It seems to me that when you hear about Jesus in a church he is often quite a nice fellow. He is easy to listen to, always says nice things, and never upsets anyone. This last Sunday I listened to another of these sermons where we were encouraged (of course quite rightly) to prize friendship.
Perhaps it’s just me or perhaps it’s the passages we read in the gospels in church but when I read about Jesus he seems to be having the opposite effect on those who hear him.
Yes there are large crowds but by the time he is crucified all the large crowds have dwindled away. The religious leaders come to try and catch him out and he usually sends them away embarassed. We even hear quite early on in the gospels that people were planning to kill him.
Now we might put this down to first century zeal where the easy solution to any problem was to bump off the person causing trouble. But I think this is too simply a view. I think people were still bothered by the thought of killing someone, I don’t think they took this kind of things lightly at all. I think we can even see this in the character of Pilate who condemns Jesus. He can be ruthless but he still understands that taking another’s life is a big deal.
Jesus says things and does things that really upset people. He doesn’t just say do what I do, he says do what I say. Jesus says things that only God has the authority to say and in the end his opponents are very clear in their own minds that Jesus is claiming to be God.
This is uncomfortable for us even today. Most of us would like Jesus to be a little easier to cope with. But if what Jesus said is right then perhaps he should be causing a few upsets.
Perhaps Jesus needs to cause a few upsets even today.
Thoughts Jesus, jesus christ, who is jesus?
Here in the U.K., at the moment (May 2009), we are obsessed with the expenses being claimed by our MPs (Members of Parliament). It seems that some of them have been pushing the limits of what they can claim and not thinking about whether they should claim them. Did Jesus have anything to say about this?
Well first let’s turn our attention to the great British public because, although they don’t know it, they are reflecting something of the attitude of Jesus. They are outraged and think that something should be done. You see they understand that just acting as the law says you can does not make you right.
Jesus was very clear that it is not the following of a law that makes you right but it’s what comes from within (e.g. what you think). You can follow every law to the letter but it won’t make you right. The law is an attempt to describe what is right and wrong and a countries laws should protect the innocent and provide ways of dealing with the guilty but it is not the final word on what is right or wrong.
However Jesus did point out a couple of other things that I think applies here.
1. It is not the magnitude of a crime that makes you right or wrong. You don’t have to do something really big to be wrong, even the smallest of things counts. Of course some crimes are more serious than others (Jesus never denied this) but wrong is wrong. Because an MP claims thousands of pounds for something they should not have doesn’t mean that the few pounds you claim is somehow right. Anyone who claims (or takes) any money that they should not claim (whether a few pound or thousands) is in the wrong. I wonder how many of us who get upset with MPs have ever claimed a work expense (perhaps a meal or clothing or travel, etc) that perhaps we should not have. Or what about those who take stationary (pens, pencils, paper, the odd bit of printing) from their place of work? Are they not also doing wrong? Or what about using the Internet when you shouldn’t be? Are not these small things also taking money from where we shouldn’t? I don’t say this to excuse anyone but I think we should understand that perhaps we don’t have the right to get angry when we do the very same things albeit in a smaller way.
2. Let the person who never does wrong be the one who passes judgement (let he who is without sin cast the first stone). If we also do wrong then we should acknowledge this. Jesus spoke about removing the plank from our own eye so we can help take the splinter out of anothers eye. Perhaps we need to acknowledge that our whole country is in the dock over this one because we have allowed a society to develop that thinks it’s OK to cheat a little as long as you remain within the law.
I am not suggesting that some MPs have not been caught doing wrong or that they should not face the consequences of their bad behaviour but I am saying let’s look at ourselves in the same way and try and work out what we can do for our world to make sure that this kind of thing never happens again. Passing new laws will not address the issue other than plugging a few loopholes that the dishonest can exploit. What I would love to see is MPs who I can trust to do what is right regardless of what the law says they can get away with. I would like this also for myself.
