“I am not a God afar off, I am a brother and friend;

Within your bosoms I reside, and you reside in me . . .”

—William Blake, Jerusalem The Emanation of the Giant Albion

As a person who experienced, and continually experiences, a spiritual intervention through the person of Jesus, I cannot help but identify as a Christian. I can testify to his presence, to the ways he’s held me and spoke to me, how he’s shined light unto my path, accompanying me as I seek to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly. He has been my closest companion in this inward apocalypse. That said, I hold loosely to the mechanics of my theology. I find that both the dynamic relationship with the Spirit, with her continuing revelation, and believing God’s incarnation in Christ, continually challenge me and transform how I view God.

For those of us who believe in an incarnational Christ, we witness the personality of God in Jesus. We see a God whose mercy is ever-extending, whose love is not bound to formalities and rules, who does not impose their power on others but rather seeks to build power among the people, and who is willing to die for collective liberation.

For me, I also see God entering personhood in Jesus.

I see this spirit that rests beneath all things, this Ground of Being, this weak but universal power, becoming real, embodied, material. I see this God take up the vulnerability, chaos, danger, and beauty of flesh and human existence. I see a God who abolishes the division between humanity and divinity and proposes that to be fully human is to be fully god.

For many, God became real to them in Jesus. They encountered a God who declared themselves not a master, but a friend. A comrade. A God who was bound to limitations and weaknesses. A God who was human. God may have been a vision, an idea, a compelling force even, but now God was present and alive to them, leading them into a kin-dom that is here and now.

Was God like this before Jesus? I think so. I think Jesus wakes us up to the fact that love and divinity can only be real when material and social. We cannot love God if we do not love God’s kin, and we cannot love God’s kin simply in principle, as an abstract doctrine, but in deed. This is worship.

I think there’s a reason why Paul calls the early church “the Body of Christ.” These disciples of the Way were called to embody the generosity, justice, and love of God in the world. They were to corporately embody God. They were not simply continuing the work of Jesus, but were meant to go even further, and do greater things. And yet the church ossified into a vehicle of power, forming a synergistic relationship with its greatest enemy: empire. The church was tragically corrupted into the anti-Christ.

And yet, I still believe in the Way of Jesus. I see this Way as beyond and even countering the church. This way seeks to de-throne the God of the church, of empire, and all condescending and oppressive powers. In Jesus, I know a Spirit that incarnates within the masses, stirring them to enact justice and love for each other, and to live in a solidarity that could cost one’s life. I see a God that does not reign above me, but who is integral to my own personhood, who holds me all and all creation, seeking for opportunities to manifest mercy. I see a God who is enfleshed in my siblings, in my comrades, present in the midst of communal love. A God who is action, who is material justice, who is Bread.

Maybe this God isn’t God. I think in Jesus, they don’t need to be.