How We Got Where We are Today

My wife and I lived in Guatemala for a couple of years. It was a fantastic experience for us, and one of the most memorable trademarks of life in Central America is the "chicken bus," which the online Urban Dictionary aptly defines as,

A schoolbus that has been retired from its academic duties in the U.S. to go face a long, slow death in Latin America. Often painted garish colors and includes numerous religious icons, including the Virgin Mary, displayed prominently within the bus in an effort to reassure passengers. The emissions from one chicken bus equal that of four tractor trailers. Chicken buses often carry chickens in addition to other small livestock.(1)

By Greg Willis from Denver, CO, usa (Santiago - Chicken Bus Uploaded by russavia) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
By Greg Willis from Denver, CO, usa (Santiago - Chicken Bus Uploaded by russavia) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Though I rarely rode on one of these buses in our time there, I had plenty of opportunity to study them while being stuck in traffic. Whoever wrote that entry in the Urban Dictionary noticed one of the same things I did, though I saw the the vast amount of Christian artwork that was displayed on these vehicles from a different perspective. To use the dictionary's example, if a bus was painted with an image of the Virgin Mary: what are the chances that an image of my mom will be painted on any means of transportation two millennia after my lifetime? Or, if the likeness was of Jesus himself: what kind of genius PR plan would someone have to follow to have their face be the most common thing painted on chicken buses in Guatemala two thousand years later? None of the Roman emperors from closer to Jesus' time accomplished this, nor is it likely for any of today's world leaders to be painted on the future's equivalent of the chicken bus somewhere around the year 4000. So, how did we get here? What are the possible courses history could have taken to get Jesus' face on the chicken buses that surrounded me in Guatemala?

I have never heard anyone try to make the case that the depiction of Jesus on those buses proves his resurrection, because that would be foolish. (Jesus' face wasn't the only thing that got painted on the buses, but he was in a different category since none of the other things that appeared frequently, like cartoon characters or silhouettes of nude women, were ever asserted to have any the claim on my life's complete allegiance such as Christianity gives to Jesus.) Even so, in light of questions we have looked at previously about Jesus, I think it's also a mistake to think the chicken buses do nothing to inform us about the intelligibility of thinking of Jesus' resurrection as a historical reality. As I've tried to point out, it is perfectly logical to think that Jesus lived and died, so his likeness on the buses is quickly of a different type from those of Mickey Mouse. And, if he really did live and die, some chain of events has happened between his lifetime and now which makes people think of painting his face on buses and a myriad of other things. That chain of events–including its good, bad, and ugly parts–has to have some kind of explanation. What could it be?

If we were to leave the explanation of that chain of events to those with a strong bias against Christianity, some entertaining theories would undoubtedly surface. But–again–if Jesus was a real historical person, and real historical events have happened relating to him in all of the years since his death, what is most reasonable to believe could have occurred to give history the shape it has taken? Or, as Dallas Willard puts it, "The basic issue here is whether events subsequent to what is claimed as the resurrection of Christ could have been what they are if it hadn't actually happened."(2)

In the context of this question, the most fascinating and most crucial segment of the course that history has taken is within those first few generations following Jesus' death and supposed resurrection. Michael Green notes the following points among those that need to be considered(3):

  1. Jesus, the prisoner of Pilate, really was dead. Though some people have tried to propose that Jesus must not have actually died, but only been beaten into unconsciousness, that explanation fails to take into account one really important thing: Roman soldiers were really, really good at killing people. It takes an immense degree of unsubstantiated "faith" to believe that they failed to kill Jesus.
  2. The tomb was empty. It doesn't make sense to dismiss the stories of Jesus' resurrection by believing the accounts of his life up until the point of his burial, but then concluding that his body must have stayed in a tomb. The claims about his resurrection caused enough of a stir that if his body had never left the tomb where it was buried (either alive or still dead), Jewish and Roman authorities easily could have provided the evidence to stop the stories circulating about him.
  3. The church was born. This point doesn't get enough attention in the way we often talk about whether or not the resurrection could have happened, but is as important as anything else. Willard notes: "The evidence in favor of [Jesus' resurrection] is mainly the transformation of his followers from a small group of highly unqualified and socially marginalized individuals, disgraced and hunted by the authorities, into a force for moral and social regeneration that, within a few generations, was present throughout the Roman Empire and, within a few centuries, had become the dominant form of religion within it. All of this came about without any special advantage other than the words they spoke and the life they lived, without any use of force and even against strong and often deadly opposition."(4)

It is possible to look back and suggest any number of possibilities about how someone/some group of people might have deceived others into believing that Jesus was physically alive again after he had been physically dead. But can any of those theories explain, in an intelligent and honest way, why Christianity began and took the shape it did? I am open to any other explanation, but aware of none, that fits as well as this one: it actually happened.

