What kind of Jesus do you believe in?
It might seem a silly question but it is an important one. One of the strange things that happened when the church tried to explore who the historical Jesus actually is was that those who did the research seemed to end up with a Jesus that was just like them. Instead of digging through all the layers supposedly imposed on Jesus what we found was that the layers that got removed were the layers that made Jesus seem uncomfortable for the one removing the layers. There are still some scholars who do this today and claim they have found the ‘real’ Jesus when the truth is that this ‘real’ Jesus is actually a Jesus just like them.
It’s taken the church a long time to understand that in fact the gospels paint a very accurate picture of who Jesus actually was/is. Our problem is learning to appreciate who Jesus actually was/is even when that makes us feel uncomfortable. This means we have to revise what we think of Jesus and not try and avoid what Jesus is like by claiming the bits we don’t like belong to some later editor of the gospels.
If you want to know what Jesus was actually like then read the gospels and you’ll get a pretty good idea.
