“Human beings are not born once, and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but… life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.”- Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

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More than any other religious figure, I’ve identified with Jesus Christ, and while I don’t worship him as a God, I do follow him as a human being committed to doing good.

He inspires and guides me, preaching as he did for the poor, people in need, and the vulnerable. He asks us to have a purpose in life and, for that purpose to be doing good.

I’ve read about him all my life and honor him on Easter, a day for celebrating his rebirth and resurrection. A day the corporations haven’t yet figured out how to co-opt and market.

I’m familiar with regeneration; I am in the process of being reborn and strongly embrace the idea. My process is a lot easier than his.

Marquez was right. We humans often give rebirth to ourselves more than once.

Even though Christ himself has been betrayed and abandoned by the White Christian Nationalists and Evangelicals seeking to take power in our country,  I find Christ’s teachings more relevant and vital than ever.

I read many books about the true Christ and his life, not just the myth spreaders; scholars are learning more and more about him all the time, and as we might guess, what they are finding doesn’t always support the common God-like portrayal of him.

American Scholar Bart Ehrman has been investigating and explaining myths and truths about Christ for more than a decade; I find him consistently intelligent, knowledgeable, honest, and balanced.

I’m now reading his latest book, Jesus Interrupted, which is as good, thoughtful, and surprising as his other writings.

In his research, he’s found good and bad news about Christ, but the raw portrayal of Jesus is as persuasive and credible as any I’ve read. It makes me love him all the more.

For the first time, I am learning that not only do I relate to his teachings and values, but it’s possible that he and I were alike in other ways – he was often irritable, judgemental, and impatient.

I love this idea on many levels, some quite selfish. As I am learning, you don’t have to be Buddha, the Dalai Lama, or Mother Teresa to be spiritual and do good.

Like all of us, and like Christ himself, you just have to be a human being, a remarkable but profoundly flawed species.

Ehrman found that Jesus was no Buddha. He had a short fuse and an ironic and often and-cutting wit.

He was often and openly annoyed by what he thought was the stupidity of many of his followers and their inability to grasp apparent points.

“Do you have eyes but fail to see?” he asks one poor disciple after preaching.

Unlike charismatic leaders like John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X, who stood up for oppressed people,  Christ was enigmatic, confusing, “verbally spry,” and sometimes even shifty.

He was taken in his preaching with defiant, enigmatic, and pregnant parables that went nowhere,  never entirely ended and sometimes didn’t make sense.

He might, wrote Ehrman, have been deliberately obscure to avoid angering the Roman authorities, who were monitoring his every word and building a case against him.

None of this makes me think any less of Christ. It just means he was a human being, not necessarily a messianic God who lived and soared far above ordinary people like me.

Ehrman is persuasive, careful, and responsible in his widely praised writing.

You don’t have to be all that good to do good.

You certainly don’t need to be perfect.

It’s okay to be grumpy, judgemental, and impatient – I think of the often stunningly dishonest and unknowing messages I get online every day and hoe irritating they can be.

I’m relieved. I don’t want to be any kind of God.

On this day, celebrating his rebirth and resurrection, I appreciate Jesus all the more.

He was, after all, just one of us, and if you can’t be one of us, you can’t possibly understand us.

I know it is arrogant for me to assume Jesus would warm to me, but usually if I warm to somebody, they return the favor.

Christ’s ordinary humanity makes him all the more credible to me, even as I admit it makes me feel even closer to him. We can rise up trying to heal the world by doing good. It doesn’t matter what we are like.

Perhaps it takes outsiders like me to appreciate what Jesus did and what he taught; maybe that’s the only way his messages can be kept alive.

The money changers have left the Temple and bought the churches instead. Christians who use faith to hide their hatred and anger better be ready to run if the legends are true and Jesus Christ really is planning to come back.