I am well aware that what I am saying here proves nothing. But the lack of proof doesn't negate the legitimacy of these points: It is perfectly intelligent to believe that he lived, he died, and his rag-tag group of followers started a movement that has resulted in him being the most influential person in world history. If there is any explanation for how that happened superior to the belief that he rose from the dead, every responsible person should pay attention to it. If there is not, every responsible person should re-evaluate the entirety of their lives in light of the likelihood that this crucified messiah actually walked out of his own grave.

–––

Scripture Readings for the Week*:

  • Amos 7:7-17
  • Psalm 82
  • Colossians 1:1-14
  • Luke 10:25-37

A Prayer for the Week*:

O Lord, mercifully receive the prayers of your people who call upon you, and grant that they may know and understand what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to accomplish them; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

*Scripture readings are taken from the Revised Common Lectionary. Weekly prayers are from The Book of Common Prayer. (1) http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=chicken%20bus(2) Dallas Willard, Knowing Christ Today, 133(3) See Michael Green, Avoiding Jesus: Answers for Skeptics, Cynics, and the Curious (4) Willard, Knowing Christ Today, 134NT Wright, The Challenge of Jesus, 126

[This post is part of How Jesus Got Hold of Me: Why I Believe and Why I Follow]

Did He Rise From the Dead?

I am somewhat embarrassed to say this, but for most of my life, the claim that Jesus rose from the dead didn't matter all that much to me. I wouldn't have said so–and wouldn't have thought it was true if you had asked me about it–but looking back on it now, it's undeniable. What really mattered in the kind of Christianity that I lived were: 1) Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden, 2) Christmas, and 3) Good Friday. For me, those three events formed the framework of the entire gospel. I knew very well that I had messed up (Eden), God was determined to rescue me from how I had messed up (Christmas), and therefore Jesus came and paid a penalty on my behalf by his death (Good Friday). If Jesus' resurrection (Easter) mattered, it was so that I could have an imprecise kind of new life, but–honestly–I thought being a Christian had much more to do with the forgiveness associated with Jesus' death than it had to do with his resurrection. Again, I would never have said so, nor even thought that I believed so, but any examination of my beliefs and actions would have clearly revealed that I thought of Easter as being little more than the spike of the football after the real touchdown on Good Friday.

Sound familiar? I certainly don't think I'm alone in having envisaged Christianity that way. Many Christians and non-Christians alike would summarize the message of Jesus' life somewhere along those lines.

But since so many of the Christians who hold beliefs similar to those I had also (as I did) consider themselves to be very Bible-focused people, here is a red flag that we were missing the point: those three main parts of the story which I thought were the framework for the gospel (Eden, Christmas, and Good Friday) occupy an astonishingly small percentage of the Bible which I claimed was the foundation for my life and thinking. The debacle that happened in the garden of Eden in the third chapter of Genesis is on page 5 in my Bible. It is never mentioned again until page 1076.(1) The limited attention it gets in the New Testament is mostly to point out how Jesus' resurrection began to set right the things that began to go wrong in Eden.

Then, for Christmas. As much as Christmas and Easter are the two apparently equal highlights of the year in most churches and in the lives of many Christians, it isn't that way in the scriptures. Jesus' birth isn't even mentioned in two of the four accounts of his life, while the climax of all of them is the resurrection. As N.T. Wright points out, "Take away the stories of Jesus’ birth, and all you lose is four chapters of the gospels. Take away the resurrection and you lose the entire New Testament, and most of the second century fathers as well."(2)

Going by this "how much attention they get in the scriptures" analysis, Good Friday matters–tremendously. Attention to Jesus' death is given throughout the New Testament, but his death is always viewed through the lens of his resurrection. If their claim of Jesus' resurrection had not been the center of the existence of those earliest generations of Christians, they would not have had any reason to look back on his death other than as being evidence that he was one more failed Messiah.

