Proselytism Versus Spiritual Sharing

Before Jesus' name was later used by some Christians as justification to murder, maim, beat up, rob, extort from and forcibly convert his own descendent people, Jews (even if they were not among his followers) knew of him as a reformist rabbi who prophesied doom for the Temple Culture if religious authorities continued to compromise values and traditions to accommodate the amoral worldly priorities of their Roman overlords. These Jews who were contemporaries with Jesus also knew him as a former disciple of John the Baptist, who in turn had belonged to a larger separatist Jewish movement, as exemplified historically by such groups as the Essenes and the Qumran sectarians, whose Aramaic writings generally emphasized moral intent, spiritual contemplation and the sacred act of forgiveness in contradistinction to hollow ritual observance, however assiduously adhered to. However, when some of Jesus' former disciples began preaching after his death that he had been the Messiah, the broader Jewish community rejected the validity of the assertion, because, for them, the True Messiah will usher in an immediate, permanent and world-spanning age of peace, justice and prosperity. In his lifetime, Jesus taught his followers the way to build greater peace and social justice, but he recognized the intrinsically imperfect state of this world. However, Jesus wanted his followers to not be passive in the face of these imperfections. If the apostles had not tried to proselytize Jesus as the Messiah, it seems likely that Jews would have placed him in their tradition of honored rabbis under his Aramaic name, "Yeshua ben Maria", telling stories of him alongside other such figures of Jewish Antiquity as Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Eleazar ben Shammua. One reason this seems possible is Jesus' honored place amidst another Semitic culture: that of the Arabs. Muslims revere Jesus as a prophet, calling him by the Arabic form of his name, "Isa". Up until European colonial powers in the Early Modern Period began using missionary Christianity alongside military force to dominate territories where Muslims dwelt, it had been an Islamic literary tradition to write down various tales from oral tradition that described Isa as an exemplary sage and healer, indeed as one of the progenitors of Sufism (as discussed in an earlier article of this blog). Imperialistic oppression by Westerners soured the popular native traditions devoted to Jesus, and their voices fell silent (or at least the scribes no longer felt inclined to record them). Though it is disputed, there is some evidence that Jesus was honored as "Isha, Best of the Sons of Men" by Tibetan and Nepalese Buddhists, who believed Jesus had come to India to study various spiritual traditions there, of which he came to prefer the teachings of Buddhism. Despite the aggressive policies of missionaries, Buddhists still honor Jesus as one of the world's great teachers of the true moral path, and Muslims still hold as orthodox the tenet that Jesus will accompany Allah in the Redemption of the World. Jews today, through the rectifications of Judeo-Christian scholarship now can see that Jesus belongs to a branch in the historical tree of the evolving Jewish faith, and if so understood, can be a figure that brings peace and understanding between Christians and Jews, rather than strife. What we must recognize is that there have always been elements that arose freely and naturally among like-minded, spiritually-oriented people for interfaith understanding and respectful sharing of scriptural traditions. It is only opportunistically divisive, politically motivated religious chauvinists who have upset and repressed a natural drift toward ecumenicalism between moral faiths. Proselytizers should always respect and not interfere with a person's chosen path: never impose, or the virtue of faith evaporates. We must remember that when Jesus helped, taught, healed and defended people, he did not ask first or even afterward that they worship him, or that the person to whom he had shown charity should become a Jew as he was, but rather, he simply said, "Sin no more."