In truth and in essence each of us is a theologian as we look for the purpose and meaning to our existence. You don’t need the Didache or the letters of Saint Paul to lead to the God within each of us.
Searching for your god in semantics is destined to be either an exercise in futility or a quixotic quest of self-delusion.
Likewise, attempting to corral or limit your god through the use of a personal pronoun to describe “him” “her” or “it” is equally futile.
There is an essence to our lives, the life force within us, the life force of creation, that to which we owe our existence and that which we share with all creation. Words are inadequate to describe this life force which we call God.
As a lawyer, I have spent my life’s work creating and shaping concepts using words, both oral and written, to create a visual image in the minds of the persons hearing or reading them. I know the inadequacy of semantics to capture even the mundane arising from our daily lives.
Words are wholly inadequate as a vehicle to approach the ultimate meaning and purpose of existence.
Especially when we base the search for our God on the words in biblical stories and other texts we are ultimately ordained to come up unfulfilled. Simply stated, words cannot capture the God within us.
We usually look at the stories that religion is founded on with a willing suspension of disbelief. We do not apply the same standards of critical intellectual and logical analysis to religious stories that we would otherwise use in everyday life.
The stories themselves purport to evidence the workings and teachings of the god among us, the reputed God/man Jesus Christ. For certain, Jesus was a wonderful person, wise and spiritual, in touch with the God within himself as he is the “son of the Father”, to use words attributed to him. In such a way, perhaps we are all sons and daughters of this “Father”, creatures of this life force we define as the “Father.”
In seeking our God through semantics we willingly ignore the foibles of human recollection and communication.
The words we want to believe in to capture our God we call “divinely inspired “, dismissing the fact that people attending a meeting, a performance, a lecture or any such human intercourse are likely to come away with different impressions or interpretations of what they saw, heard our experienced. Was this tendency of human nature any different at the time of Jesus?
When we consider the circumstances under which these alleged stories and actions by Jesus occurred and the methods by which they were communicated, eventually recorded in written form and ultimately transmitted through different languages and cultures over centuries we can see that it it is plausible, even likely, that some distortion has taken place.
Initially, whatever occurred did so within the then contemporary culture which alternatively seemed to be looking for a messiah warrior king, a god of power and might, a god who sought all honor and glory unto himself and/or a loving and humble God, a self-effacing God, an all knowing and all caring God of love who was concerned with all of the creatures of his creation. This loving God is also the god of the super computer who keeps tabs on each of us throughout history and in every aspect of his creation.
At the time of Jesus people saw in him what they wanted to see, this populist king of the Jews with a message that resonated with his followers however they perceived it. His image spread far and wide throughout the Judeo world and after his death far beyond to the then known world carried through the diaspora of his followers.
His was a message consonant with what those who believed in him wanted to hear, though it was a message transmitted over time and distance and subject to all the imperfections of human communication. His was a message or story delivered initially in Aramaic, the contemporary language of Jesus, the vernacular of his culture, then likely further translated after his death into and through Greek, Hebrew and Latin and eventually into the myriad languages of our current era.
These stories containing fragments of the life and teachings of Jesus are nice; they are good stories passed generation to generation, language to language by people who were inspired by them and who perceived them in a way consonant with their own spiritual needs and beliefs.
Were there distortions of the facts as orally reported and transmitted over time and distance for generations? Our human experience of both perception and communication would suggest that this likely occurred.
If you want an all-powerful crusading god of wrath and vengeance who will separate “the wheat from the chaff”on the last day you can find him in Scripture. If on the other hand you seek a god of love tenderness and mercy, he’s there too.
What you want is what you get when you look for your god through semantics. Using words to search for the god within you is sure to result in either futility or self-delusion.