Jesus Course

Some people are not very impressed with the church. They look at the bad side of church history and conclude that the church has not followed Jesus Christ very well and so perhaps the church doesn’t have the moral authority to talk about Jesus. Of course they are right – in some ways.

The church has done many things in the name of Jesus Christ that are just plain wrong and can’t be excused or explained away. There can be no defense. But then Christians don’t claim to be perfect and every day seek God’s forgiveness.  The church is not immune from power struggles, pride and selfishness. Of course it also saddens Christians that the bad is remembered whilst the much greater good that the church has done is ignored.

Yet despite the churches failings it is clear from all the evidence we have (both from the New Testament and other historical sources) that Jesus founded the Christian church so that his message could be taken throughout the world. The message of Jesus and who Jesus is was entrusted into the hands of the Christian church – something which the Christian church has been very aware of and careful about since its earliest days.

I’m not suggesting that this makes the church perfect but I am suggesting that Jesus knew what he was getting himself into when he founded the church and yet he still did it.

This doesn’t mean that Jesus belongs to the church. The church doesn’t have any copyright of Jesus and people are free to look at the evidence for themselves and draw their own conclusions. It is sad that at times in it’s enthusiasm for preserving the message of Jesus it sometimes persecuted those who thought differently. However, the church does have a responsibility for saying what it believes is the message of Jesus and for speaking out against what it believes is not the message of Jesus.

So then you are welcome to ask anyone what they think about Jesus but if you want to know what Jesus thought about himself you have to go to those Jesus picked to pass that message on – the Christian church. Of course this is a complex issue but understanding the essence of who Jesus is, what he taught and what that means for the world is the very reason that Jesus created the church in the first place (as well as for worship, service, etc).

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Fasting has always been a controversial subject for Christians – ever since Jesus defended his disciples who didn’t fast (Matthew 9:14ff). It’s a mistake, however, to think that Jesus had anything against fasting – he did it himself after all.

Fasting in the bible

Fasting pops up many times in the bible and tends to be associated with a need to pray about something. It could be that people wanted to express how sorry they were or that they were asking God for something very important to them.

Jesus was keen on the idea that when people fast they shouldn’t tell others about it. Fasting is something that is done for God and not for others to observe and conclude how spiritual you are. I know that danger myself because I’ve fasted on several occasions and if people find out they are often very impressed (and sometimes confused) – this leaves me wondering if perhaps I shouldn’t have bothered now everyone knows about it.

Is fasting just giving something up?

I think it’s important to not get fasting confused with giving something up for your own benefit. It’s not unusual for people to give something up for a while to try and improve their life (e.g. T.V., alcohol, chocolate, etc) but this is about self and not about God. This is commendable but has little to do with fasting for the spiritual life.

Fasting does involve giving something up – mainly food. This can be a difficult experience and it does have the benefit of helping break dependence on the thing you fast from (e.g. food). However fasting really is about your relationship with God and not the thing you are giving up.

Feeling hunger is a good way of learning to hunger for God

Going without food, for instance, is a good way of learning to depend on God more. The hunger acts as a reminder to think about God and after a while without food you start to feel it constantly. You have to turn that longing for food into a longing for God (it’s easier than it sounds).

Give it a try

So I encourage all Christians to try some fasting, but make sure you do it all for the right reasons.

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Being a follower of Jesus can sometimes seem like more of a chore than a joy. We get so worked up about what we should or shouldn’t be doing, or what we should or shouldn’t be believing that we can lose some of our desire to follow.

Then of course non-Christians look at us and think that being a Christian doesn’t look like a lot of fun but just more rules and regulations to follow. We tell them that we get freedom from following but they what they see is lots of rules and regulations.

If you are struggling or starting to drift into thinking being a Christian is just about following a set of rules or beliefs then I encourage you to try and get some more love back into your relationship with God.

There are all kinds of ways of doing this but why not set aside an hour or two (or more) in your diary for just thinking about how great God is. Listen to some music if you like, go walking in a beautiful place, just sit still and think about the beauty of God. We all need this every now and then. It all starts with love.

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Christian’s are always encouraged (and I believe rightly so) to understand as much about Jesus and the bible as they can. But this can become a detremental obsession.

Being a Christian and following Jesus is not about what we know it is about how we respond to what we know. Does anyone seriously believe that when they die and are on their way to heaven that there will be a test about what a person knows about God and the bible? Will those who get something wrong be turned away from the pearly gates? In which case we had all better get worried about this. Is the love of God confined to those who grasp the complexities of theology? Did Jesus die on the cross to overcome the problems caused by lack of knowledge of the bible? The answer is no – by the way.

Being a Christian is almost exclusively about how we put our appreciation of God into action (no, I’m not talking about salvation by works). The actions I’m talking about are things like: faith, devotion, discipleship, service, etc.

Knowing lots of stuff about Jesus is a very good thing but it won’t get you closer to God – only faith and discipleship will.

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There is an advertising campaign run by atheists claiming that there is “probably no god” in the U.K. at the moment. I haven’t seen them myself but I believe that they exist.

Perhaps that is the nub of my problem. I can believe things without having to see them. Like I believe Australia and the Antarctic and India and Mount Everest all exist even though I have never seen them.

It seems to me that we have got so hung up on philosophy (and I like reading philosophy by the way) and the meaning of words and what truth is that we have missed out on some basic parts of life and how we actually know that something is true.

For instance it is possible to make an argument about colour and that we can’t really know that what one person sees as a colour is actually what another person sees. My blue may be red to you. We see the same thing, the same wavelengths etc but how do we know that we see the same colour?

It’s thinking like this that leads some to conclude that there is no god. If we can’t be certain about anything then we have to doubt everything and if we doubt everythng then we have to doubt that god exists, etc.

All very boring I know.

And yet I can turn to my youngest son and point out the beauty of a rainbow or the stars in the night sky and together we enjoy the experience. In some way we just know that we are sharing something together and finding pleasure in it. I can have a conversation with my wife and we end up concluding the same thing. I can watch Harry Hill on the T.V. and enjoy his humour.

There is a part of us that longs for certainty about everything but sometimes that search for certainty gets in the way of knowing and of truth.

Some scientists have tried to claim that they know the only and whole truth and yet ultimately what they claim is based on probabilities only. Science only works if the universe works to a pattern or rules but perhaps we have just made those rules up and in fact the universe is completely random. It is possible for people to see patterns where none exist.

In the end everything we know can only be known by faith.

So then we come back to the existence of god. “Probably”, injects an element of doubt but that doubt works both ways. To say there is probably no god is to say that there might be. If there is even a small chance that god exists then we need to be living as if god does exist. We should also be looking out for the evidence.

Of course I believe that the evidence for the existence of God is overwhelming and so it only takes a little faith on my part to believe in God. After concluding that God does exist I felt a great release and sense of peace about things. Since that time I have even met God, felt his presence. I could now no more deny the existence of God than I could deny the existence of my wife.

Philosophically I can only say God probably exists but in my heart I know He does. Philosophy is great fun but it’s rubbish for working life out.

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