Jesus Course

There is an article on Fox News about an interview in Parade magazine with Elton John. I must commend his efforts of now using his money and talent in a positive way but couldn’t help feel sad when he described his many past relationships.

You can read the article here …

In the interview Elton explains what he believes about Jesus:

“I think Jesus was a compassionate, super-intelligent gay man who understood human problems,” John told the Sunday supplement. “On the cross, he forgave the people who crucified him. Jesus wanted us to be loving and forgiving. I don’t know what makes people so cruel. Try being a gay woman in the Middle East — you’re as good as dead.”

I think in some respects he is correct. Jesus was very forgiving and it is shameful that people are so cruel. Being gay should not be a reason to execute someone. But I think he is wrong about Jesus being gay. We really have no evidence to support this position other than reading between the lines and assuming that because he was single and had some close male friends he must have been gay. During my time at College I had many close male friends and was single but that didn’t mean I was gay.

The reason I mention this story is because I think it is a great illustration of how people create a “Jesus” that is very much like themselves. In the past the quest for the historical Jesus has simply resulted in many different images of Jesus that turn out to be super versions of the historian who does the exploration. This doesn’t mean it’s not possible to discover the real historical Jesus but just that we have to be very careful to let the evidence speak rather than simply making the evidence fit our own preferred image of Jesus Christ.

Elton’s image of Jesus is distorted to end up looking like a super Elton John. It is very important to discover the true nature of Jesus and just making Jesus fit our own image will not do at all.

Jesus

Lent is a time for giving stuff up and in the UK people like to give up lots of stuff. Some people give up chocolate – to lose weight; some people give up smoking – for their health; other people give up drinking – for their livers sake; etc. What strikes me, though, is that I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyway say that they are going to be trying to get closer to Jesus during Lent.

I’ve heard plenty of Christians who are giving stuff up and plenty that will go to special house groups for Lent but I’m sure I’ve never heard anyone say that they are going to be getting closer to Jesus in Lent. Of course this is just what some of the groups are supposed to be doing but I don’t hear anyone ever say it.

I’m sure this is just because I’m not mixing with the right people but it saddens me every year that so many people seem to think that Lent is a time to give stuff up purely for their own health. This isn’t what Lent is about at all.

Christians have been encouraged to fast in Lent as a way to prepare themselves for Easter. The whole idea being that you get yourself right with Jesus during Lent so that when Easter comes you are in a good place to celebrate it.

So I’m challenging every Christian to not give up Jesus for Lent. Don’t give up anything other than those things that get in the way of your relationship with Christ.

Jesus lent

This one comes in 2 parts (no I’m not cheating). Part 1 is the parable and part 2 is Jesus’ explanation. You can find the real parable in Mark’s gospel Chapter 4 verses 1- 20

The parable

Farmer sows seeds on different soils: hard = birds eat seed, rocky = plants wither, thorny = plants choked, good = fantastic results

The explanation

Soils = Jesus’ message: Hard = message snatched away, rocky = short lived response, thorny = other concerns choke interest, good = success!

Jesus

There are plenty of people who believe in God but some of them say that although they accept that God exists they don’t think it is possible to know anything about God. They might be willing to accept that there must be a creator but that we can’t know what that God is like.

Of course this belief can give a lot of comfort to people who want to believe that there is a God but still want to live and behave as though there isn’t one. It’s possible to admit that the evidence points to the existence of God but then by excluding any possibility of knowing anything about we can continue to live however we want to (without any supreme being interfering with things of course).

Unfortunately, in my view, this doesn’t really make a lot of sense.

For instance, why would God want to create such a magnificent Universe just to ignore it? If God did create everything and then decide not to take any notice of it we get a pretty bad picture of the way God is. Wouldn’t this also be a self defeating argument with a God who is all knowing but doesn’t want to know? All powerful but doesn’t ever do anything? Omnipresent but not wanting to be everywhere. One would have to wonder why such a God would want to bother creating in the first place?

Doesn’t the fact that God created give us an idea that God must, at least, be interested in his creation?

Christians, of course, believe that God is more than interested in his creation. That God is so interested that he chooses to reveal himself to his creation. That within the design and manufacture of the creation it is possible to discover things about God. But then Christians want to go even further and say that God is so concerned about his creation that he incarnated himself in the person of Jesus Christ. That to know God all we have to do is to know Jesus Christ.

Then we believe that God loves us so much that he would be willing to suffer and die for us and then to rise to life to show us hope for the future.

So far from it being impossible to know God it is in fact possible to know God as one might know a friend.

Thoughts jesus christ

It’s time for the release of the new British Social Attitudes Report which makes interesting reading. Of course it doesn’t really tell me anything that I didn’t already know or at least suspect. I guess this kind of report challenges the church to consider how much influence it actually exerts in modern Britain (in my experience most Clergy have an overinflated view of how much influence they think they have over society).

Whenever I am surprised by something the U.K. public says I remind myself that these are the same people who vote on the “X” factor (Britain’s Got Talent, etc) and then it all makes sense.

However, I’m not one of those who looks at such surveys and then feels sad (or even worse mad) at the way everyone is ignoring the teachings of Jesus. It’s not a vicious plot against the teachings of Jesus and everyone should be berated for ignoring them, instead I believe much of it is down to ignorance and lack of interest.

So the challenge to Christians is how do we get people interested? This is made especially hard when the majority in the U.K. have a pretty comfortable life (notice I didn’t say happy life because other research I’ve read suggests that people in the U.K. are less happy than many other people in underdeveloped countries). A comfortable life now seams to mean that people are less bothered about thinking about what life might be like after death (one of those things that makes people think about God).

