October 12, 2025

Here are some real responses from people who were asked who is Jesus:

• Jesus is real in the sense that he exists for those who want him to exist.
• We don’t know many historical facts concerning Jesus, but apparently he was a rabbi who was an example of compassion. Since then he has been exploited by Christians especially Americans.
• Jesus is about as real as “real” as Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, or King Arthur.
• Jesus was a man we should pity more than revile or worship. He suffered from what contemporary psychologists now know to be delusions of grandeur, bipolar disorder, and probably acute schizophrenia.
• An apocalyptic prophet who bet wrong and died as a result. He should be ignored not celebrated.

The truly sad thing about these statements is that some people sincerely believe these ideas.

In a similar example once while visiting a house to provide some information about spray foam insulation. The subject of Jesus came up. The owner of the home proudly informed me of some inside knowledge he had about the subject. Jesus, he said, was actually a part of a Jewish sect called Essenes. Furthermore, there are other ancient gospels which the Catholic Church forced out of the Bible that tell us what Jesus was really like. As he enlightened me I waited to hear where he was finding this new information and what it meant to him. He said he had read a book recently by a Lady, whose name he could not remember. I asked if it could it have been Barbra Thiering, to which he replied, “yeah she’s the one.” I gently pointed out that no reputable scholar, even those who don’t take the New Testament seriously, accept Thiering’s conclusions. He had read a book called “The book Jesus wrote” claiming that Jesus didn’t die but lived on and wrote the gospel of John.

The reason these strange and inaccurate perceptions of Jesus persist is not because people don’t have access to accurate information. Rather it’s because people are deeply uncomfortable with the challenge the Biblical and historical Jesus presents.

If the bible represents an accurate depiction of Jesus life and teaching then people need to live and act completely differently than they do.

John described the problem well when he said “ The light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.”

~ Kevin Cleary