Jesus Course

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?

This is a tricky question to answer because people get so heated about it. However here is my take on the subject.

It seems to me that we can’t take the fulfillment of prophesy to be literal (e.g. we expect every last detail to be exactly how it is fulfilled). A good example of this is given in Christopher Wrights book about Jesus in the Old Testament. He says that if a father promised his young son a horse (for transport) and when his son was fully grown instead he bought him a car (the world has moved on and engineers have developed a car) his son would not complain that his father had not kept his promise to provide for his sons transport needs. The promise has been fulfilled but in a different way that was originally described.

This makes a lot of sense to me. If God describes something at one time in such a way so we can understand it this doesn’t mean that when the world is different and God fulfills it in a slightly different way (but retains the essence of the promise – e.g. to be with you or forgive sins etc) that this means something is wrong.

So if God fulfills all of the essence of his promises in Jesus why should we complain.

If you look at Matthews gospel for instance you would see that Matthew uses the old testament in just this way. He points to the essence of what God was predicting about his messiah and the new convenant and then shows that Jesus is the fulfillment of that promise. This is why sometimes the quotes that Matthew uses are a little confusing at times (e.g. the quote from Jeremiah when Herod has the innocent children of Bethlehem slaughtered).

So what does that mean for now? Well perhaps it means that we shouldn’t be looking for the details in prophecies and expecting God to fulfill them using those details. For instance perhaps looking at the old testament peoples who are mentioned and expecting to transfer those peoples into a modern day world. Perhaps such a literal view of prophecy is misleading.

What do you think? Am I wrong? If I am what could you say to convince me otherwise?

Uncategorized jesus christ, prophecy

This is a question that all of us have to answer at some point. If what Christians say about Jesus is right then no matter what we think about Christians themselves Jesus is the single most important person in anyones life.

If Jesus is indeed God then nothing else you do or think about will be as important as thinking about Jesus.

Suddenly everything that Jesus said is very important to listen to. The stuff he said about heaven is very reasurring and the stuff he said about how we should live is essential to life.

I was once very skeptical about Jesus and what Christians say about him but now I am convinced. Not because I left my brain behind or because I was brain washed but because I discovered enough about Jesus that not believing was no longer an option for me.

I want to encourage you to answer the questions about Jesus for yourself. For me the evidence is impossible to refute and I have become a follower of Christ – but you must make your own choices.

The Jesus Course is one way for you to search for an answer for yourself.

Uncategorized Jesus, jesus christ, who is jesus?

What is love? is a question that all of us has to answer at some point in our life. Am I in love with the person? What does this mean?

Jesus was very keen on love. He encouraged people to love each other and even made love a central part of his greatest commandment: love God and love others as yourself.

Jesus also said that the greatest love you could have would be to willingly lay down your life on behalf of someone else. Many people have done this throughout history, not least Jesus himself who said that he laid down his life willingly for each one of us.

The greeks were so keen on love that they had four words for it and we find these words used in the bible. I’m  not going to bore you with the greek but this is what each one meant.

Affection: fondness through familiarity. This is the kind of love we find in a family and it’s a love that doesn’t need loveable things. It doesn’t matter what you are like someone will still love you in this way. Of course the problem comes when people take this for granted.

Friendship: a strong bond between people who share a common interest or activity.

Eros: love in the sense of ‘being in love’. It’s more than sexual love and tends to see the best in the person who you love.

Agape: is an unconditional love directed towards one’s neighbour which is not dependent on any lovable qualities that the object of love possesses. This is generally the kind of love that Jesus encouraged us to have.

There is an article on wikipedia which explains this much better at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Four_Loves

Love is not really an emotion although it can bring out a strong emotional reaction in people. To be in love can be the most wonderful feeling in the world but if all you have is a feeling then something is missing.

Some people have tried to make out that love is a weak and useless virtue but this is far from the case. It take a lot of courage and strength to love unconditionally and this is just the kind of strength that Jesus encouraged us to have.

If you want to find out about love then you should read what Jesus has to say about it in the gospels.

Thoughts good friday, Jesus, jesus christ, what is love

It’s so easy when you start to think about Jesus to forget the fact that he was a man, a person. The gospels are full of stuff about Jesus the person and how he felt and what he experienced. I’m not saying this to deny anything else about Jesus but simply that he was a real person. The disciples would have been able to touch Jesus and listen to the tone of his voice. They would have been able to share a joke with Jesus and talked with him as they walked along a road. These are all experiences that are not open to us and so it makes our experience of Jesus that much more distant. We don’t even have a photo of him.

However not being able to see what he looked or like or the tone of his voice does not mean he is not a real person. There are ancestors of mine that I know nothing about save that they must have existed because I do.

The gospels tell us that Jesus felt emotion, that he had friends, that he was sad when his friend died, that he enjoyed to eat and drink, that he knew what it was to be thirsty, that he suffered on the cross.

Don’t ever forget that Jesus was a real person.

