There are several versions which I take seriously, without giving belief. My beliefs are simple. Jesus was/is the Christ, and the hope of salvation for individuals and the world, and the method of achieving salvation is humility and love, which are really the same thing anyways.

Every other detail that Christians have tacked onto it is suspect and speculative. That's why you can't just take the meaning at face value. Symbolic language is used - find the meaning of the symbols, or you can't understand it. That's just logical. Logic is logos.