Because it can seem so laughable to think of the stories of Jesus' resurrection as a historical reality, it is tempting for us to come up with a version of Christianity which doesn't need them so badly. We can rally behind Jesus the great teacher and altruistic martyr, but it seems like we subject ourselves to accusations of simpleminded unintelligence if we state just as confidently that his corpse came back to life and walked out of the tomb where it had laid completely lifeless from Friday evening until Sunday morning.

The early Christians were not following a noble martyr. If that had been the case Jesus would have been remembered heroically by some, but even they would have gone on looking for another messiah, and hence there would have been no such thing as early Christians. His name would have practically disappeared from history along with other would-be messiahs from around the time of Jesus, such as Simon, Anthronges, Menahem, and Simeon ben Kosiba. These guys tried really hard, but failed. An executed messiah was an impossibility.

Christianity is simply inexplicable without the real, bodily resurrection of Jesus. If it didn't happen in point of fact, we have all been duped in the worst possible way. Regardless of what our experiences have been, or of what we have always believed, or how long Christians have had influence in the world, it all crumbles to the ground if he wasn't really, bodily alive after he had been really, bodily dead.

So...did it happen?

Next week's post will continue the exploration of that question, but before I get to the issues I want to address there, a couple of essential qualifications on this question of whether or not we can intelligently shape our lives around belief in a resurrected Messiah:

First, we have no reason to be scared of science, in this or any other matter of faith. We tend to assume that it might have been easier for people of earlier centuries to be convinced that Jesus was restored to life, but with the rise of science in the past few hundred years, the evidence is now against it. In response to that line of thinking, I've heard N.T. Wright say, "Give me a break. Dead people have been staying dead longer than that."

Science examines repeatable events and conditions, which will naturally always lead us to the conclusion that dead people stay dead, and since Jesus was dead, he could not have come back to life. But the question of the Christian belief in Jesus' resurrection is a question about something claimed to have happened one time to him, and which also points to what will happen to all of God's people in the future. Science, by its nature, cannot say true or false to either of those claims.

But, secondly, that does not mean that our belief in the resurrection should be based on a "blind faith" in which the most faithful thing we can do is to try really hard to think we believe it happened and not ask any questions, regardless of what our best intellectual faculties would normally lead us to do. In this or any other matter of faith, if it is true it will be able to stand up to any reality-seeking questions any of us can pose.

If Jesus died and stayed dead, stories about his resurrection do not matter. If Jesus died and later walked out of his own tomb, nothing else matters. Next week, I will do my best to explain why it is a perfectly rational thing to believe the resurrection happened and why therefore our world is a completely different kind of place than it would have been otherwise.

–––

Scripture Readings for the Week*:

  • 2 Kings 5:1-14
  • Psalm 30
  • Galatians 6:1-16
  • Luke 10:1-11,16-20

A Prayer for the Week*:

O God, you have taught us to keep all your commandments by loving you and our neighbor: Grant us the grace of your Holy Spirit, that we may be devoted to you with our whole heart, and united to one another with pure affection; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

*Scripture readings are taken from the Revised Common Lectionary. Weekly prayers are from The Book of Common Prayer. (1) See Hosea 6:7 (2) See Wright's lecture, "Can a Scientist Believe in the Resurrection?"

[This post is part of How Jesus Got Hold of Me: Why I Believe and Why I Follow]

Did He Live? Did He Die?

Clarence Darrow is quoted as saying, "I don't believe in God, because I don't believe in Mother Goose."(1) Darrow was certainly a bright person, and I would be unwise to try to question his intelligence by anything I say here. His statement would likely prompt a strong emotional response from many Christians, but part of the reason for that might be–on some level deeper than we normally pay attention to–we fear that he was right. 

As I mentioned in our first post, there is an angle from which we can look at the claims of Christianity and understand how they can be seen on the same level as stories about Zeus or Darrow's Mother Goose. It isn't difficult to see the myth-like qualities of assertions that Jesus could do things like walk on water, heal people's dead children, cure terminal diseases, or multiply food (I won't even mention rising from his own grave yet, but will get to that next week). In addition, one difference between Jesus, Zeus, and Mother Goose is that there are no ancient Greek gods, fairy tales, nor nursery rhymes that make demands on us at the level Jesus does. No Mother Goose story says anything close to Jesus' statement, "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple...any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple."(2)

Another tremendous difference, though, is fairly obvious: Christians (as well as many non-Christians) believe that Jesus was a historical person. The claim is that if you had lived in the same community in Israel at the same time, you would have known him as your neighbor because his life was every bit as real as ours. So we are faced with an immensely important question: Did he live? Is it more intelligent to think that he probably did live, he probably didn't, or that there aren't enough important facts for us to make any judgment either way? Is this ancient Jewish rabbi who lays claim on our full allegiance someone who ever walked around on this planet, or was he something drawn up in the minds of the most wildly successful storytellers in human history? 

