Part III: When Reverence Replaces Imitation
By now, a pattern should be visible.
Paul didn’t just reinterpret Jesus.
He helped make Jesus manageable.
And once Jesus became manageable, something subtle happened:
people learned to admire him instead of following him.
That shift didn’t require bad intentions.
It required relief.
A Symbol Can’t Disrupt Your Life
Symbols are powerful precisely because they don’t demand anything concrete.
You can:
- praise a symbol,
- defend a symbol,
- argue about a symbol,
- build institutions around a symbol,
without having to change how you live tomorrow morning.
A way of life is different.
A way of life interrupts:
- how you treat power,
- how you relate to money,
- how you handle conflict,
- how you respond to harm,
- how you forgive when it costs you.
Jesus taught a way of life.
Christianity learned to venerate a symbol.
Jesus’s Teachings Are Personally Destabilizing
Strip away doctrine and titles, and Jesus says things that are hard to institutionalize:
- Love enemies.
- Forgive without limit.
- Refuse domination.
- Relinquish status.
- Give without securing return.
These teachings don’t scale cleanly.
They don’t protect hierarchy.
They don’t stabilize identity.
They destabilize it.
That’s why reverence is safer than imitation.
Belief Is Easier Than Embodiment
Belief allows distance.
You can believe something is true without letting it touch your fear, your habits, or your self-image. You can believe Jesus is Lord while living exactly as before.
Embodiment removes that distance.
To embody Jesus’s way is to confront:
- resentment you rely on,
- authority you benefit from,
- identities that protect you,
- comforts built on someone else’s loss.
Belief feels safe.
Embodiment feels dangerous.
Paul’s Framework Gave People Somewhere to Stand
Paul’s theology offered a relief valve.
Instead of:
- Live this way
the emphasis became:
- Believe this correctly
Instead of transformation now:
- salvation later
Instead of ethical disruption:
- spiritual alignment
This allowed people to remain intact while still feeling faithful.
And intactness is something the nervous system craves.
Identity Prefers Admiration to Change
When Jesus becomes a symbol, he can be safely placed inside identity.
“I’m a Christian.”
“I believe in Jesus.”
“I defend the faith.”
These identities feel solid.
They orient the self.
They provide belonging.
But following Jesus’s way threatens identity rather than reinforcing it.
It asks:
- Who are you without status?
- Who are you without moral superiority?
- Who are you without enemies?
Those questions are not symbolic.
They are existential.
This is part of a broader pattern in identity and psychological narratives—how the self organizes around stories that protect coherence, even at the cost of awareness. These dynamics are explored more deeply in the self you’re trying to hold together.
Why Institutions Need a Symbolic Jesus
Institutions cannot survive a fully embodied Jesus.
A Jesus who is:
- deferred to heaven,
- reduced to belief,
- filtered through doctrine,
is useful.
A Jesus who is:
- practiced,
- imitated,
- allowed to disrupt,
is not.
So institutions do what institutions always do:
they preserve the image and postpone the demand.
This Is Why People Feel the Tension
Many people today say something like:
“I love Jesus, but Christianity feels wrong.”
That tension isn’t confusion.
It’s perception.
They are responding to the gap between:
- a symbol that is endlessly praised, and
- a way of life that is rarely lived.
Naming that gap doesn’t destroy faith.
It clarifies it.
What Following Actually Asks For
Following Jesus’s way doesn’t require perfection.
It requires honesty.
It requires noticing:
- where obedience replaced awareness,
- where belief replaced relationship,
- where safety replaced truth.
And then staying present when the old structures don’t immediately replace themselves.
That space is uncomfortable.
But it’s also alive.
Closing Invitation
This reflection is part of an ongoing exploration into how belief, identity, and authority shape the human experience—often by protecting us from the very transformation we say we want.
These themes are explored more deeply in Proof That You’re God, a book about awareness, selfhood, and the freedom that comes from seeing clearly rather than hiding inside inherited structures.
Jesus does not need to be defended.
He needs to be encountered.
And encounters change people.
Reflection
Where in your own life has admiration replaced imitation—and what do you notice when you imagine letting the way of life matter more than the symbol?
