Recover Jesus of Nazareth

The excessive consumption, the competition in the lighting of the streets, squares and shopping centers, the excesses in food, the waste of a third of the food that goes to the trash and the mythical aspects, Christmas iconography, in these Christmas parties have overshadowed, hidden or forgotten their true protagonist: Jesus of Nazareth, whom I would like to recover from such oblivion or falsification, but not in his folkloric, consumerist, cultural and sentimental character, but in his ethical, prophetic and liberating

Religions have always been the object of criticism, rightly so, and especially since modernity. It has been said that they promote superstition, fanaticism and intolerance. God or the gods and goddesses have also been criticized everywhere. Sometimes their existence has been denied because it is understood that it lacks an empirical basis. Others have attributed its origin to fear, the need for comfort and protection from nature or threats from our fellow humans.

The criticism hits squarely on the waterline of religious institutions that claim to defend the rights of divinity when they frequently forget to defend human rights, and especially those of impoverished people and groups. They have been accused of perverting the authentic message of the founders, psychologically alienating their followers, generating feelings of guilt, imposing submission and relegating women to an inferior role.

Jesus of Nazareth, however, is saved from all criticism, or almost all. There is a kind of consensus about him. Almost everyone speaks well of him and agrees in recognizing his values ​​and qualities: philosophers, theologians, artists, religious figures, poets, novelists, scientists, saints, film directors, etc. They are people of different religions, and even non-believers, agnostics, atheists…

Gandhi writes: “The spirit of the Sermon on the Mount exercises on me almost the same fascination as the Bhagavad Gita. That sermon is the origin of my affection for Jesus.” The writer Albert Camus states: “I do not believe in his resurrection, but I will not hide the emotion I feel before Christ and his teaching. Before Him and before the history of Him I experience nothing but respect and veneration. Observes the philosopher Simone Weil: “Before being Christ, he is the truth. If we turn away from him to go towards the truth, we will not go far without falling into his arms. Rousseau confessed: “If the life and death of Socrates are those of a wise man, the life and death of Jesus are those of a God.”

Nietzsche, who defined God as “our longest lie” and proclaimed his death, defines Jesus as the “great symbolist” and “good messenger,” who “died just as he lived, just as taught, not to 'redeem men', but to show how to live. What he bequeathed to humanity is the practice: his behavior before the judges, before the executioners, before the accusers and before all kinds of slander and mockery, his behavior on the cross.

Ethically impeccable

I also count myself, modestly, among the admirers of Jesus of Nazareth and I agree with the testimony of Laín Entralgo, who, at the presentation of his book The problem of being a Christian, He asserted: “The central nerve of Christian conduct is not the imitation of Christ, among other reasons, because Christ is inimitable. What is characteristic of Christianity is the following of Christ from and with one's own life.”

The place of convergence of the different laudatory testimonies towards Jesus of Nazareth is his ethical attitude, his liberating praxis, his commitment to the most vulnerable people and groups, his defense of lost causes, his being-for-others, his detached lifestyle, its humanist and ecological message. His supportive and compassionate attitude towards his neighbors in need, the radical nature of his denunciation of all powers: political, religious, economic. Everyone agrees that Jesus was a ethically impeccable personof great moral stature.

It is this ethical dimension, ignored by many of the dogmatic Christologies, that today I want to highlight in these celebrations in full harmony with the theology of the following of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Johann Baptist Metz, Jürgen Moltmann and the theologies of liberation, which present it as a liberator.

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