–––

In recent years, I have become more aware of the amount of advertising with which we are endlessly bombarded from every direction, and have become increasingly cynical and distrustful toward any kind of ad. I sometimes entertain myself with a game in which I listen to the commercial, and then follow its claims in my mind by saying, "...according to [insert the name of the person/group doing the advertising]. For example, a commercial might say "Bob's Car Lot has the best prices in town," and then I insert "...according to Bob's Car Lot." (Perhaps I am way too easily entertained, but you should try it.) Here's a start: "Daniel's writing is the most helpful and entertaining stuff you'll ever read...according to Daniel."

The reason I find this entertaining is because it brings to light the ridiculous, self-interested claims we allow to be constantly pushed on us, and when we see things as being that self-interested, we rightly know we have good reason to doubt them. So, when Christians base their entire belief that Jesus existed simply on the accounts of the Bible, it can seem like we're saying, "Followers of Jesus have been exactly right about him all along...according to followers of Jesus."

That's why, to me, four names that are not Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are very important for coming to a reasonable conclusion that Jesus existed: Thallus, Tacitus, Pliny, and Josephus.

  • Thallus wrote in Rome (AD 52) and included an attempt to explain the darkness which Mark 15:33 says came at the moment of Jesus' death. He explained it as an eclipse of the sun, but the most notable thing about it is that a non-Christian historian in Rome saw a need to explain the phenomena within twenty years of the event.
  • Tacitus, another Roman non-Christian, was a historian of the empire who wrote about Christians in his Annals (AD 117), saying that "The name Christian comes to them from Christ, who was executed in the reign of Tiberius by the Procurator Pontius Pilate."
  • Pliny was an ancient Roman governor whose letters to the emperor (from around AD 112) describe the social impact that the early Christians were having (like the closing of pagan temples for lack of business) and his perplexity that even while he continued to give Christians the death penalty, they appeared to him to be very harmless.
  • Josephus was a Jewish historian who mentioned Jesus twice in his Antiquities (AD 94), including a reference to James as being Jesus' brother.

These four writers are notable in relation to Jesus, precisely because they were not his followers, but were so close to his time and all, to some degree, part of groups which tried to extinguish Christianity. In different ways, they each say from those earliest years, "Here is a detail about Jesus and his earliest followers...according to those of us who were opposed to their success."

---

The judgment that Jesus actually did live and die is of immense importance. If it is true, it means we are dealing with a historical person rather than Zeus or Mother Goose. If there is no good reason to dismiss Jesus as a make-believe hero, responsible people who really want to know the truth are then left on the hook to find out more about him. But even if we can reasonably conclude that Jesus lived and was executed from these non-biblical/non-Christian sources, that still leaves us a long way from needing to devote our entire lives to following him. I know my great-great-grandfather's name and a few details about his life, but just because we're reasonably certain he lived and died, no one has ever suggested that we should trust James Harvey Harris for our eternal salvation.

If the non-Christian sources from the time give us enough of a reason to believe that Jesus really lived, we then have to look at the Christian sources (the Bible) to get information on what his life was like. Those non-Christian references to his life agree with the information in the gospels about Jesus' death (that he was executed under Pilate, and that there were many who believed him to be alive again afterward), but beyond that, how much can we rely on the stories about Jesus that we have in the Bible?

The issues surrounding how the Bible came to be what we have today are more complex than can be addressed here. The Bible was written by dozens of authors over more than a millennium. Many of the books were passed on as oral tradition before they were ever written. Each book was written for an audience in a time and place very different from our own, in ancient languages which are no longer spoken. Neither the Bible nor its history are simple.

Yet the evidence suggests that the Bible as we now have it is remarkably close to the documents as they were originally written. The amount of scholarship from Christians and non-Christians that has gone into the analysis of every detail of these texts throughout the centuries is without comparison, and we should welcome the best information on the scriptures from wherever it comes.

