It's Sunday! Which means it's time for me to ramble about the latest social or political events without putting much thought or research into it!

Nah, change of plans today. Today I think I'll talk about religion. Christmas is fast approaching, so why not bring Jesus into this.

So here's the thing: I think I might just be Jesus 2.0. And I think you might be as well. And I think everyone born after Him (do I capitalize the "H" like I was taught back in Catholic school? Sure.)--I think everyone born after Him had the potential built in them to be the second coming and everyone born before was potentially a beta version.

Where to go from here...

Back to the start: I think there's a flaw in the Jesus story. The flaw is: he was quite literally the son of God. Divine conception and everything. On the line of Hercules or one of them Greek Demigods born of Zeus' lust for human women (should that be portrayed as more...strange and not-OK in the cartoons?).

They try to say in the stories that He's totally human! He IS just like us—except he's also God incarnate—so not exactly like us. We can be LIKE Jesus, but we can't BE Jesus ourselves.

There's a limit on our aspirations.

I guess I approach it more from the Buddhist storyline (which I'm sure I'm about to butcher). The Buddha was a guy—just a guy (albeit a royal guy, right). Then he sat down one day and figured some shit out and basically transformed into an enlightened guy.

Jesus didn't do that. Jesus was BORN an enlightened guy. (Ps: just ignore the time before he was thirty where no one tracked what he did and no stories were written.)

- I'm just going to pause here 'cause I might start using more "God" words. This is a trigger warning, I guess. I just want to say: you may totally substitute "God" with something else. Copy this, paste it in word, do a "find and replace" to change it to "some origin thingy related to the big bang that we don't understand and don't want to label yet."

OK onwards.

I call balogna on the immaculate conception story. I don't know if that part was added to give Jesus more credibility/authority in the face of a Church that was eager to discredit him. "Who is this peasant to say what's right and wrong?" "He's uhh, God himself!"

That was a terrible fake conversation to add to this. No-delete Sundays!

Somewhere along the way, someone decided it wasn't good enough that Jesus was a guy who figured something out. They added some b.s. to the story that, in my opinion, kind of fucks it up.

It creates images of this "god deity" and anthropomorphizes "Him." "He" visited a woman and created a man with "divine" roots. It's a fine story, but it's hard to actually believe.

So how about this: Jesus is the "son of God" in the same way every person ever is the "child of God:" he was born of the Universe—ascribe whatever intelligence you want to it. He understood what that meant and embraced it in a way that. very, very few people do. He was all in on the whole, "we are all but one part of an interconnected "whole" that is the universe. My brothers and sisters are really "me" (which is to say a universale conciousness) inhabitting another body."

Something clicked for him.

And so when I say I may just be Jesus 2.0, what I'm saying is: I'm holding hope that something might click for me.

I toss these ideas around all the time, but to me they're all kind of...superficial? I can say, "I come from a creative force responsible for the Big Bang," and "I am but one window for the universe to look into itself," but I don't fully mean it. It sounds interesting—but it's not really sticking.

But one day it might.

And it might for a whole lot of other people as well.

Eclhart Tolle talks about a mass "awakening" on the horizon, ushering in his "New Earth." I guess that's the thught I'm echoing here. Heh, "thught."

Jesus says near the end of his story—or maybe he didn't...maybe this was put in and made into a prayer to scare people—anyway HE SAYS he'll come again. And the story says that'll be the end. Some people will go to heaven, some people will go to hell.

I think it's fun to roll with prophecy. So maybe what he meant, when he said "I'll come again," was just that other people will "get" what he got. And when we do, we'll be able to turn this place into the utopia we call "heaven."

What am I doing with this whole post? I think I'm stting the bar higher. I think what I'm saying is: latent in all of us is the potential to "get it" in a more profound way than we really consider. The whole, "try to be a nice person," is not the answer we need. Wearing WWJD bracelets and doing the right thing on occassion might not be enough.

I think what I'm saying is: we need some pretty big shifts in how we view ourselves and our place in the world. We need to aim for a perspective change that trancends rule-following or emulating role models. We need to chase leadership roles. We need to figure some shit out.

Is this well thought out? No it is not. It's kinda all over the place today. It might make no sense at all. Maybe it's a conversation starter.

OK Arche flopped on top of me so Ill call it for the week (I say as I type this with only my left hand).