Why “is Jesus God?” is the wrong question

Rethinking Jesus' divinity beyond dogma

John 1:1

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

John 1:14

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

One of the great tragedies of the church is that, after the first few centuries, curiosity and mystery gave way to rigid dogma. As Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire—the very empire the apostle John called the Beast—empire logic took over. Empires thrive on binary thinking and absolute pronouncements, enforced by violence.

Before this, the early church contained a range of perspectives on Jesus’ nature, which makes sense because the Gospels themselves leave it open-ended. Neither Matthew, Mark, Luke, nor John plainly state, "Jesus is God," without qualification. Instead, they lead us toward a conclusion—almost as if it were too sacred, too mysterious, too loaded with personal and holy meaning to turn it into a dogmatic proclamation, much less a precise formula.

But eventually, the church did just that. It not only defined creeds about Jesus’ divinity but stamped out opposing views with violence—excommunications, forced conversions, and even executions.

St Nicholas (aka Santa Claus) slapping Arius for Christological heresy

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t believe beheading and burning people at the stake is a great way to foster curiosity, much less arrive at truth.

Even within our four Gospel accounts, there is diversity on Jesus' divinity—only John comes close to stating it explicitly. There is no doubt John wants us to consider that the God of the universe could be mysteriously found Jesus. But even the opening of John’s Gospel, one of the most powerful statements of Jesus’ divinity, is not a technical proof, but a poem.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

The appropriate response to words like these is not to systematize them but to sit with them, allowing them to lead us into reverence, meditation, and communion with the divine.

In the Beginning by Makoto Fujimura

John uses a concept from Greek philosophy: the Logos, or the divine ordering principle of the universe. It is the word that explains the world. The Logos is the blueprint, the meaning behind everything.

John tells us we can discover this meaning in Jesus. In other words, Jesus lived a life that shows us what life is all about.

As the theologian Marcus Borg puts it, "Jesus is, for us Christians, the decisive revelation of what a life full of God looks like. Radically centered in God and filled with the Spirit, he is the decisive disclosure and epiphany of what can be seen of God embodied in a human life. As the Word and Wisdom and Spirit of God become flesh, his life incarnates the character of God. . . . In him we see God’s passion."

So was Jesus God?

I don’t mind saying yes to that question. But that doesn’t mean that I believe a big guy up there came down and became a little guy down here.

Many of us have inherited a distorted view of God—a sky king.

But God is not a big man in the sky, God is Spirit (John 4:24), filling heaven and earth (Jer 23:24), permeating all of creation, over all and through all and in all (Eph 4:6). God is the very nature of reality—“in whom we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). God is, as Richard Rohr says, “reality with a personality.” And John will later write that God is love. That means that the divine heart of the universe—the Logos, the key that unlocks all of reality—is love. Love is the word that explains the world.

And John tells us that this mystery of love is disclosed in Jesus.

“Jesus is God” is not a technical statement about how God transferred into a human body. John’s poem invites us to something far more life-changing: to see God’s loving nature and the meaning behind all life revealed in Jesus.

And what do we see?

A poor, radical Palestinian Jew—who preached justice to the rich and religious elite, centered the marginalized, and was executed as an enemy of the state.

John says, that is what God is like. Sit with that.

Using Dogma for division

Here’s the problem with the question, “Is Jesus God?”

Usually, when someone is asking it, they’re asking because they want to know what category to put someone in.

Are they one of the "right belief" people or one of the "wrong belief" people who need to be converted?

For many, dogma exists to divide—so they can feel right while others are wrong. But the purpose of this truth is transformation. The spiritual legends have always taught: we become like what we worship. Show me your God, and I will know who you are.

If you tell me Jesus is God, but your life looks nothing like Jesus, you’ve missed the point.

Ironically, many people believe Jesus is God in a way that makes them less likely to imitate him. “Well yeah, Jesus did that, but he’s God.” As if his life were an unattainable standard rather than a model for us to follow.

But as the Logos of God, Jesus showed us what’s worth living for—which means what a true human life looks like.

The God of the Slaveholders

If you need a clear example of how easy it is to miss the point entirely, you only need to remember that Christians who believed Jesus was God colonized and enslaved the world.

In The Black Christ, Kelly Brown Douglas points out that white slaveholding Christians were emphatic about Jesus' divinity—it was their central doctrine. And yet “his ministry to the poor and oppressed is virtually inconsequential.”

The life of Jesus was irrelevant to them. They believed the “right” doctrine about Jesus being God, and then enacted horrors that would have caused the real Jesus to turn over tables.

Douglas points out, “With [their] salvation guaranteed through belief, white people could be slaveholders and Christian without guilt or fear about the state of their soul.”

But for enslaved Black Christians, the divinity of Jesus meant something entirely different. To them, if Jesus was God, that meant God was with the poor and oppressed. God was on the side of the crucified ones.

If Jesus was God, that meant that God was one with them, because they saw so clearly that Jesus was one of them.

If someone believes Jesus is God and yet owns slaves, I would say their belief doesn’t matter at all, and they have entirely missed the point of what Jesus’ divinity actually means.

A Better Question

So let me offer a better question.

Instead of asking, “Is Jesus God?” ask,

“What if God is like Jesus?”

Jesus, who never punished anyone.
Jesus, who only healed and never harmed.
Jesus, who stood against the rich and powerful and sided with the weak and lowly—all the way to death.

What would change about your understanding of God if you really believed that?

And what would change about you?

If God is like Jesus, then God is not on the side of empire, wealth, and dominance—but on the side of the wounded, the poor.

Which side are you on?

If God is like Jesus, then God is not a powerful ruler demanding worship, but a servant who celebrates with social outcasts.

Which do you want to be like?

If God is like Jesus, then God is not the justification for war, power, and control—but the one crucified by it. He is the one always calling us back to peace.

If God is like Jesus, then believing in Jesus is not about securing your place in heaven, it’s about whether we are willing to follow him here on earth.

This faith is not just about who we believe in—it’s about who we are becoming.

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As you complete this breath prayer, release any need for dogma, any need to be right. Simply consider who you are becoming.

Inhale: Jesus, reveal God’s heart…
Exhale: Help me love like you loved

Inhale: If God is like Jesus…
Exhale: Help me stand where you stood