I read a book a few years ago by a textual scholar who is a leading critic of Christianity, Bart Ehrman. The book had a title that implied a hefty promise about the content: Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why. After reading the book, however, the content came nowhere near living up to the promise of the title. The changes of the Bible Ehrman explores are variations in the texts of the surviving manuscripts which are all likely to be represented in the notes in the margins of any Bible you have sitting on your shelf right now. Some of them make interesting differences in how to interpret a specific passage, but none of them make any significant difference in how we understand any central Christian doctrines.

While accepting that our modern Bibles are very close to the original documents doesn't prove anything about whether or not the things the Bible says actually happened, the most important thing for us to note in considering Jesus' life is that the books of the New Testament, written so close to the time of Jesus' life, were circulated very widely very quickly. Certainly anyone who knew them to be false could have written other documents saying so. I know of no such early documents. Apparently it wasn't until the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries that questioning Jesus' existence began to be considered as logical.

–––

My hope in exploring these topics in such a fly-by manner is not that anyone would take my brief answers as conclusive. The questions are serious enough that they deserve more of our best efforts than that. Did Jesus live? How did he die? How reliable is the information we have about him? In light of all of the times in my life that I have heard someone mention the importance of not just knowing about Jesus, but knowing Jesus, perhaps we should realize that it serves no one to eliminate either side of that equation. How well can we possibly claim to know him while we put so little effort into knowing anything historical about him?(3)

Instead of hoping that my comments would be finally persuasive to anyone, my aim is twofold: first, that any non-disciples of Jesus would become more open to the rationality of a lifestyle of complete devotion to this ancient Jewish rabbi; and second, that those who are already his disciples would embrace these kinds of questions rather than feeling like it is a duty of faith to ignore them. If the one who said, "You will know the truth and the truth will set you free" is who we claim him to be, he would eagerly and calmly encourage us to seek the facts and follow wherever they lead.

–––

Scripture Readings for the Week*:

  • 2 Kings 2:1-2,6-14
  • Psalm 77:1-2,11-20
  • Galatians 5:1,13-25
  • Luke 9:51-62

A Prayer for the Week*:

Almighty God, you have built your Church upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone: Grant us so to be joined together in unity of spirit by their teaching, that we may be made a holy temple acceptable to you; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

*Scripture readings are taken from the Revised Common Lectionary. Weekly prayers are from The Book of Common Prayer. (1) From a speech in Toronto (1930); as quoted in "Breaking the Last Taboo" (1996) by James A. Haught. (2) Luke 14:25-27,33, ESV (3) For a more in-depth exploration of some of the relevant questions about Jesus, see Avoiding Jesus: Answers for Skeptics, Cynics, and the Curious by Michael Green, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism by Timothy Keller, Simply Jesus: A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did, and Why He Matters by N.T. Wright, or A Place for Truth: Leading Thinkers Explore Life's Hardest Questions edited by Dallas Willard.

[This post is part of How Jesus Got Hold of Me: Why I Believe and Why I Follow]

The Importance of Starting with Jesus

I loved the place where I attended college. That alone isn't unique, but the older I've gotten, the more I've realized how different my college experience was from many people's–and I am continually grateful for it. I became interested in attending there because of people whose lives with God impacted mine as a youngster who had attended there and/or spoke highly of it. I wanted to learn to live an authentic kind of Christianity, and I wanted to be around people who would help me move in that direction, so after visiting a few places and taking my first few courses at a community college, I really wanted to be at that Christian college.

Going there has certainly been one of the most pivotal decisions of my life to date, primarily because of the people I met. I got to know faculty, staff, and students (including the one who would eventually marry me) who all helped me along toward the kind of life with God that I desired.

It almost didn't happen, though. I remember one night, sitting alone in my room at my parents' house, feeling down because it seemed like my hopes of going to school there couldn't come to pass. After visiting the school and taking a serious look at it, I had concluded that it was too far away and too expensive. As I was in my room thinking (pouting) about it, I heard my dad's footsteps coming down the hallway. He was my hero, and someone who never used any more words than were necessary. He stood in the doorway, paused, and said, "If that's where you want to go, we'll get you there." Then he turned around and I heard his footsteps heading back to the other side of the house. I graduated three and a half years later, full of encounters and relationships with people who knew God (and a good academic side of the education too).