Thoughts, What would Jesus say? jesus christ, mp expenses
For a long time now there has been a desire to discover what the real Jesus is actually like. Some took this to mean that we need to debunk what the gospels say to get to the real Jesus. This is based on the assumption that the gospels are biased and paint a distorted vision of what the real Jesus is actually like. On the surface it seems like a good idea but it ends in disaster. You see what we end up with is a Jesus who is a reflection of the person who does the research. It turns out that none of us can be completely neutral about things. We all bring our assumptions and desires to bear when we try to work out who Jesus is. This results in the kind of nonsense that some scholars have come up with where Jesus ends up a shadow of the Jesus of the gospels. We end up with a Jesus that looks just like the scholar who investigated the historical Jesus and sometimes that scholar is a little wierd and uninteresting.
So then we have to ask certain questions about Jesus and the gospels.
1. Does being biased mean that you cannot be accurate or realistic? The answer has to be no. Just because you think favourably towards someone does not mean that you are blinded to the truth about them. I love my children and my wife but that doesn’t mean that I don’t see their faults – or they mine for that matter. Who is to say that someone who thinks positively towards someone has the wrong view when a sceptic has the right one? We also have to understand that the sources of the gospels (e.g. the apostles) come off very badly in the gospels themselves. This suggests that when they told the stories they most probably told them accuratly because they don’t attempt to cover anything about themselves up, they admit their faults. So the gospel portraits of Jesus, in my opinon, are accurate.
2. If the gospels are accurate what kind of Jesus do we find? Well, Jesus turns out not to be the kind of person we find portrayed in many T.V. programmes. Jesus is disturbing. He claims some pretty amazing things about himself and he tells us things about life that few of us really want to hear. Jesus is often hard to listen to.
I’ve come across lots of people who say that the bible is hard to understand. My feeling is that it is actually quite easy to understand but we just don’t like what we read.
Jesus disturbs me. He challenges me every day to be a better person and often upsets my way of thinking. Every time I read the gospels I find a Jesus who I want to follow but who I’m embrassed by because I do such a bad job of following. If you think that Jesus is just a nice person who tells everyone they are doing a wonderful job then maybe you haven’t really read the gospels.
Thoughts Jesus, jesus christ, who is jesus?
I get to read a great deal of stuff that people debate on the Internet. It often seems to me that people get really caught up on the smallest of details. For instance I read a whole stream of posts the other day on the first few verses of John’s gospel where the question arises of the translation of “and the word was God”.
At risk of starting the argument up again here is my opionion on the matter (so we can get it out the way to ask the more important questions). You see in the original Greek there is no definate article so some have claimed we should translate it as “and the word was a god” not “was God”. Indeed this is exactly what we find in the bible of the Jehovah’s Witnesses (in my opinion a bad translation). Now whilst it is absolutely true that there is no definate article and whilst it is true that this COULD mean “a god” if you were taking a very literal approach it is also true that this would be a very bad translation of the phrase. Given that the definate article was seldom used anyway for God and that the writer was Jewish and so would never have written “a god” and that this verse mirrors the beginning of Genesis where we have “God” not “a god” it turns out that “and the word was God” is the most accurate translation. To insist on “a god” is the kind of translation you might expect from a first year student of Greek and not a true translation. Anyone who knows anything about translation (or who has ever read something translated by a computer) will know that there is a lot more to translation than just translating each word in turn literally. It should also be noted that this is not by any means the only passage that refers to the divinity of Christ but we are not going there now.
If you have got this far in this post you will realise how people can sometimes get really caught up in the detail and miss the point.
Fun though all this arguing is about the detail it seldom gets you anywhere. The bible has many stories where people who met Jesus got caught up in debating the smaller points and yet missed the bigger point of who they were talking to.
It seems to me that there is amuch bigger more important question to answer about Jesus than the translation of one word here and there.
What if it’s true?
What if the story of Jesus is all true (and I believe it is)? What if the things that Jesus said really are the truth? What if Jesus really did come from heaven? What if Jesus really did rise from the dead?
If it’s true then no moment of anyone’s life can ever be the same.
What if it is all true?
Thoughts Jesus, jesus christ, who is jesus?