November 2019
A question: What was the nature of Jesus Christ’s microbes? Were they ordinary microbes, suited to Jesus’s ordinary human body? Or were they, like him, imbued with divinity, themselves fully microbial and fully divine? When Jesus was resurrected, were they resurrected with him? And--perhaps most importantly--does it matter, one way or another?
These are questions that would be better suited for Thomas Aquinas. If we want the truth, we should ask learned theologians and knowledgeable microbiologists. However, in matters of faith, “truth” is a flexible thing. We can’t exactly send emails to God asking him to explain the nature of his creation. In place of certainty, we believe what we find we must, picking up pieces of personal theology from our parents and our books and our friends. I am not a biologist or a theologian. I am merely a self-proclaimed heretic, increasingly suspicious of institutionalized religion, who was spiritually changed by taking a microbiology class. I know very little about the different strands of Christian thought regarding the nature of Jesus’ humanity, and I know even less about microbiology. I am not “qualified” to answer this question, but I don’t need to be. This is merely what I believe.
Every human serves as the host for about 100 trillion microbes. The question of Jesus’s microbes hinges on the nature of our relationship with our microbes. Either we are simply humans, bound to our microbes in a mutually beneficial relationship, but nevertheless a completely separate entity; or we are a holobiont, the entire community consisting of our macrobial human body and 100 trillion microbial bodies. Our consciousness, spirit, life force, or whatever you want to call it, either stems from our human cells and nothing else, or it stems from our human cells in combination with our microbes’ cells. What we call a human may not really be just a human at all, but the sum total of one human and millions of microbes.
If humans are simply humans and our microbes are simply microbes, there would be no reason for Jesus’s microbes to be divine at all. Jesus walked on earth with a human body, his divine aspect relegated to spirit/soul/consciousness. If his microbes had no part in the makeup of his consciousness, the proximity of Jesus’s divinity wouldn’t be enough to elevate these totally separate creatures to a divine level. They would be merely microbes and nothing more.
If, on the other hand, humans are actually holobionts, the story changes entirely. If Jesus’s microbes had a share in his divine consciousness, they would likewise have to be divine. In this case, there are two separate entities we have to consider: Jesus-the-human and Jesus-the microbes (really millions of separate entities), both imbued with the entirety of God’s divine nature.
When I’ve talked to devout Christians about these ideas, I’ve been met with enthusiasm and interest, but I’ve also been met with scorn. I’ve been told that considering these things reduces the story of Jesus to “silliness.” I’ve been told that Jesus-the-microbes aren’t worth considering. But the existence of Jesus-the-microbes has broader implications for the nature of the world we live in, for one important reason: Microbes tend to move from host to host. There’s no way to stop this from happening; it is a side effect of being a creature that interacts with the world through physical contact. Jesus-the-microbes wouldn’t have been exempt from this rule. They wouldn’t have stayed in one place, content to live and die with Jesus-the-human.
Once you realize that, the entire story of Jesus-God-incarnate looks a little bit different, and suddenly every instance of Jesus interacting with the world through touch becomes incredibly important. And Jesus does a lot of touching in the gospels--when he is baptized, when he heals the sick with his hands, when he shares meals with his disciples, these are all moments where Jesus-the-microbes are transferred to other human beings. Then there’s the passion narrative, chock full of close, often brutal, bodily contact. Judas’s kiss of betrayal. Jesus’s rough treatment as he is arrested. The blood dripping from his wounds as he’s nailed to the cross. All of these moments transfer Jesus-the-microbes to Jesus’s abusers, thereby imbuing them with a tiny spark of divinity.
And once we’ve considered all of this, there is one more question to ask: After Jesus-the-human ascended to heaven, did Jesus-the-microbes, already scattered across many bodies, ascend with him? Or did they stay behind, replicating and spreading, until everything in the world contained some measure of microbial divinity? Is each one of us blessed with the intimate presence of God?