I mention all of this not as an advertisement for my alma mater, but to point back to an idea that was planted in my mind by one of those people who impacted me. His name is Dr. Dennis Kinlaw. He was a former president of the school, and continued to return and speak in our chapel services regularly while I was there. He is a brilliant man, an inspiring speaker and author, and–though I never got to know him personally–I looked forward to any chance to learn from him.

One of his ideas that has stuck with me is this: If we're talking about anything involving Christianity, the best place to start is with Jesus.(1) That statement may not seem profound on the surface, but it needs to be stated because it's surprising how often we start the conversations elsewhere. For example, today's most influential critics of Christianity often focus on the horrible things that have been done in the name of Christianity throughout the centuries. Even though those parts of the story matter, it makes more sense to start with the life story of the ancient Jewish rabbi to whom groups so radically different from one another have all claimed allegiance. Let's not start with our history, though it matters tremendously. Let's start with Jesus.

Perhaps something that comes up even more commonly than Christianity's checkered history in firsthand conversations is people's claims of personal experiences. On the side that affirms Christianity, people will sometimes make claims about how God has interacted with them in some degree–that they saw, felt, or experienced something. The other side is more subtle, because it professes an experience of gaining knowledge that such things do not, or even cannot happen to people. Our experiences, or the absence of them, are very important, but they can't provide the right foundation for all of the questions. We have to start with Jesus.

Or, what about the typical college freshman's first exposure to a higher education course in philosophy or biology? Young people who were sure that God had a plan for their lives a year earlier while living with their parents suddenly have their entire structure of beliefs challenged with questions they may have even been taught to avoid. Then, within the course of one semester, God can go from having had a plan for their lives to suddenly being a psycho-socially constructed figment of their imaginations. The impact can be overwhelming of, for the first time, seriously being faced with challenging philosophical/scientific questions like where the world came from, how a good God could allow so much evil, etc. Again, these issues matter tremendously and need to be addressed, but they aren't the logical place to start. Let's start by looking at Jesus.

As I mentioned last week, the invitation of Christianity can seem absurd because of the kinds of claims it makes about Jesus and the kind of complete devotion Christians are supposed to give to this ancient rabbi who lived in a world so different from our own. Because those claims are so outlandish, we miss the point when we start by looking at what Christians did during the crusades, or what your super-religious aunt might claim to have been told by God, or even whether or not God is good or even exists. The only logical place to start is with him–with that ancient, total-obedience-demanding rabbi at the center of it all. As Kinlaw says, "I began to feel that the key to understanding all of this was to start, not with the question of whether God exists and what can be known about him, but rather with Jesus himself..."(2)

So, having spent these first two weeks trying to frame this exploration, next week, we will begin digging into it. Even if we agree with the idea of starting with Jesus, what do we know? Can we trust what the Bible tells us about him? Did he really even live, and if so, what do we know about his death?

–––

Scripture Readings for the Week*:

  • 1 Kings 19:1-15a
  • Psalm 42
  • Galatians 3:23-29
  • Luke 8:26-39

A Prayer for the Week*:

O Lord, make us have perpetual love and reverence for your holy Name, for you never fail to help and govern those whom you have set upon the sure foundation of your loving-kindness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

*Scripture readings are taken from the Revised Common Lectionary. Weekly prayers are from The Book of Common Prayer. (1) See Dennis F. Kinlaw, Let's Start with Jesus: A New Way of Doing Theology. It isn't long, but can be fairly heavy reading. Another great option is his daily devotional book, This Day with the Master. (2) Kinlaw, Let's Start with Jesus, p. 13.

[This post is part of How Jesus Got Hold of Me: Why I Believe and Why I Follow]

The Decision to Devote Myself to an Ancient Jewish Rabbi

If we're honest about it, the invitation of Christianity is absurd.

Apparently–we are told–two millenia ago, a Jewish boy was born in questionable circumstances to peasant parents. We know nothing about most of his life. Somewhere around the age of thirty, he became something of a wandering, unsanctioned rabbi. Though he gained enough of a following to cause a stir, it was largely among uneducated, lower-class, people who were at least as motivated by the hype of being around an up-and-coming new celebrity (who was rumored to have done things like heal people's dead children and fill the stomachs of crowds of people who had no food) as they were for any religious reasons. There must not have been much real allegiance to him among those crowds, since he died utterly alone, executed as an enemy of the state, after being betrayed by one of his closest friends.

