By Jordan Nicholas Sukut, 2024.01.25 (updated 2024.01.25)
A post in Above The Chaos
In the post Above The Chaos, Rediscovering God Beyond Religion, I made the case that the next step in our collective journey requires that we tear down the Propositional Idols we are worshiping, and rediscover the Ultimate Reality and Ultimate Unity of God beyond the confines of religious structures and dogmatic propositions forged by human minds and hands.
Just as our Progress towards Unity through Love requires liberating our concept of God from religious dogma, so too must we liberate our conceptual understanding of, and personal relationship with, Christ from the religion that claims the Name while bearing little resemblance to the Ideal.
When I use the word Christ, and state that my Mission is the Mission of Christ, it is again a matter of definition and not of religion.
The word "Christ" comes from the Greek word "Christos" (Χριστός), which means "anointed one." The term was used in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible (the Septuagint) to translate the Hebrew word "Mashiach" (מָשִׁיחַ), from which we get "Messiah" in English.
In Hebrew, "Mashiach" means "anointed" and was typically used in the context of someone who was anointed with oil as part of a ritual, often signifying a chosen status. In the Old Testament, anointing was commonly associated with kings and priests who were set apart for a specific, God-given role.
In Jewish tradition, the Messiah ("Mashiach") is a future king who is expected to be anointed as a ruler to restore Israel, bring about an era of peace and justice, and usher in a unification of humanity under the worship of the one God.
In the New Testament, "Christ" is used as a title for the person of Jesus to signify that he is the awaited Messiah prophesied in the Old Testament. The authors of the New Testament interpreted various Old Testament prophecies as being fulfilled in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, while looking forward to a "Second Coming" during which Christ would reign on Earth and fulfill the remaining Messianic prophesies not completed during the life of Jesus, including vanquishing evil, establishing a reign of wisdom, peace and justice, and forging the everlasting Kingdom of God on Earth as it is in Heaven.
Beyond the Judeo-Christian tradition, many other religious and spiritual traditions contain prophesies pointing towards similar archetypical patterning.
The crucial thing to understand is that the Mission of Christ, or the Messiah, is by definition equivalent to the embodiment and enactment of the Will and Intention of God as a consequence of complete Unity of Spirit incarnate in human form.
The Spirit of Christ is by definition One with the Spirit of God, impelling Christ to do what God would do, or have done, in that local fragment of SpaceTime.
This is the idea of Incarnation; the Manifestation of the Transcendent via Spirit, and the incarnation of Spirit into the SpatioTemporal limitation of a given Form that is progressively transforming and conforming its temporarily and perceptually individuated Self back towards Unity with God.
Because the Spirit of God permeates, animates, and sustains the universe, and indeed is living within us, or more accurately living us, the Potential to be "like Christ", in other words to transmute or transform the essence of our Individuated Being towards ever greater conformity to the pure Spirit / Image / Ideal of God, is present in every person to varying degrees. Eastern Christian traditions often refer to this process as Theosis, derived from "theos" (θεός), the Greek word for God.
Theosis is not merely an individual process. It is also a collective process owing to our underlying interexistence in God. We are collectively engaged in the universal project of transforming not only our perceptually individuated lives and localities, but also our underlying interexistence and world towards its Ultimate Destiny.
How high can we go? What is the Upper Limit of our Transformation towards the Ideal?
How much like Christ can we become? How close to Heaven On Earth can our world become?
To what extent are we, individually and collectively, capable of fully embodying and enacting the Spirit, Will, and Intention of God over the course of the coming millennia?
When I say that my Mission is the Mission of Christ, I mean that I exist to progressively conform my life and my world towards the Image and Ideal of God, by the power of the Spirit of God. I mean that my Mission is the Kingdom of God, On Earth As it Is In Heaven.
Interestingly, that Mission has put me at odds with religious and political leaders and power structures that publicly call themselves "Christian".
As we progress beyond the elementary religious structures that guided us in our youth, we will discover that whether something or someone is "Christian" is not a matter of religion or self-identification. It is not saying "Lord Lord" that gains us entrance to the Kingdom. It is a matter of the degree to which one is actually embodying and enacting the Spirit of Christ, which is the Spirit of God, in their own Time and Place, and progressively transforming and conforming their life and their world towards the Ideal. To the extent that someone recognizes our efforts in that direction and identifies us as Christians, we are deeply and humbly honored.
I hope and pray that regardless of how we or society might label us, when God and future generations weigh our lives in the balance, they will find that we did our best to become as much like Christ as our SpatioTemporal limitations would allow.
As our world shakes under the weight of the self-inflicted Meta Crisis, the degree to which we progress together towards Heaven or Hell on Earth will be the evidence of how fully the Spirit of Christ was present within us Here and Now.