The ideas we have about God are not God. Any idea, thought, or concept never was and never will be God. They may be helpful symbols that point to God, metaphors, analogies, allegories, images, but they are not God as God is. They will inevitably conflict with one another and be fallible, as every symbol eventually fails at actually being the thing it is supposed to represent. The symbol is never the thing-in-itself.
The ritual practice of anointing makes the person that is anointed an "Anointed One," which is what the word Christ literally means, and by derivation is what being a Christian means. Cyril of Jerusalem in the fourth century noted of those who had been baptized and anointed, "You have been made Christs, by receiving the anti-type [symbol] of the Holy Spirit [the oil]" (Catecheses 21.1). Receiving the chrism they are ritualistically made Christs, being clothed in that Name and Identity, taking it upon themselves in actual fact as their own Eternal Identity, their True Name/Self.
Jesus was the man, the human form, the male person who lived in the Middle East some 2000 years ago. Christ is the realization of oneness with God, Source, Universe, Reality, in and through all of life, love, goodness, and truth. I perceive it is synonymous with Buddha-nature in Buddhism, and the Atman in Hinduism.
Deep within me a thousand sweet breaths of Silence
cover my lips and say—
"Be Still."
An addition to the BHT, about the insufficiency of outward commandments, laws and rules.
I don't think so. But I think it is deeply, absolutely, universally Real. Let me explain.
The only God that we can find and perceive and know directly as such, I believe, is the one that can be found in the very center and heart of our own Self and Being and Consciousness. That is where God is. That is where God lives. That is God, in humanity.
Several months ago I began to write new "translations" of key passages of scripture in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. I thought the original translations were not clear enough, and did not communicate the truth very well that I have experienced in recent months and years. So I began to rewrite them as I understood this truth, to try to better convey that truth to a modern reader. I've called this the Bryce Haymond Translation (BHT).