A More Human Jesus?

The runaway success of the “Da Vinci Code” points to a human desire for a more human Jesus and more humane religion.

Faith has become so harsh in our time, so inhuman, that hundreds of millions have turned to the New Age to accommodate their spiritual needs in utter rejection of organized religion. Those most to blame are Muslim extremists who kill in the name of G-d. But Christians and Jews are also guilty of displaying the hard edge of faith. Many Christian evangelicals believe that the essence of Christianity is best captured in condemning gays.

Likewise, I heard just this week that a Chabad-Lubavitch colleague of mine from New Jersey suggested that I should not be called up to the Torah at a Chabad House, apparently because on my TV show, “Shalom in the Home,” I had counseled a lesbian couple with children.

People are tired of this kind of harsh religion that is all about judgment and not about redemption, all about rejection and not about acceptance, all about condemnation and not about inspiration.

As a Jew, I have watched the “Da Vinci Code” debate with utter fascination as the Catholic Church cries foul and Christians the world over shout sacrilege. What was Dan’s Brown’s offense? Did he call Jesus a pedophile, echoing former Southern Baptist Convention President Jerry Vines’ comments about Muhammad? Did he portray Jesus as a murderer, the way that Mel Gibson portrayed the Jewish leadership in “The Passion of the Christ”?

No, his blasphemy was that he dared to imagine that Jesus took a wife, that Jesus, like us, got lonely, that he sought the divinely sanctioned companionship of marriage, that he sired children within wedlock, and that before he died on the cross at the hands of the Romans, he took comfort in knowing that not only his teachings, but his offspring would endure. How fascinating that a man’s humanity could itself be considered profanity, that human frailty could be considered an affront to faith, that the very notion of Jesus as a man could so offend our Christian brethren.

To me, it has always been precisely the opposite. The truest affront to G-d is the man who thinks that he doesn’t need others, who goes through life without ever truly connecting with, or leaning on other souls, the bachelor who thinks that no woman is good enough for him. In Judaism, it is not marriage which is a sin, but celibacy, not the admission of loneliness but the posture of arrogance. Is the human condition really so revolting to our Christian brothers and sisters that the mere notion that Jesus shared in any of its vicissitudes would constitute the ultimate assault to belief?

Continued on page 2: Let's define righteousness.... »