Albert Schweitzer led Biblical scholarship in the late 19th Century. He correctly concluded that Jesus as a historical figure could never be known. He has never been proved wrong.

Those who insist that Jesus never existed know no more than those who insist he did. I think he existed but I do not believe the Bible story of Jesus as history. I put it on the level of the best of Shakespeare.

Jesus has almost from the start been accepted by some as a Universal Guide to what is good. That is how he should be seen -- as a person whose story shows how heaven can come to earth by our following the way of the one he called Abba.

Abba was hardly the stern, binary, tribal god of Israel. Abba was the accessible reality that enabled Jesus to confidently suggest the Lord's Prayer.

Triadic revolution

Jesus empowered what can now become a universal global revolution, but not one in which any religion triumphs over others. Not one that pits nation against nation and allows brute power the last word.

The victory that Jesus brings is exactly what Nietzsche, Peirce, Wittgenstein and others, each in their own way, advocated. Namely that we think in terms of the relativity of everything but acknowledge and embody our essential and ordinary unity.

No more either-or

We live in the era of the death of the binary as the dominant mode of thinking and doing.

That means the end of war, the diminution of violence, and the elevation of consideration like that advocated by Jesus when he suggested we consider the lilies of the valley. In other words, we are to live with eyes open to what is happening right now. And think our way ahead.

Evolving

Jesus opened up the possibility that we can evolve from our binary human state to a triadic existence capable of creating lives that are good.

We are meant to make earth itself more and more heavenly. All of us together. We do not have to believe a Christian creed to accept the story of Jesus as one of incredible overcoming. We should make that our story as well.

This is not an effort to sneak religion through some back door. It signals the end of religion and the development of a secularity that's a quilt of spiritual expressions.

The unifying factor will be the values that should bind us all -- values that make for peace and progress, values that celebrate tolerance, helpfulness, and democracy.

Guidance

With Jesus as a guide, we move beyond institutional religion. We move to universal spirituality based on the capacity of each unique individual to develop a mode of being that seeks to be conscious and ethical. Uniting heart and mind, body and soul, the whole person is guided when engaging in something like the daily recitation silently of the Lord's Prayer or a version of it,

The universal nature of Jesus and the morphing of religion into a way of life is the best recipe for moving to a world of sanity and mutuality.