My buddy, Marc, said something to me recently that has resounded in my soul... Then he said it again. It has caused me to really ponder this topic. To paraphrase, Marc said that, while he doesn't know whether or not Jesus was the Son of God, he believes that Jesus got it right; He understood being human and He lived the way a human should. I agree.
I think that Marc's observation is incredibly poignant. Putting aside the question of His deity (which I fully believe to be true) if Marc is right then each one of us should be paying close attention, not only to what Jesus did, but what He said; what He taught even when He wasn't "teaching".
If the Biblical narrative is to be trusted as pertains to Jesus' life then following are some of His chosen endeavors: He healed the sick, gave sight to the blind, made the lame to walk, fed the hungry, and advocated for the children. These are indeed commendable causes, and activities we should emulate to the best of our ability (I haven't been able to feed thousands out of a Darth Vader lunch box yet...) But what I would like to do in this series of short blogs is to focus on what He said, rather than what He did.
Before I start, in post 1 (this is only the intro), talking about His teachings during His 3.5 years of ministry, I'll just include here His only previously recorded words.
At age 12 Jesus took a trip to Jerusalem with His parents for the Passover and decided to hang back at the temple - you know, blowing the minds of the priests and wot not... totally normal - but His parents hadn't realized and had left without Him. Long story short, when they discovered He was not among their caravan (which was not a 1st century minivan) they went back to Jerusalem and found Him at the temple.
Astonished to find Him mingling with the religious elite, Mary questions Jesus as to why He stayed back. His answer was, in modern terms, "Why are you looking so hard for me? Didn't you realize that I would be in my Father's house?"
Could Jesus have meant that He didn't leave them, but they had left Him, as some commentators suggest? Sure. This would answer the question of whether He was being disobedient or not, and I think it's a great observation. But I believe that the most amazing aspect of this, His first recorded utterance, is found in His description of whose house He was in.
You see, in the Old Testament it wasn't common at all to speak of Yahweh in such intimate terms as "Father". There wasn't this notion, as we see today, of everyone being God's children. God was seen as King of the universe; the transcendent, eternal, omnipotent Creator. Jesus wasn't using a 21st century cozy colloquialism in this scenario. He was identifying Himself as the Son of the One whose house He was in. No Hebrew in the 1st century world would have questioned what He meant when He claimed to be God's Son, and that is confirmed when He is crucified for making the same claim 21 years later.
Thanks for reading the intro, and please wait with great anticipation for part 1! I promise to try and keep the subsequent entries much shorter.
9 comments:
What, no question for us, your loyal readers? :-) Can't wait for the discussions!
Cool. :D I am very excited to read these. This has actually been my focus lately.. JESUS! What He said, how He said it, Why He did things, where He went, and you know.. Just all about Jesus. I want to know Him more and learn from His teachings. I understand the apostles and all the books in the Bible are important but they give us an example in what not to do most of the time by their mess ups and then Jesus is like HEY this is how you should be.. Listen to my teaching. :D
Haha... yeah, Cath, I guess I need to come up with some questions to fuel conversation :)
That's awesome, Gabby! Glad you're already thinking about this stuff. I have no doubt that there will be some surprises, like in part one. I think that if people stumble upon these that some preconceived ideas about Jesus will be shattered; some in a pleasant way, and others in a painful one.
Please keep reading, and point people over here, people you think would be interested to see what Jesus actually taught.
Marc said (on Facebook):
Well if you were God, which one would you care about. I also don't buy this God being angry and needing glorification stuff. Anger and the implication that God needs or wants glory are nausiating to me because that would mean that he had the two most animalistic crude human needs and emotions. Anger and an ego that needs to be massaged. I think that these are things that humans bring into the definition of what God is.
Yeah, I see where you're coming from. These are some of the very same things I struggle with, and they are not to be taken lightly. That, in my opinion goes just as much for dismissing them as accepting them. If the Bible talks about something, a subject such as God's wrath for instance, I accept (because I believe the Bible) that it has merit, even if I don't understand it. That doesn't mean that I accept what would be a prima facie understanding of it. The Bible itself says that it is the glory of God to conceal a matter, and that it is the honor of kings to search it out; meaning, as I see it, that God enjoys concealing information because wise people enjoy discovering concealed information. For this reason I always allow for a deeper than face value meaning, while never discarding the obvious meaning. This will make more sense the more you all read my writing.
So, I have too look at issues such as these, which are oftentimes obscure, in light of what the Bible clearly says about Him. The first thing most people would think of is love. God IS love, and that's a verse that bunches and bunches of people latch onto without ever considering what that means. To parents, like you and I (Marc and Bobby), love often means acting in ways that make us look like the bad guy to our children. It's not generally until they grow up and gain a new perspective (by being an adult) that they finally understand what a lot of that "tough love" was about.
One aspect that is overlooked a lot is justice. If God is righteous, then it logically follows that He would be just. The two cannot exist apart from one another. In the same way that a "good" judge in our legal system would not allow crime to go unpunished, because he has a sense of justice, God's just nature would require that He see that moral crimes are paid for. Now, I am not, at this point, advocating for hell in the current understanding of the term. I am just bringing to light the possibility that what we perceive as His anger, or wrath, is truly His justice. After all, the criminal in court looks on the ruling against him as antagonistic, when in reality it is merely reactionary. It's the correct response from a righteous judge to an unrighteous crime.
