In The Third Jesus,
bestselling author and spiritual leader Deepak Chopra
provides an answer to this question that is both a challenge
to current systems of belief and a fresh perspective on what
Jesus can teach us all, regardless of our religious
background. There is not one Jesus, Chopra writes, but
three.
First, there is the historical Jesus, the man
who lived more than two thousand years ago and whose
teachings are the foundation of Christian theology and
thought. Next there is Jesus the Son of God, who has come to
embody an institutional religion with specific dogma, a
priesthood, and devout believers. And finally, there is the
third Jesus, the cosmic Christ, the spiritual guide whose
teaching embraces all humanity, not just the church built in
his name. He speaks to the individual who wants to find God
as a personal experience, to attain what some might call
grace, or God-consciousness, or enlightenment.
When
we take Jesus literally, we are faced with the impossible.
How can we truly “love thy neighbor as thyself”? But when we
see the exhortations of Jesus as invitations to join him on
a higher spiritual plane, his words suddenly make
sense.
Ultimately, Chopra argues, Christianity needs
to overcome its tendency to be exclusionary and refocus on
being a religion of personal insight and spiritual growth.
In this way Jesus can be seen for the universal teacher he
truly is–someone whose teachings of compassion, tolerance,
and understanding can embrace and be embraced by all of us.
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