Open- Sourced Faith?

Jesus did not protect God behind religious language, institutional power, or spiritual credentials. He communicated God in the open.

He spoke in stories pulled straight from ordinary life—farmers and seeds, women baking bread, laborers waiting for work, fathers and lost children. He refused to make God a technical subject that only trained professionals could interpret. Instead, he translated the deepest truth of God into the shared vocabulary of human need, joy, failure, hunger, grief, and hope.

In doing this, Jesus effectively “open-sourced” God.

No gatekeepers were required. No insider status was needed. No spiritual license had to be earned.

God was no longer controlled by temple systems, purity codes, elite theology, or moral ranking. God became accessible in public—in kitchens, fields, boats, street corners, dinner tables, and hospital rooms. Anyone could recognize God because Jesus described God in terms of what people already knew: forgiveness, welcome, repair, mercy, persistence, and joy.

Even more radically, Jesus did not only talk about God. He handed the work of God to ordinary people. “Heal the sick.” “Feed the hungry.” “Forgive one another.” “Love your enemies.” God’s life was no longer locked inside sacred buildings or authorized leaders. It was released into human relationships.

In Jesus, God is no longer a closed system.

God becomes participatory.

This is what makes the gospel so unsettling to religious power and so liberating to everyone else. If God can be encountered anywhere mercy is practiced, dignity is restored, and power is shared—then no institution can own God.

Jesus did not simplify God.

He made God shareable.