Jesus Was My First Guru
I grew up Southern Baptist, in a large church where my mother made history as the first woman deacon. I know the hymns by heart, still love to sing them, and can easily be moved to tears. I can still feel the pressure of the baptism — that quiet, urgent plea to stand in front of the church, be cleansed of my sins, and "give my life to Jesus."
And you know what? I did.
And I meant it.
But what I didn’t realize until much later was that the Jesus I gave my heart to wasn’t the one locked in doctrine and dogma. He wasn’t the angry judge of fundamentalist sermons or the gatekeeper of heaven. He was the wild mystic — the barefoot wanderer who wept, who touched the untouchables, who saw through illusions and invited others to do the same.
The Jesus I met was my first guru.
The Christ of My Altar
He still sits there — right on my altar, next to Kali and Amma and the Sri Yantra. He’s not jealous or angry. He’s not threatened. He’s honored. He belongs there.
Because Jesus was never meant to be boxed inside a single tradition. He’s a bridge‑walker. A heart‑opener. A frequency. A presence. A universal consciousness.
He is my Ishta Devata — the form through which I first understood what unconditional love could feel like. He was the one I prayed to as a child, the one I argued with as a teenager, the one I circled back to — not through church, but through the fire.
Timeline Check
Before I go further, let’s get this straight: what some people now call "New Age" is actually ancient wisdom. Here's a rough sketch of the timeline:
Ṛg Veda / Sanātana Dharma — 1500 BCE or earlier
Astrology (Jyotisha, Babylonian) — 2000 BCE and earlier
Yoga (Upaniṣads & Sūtras) — 800–200 BCE
Buddhism — 5th century BCE
Christianity — 1st century CE
Reading the stars is not new. Chanting mantra is not new. Working with energy is not new. What’s new is the fear around it — and the forgetting.
Beyond the Bible
My relationship with Jesus deepened when I stopped trying to filter him through the Bible — especially the Old Testament, with its wrathful, petty, jealous god who seemed to demand blood to be satisfied. That never sat right with me.
In 2020, I went deep: into the Gnostic Gospels, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Nag Hammadi, and teachings on the Demiurge and Sophia. And what I found was stunning: a Christ who was not here to start a religion but to awaken remembrance. A Jesus who spoke of the kingdom within, who stood against empire, who never once demanded worship — only love, truth, and radical embodiment.
I also spent time listening to Bart Ehrman, a historian and professor at UNC who studies the historical Jesus. Ehrman doesn't just question what the Bible says — he shows, through rigorous scholarship and textual history, that many of the words attributed to Jesus were likely not spoken by him at all. And this isn’t some fringe theory. This is grounded academic work that reveals how much was added — and left out — and why.
Instead of shaking my devotion, it clarified it. Ehrman didn’t dismantle my love for Christ — he cleared the debris. The Jesus that remained was even more luminous: the mystic, the rebel, the man who held paradox in his body and truth in his gaze.
HE walks with all of them. And loves any sincere worship of God.
Why I’m Writing This
Because I see so many people returning to Christianity out of pain and unresolved fear — and rejecting everything they once explored as “New Age deception.” I see astrology, energy work, and ancient mystical systems being trashed by people who once used them as lifelines.
And it’s not OK.
Not because Jesus is the problem — but because they’ve confused their longing for safety with the need to exile anything that doesn’t agree with where they think they’ve found it.
But Jesus was never afraid of the unfamiliar. He walked into temples and overturned tables. He spoke in parables. He wandered into deserts. He held hands with the outcasts.
So if you love Jesus — wonderful. Me too. But don’t tell me I can’t love Him and chant mantra, read the sky, honor the Goddess, and speak with trees. Don’t tell me that Christ must be alone on the altar.
Because the One I know? He walks with all of them. And loves any sincere worship of God.
Interlude: Jesus Christ Superstar and the Mirror of Judas
I still love Jesus Christ Superstar. The music, the ache, the messy human devotion — especially that song where Judas sings:
“And all the good you’ve done, will soon get swept away. You’ve begun to matter more than the things you say… But every word you say today gets twisted ’round some other way… Your followers are blind. Too much Heaven on their minds.”
There’s something holy in that discomfort. Something honest in the questioning. Because even Judas — vilified as the betrayer — was trying to make sense of who Jesus had become to the crowd… and who he really was beneath the projections.
That musical was one of the first places I saw Jesus as man and myth both, and where I began to understand the danger of what happens when we mistake the message for the structure, or the power for the presence.
I’ll probably watch that scene again this week — Judas pacing, questioning, warning, still loving. And cry. That song still breaks something open in me. Not because I’m lost. But because I’m not.
And somewhere in the back of my mind, I hear another whisper — from Kashmir, where some say Jesus lived out his final days. Even Meher Baba spoke of it. It’s mostly a Muslim region now — and they love Jesus, too. Not as a god, but as a great prophet.
Is it true? I don’t know. But I’ve learned to listen to the edges, to the things left out of the canon, to the stories hidden in silence. Sometimes that’s where the real Jesus shows up.
Closing
To me, Jesus is still the teacher of the heart. The revealer of illusions. The mirror of compassion. He didn’t need a steeple. He needed presence. And He still shows up in mine.
If that makes me heretical — good. I’d rather be a heretic than a hollow echo of someone else’s fear.
If Jesus has resolved your pain and fears, I’m truly happy for you and celebrate your freedom.
Let the mystics rise.
Let the altars overflow.
Let the wild Christ walk with us again.