Thinking About Jesus - and The Buddha

The women's book club [via Zoom] at our church recently finished Holy Envy, subtitled Finding God in the Faith of Others, by Barbara Brown Taylor.  My lovely wife enjoyed the book and passed it on to my with a positive review.

It's good, She writes well, thoughtfully and honestly.  But early in Chapter 2, these words comparing the Buddha and Jesus, brought me up short.

"Christianity and Buddhism both recognize the centrality of suffering in human life.  Both stress compassion.  Both seek lasting peace."

OK - so far, so good.  Then this happened.

"Beyond that, they could not see things more differently.  The Buddha shows his followers how to achieve salvation.  Jesus achieves it for his.  The Buddha says the problem is ignorance.  Jesus says the problem is sin.  The Buddha says the self is impermanent.  Jesus says it is destined for eternal life.  I am pretty sure those teachers could stay up all night talking  .  .  ."

Now, Ms Taylor is an ordained Episcopal Priest and I am just an old man.  But I think she is largely getting Jesus wrong.  He was a Jew in first century Roman occupied Palestine.  As I understand it, Jews then, and to this day, have between little and no concern for the afterlife.  So questions of salvation and eternal life almost certainly meant very little to him.  Jesus seems not to think about sin as rule breaking, but rather doing wrong to somebody.  Further, he isn't achieving our salvation [though, admittedly, this is the prominent Christian view,] rather, he is setting an example for how to live rightly. 

The Greek word in the NT that is translated as "eternal" is a modifier that also can raise the word it modifies to its highest level.  So, eternal life is the best possible life and eternal punishment is the most severe.  There is no need to bring in the non-Jewish concepts of heaven and hell.

Jesus was very much abut the here and now, and taking care of the other, most especially the needy and oppressed.  2000 years of Christian dogma have badly distorted what the Gospels say about him.