So now, 2,000 years later on the opposite side of the globe from where he spent his short life, we are told that we should dedicate the entirety of our lives to him–this ancient Jewish quasi-rabbi about whom the majority of us really know very, very little. If I asked you to take any other invitation with that level of preposterousness to it, I expect that spurning the offer would be a prerequisite to being considered an intelligent person.

If we are able to step back and look at it objectively, we might have to admit that when we claim allegiance to him, the primary reason could be an accident of geography: the majority of us have been born and raised in families who lived in places where devotion to him was the socially accepted (or even socially expected) norm, and so we have simply continued to do what is familiar to us: we give our assent to the claims and stories about him, and we sing the songs about him–even if we neither understand nor believe what they say.  If you or I had been born in today's world but in the part of the world much closer to the geography Jesus knew, the likelihood that we would identify ourselves as his followers now is certainly drastically smaller. Perhaps this kind of conformity is a recent thing and new to us, or perhaps has been the pattern through the generations.

All of those things are legitimate parts of Christianity's invitation, and here I am as a person of (as far as I know) a normal degree of sanity and rationality and yet I have accepted the invitation. Not only have I accepted it, I have chosen to organize the entirety of my life around it to the best degree which I know how. I–a North American male in my mid-30s–have somehow become convinced that the best possible way to live out the relatively few days of my life is to devote them to following this ancient, poor, Jew who was condemned to death before he reached my age.

–––

As is probably normal for anyone born into a Christian family, for the first decades of my life, I certainly fell into that category of people who believed in and followed Jesus because it was what the people around me did, and had been doing for generations. I'm deeply grateful for that part of my own history, and I don't disparage it in the least. But there comes a time in the maturation of our faith when we have to face whether it is actually ours or someone else's. Regardless of whether or not each of our parents claimed to accept the absurd claims and invitation of Christianity, do you and I? Is Christianity part of our lives because it is part of the culture around us, because it was part of the way we were raised, or because we have actually become convinced that there is no other way of life that compares to the one we enter when we seek to immerse ourselves in the life and teachings of this carpenter from Nazareth who said, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me"?(1)

When I came to the point of wrestling with the questions for myself, it was a bit frightening. I was already receiving my education to spend my life helping others get to know the ancient Jewish rabbi, but what if it was all a hoax? Did I really want to give my best efforts to following someone I know so relatively little about? (At the time, I knew more about the lives of a good number of my sports heroes than I did about his.) Every experience I had ever had with other people taught me easily observable yet important things like: bread doesn't multiply, human feet sink if they're on top of a body of water, and–perhaps the most preposterous part of the claims about Jesus–every dead person I had ever known was still dead.

So there I was: a young adult academically prepared for ministry, but with some pretty difficult, even seemingly dangerous, questions under the surface of what was going on in my life.(2)

Thankfully, the course I chose was not to give up on my efforts to follow this rabbi because of these difficult questions, but rather to make sure those efforts were well-informed and then put them to the test. Because of wise guidance I had been given in various places(3), I began to operate on the assumption that if Jesus really was who Christians throughout the centuries have claimed him to be, there had to be something more authentically formed by him than the kind of life I was experiencing to that point. If Jesus was who we claim, I knew that he would be exactly the kind of person who could relax and encourage me to seek the truth about my questions wherever they would lead, because if it is all true, they would lead to him.(4)

I am now about fifteen years into this experiment of wrestling with the questions and putting the claims of Jesus to the test in my life the best I know how, and I am as convinced as ever that living our lives as his students is the best option available to us. Over the next ten weeks, I will do my best to explain why.

–––

(A note on the readings and prayers for each week in this series: These are taken from the tools I normally use in my own reading and praying, which lead us through a yearly cycle. Because we're essentially in the middle of a year, the readings pick up in the middle of a sequence. That's okay. I recommend reading the four scriptures below, with the accompanying prayer, repeatedly throughout the week so that it can sink in, and then the sequence will continue through the weeks to come.)