Thoughts Jesus, jesus christ

It is a hard thing to admit that you were wrong – especially when you have written a book about something and been featured in debates that argued against Christianity. Here is an aritcle from someone who is willing to admit that they were wrong. I don’t offer this link because I want to laugh at those who think differently (like someone has joined my gang who was once in yours) but as an encouragement to not let others decide how you should think about Jesus.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1169145/Religion-hatred-Why-longer-cowed-secular-zealots.html

A.N. Wilson once wrote a book knocking the Christian view of Jesus – he is now man enough to admit he was wrong.

For much of my life, I, too, have been one of those who did not believe. It was in my young manhood that I began to wonder how much of the Easter story I accepted, and in my 30s I lost any religious belief whatsoever.

Like many people who lost faith, I felt anger with myself for having been ‘conned’ by such a story. I began to rail against Christianity, and wrote a book, entitled Jesus, which endeavoured to establish that he had been no more than a messianic prophet who had well and truly failed, and died.

Why did I, along with so many others, become so dismissive of Christianity?

Like most educated people in Britain and Northern Europe (I was born in 1950), I have grown up in a culture that is overwhelmingly secular and anti-religious. The universities, broadcasters and media generally are not merely non-religious, they are positively anti.

To my shame, I believe it was this that made me lose faith and heart in my youth. It felt so uncool to be religious. With the mentality of a child in the playground, I felt at some visceral level that being religious was unsexy, like having spots or wearing specs.

This playground attitude accounts for much of the attitude towards Christianity that you pick up, say, from the alternative comedians, and the casual light blasphemy of jokes on TV or radio.

It also lends weight to the fervour of the anti-God fanatics, such as the writer Christopher Hitchens and the geneticist Richard Dawkins, who think all the evil in the world is actually caused by religion.

The vast majority of media pundits and intelligentsia in Britain are unbelievers, many of them quite fervent in their hatred of religion itself.

My own return to faith has surprised no one more than myself. Why did I return to it? Partially, perhaps it is no more than the confidence I have gained with age.

Rather than being cowed by them, I relish the notion that, by asserting a belief in the risen Christ, I am defying all the liberal clever-clogs on the block: cutting-edge novelists such as Martin Amis; foul-mouthed, self-satisfied TV presenters such as Jonathan Ross and Jo Brand; and the smug, tieless architects of so much television output.

But there is more to it than that. My belief has come about in large measure because of the lives and examples of people I have known – not the famous, not saints, but friends and relations who have lived, and faced death, in the light of the Resurrection story, or in the quiet acceptance that they have a future after they die.

The Easter story answers their questions about the spiritual aspects of humanity. It changes people’s lives because it helps us understand that we, like Jesus, are born as spiritual beings.

When that great saint Thomas More, Chancellor of England, was on trial for his life for daring to defy Henry VIII, one of his prosecutors asked him if it did not worry him that he was standing out against all the bishops of England.

He replied: ‘My lord, for one bishop of your opinion, I have a hundred saints of mine.’

Now, I think of that exchange and of his bravery in proclaiming his faith. Our bishops and theologians, frightened as they have been by the pounding of secularist guns, need that kind of bravery more than ever.

Sadly, they have all but accepted that only stupid people actually believe in Christianity, and that the few intelligent people left in the churches are there only for the music or believe it all in some symbolic or contorted way which, when examined, turns out not to be belief after all.

As a matter of fact, I am sure the opposite is the case and that materialist atheism is not merely an arid creed, but totally irrational.

Materialist atheism says we are just a collection of chemicals. It has no answer whatsoever to the question of how we should be capable of love or heroism or poetry if we are simply animated pieces of meat.

The Resurrection, which proclaims that matter and spirit are mysteriously conjoined, is the ultimate key to who we are. It confronts us with an extraordinarily haunting story.

J. S. Bach believed the story, and set it to music. Most of the greatest writers and thinkers of the past 1,500 years have believed it.

But an even stronger argument is the way that Christian faith transforms individual lives – the lives of the men and women with whom you mingle on a daily basis, the man, woman or child next to you in church tomorrow morning.

News change your mind, Easter, jesus christ

The vatican recently commented on the supposed quote from John Lennon when he claimed that the Beatles were bigger than Jesus. Well to be fair to Lennon he didn’t actually say that the beatles were better or bigger than Jesus but just that they had a bigger influence on teenagers in the U.K. at the time, and he was probably right.

After 40 years I guess we ought to take stock and see if it is still true.

In the U.K. maybe the beatles are still big but there are plenty of young people who know nothing about them or who have never listened to their music. In certain generations, however, there are probably more people who listen to the beatles than who pick up a bible to read.

However more people will listen to modern popular music today than will go into a church so perhaps the situation is even more stark today than it was then.

Of course worldwide the Christian Church is still growing fast and shows no signs of dissapearing. The only place we see a real decline is in western europe. Are europeans just not interested or perhaps it is rebellion against the way the church in western europe had behaved in the past. However recent surveys suggest that people are as interested in Jesus as they ever were.

Thoughts beatles, beatles 40, Jesus, jesus christ, religion