In short, God's wrath, as described in the Bible, is primarily towards sin. Bringing that down to a human level, the just nature within you and I causes us to react to something evil, let's just take rape for an example, in a way that the rapist would perceive as wrathful, hateful even. Our justice screams for retribution against such a heinous crime.
That's a little of what has gone on in my skeptical mind. A lot of people read "wrath" in the Bible and just accept it in a very straightforward way. I don't. I see in the Bible very clearly that God is loving, well, He is Love, and so I have to interpret wrath in light of that. Without getting too controversial (right :P), I love children so I hate abortion, which is the murder of innocent children. Now, if my sense of justice kicks in when I read about this plague on humanity, I wonder how a perfectly righteous being would react…
I spent way too much time on wrath to say anything substantial about glory, without putting everyone to sleep, but I think you should be starting to get how I think. So, in the case of God receiving glory, I look at what the Bible says about Him, that He is humble. The New Testament teaches that Jesus was God in the flesh, and also describes Him as being extremely humble, so much so that He washed the feet of His followers; a job that was reserved for the lowest members of society. That, together with the fact that it is also said that He needs absolutely nothing, tells me that He does not need us to glorify Him. He did perfectly fine without that glory before us and He'd be just dandy without it. Where does that leave the glory issue? I guess we can do a whole blog on that once we get to it, as I am sure we will :)
Marc said (from Facebook):
Hey James,
I think once again you and I are not to far away from each other. I was not really talking about works but more about fruits of the soul. . . which I realjze would involve works as an outward manifestation. About the vagueness of it all, don't you think that it would have to be vqgue based on the fact that you brought up about all of us being different and having different gifts, personalities and abilities. I mean think about it. The only thing that any parent can reasonably and realistically want for their child is for them to do their best. I mean you can want more but wanting more wont increase the pitential. Best is best, right? So if God is intelligent, fair, and just than it would follow that what he would want from each of his children is their personal best, whatever that might be. And who better to know each child's best than the one who created them? Do you see what I am saying?
Marc
Hey Marc,
I totally do. I think there's wisdom and experience in your words. Being a parent really brings some things out in our thought processes that people who don't have children can't quite identify with...
However, I believe that God, in His great compassion, has created a way where we don't have to do our best, which none of us can really do anyways :)
I mean, who can say that they really have done their best, or even anywhere in the ball park? Heck, even Gandhi called himself a wicked, loathesome wretch with "evil passions," and let's face it, if he recognized his failure to do his best, you and I are not looking too good.
Just thinking about Jesus who, as you said, seemed to get it right... I ask myself, when is the last time I fed a homeless person, or gave a shirt to a poor fellow? I haven't gotten there yet, but in that same passage where Jesus made His first public address, the people ask Jesus what they should do and He tells them that if you have 2 shirts you should share and give one away.
I have like 40 shirts, most of which I don't even wear, and yet I haven't given a single one away...
I guess what I am saying is that, like I said, I like the ideal of what you're saying on the surface, but the more I skepticise it, as I do with everything (it's a curse and a blessing) the more I see the inherent problems, like what I just said.
Just to quickly rephrase my response to your comment: I don't think any of us know what our best is, but I think if most people are honest with themselves they will realize that they're not doing anywhere near their best. If that is the case, and even if God doesn't require our best but only maybe like a 75% effort, where do we stand? What about the vast majority of people who likely are resting around 50% or less?
I believe that Jesus is the answer to those questions. He did His best, which was perfection, then, to quote Bono, "Christ took on the sins of the world, so that what we put out did not come back to us…" He did His best because we couldn't, then He took responsibility for our failures and suffered the punishment for our moral train wrecks…
So, in a roundabout way I'm with you. God required our best, but we don't give our best. But Jesus did so that we don't have to. Make sense?
All that said, I do understand that all of this hinges on whether or not Jesus is God… If He is not then we're at least having some interesting, thought-provoking, amicable conversation. If He is, well then, I guess we're being productive!
Stacey said (from Facebook):
Hi Marc,
You bring up really good points. I think both the point about if you bear fruit then you are following Jesus and that is makes sense that God can only expect our best like a parent. I've been thinking about both of these and they both seem true but I think in a way the parent comparison really helped me figure it out because I realized that I don't just expect my kids to do their best. I expect to have a relationship with them, I expect their love and their trust and I'm an normal mother with imperfections and yet I still expect this from my kids. How much more does a perfect God have a right to expect our love and trust and much more.
I think that is really the difference between a person who is a good person or "bears fruit" but is not saved and person who is saved and "bears fruit". I mean if the kid down the streets obeys my rules without knowing me that's good for the kid and if my rules are good rules (like God's are) then the kid will be blessed but I don't know the kid and the kid has no desire to know me. Also, how much more do I love my own kid even though sometimes he disobeys me but he loves me and he wants to make me happy.
Now if you put it on a spiritual level think of the person created by God, that God is trying to have a relationship with, for whom God came to earth and died to have a realationship with, and yet that person still refuses to have that relationship with God but will follows God's "rules" and be blessed here on earth by following those "rules". Why should that person be saved (i.e. spend eternity in a relationship with God), when that wasn't ever what the person refused over and over in life? How much could such a person really enjoy heaven?
I'd love to know what you think. And you too James. I like your post a lot and it helps me with some studying I've been doing recently on the deity of Christ for my cousin.
Thanks,
Stacey
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