Will The REAL Jesus Please Stand Up?
How Jesus the Liberator Became Jesus the Yoke
There are two versions of Jesus in circulation: the Liberator and the Shepherd. The Liberator Jesus was a radical, a threat to the established order, a man who preached love, justice, and a direct connection to God that bypassed the power structures of his time. The Shepherd Jesus, on the other hand, is the one most people know—the gentle, guiding figure who keeps his flock in line, who teaches obedience, and whose name has been used to build religious empires.
What if the shift from one Jesus to the other wasn’t accidental? What if the very people and institutions that felt threatened by Jesus’ message repurposed it, turning his teachings into something useful for control rather than liberation?
Jesus as a Liberator
The historical Jesus was born into an occupied land. The Romans ruled with brutality, and the Jewish elite—the Pharisees and Sadducees—were caught between religious tradition and the demands of the empire. Jesus arrived as a disruptor.
His message was simple but radical, a kind of unified field theory to achieving heaven on Earth:
Love God and love your neighbor.
Keep the commandments.
Give to the poor. Challenge injustice. Reject hypocrisy.
He attacked legalism—the idea that following a set of rigid religious rules was enough to make someone righteous, but this doesn’t negate the idea of Faith in Acts, because faith in God and Humanity are naturally expressed in action. Legalism wasn’t just a theological issue, it was a predatory business model — He was trying to break a system of control and exploitation.
The Moses Scrolls and other historical evidence suggest that many of the 613 laws of the Torah, particularly those concerning ritual purity and sacrifices, were not just religious guidelines, but economic tools used by the priestly class to keep people trapped in a cycle of sin and payment —
Sin was a commodity, and animal sacrifice was the price of redemption—a constantly recurring payment that ensured the priestly class remained in power and wealth. The more impossible the laws were to follow, the more people ‘sinned,’ and the more sacrifices they had to offer. This created a controlled economy where righteousness was not a matter of faith and integrity, but of transactional atonement—one that funneled resources straight into the temple system.
When he flipped the money changers’ tables in the temple, condemning those who turned a house of worship into a marketplace (Matthew 21:12-13), he was challenging this corrupt business model.
This topic deserves its own blog post, which I will attend to at a later date.
Jesus ate with sinners, defended the outcasts, and directly challenged the authority of religious leaders. He wasn’t just a charismatic head of a spiritual movement; He was an existential threat to the elite.
He was hardly preaching submission—he was preaching transformation. And transformation always threatens those in power.
Jesus as the Yoke
One of the reasons I write and make videos about these topics is because I feel called to reveal the hidden yokes of humanity—whenever and wherever I see them. And I see them everywhere, from the definitions we accept without question to the rulers who shape our reality. Power structures aren’t inherently evil, but we should always know who holds the rope—because without that awareness, we risk mistaking control for freedom.
Jesus understood this. He saw the spiritual and societal yokes that bound people—legalism, exploitation, empire—and he worked to break them. But after his execution, something changed. His movement didn’t die—it spread. Yet as it grew, so did the institutions around it. And instead of being about breaking chains, it became about accepting them—all in Jesus’ name
The Jesus of institutional Christianity is no longer the revolutionary who flips tables in the temple. He is the Shepherd, and his followers are the sheep.
The shepherd metaphor, which Jesus himself used, originally suggested protection and care. But in the hands of institutions, it became a tool for obedience and control. Sheep don’t challenge power. They follow orders.
Where Jesus once taught that the path to salvation was through loving God and living righteously, later Christianity emphasized something else: believe, accept, obey.
This version of Jesus benefits institutions far more than it benefits individuals. If people are focused on submitting to religious authority, accepting suffering, and waiting for heaven, they are less likely to resist injustice in the present.
Madman Paul
The self-proclaimed Apostle Paul is one of the most controversial figures in Christian history. He took Jesus’ message beyond the Jewish world and into the Roman Empire, making it more palatable to Gentiles. But Paul wasn’t just spreading Jesus’ message—he was repackaging it. He was, in many ways, the first Christian adman, crafting a version of the faith that could sell. And in doing so, he may have turned a movement of liberation into something far easier to control.
Paul redefined faith—shifting from a focus on actions and justice to grace and belief.
He downplayed Jewish law, which made Christianity more universal but also detached it from its original context.
He spoke of submission to authorities, which later became a justification for Christian obedience to empire.
To be fair, Paul was also a radical in many ways. He wrote about equality—“there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus”—which doesn’t sound like someone pushing hierarchy.
But his “faith over works” theology opened the door for a version of Christianity where believing the right things was more important than doing the right things. His intentions might have been completely wholesome, but, still over time, this shift made Christianity easier to institutionalize. A religion built on love and justice is dangerous to power. A religion built on submission and belief is useful to it.
My skepticism of Paul
I call him a self-proclaimed apostle because his encounter with Jesus happened in spirit form—on the road to Damascus, after Jesus’ death. Unlike the original disciples, he never walked with Jesus, never heard him preach firsthand, and yet he criticized those who did. Still, his letters became the foundation of Christian theology.
As a Quaker, I believe in continuing revelation—the idea that God can speak to individuals directly, outside of institutions. By that logic, I should accept Paul’s claim. I should see him as a prodigal son—a former persecutor of Christians who had a radical transformation. And yet, I can’t help but feel skeptical. Paul had an interesting past and an even more interesting ego, and his influence reshaped Christianity in ways that feel more like strategic adaptation than divine transmission. For this, I am conflicted.
The Institutional Takeover
The final blow came when Rome adopted Christianity. What began as a faith of the marginalized became the religion of the empire. The church transformed from an underground movement into a ruling institution—and it needed a theology that reinforced its power. This was the birth of Christian Nationalism.
Faith became hierarchical—only clergy could interpret scripture, only priests could grant forgiveness.
Faith became legalistic—instead of freeing people from religious rules, it created new ones.
Faith became a tool for empire—instead of resisting oppression, Christians were told to accept it as God’s will.
The Liberator Jesus had no place in this system. But the Shepherd Jesus? The one who tells people to obey, to suffer well, to wait for the afterlife? That Jesus was perfect for maintaining control.
What It Means Today
If Jesus’ message was originally about breaking oppression, then much of modern Christianity—especially in its most hierarchical and legalistic forms—has betrayed that message.
Faith should not be a yoke of control, but a path to freedom.
Faith should not be about obedience to institutions, but about radical love and justice.
Faith should not separate belief from action—because faith without works is dead.
If Jesus came to set captives free, then following him today might mean rejecting the systems that have turned him into a tool of oppression. It might mean returning to acts of love, justice, and resistance—breaking free from the yoke of control.
Because deep down, we all know this is the righteous way. Not a world where the elite break every commandment, make enemies of all who oppose them, and sell us nihilist solutions like shipping us off to Mars.
Maybe it’s time we FLIP THE TABLES.