Burmes Don't need This Christ

        Sometimes we understand something, some concepts or some reality when expressed in the apposite term. Our image of Christ is the Other. This is the Christ we cannot accept and the Christ we reject. In many ways, the Christ the non-Christians do not believe is also the Christ I do not believe in. I would like to reformulate my christological credo: I Christ I don’t believe in.

I don’t believe in the Christ in whose name “the cross legitimates the sword,” who validates “slavery” and “wars,” tolerates “violence” and “inquisitions,” and is indifferent to “colonialism” and “imperialism,”  

I don’t believe in the Christ who has completely lost his (Asian) Jewishness, and put up the Greco-Roman-European image, 

I don’t believe in the Christ whose mind is so concrete-all mixed up and permanently fixed since before Incarnation that he has only one unique image/face and message for everyone,

I don’t believe in the Christ who, siding with only a particular Church denomination and religion, cannot be found outside the Christianity,  

I don’t believe in the Christ who has nothing to do with peoples of other religions and condemns their religious practices and remains in the Christian code, cult, creed and community,

I don’t believe in the Christ who supports the dictum: “Outside the church, there is no salvation,” and imposes non-Christians to enter the church and accept his gospels,

I don’t believe in the Christ who gives the twelve apostles a “detailed blueprint for a church: seven sacraments with precise matter and form, the papacy vested with supreme and universal jurisdiction, the monarchical episcopate, doctrines, liturgies, and laws”,[1] 

I don’t believe in the Christ who so humble and meek that pleases everyone and never scandalizes anyone and revolutionizes any idea, 

I don’t believe in the Christ who comes solely to save our “soul” from (original and personal?) sins for next life, separating and denouncing “body” as evil and soul as absolute,    

I don’t believe in the andocentric Christ who forbids women for service (diakonia) in communion with Abba (koinonia) at the agape-meal table (eucharistia) of his followers' community (ekklesia), but partially allows them to lead in celebration/worship (lieturgia), witness (martyria) and the proclamation of word (kerygma), 

I don’t believe in the Christ who commands his disciples to abolish cultures and to substitute them with gospel,

I don’t believe in the European Christ who came back to Asia with swords and cross and claimed that Asian is a idolatrous pagan atheistic continent,  

I don’t believe in the Christ of those who said that “the Africans have no souls” [like animals especially monkeys], and who tolerated the slave trade, and those white Christians declaring: “Oceania  is a pagan continent”,

I don’t believe in the Christ of those who claim to be infallible and posses the truth, and the Christ of those who cannot be criticized and questioned their transparency and accountability,

I don’t believe in the Christ of those who have all the answers for any contemporary problem from the Bible, from the Tradition and the Magisterium,

I don’t believe in the judgmental and perfectionist Christ who holds a policy of zero tolerance in his Kingdom,

I don’t believe in the imperialistic Christ of the West who wills the missionaries to impose faith with colonial power, 

I don’t believe in the Christ who tolerates violence like the Crusades and the Inquisitions, and the Christ in whose name wars are justified, color discrimination vis-à-vis social worlds accepted,

I don’t believe in the Christ whom one can encounter only in the Eucharist, but not in the market, not in the night club, not among the prostitutes, gamblers, drug-addicts of today,

I don’t believe in the rigid and churched Christ fully locked up for good in the christological doctrinal [re]formulations of the various councils, 

I don’t believe in the rational Christ of scientific experiment, archeological finding, historical research and the Christ [who is under the control] of some theological, clerical, intellectual product and therefore has nothing to do with the global [socio-economic-religious-political-cultural-ecological] realities of today,   

I don’t believe in the Christ who is incarnated just to die for “divine retribution” and sent to reconcile the world with the Father “by the shedding of his blood” to save our souls alone by forgiving sins,

I don’t believe in the anti-sex Christ, an a/desexualized Messiah, and a Savior without sexuality,

I don’t believe in the gay Christ who together with his gay disciples is homosexual in accordance with the Greek elite culture of his time,

I don’t believe in the cleric Christ who as a chaste, poor and obedient priest and perfect example chooses men followers and imposes them to be celibate for good,

I don’t believe in the Christ who always wants to be adored, exalted, pleased, worshipped, prayed to, asked for and is at all times seated at the “tower of ivory” in the form of the Host,  

I don’t believe in the Christ who is blind enough to see the social evils of any context, deaf to discern the cry of majority and dumb to criticize (numb to feel) the hypocritical social structure,