Let's examine the parts of this
proposition from a more purely
lexicographical perspective. First, what does it mean to be "
gay"? Well, historically, gay meant
happy,
joyous, romping about in
carefree delight. Was
Jesus happy? Surely he was at some times, if
morose at others. But did he romp joyously, was he carefree, doing cartwheels among the daisies? At times it seemed that Jesus felt he carried the weight of the world upon his narrow
shoulders.
This leads us right into the second word of enquiry. Was Jesus
black? Well there are a couple of different possible interpretations of that
proposition. One could be that he reflected no light, which would have made him well nigh
invisible. Miraculous though this might be, there is no historical or Biblical suggestion of so remarkable a capacity as this. But there's another historic meaning of "black," that being of a mood, of a deep psychological
depression, of a foul moroseness of the heart. It seems immediately contradictory to suggest that Jesus exhibited a persona both gay and black, though a person suffering from serious
bipolar disorder might be both by turns. In other words, simply put, Jesus (like most of us) may have been gay at some times and black at others, but never gay and black at the same time.
Now to the question of the hippieness of Jesus. While it is poor grammatical form, it remains common to address physical characteristics by appending -y (or less commonly -ie) to the body part being described (ie chesty, leggy, toothy). Most every
pictorial depiction of Jesus casts the character as being
rail-thin, and indeed he did not come from such times of
plenty as where the average Joe (or Joseph) working as
carpenter,
fisherman, or
rabbi, would have a filled out
frame. Jesus probably had
hips that were either narrow or, at most, typical of men in his day. And so, it is fairly safe to say that Jesus was not hippie, or hippy, or any other spelling which connotes roominess of the hips. But, if we give the word a broader meaning -- that of simply being in
possession of hips -- Jesus surely had hips, and so was as hippie in that respect as any other man.
Lastly, was Jesus a
Jew? This is a more interesting enquiry, for amongst the
characteristics inherent to
Judaism is the conceptual denial of the notion of "God" having a son who is somehow thusly distinct from
mankind. The God of the Jews may well have already been cast in a conceptual state superior to that
notion, and so if Jesus adopted such a belief, then he was not religiously a Jew. And yet, there are all the signs of Jesus participating in Jewish
ritual, and hewing to a Jewish
identity, which presupposes a broader and more thoughtful and encompassing philosophy than is usually credited to him. For if we recognise that the entirety of our Universe is merely the physical manifestation sustained by a force of nature; and if we recognise that such force might as properly be called "God" as anything else, and that the label "God" might as properly be applied to such force as anything else; it then follows that all things in our Universe are expressions of this one "God," and so all men are "God," and all sons of men are, as well, sons of "God."
This is, granted, a
theological reading far more advanced and informed than what might have occurred to men of Jesus' day. But if Jesus was in some sense a theological
savant, he might well have expressed that all men were indeed the sons of God, and that there was no way to
reach God except, for each man, through one's own self -- that is, for each man to proclaim there to be "no way to the
father but through me"!! And since such a theological
breakthrough would not of necessity inherently conflict with the precepts of at least the most
liberal strains of Judaism, we may still find it possible that Jesus remained an ultraliberal Jew, to the very end of his
thinking.