Fiction

This I believe:

1. Hamlet is a compelling fictional character whose story and speech contain useful elements to ponder when one is thinking about the human condition. But if you consider him your invisible friend who is with you all the time, you have problem in your brain.

2. Oedipus is a compelling fictional character whose story and speech contain useful elements to ponder when one is thinking about the human condition. But if you consider him your invisible friend who is with you all the time, you have problem in your brain.

3. Jesus is a compelling fictional character whose story and speech contain useful elements to ponder when one is thinking about the human condition. But if you consider him your invisible friend who is with you all the time, you have problem in your brain.

Some people find it surprising that an atheist -- much less an atheist proponent of the Christ Myth theory -- would say all the nice things about Jesus that I habitually utter in public.

As for me, I don't see a contradiction. Hamlet, Oedipus and Jesus are all fictional characters. And I do with fictional characters what we all do with them -- I make them my own. My Hamlet is not your Hamlet. Maybe where you see a madman, I see a grieving son. Whatever. I don't care. You can have your Hamlet, but you can't take my Hamlet away from me. And I doubt you would want to.

But deranged literalists have demoted Jesus from his rightful place in the pantheon of fictional characters and insisted that he is the one character you must accept as true or reject entirely. No other choice.

I don't accept this false choice any more than I would accept a similar scheme for Hamlet or William Tell.

Jesus is not the greatest literary character ever invented -- and, I'll admit, the whole story gets a little too Lord of the Rings for me at times -- but he's certainly interesting, and you can't deny that the fictional book he stars in has been pretty popular. For someone like me who traffics in myth, Jesus is well worth studying, not least because he's a synthesis of a great many time-tested myths.

Of course, the mythical Jesus I appreciate today as a study in contradiction -- certain but confused, peaceful but violent, reverent but blasphemous, wise but insane -- is a different Jesus than the one I grew up with. That Jesus was a censored Jesus -- not the Hothead Jesus who killed a fig tree with his magic powers because it didn't have any damn figs for him. Not the Vengeful Jesus who tells a parable reassuring his disciples that all nonbelievers will be slaughtered in the end. Rather, the Jesus I grew up with was the construct that most people mean today when they say "Jesus."

They mean this Jesus:

The kind philosopher who just wanted everybody to get along. The Jesus who told us to take care of the least among us. The guy who said all those nice things that just about no civilized person on Earth disagrees with. To paraphrase Dawkins, the Jesus we all like.

I wish there were a less laborious way to name "The Nice Jesus Character Who Can Be Extracted From The Gospels If You Take Out The Horrible Stuff And Who Most People Have In Mind When They Say 'Jesus.'" Because The Nice Jesus Character Who Can Be Extracted From The Gospels If You Take Out The Horrible Stuff And Who Most People Have In Mind When They Say "Jesus" was the Jesus who I was introduced to as a child. He just happened to be the character used by authority figures in my life to teach me about charity, forgiveness, compassion and other worthwhile liberal values. It didn't have to be The Nice Jesus Character Who Can Be Extracted From The Gospels If You Take Out The Horrible Stuff And Who Most People Have In Mind When They Say "Jesus," as any number of fictional characters (or even historical ones) can teach the same lessons. But in my case, it was The Nice Jesus Character Who Can Be Extracted From The Gospels If You Take Out The Horrible Stuff And Who Most People Have In Mind When They Say "Jesus."

Sometimes, my shorthand for that Jesus is "Jesus."

And, Christ on crack, does this get me into trouble.