Scripture Readings for the Week*:

  • 1 Kings 21:1-21a
  • Psalm 5:1-8
  • Galatians 2:15-21
  • Luke 7:36-8:3

A Prayer for the Week*:

Keep, O Lord, your household the Church in your steadfast faith and love, that through your grace we may proclaim your truth with boldness, and minister your justice with compassion; for the sake of our Savior Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

*Scripture readings are taken from the Revised Common Lectionary. Weekly prayers are from The Book of Common Prayer. (1) Mark 8:34, ESV (2) I don't mean to give the impression that all of this happened at one specific time in my life. It was a sum of experiences and questions over several years. (3) Much of this was through personal relationships, but also particularly through reading the works of Dallas Willard and C.S. Lewis. (4) I certainly am not the first person, young or old, to wrestle with these questions. But I'm thankful that I didn't make the mistake of some, in that I never considered separating myself from the Christian community (the Church), regardless of what question I may have been wrestling with.

Money-Back Guaranteed Recipe for Humility

made_at_www-1.txt2pic.com A friend used to joke about having been given a button to wear on his shirt that said "HUMBLE". He said that it even came with blinking lights on it. That friend, who–despite his "humble button" joke–is one of the most humble people I know, remains one of the people I have continued to go to through more than a decade when I'm seeking God's guidance on something. When I need others to help me discern God's leading, we intuitively don't go to ego-driven people. Our instincts tell us that there may be nothing that squelches someone's ability to hear from God more than pride.

In a section of Hearing God, Dallas Willard wrote about this, and then–as wasn't uncommon when I read his writings or listened to him speak–he threw in this paragraph as something of a side-note even though it alone was worth the price of the book:

"In seeking and receiving God's word to us, therefore, we must at the same time seek and receive the grace of humility. God will gladly give it to us if, trusting and waiting on him to act, we refrain from pretending we are what we know we are not, from presuming a favorable position for ourselves in any respect and from from pushing or trying to override the will of others in our context. (This is a fail-safe recipe for humility. Try it for one month. Money-back guarantee if it doesn't work!)"(1)

In case you didn't catch it, there's plenty for us to chew on for...at least a couple of decades. The first thing that catches my attention is that humility is a grace. That probably doesn't sound counter-intuitive to many of us, but yet we certainly aren't trained to live as if it's true. Grace is God's undeserved action in our lives to bring about what we can't accomplish on our own, and if we apply that to humility, it means that God's work is furthered more when we become humble. (So, pastor friends, where are our seminary courses in "The Necessity Of and Path Toward Humility"?)

Then, Dallas' three-point recipe for humility is brilliant (and even though I'm sitting here writing about how great it is, I'm not particularly looking forward to going and putting it into practice). First, he says, "refrain from pretending we are what we know we are not." How many of our ways that we interact with one another would fall apart if our ability to pretend suddenly disappeared? Think of going to your next professional convention and presenting yourself as being as unsuccessful as you really are.

Then, "refrain...from presuming a favorable position for ourselves in any respect." What if, instead of being urged to stand out and get noticed as part of what it means to be a competent adult, we took it as our goal to get no credit for as much good work as possible?

And finally, perhaps the most radical part of the recipe, "refrain...from pushing or trying to override the will of others in our context." But he can't seriously mean...think of all of the kinds of things that might happen to us if we actually did that!?! What if we refused to fight for our own agendas? People around us will certainly continue to do it, so wouldn't we be conceding victory on everything that matters to...everyone but us?

While listening to a podcast from Dallas today, I heard him say, "The biggest threat to the kingdom of God in my life is the kingdom of Dallas Willard. I have to lay that aside. That means that I don't expect things to be done by my power. I expect things to be done by God's power."(2)

In that light, it becomes apparent that a humility-blocking issue for me is that I simply don't trust God and his kingdom that much. I think things are way too much up to me, and honestly–it raises fear in me to think about what things would be like if I abandoned the outcomes of things I care about in that complete of a way to God's hands.

But, based on the course my life has taken to this point, that fear should appropriately go in the opposite direction. Virtually everything genuinely good about my life has come about as a result of things I could not have orchestrated on my own, while everything I have tried to seize control of has gone crashing down. Rather than fearing what might happen if I lived Dallas' humility recipe, perhaps I should spend some time thinking about what might happen if I don't.

(1) Dallas Willard, Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship With God, p. 38 (1999 InterVarsity Press edition) (2) From August 14, 2011 Tree of Life Community Podcast, "Being Church (10): Dallas Willard" https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/being-church-10-dallas-willard/id453093989?i=124909144&mt=2