Margaret Cho on Jesus Christ
I just read this great piece that Margaret Cho wrote on her blog about The Passion of Christ, Catholics, and why the saviour supports gay marriage.

I've always had a problem with the way most Christians see Jesus Christ, but every once and a while I read or hear someone that makes me think "this person sees Christ as I do." I remember when I was in elementary school, I went to some Sunday School for a while. I really got into it and even asked my parents for my own bible for Christmas that year. (I still have that bible. It's a red letter King James bible with a fake leather cover. I've owned a few others, but that has always been my favorite.) I remember starting to read the old testament and thinking that is was boring and that god seemed like a bit of a prick. Then I read in the beginning of the book where it explained that the words of Jesus Christ were in red for easy finding. Well, that was why I wanted a bible. I wanted to know about Jesus, not some faceless entity that would ask someone to sacrifice his own son as a test (which is pretty twisted, no matter how you look at it). I wanted to read these teachings of love that I kept hearing about.

...and I read all of Jesus's words. Jesus did teach love and had all sorts of wonderful things to say. I remembering laying in bed, reading this man's words and thinking here was a man I would like to be like.

Going back to that church and sunday school after that, I felt more distant from them. They focused on all these other things, not Christ's message of love. They focused on those horrible old testament stories and how much to tithe. Constantly, the pastor seemed set to make us feel guilty. Christ hadn't made me feel guilty, why did the church. It was always about how we weren't doing enough to spread the word, giving enough in the offering plates or how the world was a horrible and sinful place. He would sermon about some horrible sin that was rampant in the world and through the whole time, there was little to nothing about love. Sure, he would say things like "we need to spread Christ's message of love" and that "God loves you, " but then would follow up with telling us how we could all end up burning in hell.

I began to feel less and less connected to Christianity. I tried several times to attend different churches but the spark was never there.

Years later, I found the teachings of Buddha and found that same feeling I had felt when reading Jesus's teachings. At the time, I was studying Wicca and a lot of new age religions. I had determined that god's message was in all the religions in some way and was determined to find those teachings. Reading Buddha, I found another someone who understood how to love and taught us all how to live that way. Then, what really began to appeal me bout Buddhism and why I ended up self-identifying with Buddhism was the lack of "clutter." Buddha's message and his path to enlightenment was like Jesus's, but it seemed simpler, more straight-forward without all the attached dogma from old religions. (I have since learned a lot about all the extra Buddhist stuff that has been added to the religion over the years but when I originally read about Buddhism it did not include all the mythology and only included the Buddha's instructions.)

It wasn't until a few years ago, when I read Living Buddha, Living Christ by Thich Nhat Hanh that I reconnected on some level with Christ's teachings and remembered that feeling about Christ that the the church had driven out of me over the years. Christ is about love and its really a very simple, beautiful message. It sucks that I forgot it over the years.

(EDIT- Now that I think about it, I guess it shouldn't be a suprise that Margaret Cho, coming from a Christian/Buddhist background, has a similiar view of Christ as me.)