Personally, I would love people to explore what they believe more. It is hard to get people to understand the importance of trying to understand who Jesus is but if what Jesus claims is true then Jesus is the single most important person to listen to. If what Jesus claims is true then the best education in the world is insignificant compared to listening to Jesus.

Thoughts

Plans are under way to stage a Passion play of the easter story in London’s Trafalgar square.

You can see the story here

News, Thoughts Jesus, Passion Play

Jesus has now appeared on a naan bread

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/6960952/Jesus-spotted-on-naan-bread.html

Jesus in funny places Jesus

Our thoughts and prayers are with the people of Haiti as they work hard to cope with the devastation caused by the recent earthquake.

I was watching the news on the T.V. this morning and I found it interesting to compare the news from Haiti to the more local U.K. news. In the U.K. we are currently thinking about the increase in accidents due to some icy weather and also how there are more pot holes in the roads than usual. I don’t want to devalue the problems faced by people in the U.K. but it really does seem insignificant compared to this earthquake.

We all have problems and they don’t go away just because someone else has a bigger problem, but then our problems shouldn’t stop us helping those who are in need.

I’ll be praying, as well, for those who are going to help the people of Haiti, both now and in the future.

Thoughts

Wisdom has always been highly prised. We even find a lot of talk about wisdom and being wise in the bible. Then in the stories just after Jesus is born we read about some Wise men who came to see Jesus. We don’t know how long the gap was between his birth and them turning up but we are encouraged to think about at this time of year (also known as Epiphany in the church calender).

Who do you think would be considered a wise person in todays world?

I think we tend to think of wise people as those people who know lots of stuff. We might consider University Professors or Scientists for instance to be the wise ones. Or then again we might think that wise people are those who gain the most in a material way – business leaders, entrepreneurs, etc.  Or what about those who can make a clever argument – philosophers or politicians, etc.

However, if you consider the wise to be those we take advice about life from then we might have to consider people like popular singers and film stars as being the wise in our world today (gulp). Or what about journalists – they are forever telling us what’s what?

I find that the list of people we tend to consider wise a bit disturbing and doesn’t fit with the bible’s idea of what a wise person is.

So what are the features of a wise person?

Here are some of the things that the book of proverbs tells us about wise people:

• they help others with good advice
• they cautious and like to think things through from all angles
• they seek knowledge and more wisdom
• value wisdom above money
• respond positively to correction
• control their anger
• keep peace
• avoid doing bad things
• welcome good advice

You see it’s not so much what they know but the way they apply it.

Elsewhere in the bible we are also told that the first step in being wise is to seek a good relationship with God.

So if you are looking for a wise person to help you with your life then I suggest you look elsewhere than the celebrity lists (not that it’s impossible for a celebrity to be wise).

Thoughts epiphany, new year, wisdom, wise men

I’m sure it will come as now surprise if I say that Jesus was probably not actually born on 25th December. There are various options for the actual date but one thing we are sure of is that it wasn’t 25th December. So why is this the day that we celebrate Jesus’ birth?

It could be that it is simply the date 9 months after the day Jesus was believed to have been conceived (March 25th). Or it was picked because it was 6 months from the date of Jesus’ death (which was believed to be significant for a prophet). It may just have been picked because it seemed to be a good day to celebrate. The earliest physical reference to the Christian celebration is dated to a 354AD (read about it in Wikipedia) where both Sol Invictus and Christian Christmas get their first mention. Of course both festivals would have been celebrated on that date before this but which one came first can never be proved.

Well in the U.K. this makes a lot of sense to us because our monarch (Queen Elizabeth II) has an official birthday and an actual birthday. The official birthday is the day when the country celebrates her birthday (we have a thing called Trooping the Colour) and then the Queen celebrates her real birthday with her family and friends.

When I was talking about this with my youngest son he pointed out that we all do the same. We have a real birthday and then an official birthday when we have a party. Sometimes the party is on the same day but more often it isn’t.

So 25th December is Jesus’ official birthday and the day we all join in celebrating it.

Now, some party poopers like to make something out of some of the ancient festivals that used to happen on the 25th December. Whilst it is true that 25th December was the Romans official date for the winter solstice (shortest day) it was only later (quite possibly after the time of Jesus) that it ever became the date for a festival (the celebration of the Sun god – Sol Invictus).  Later the followers of Mithras claimed the day for their own celebrations (Mithraism is notorious for jumping on popular ideas to gain a greater following – it died out of course) but the evidence really points to this happening after Christians were celebrating on that day. It’s true that nearly every western culture had a festival in mid-winter (Yule for instance) but this doesn’t mean that the Christian tradition of celebrating the official birthday of Jesus Christ has any less of a claim on the date.

The other old chestnut that is often roasted around this time of year surrounds the headlines of “Puritans ban Christmas” which isn’t – needless to say – the whole story. Then this tends to get twisted to the idea that Christians don’t really like Christmas anyway (Puritans = all Christians in the modern journalists mind). Christmas was seen as a Roman Catholic idea and so the Puritans (being fervent opponents of Roman Catholicism) wanted to call it Christ-tide (getting rid of the mass bit). They also banned various things that people used for the celebrations (including mince pies, etc). The celebration of Christmas was surrounded by 12 days of partying and drunkenness and they wanted to reform this. This was hugely unpopular – as you can imagine. So the Puritans didn’t ban Christmas at all they simply wanted to reform it – in some ways an admirable thing to try and do, and we do the same (encouraging people not to drink and drive for instance) but it seems to me the modern approach of encouraging people to act in a more responsible way rather than forcing them to do it is a better approach. Oh, and by the way I like mince pies.

So Christians haven’t stolen someone else’s idea for a celebration and we haven’t tried to ban Christmas in the past. This is just the day for our official celebrations of the birth of Christ.

A very merry Christmas to you all.

Thoughts