Jesus Course

Jesus has now been spotted on the toilet door of an Ikea store in Scotland.

See the story here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/6373674/Jesuss-face-spotted-on-the-toilet-door-in-Ikea-Glasgow.html

Jesus in funny places Jesus

It might seem a silly question but it is an important one. One of the strange things that happened when the church tried to explore who the historical Jesus actually is was that those who did the research seemed to end up with a Jesus that was just like them. Instead of digging through all the layers supposedly imposed on Jesus what we found was that the layers that got removed were the layers that made Jesus seem uncomfortable for the one removing the layers. There are still some scholars who do this today and claim they have found the ‘real’ Jesus when the truth is that this ‘real’ Jesus is actually a Jesus just like them.

It’s taken the church a long time to understand that in fact the gospels paint a very accurate picture of who Jesus actually was/is. Our problem is learning to appreciate who Jesus actually was/is even when that makes us feel uncomfortable. This means we have to revise what we think of Jesus and not try and avoid what Jesus is like by claiming the bits we don’t like belong to some later editor of the gospels.

If you want to know what Jesus was actually like then read the gospels and you’ll get a pretty good idea.

Jesus Jesus

After reading a recent slow news day report about how the beatles are more popular than Jesus I thought I’d do my own research on the subject. The results were not very surprising with Jesus being much bigger than the beatles.

http://www.google.com/trends?q=jesus%2C+beatles&ctab=0&geo=all&date=2009-9&sort=0

Blue line is Jesus and red Beatles by the way

One interesting thing I did notice is that although Jesus is far more popular on searches this is not reflected in the way newspapers report things. Do the newspapers having something against Jesus?

Jesus Jesus

There are some questions about life that are difficult to answer. Is there a life after death? Does God exist? If God does exist how do we get into heaven? Etc. These are all questions that philosophers as well as ordinary people have been trying to answer since ancient times. If we knew the answers to these questions it might make a big difference to the way we live and the way the world is.

Many religions have tried to answer these questions but they tend to talk in terms that are hard to understand. But what if Christians are right about Jesus?

Christians claim that Jesus has the answers to these difficult questions. This isn’t a matter of arguing over the difference of words or whether one myth or another makes more sense because Christians claim that 2000 years ago there was a man who had the answers. A man that, if you had lived at that time, you could have touched, spent time with and even questioned about the answers he gave.

In fact Christians go further and say that this man was in fact God himself.

This is a startling claim and is made all the more amazing because Christians say that this actually happened. It isn’t just in some old story or some old myth but that Jesus was a real person with answers.

Now this goes beyond whether Christians have done the right thing or not. We have documents that can be traced right back to those who were eyewitnesses of Jesus Christ. If these documents are to be believed then nothing said by anyone else in the world is as significant as this one carpenter from Nazareth.

Why bother with Jesus? Because Jesus might just be the one who can actually answer the questions that we all want answers to.

Jesus Jesus

Jesus was really into praying, he just couldn’t get enough of it. The gospels are full of comments about how Jesus was going somewhere to pray or trying to get some quiet time for prayer, etc.

It surprises me, then, to learn that some Christians don’t pray other than when they are in church. Here is some research on prayer (a few years old now though). It doesn’t include the U.S.A. but here is one just for them. Even if we take a good view of the results (and we must always be wary of surveys) at least 20% of Christians don’t pray. What I found even more interesting is that in the first survey mentioned 86% said they had received an answer to prayer but only 64% pray every day. Even worse only 48% saw prayer as vital to faith.

Surely with Jesus being so hot on the subject we Christians should be doing it more. I also think we should be paying more attention to our use of time because some Christians complain that there just isn’t enough time to pray. I often wonder how many of these watch a soap on the T.V. or read a newspaper, or twitter, or facebook, etc. Anyway it’s not about the time you spend it’s about the quality of the time you spend.

Now I’m really not trying to make anyone feel guilty because what I want is to see more people praying.

So how do you pray? Well that’s one of the easiest things in the world to do. You open a conversation with God. It means having to open yourself up to God and I can’t give you a formula for that but if you have ever had a relationship with another person you will know what this means.

A lot of people get stuck on what to say. Not a problem – the disciples had a similar issue and so Jesus gave them a prayer to say. There are bookshelves collapsing in Christian book shops with prayers that you can use and before you get all uppity about not praying using someone else’s words Jesus never told us not to (in fact the Lord’s prayer and the psalms and nearly every hymn and worship song ever written is a prayer written by someone else).

Like all this stuff though I’m sure Jesus would want to point out that it isn’t about the words or about how many times you say them it’s about what is inside that counts. Whatever words you use make them real and meaningful to you and pour out your heart to God.

