Writer Dylan Morrison

What’s So Special About Yeshua?

Yeshua the Nazarene Prophet-Teacher has influenced human history more than any other human since time immemorial. He didn’t write a book, live in a palace, nor travel outside his national boundaries and yet became the central figure in world history under the Greek name: Jesus Christ. The image of his execution on a barbaric Roman scaffold is the icon to surpass all icons.

What was He all about and what the reason for His death? Was He God or man or both? If God in what way was He God and why?

Christian orthodoxy has formed belief systems over the millenia to place Yeshua in His Jesus box – the dying Saviour of the world! In what way is He Saviour and more importantly can millions of Christians be wrong?

Let’s start at the world of Yeshua’s time. An era of religious and political control with human mimetic desire repressed by Jewish religious law and Roman armed force. Reformist Jewish movements provided their own particular God view of liberation for the confused and largely disillusioned inhabitants of Galilee and Judaea. Some sought a political strategy to evict the pagan Roman occupiers and others proudly awaited the apocalyptic Kingdom of God in their ascetic desert communities.

Into such a world was born Yeshua Bar Yosef, destined to become the greatest spiritual leader of all time.

The most significant event for Yeshua, prior to His itinerant ministry, was His baptism by his preacher cousin John, in the Jordan river. It proved to be the key and inspiration for all that followed in the fledgling Prophet’s life. ‘You are my Beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.’ Had these words been previously whispered by the Divine to the archetypal man Adam in the idyllic prehistory Garden. I believe so! Yeshua, the Second Adam, rose out of the waters fully aware that He was now in total mimesis and harmony with Divine Presence. A new Man whose desire centre was perfectly aligned with the Divine will or delight. An intimate communion of God and Man that reflected the original creation – indeed a new creation. Yeshua encountered a born from above experience reflecting that of the first Adam as Holy Breath discovered its human dwelling.

As we view Yeshua in  light of  this experience, His message and mission take on a radical new meaning as we re-examine the Gospel narratives. Yeshua, a man in total imitative desire with the Divine is the messenger of a new Kingdom, a new Garden of Eden. Those surrounding Him are expecting a coming Kingdom steeped in the rivalry of religion ( Yahweh is our God) and of politics ( New Davidic style monarchy). Yeshua however wasn’t going to get involved in the mimetic game that set one against the other. His message was of a Spirit engineered realignment of our inner desire mechanism, set towards a Loving and non rivalous God known as Abba.No wonder folk didn’t understand Him – not even His closest friends  and family.

Throughout his three-year journey mimetic desire lay in  wait for Him in the most respectable of guises. His encounters with the professional clergy of His day were attempts by the Adversarial mimetic system to make him one of their own – a rivalous Rabbi, setting the boundaries for the ‘righteous’ and the ‘unrighteous’ . Yeshua didn’t play their game and it was a foregone conclusion where He would end up – scapegoated by the religious and political powers of His day.

In the Greek New Testament, the Greek word scandalon appears fairly frequently, usually in the mouth of Yeshua. It’s often translated as stumbling block or snare which masks its true meaning. Literally it’s something we trip over on our journey. Rene Girard believes this to be one of the most significant words in the New Testament. In his mimetic theory, scandalon refers to a person, a model-obstacle who blocks one’s spiritual  growth journey through desire rivalry.One of the most interesting cases where such a word is used is when Yeshua announces He’s going up to Jerusalem to die. Simon Peter, his most vociferous disciple, retaliates by declaring that such a course of action mustn’t be on the cards. Yeshua’s response is fascinating! He swings around and says to Peter ‘ Get behind me satan ( adversary), you are a scandalonto me!’ What a response to one of His closest friends and disciples. What did Yeshua mean? This is what I believe was going on: Three years previously Peter had left all to follow Yeshua on His road trip. Yeshua had drawn Peter into His desire for the Kingdom of God. Peter for all his flaws had begun to model Himself on Yeshua, but he still didn’t understand the Kingdom. He believed that the Yeshua entourage would end up ruling a politically and religiously restored, Roman- free Israel. Peter had got to a relational stage where his skewed mimetic desire had, in his eyes, turned him into a close advisor, indeed almost an equal partner of Yeshua’s. He’d done the groundwork and was now almost a model for Yeshua. The shocking and sudden revelation of Yeshua’s plans to walk straight into his enemies hands, forced Peter to reveal his rivalry with His Master. Hence Yeshua’s blunt response. Peter was playing the mimetic game and become adversarial in his seemingly devoted relationship to Yeshua. In that instance Peter was the embodiment of the adversarial mimetic system known as satan. Yeshua wasn’t rebuking a third party – He was looking straight at Peter! Peter had become a scandalon, a stumbling block, a model obstacle to Yeshua and His Abba’s desire. Peter’s gravitational desire for power and success was trying to hook Yeshua and reel Him in. Unknown to Peter, he was subconsciously trying to block Yeshua’s final mission of  exposing skewed mimetic desire  through His death. Yeshua’s words that Peter thought like a man and not God were spot on. Peter wasn’t in mimesis with Abba through his realigned mimesis with Yeshua. Instead His skewed mimesis was momentarily at work, despite his three years of discipleship with Yeshua.

I’ll talk more of this when I visit the whole idea of skewed mimesis within faith congregations in a future post.

As Yeshua entered Jerusalem the ritualistic forces of mimetic desire were stirring.Within the week the adoring festival goers had turned into part of the mob that condemned Yeshua. The Chief Priest Caiaphas declared the religious one liner: better for one to die than all – the scene was set for a religious lynching, an enactment of an ancient sacrificial theology born out of hyper mimetic desire and its accompanying violence. Even the loyal disciples were caught up in the scapegoating of the Man without desire. Through their fear and passivity they joined in the sacramental blood lust.

Even when facing death Yeshua refused to be drawn into the mimetic game by the Sanhedrin and His accusers – His desire was His Abba’s desire and He wouldn’t change His alignment even to save His own skin.On the Friday of His execution it looked like the old mimetic system had won again – that the satan was still deeply entrenched within all religious and political systems.

The object of Yeshua’s mimetic desire was strangely quiet over that haunting weekend – until Sunday morning that is – Mary and the other disciples realised that mimesis extends beyond the grave. The Abba responded to the Second Adam by forming a new reconstituted body for Him – a validation that shocked the whole skewed mimetic system. The Divine Source was in mimesis with the scapegoated victim, not the cultural powers that promised peace and stability – not the powers that claimed Him as part of their system.

Things would never be the same again – the Kingdom had come and all mankind were back in The Garden. Once again the Divine would whisper ‘ You are my Beloved in whom I am well pleased’. And what of Yeshua’s divinity? A man fully in harmony with the Divine delight – Yeshua Bar Alaha indeed – Yeshua Son of God , the Second Adam.

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