yet he was the keeper of deep mysteries.

This historical Jesus has been lost, however, swept away by history. He still lingers like a ghost, a projection of all the ideal qualities we wish for in ourselves but so painfully lack. Why couldn't there be one person who was perfectly loving, perfectly compassionate, and perfectly humble? There can be if we call him Jesus and remove him to a time thousands of years in the past. (If you live in the East, his name might be Buddha, but the man is equally mythical and equally a projection of our own lack.)

The first Jesus is less than consistent, as a closer reading of the gospels will show. If Jesus was perfectly peaceful, why did he declare, "Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword"? (Matthew 10:34) If he was perfectly loving, why did he say, "Throw out the unprofitable servant into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth"? (Matthew 25:30) (Sometimes the translation is even harsher, and Jesus commands "the worthless slave" to be consigned to hell.) If Jesus was humble, why did he claim to rule the earth beyond the power of any king? At the very least, the living Jesus was a man of baffling contradictions.

And yet the more contradictions we unearth, the less mythical this Jesus becomes. The flesh-and-blood man who is lost to history must have been extraordinarily human. To be divine, one must be rich in every human quality first. As one famous Indian spiritual teacher once said, "The measure of enlightenment is how comfortable you feel with your own contradictions."

Millions of people worship another Jesus, however, who never existed, who doesn't even lay claim to the fleeting substance of the first Jesus. This is the Jesus built up over thousands of years by theologians and other scholars. He is the Holy Ghost, the Three-in-One Christ, the source of sacraments and prayers that were unknown to the rabbi Jesus when he walked the earth. He is also the Prince of Peace over whom bloody wars have been fought. This sec

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Excerpted from The Third Jesus: The Christ We Cannot Ignore by Deepak Chopra
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