Becoming Christ: The Birth of Jesus the Anointed

Listen or Read. Your Choice.

We’re starting the New Year with a new subject – Jesus the Anointed. I hope everyone noticed that the website’s full name is “Becoming Adam, Becoming Christ.” The first half of that equation describes how God used evolution to create humanity, but when we chose evil rather than good, we were alienated from him. “Becoming Christ” is the Lord’s answer to our predicament. Jesus offers a second chance to everyone, a “new birth” into the life of the Spirit. We can choose to remain spiritually dead, or we can choose to follow Jesus and become like him.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus says, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Intellectual certainty doesn’t come first. The “abiding” – or “living out” – of Christ’s word as a disciple comes first, and from that lived experience comes confidence in Jesus and the truth of his teaching. Follow, and you will know. The proof is in the pudding, not in reading the recipe.

With that, I hope you enjoy this audio sneak preview of my forthcoming e-book, The Anointed. The introduction follows, but the story itself is podcast only for now.

Living in a predominantly Christian culture, all of us – even those of us who don’t identify as Christian – think we know who Jesus is. We grew up decorating Christmas trees, singing carols, and watching Charlie Brown specials. Many of us attended church as children; others were dragged there as adults by well-meaning friends or relatives. People knock on our doors to “witness” to us, promise us on TV that Jesus will solve our financial problems, and accost us on the street with invitations to “accept” Jesus into our hearts. Our politicians vie for Jesus’ endorsement, our athletes credit him with their victories, and, of course, we suffer the daily parade of social media posts purporting to inform us of Christ’s opinion on every political issue of the day. We are so saturated with God-talk and Jesus-speak that it obscures our vision like a fog.

Consider this my small contribution toward dissipating that fog. Christianity can’t be understood apart from Jesus, but few of us seem inclined to dust off the Bible, if we own one, and discover him for ourselves. In any case, why should we? We already know the story. We’ve absorbed it by osmosis.

We are so saturated with God-talk and Jesus-speak that it obscures our vision like a fog.

Such vague, second-hand knowledge of Jesus is not confined to the atheist, the agnostic, the skeptic, or the seeker; it extends across vast swaths of those who say they are his followers. Exacerbating the problem is that when people do attempt to read the gospels, they encounter numerous barriers. Should they make it past the uninviting “Bible format,” they still must grapple with a foreign culture 2,000 years removed.

My intent, then, is twofold: to present the story of Jesus in a new context, and to remove barriers that prevent people from understanding that story. To that end, I’ve paraphrased the four gospel accounts into one narrative that sounds and feels like a modern biography, making it more accessible to present-day readers.

To see Jesus afresh, we must enter his story and view him through the eyes of those who first encountered him; we must attempt to see as they saw and hear as they heard. We gain such access through the door of “historical context” – the political, economic, social, and cultural factors that influenced the writing of the gospels.

When we read historical documents such as the Bible through the lens of our own time, the picture becomes distorted, no matter how many times we’ve watched The Prince of Egypt and Ben-Hur. For example, nowadays we hear “Christ” and automatically associate it with our contemporary notions of Jesus, which may o