For the established religions to 'work,' it's best to reject science. In few places is this practiced more completely and comically than in those postulates that aim to prove the existence of a personal Jesus Christ.
Was there really a Jesus Christ? Christians to this day seek physical proof of His existence in order to historically substantiate their beliefs and thereby establish their God, religion and themselves as “the Ones.” They point to scrolls and rotting cloth sheets as evidence that in the Bible is written the Truth about Jesus Christ, whoever He may or may not have been. (They're not the only religious camp to try this on, so don't think I'm just picking on the well meaning, poor, vilified, victimised, hollow-eyed whole of Christianity. That would be mean!)
Was there really a physical Jesus Christ? The better question is, “Why does it matter to you so much?”
But the best and most entertaining question would be, 'Where is Jesus now?' Biblical texts tell us, or many tell us that they tell us, that the Christ, upon His resurrection and disinterment, ascended into Heaven. The Christ became airborne of God’s volition and headed straight up into the sky, no doubt startling and inspiring a small crowd of onlookers, who'd never seen anything other than a bird or butterfly do such an impossible thing.
So, where is Jesus now? It depends on many things. Is the Christ actually still “of the flesh” up there? If so, He must be very cold in the vacuum of space. How fast does Jesus’ shivering person travel? Can He exceed the speed of light, believed to be the maximum velocity of all tangible things? Some Christians might say He is capable of traveling faster than light, but that seems an inadmissible physical favouritism. I mean, if Jesus Christ could outstrip light on the celestial racetrack, then nuts could someday fall up from the tree. (Couldn't they?)
How far away is Heaven, anyway? Is it an actual place? Giving Jesus the benefit of the doubt, which would constitute an appropriate act of Christian kindness, if He died at age 30, as the bible says, and was splitting along at nearly 190,000 miles per second, He could be at most 1,980 light years away, presuming He hasn’t yet reached Heaven, which He may or may not have done, because no one really knows where it is. (Do they?)
In January, 1998, the Hubble Space Telescope detected a collection of isolated, intergalactic 'red giant' stars near the Virgo galaxy cluster, about 60 million light years from Earth, or 30,500 times further away than Jesus’ current, or roughly current, position.
Why, then, have no astronomers seen Jesus? Is He not full of radiance, as the good book says? If He emits His own light and is so relatively close to us, surely Hubble should have sent back a Polaroid by now.
And I like to think he'd be smiling and waving at us. I really, really do. (Don't you?)
So, kiddies, before you lay down your heads tonight, spare a thought for the freezing Saviour of Mankind. And, if you're lucky enough to be falling asleep in a middle-class home, do the right thing and offer Him a jumper.
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