Sometimes people think prayer is going to be boring – in fact this is a lie the devil has been pushing on me ever since I became a Christian. Every time I’m going to do some praying a little voice in my head says “this is going to be boring you know”. Experience however tells me different. Not every day is wonderful but some days you just won’t want to stop.

A very important thing I learned about prayer is that the more you do it the better it gets. If you struggle with boring prayer times then you need to persevere and if you do it will improve.

Anyway – let’s pray.

Christian living Jesus, pray, prayer

People have often pondered over the question of their purpose. One of the problems faced by those who do not believe in God is that if you exist by chance, a random set of circumstances, then you have no real purpose, you have no reason to exist, there is no right or wrong.

I believe this view is wrong. God created you for a purpose and you have an important reason to exist and there is such a thing as right or wrong. If you think about it for a moment you will understand that somewhere deep within you is the knowledge that some things are right and some are wrong. This isn’t just conditioning and everyone has it. This is something that God has put there.

Let’s not get caught up in thinking about how creation worked (e.g. evolution or spontaneous creation or intelligent design or whatever) because the how is not the most important bit (I know many good Christians who are convinced evolutionists for instance) the important bit is that God caused it.

God created you for a reason, a purpose. We can discover, through reading the bible, that God has a plan for the world. It is incredibly complex and God has to allow for giving people the right to make choices about how they fit into that plan but still the plan exists. It’s end goal (as Jesus pointed out) is to create heaven on earth (God’s kingdom come) and to overcome the power of death.

The wonderful thing is that God wants us to share in the plan and our purpose is part of that plan. We have a part to play in the world that will really make a difference.

I don’t mean we are all going to be world heads of government but that we all can help to make God’s plan come true. We have a purpose that God built into us. God knows us even before we are made in our mother’s womb. It was part of God’s plan to have you born.

You truly are made for a purpose.

Thoughts creation, Jesus, purpose

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.

Thoughts christian, Jesus, knowledge

A great deal of Jesus’ teaching is recorded for us in the form of parables (essentially stories that teach). But why did Jesus teach this way when it leaves so much confusion over what he meant. There is even a story in the bible that shows his disciples were struggling to understand his teaching, if they struggle how will we ever know what he was on about?

We get a clue to why he did this in Matthew gospel chapter 13 verses 10-15.

Jesus says in effect: he only wanted the right people to understand. Those people are the ones who are ready to listen to Jesus and have not closed their minds to what he has to teach.

This can be both confusing and a little alarming to those of us who read this today but there are very good reasons for why Jesus would want to do this.

You probably already know that Jesus was not popular with the religious authorities – in fact they were quite often planning to catch him out and kill him. It could be that Jesus didn’t want to talk too plainly so that he could get away with his teaching (you can’t kill someone for telling a story).

I think this could be partly true but I think it goes deeper than that. I think Jesus only wants those who are willing to be open to what he has to say to understand him. We see in other places in the gospels that Jesus had a clear idea of who should be hearing his message. Jesus just did not waste time on those who would not listen.

I think there is a lesson for Christians today. Christians are notorious for spending all of their time on those who are least likely to be interested. We will give hours and hours over to trying to convince the skeptic about Jesus and take no notice of the people who are actually interested – the reverse of what Jesus did. Jesus didn’t waist time on those who were closed minded to his message but instead gave all his energy over to speaking with those who were interested and open to his ideas.

Of course the challenge for Christians is also to understand if they themselves are open or closed to what Jesus was trying to say.

Jesus Jesus, parables, Teaching

It becomes obvious from reading the gospels that Jesus had a clear idea about what he was trying to do. Like lots of stories, however, we only really get the full picture when the vision has been fulfilled.

It seems strange then that so many people should think that having a vision is a bit pointless and only for the weak minded. If you look at any of the great people from history you will discover how they became focussed on one particular goal. For Jesus everything points to the cross as being the ultimate aim of his vision but like all good visions he also saw beyond this event to what would come after.

Why not take some time to think about your own vision? What is your life about? What are you trying to achieve?

Of course Jesus can help with some big answers to some of these questions but ultimately there is a part of life that will be particular to you. I don’t mean this in a selfish way because usually the bit of life that is just about us is actually about how we can help others.

Thoughts Jesus, vision

Perhaps one of our greatest resources is time. Without time we are rendered hopeless but with it we can move mountains (quite literally).

Jesus once talked about the importance of having our hearts in the right place. We could also add that you can tell where the right place is in the way people spend their time.

If you want to work out what things you really do value then look at the way you spend your time.

You might want to come back at me and say that your time is not yours to spend but then I want to ask whose time is it if not your own. If you think you are not spending your time on the things you value then perhaps its time to get your time planning systems out of the box and start working to make sure you do spend time on the things that are important to you.

Knowing what you value can be important for all kinds of reasons. Jesus said that we should make God our top priority but I wonder how many of us actually do.

Thoughts Jesus, time, values