When is the Whole Gospel Not Good News?
I believe a great many things about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I believe these great many things individually, but together they comprise a unified whole, a worldview, and it that unified whole that is, to me, Christianity, the Gospel, the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, or whatever you want to call it.
Among other things, I believe vehemently in God as Trinity, though I suspect I might mean something by that quite different than the traditional, orthodox explanation. But I am a Trinitarian.
Today I was having a conversation with someone I care about very deeply. This person is a Christian by birth and by family tradition (let the reader understand). This person's life has recently been wrought with hardship, and it was those hardships that were the topics of the conversation. During the course of the conversation, this person said to me, "Raffi, you know, I'm really starting to believe that ignorance is bliss; that people who either can't grasp the complexities and deep ambiguities of life have a much easier time as a result. 'Cause when they don't get it, they don't try to do much about it, and I think it makes life easier that way."
This person knows that I take this whole Jesus thing a bit more seriously than someone who is a Christian by birth and tradition (and I say that simply to explain our dynamic, not to measure our relative spiritual positions). So I felt comfortable enough to say to this person, "You know that I take most of my life lessons from a single person, right?"
"Jesus?"
"Yeah, Him. And I think He grasped the complexities and deep ambiguities of life better than anyone in history. I think He was the smartest person who ever lived. And as a result, he was crucified. So, yeah, I think you're right at one level. But on another level, the deepness of His understanding also played a role in the immensity of His love, and the end result of that was definitely not a peachy, blissful existence, but it was a life about which, above all other lives, God was well pleased. It was a life that conquered death. So I guess my point is, are we simply striving for 'bliss,' or is their a higher goal?"
This person then came back at me with this stunning but, sadly, all-too-common response: "Ya, but Jesus was God. He was born in order to do those things. That was His destiny. He knew that after all was said and done He was going home, to ultimate, eternal bliss."
So here's where my question comes in. Yes, Jesus was and is God. I believe that. It's a complex, nuanced version of that doctrine, but I believe it, and it comprises a basic element of my faith.
But it was clear, in this case, that my friend's barrier was not her belief that Jesus was God, even given her clearly surface-level, muddled understanding of what that meant or entailed. Her barrier was clearly that she had so often heard that Jesus was "fully God" that, for all intents and purposes, she had forgotten that Jesus was also "fully man...fully human."
So, my evangelical dilemma...Do I present this person, in this circumstance, at this moment, the entire framework of my understanding of who Jesus was and is? Should I, in other words, be telling her, in some form, "Yes, Jesus was God...But He was also human, and if we look at the story from His human perspective..."?
While that sort of answer would have been more faithful to the whole gospel, to my complete faith, something inside of me screamed out "NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!" This person has heard those words throughout her life, and for some reason or other, she has developed this image of a casual, easy-going Jesus; a Jesus that strode around being God all over the place, living six inches above reality. And in doing so, her mindset had underplayed the significant Gethsemane-shaped struggles that this human being, Jesus of Nazareth, went through. In other words, I don't think she needed to hear about Jesus as God.
She needed to hear about Jesus as human.
So I told her about Jesus the human. I told her that Jesus was a human being, just like you and I are human beings. And that what Jesus did was not easy for Him. That He had to make the risky and dangerous and life-as-bliss-shattering choices He did in order to bring about that Life that we today worship (as God, but I didn't use that word).
She looked at me in a strange way. Like I said, she knows that I take this Jesus thing seriously, and somewhere deep down, she couldn't comprehend how or why I was saying these apparently blasphemous things. She didn't respond, but I saw her eyes fix into a contemplative position for a few, long moments.
Before we could go on, some people came in and the conversation shifted in another direction. That brief Jesus-as-human exposition was, as it turned out, all that I had the chance to say...
For now.
So the question again: When is the whole gospel, the full picture of the revelation of God in Christ, not good news? Does anybody out there think that I was disloyal to my beliefs by focusing, in this case, on one aspect of that fuller picture? If so, why?
Grace and Peace,
Raffi
Among other things, I believe vehemently in God as Trinity, though I suspect I might mean something by that quite different than the traditional, orthodox explanation. But I am a Trinitarian.
Today I was having a conversation with someone I care about very deeply. This person is a Christian by birth and by family tradition (let the reader understand). This person's life has recently been wrought with hardship, and it was those hardships that were the topics of the conversation. During the course of the conversation, this person said to me, "Raffi, you know, I'm really starting to believe that ignorance is bliss; that people who either can't grasp the complexities and deep ambiguities of life have a much easier time as a result. 'Cause when they don't get it, they don't try to do much about it, and I think it makes life easier that way."
This person knows that I take this whole Jesus thing a bit more seriously than someone who is a Christian by birth and tradition (and I say that simply to explain our dynamic, not to measure our relative spiritual positions). So I felt comfortable enough to say to this person, "You know that I take most of my life lessons from a single person, right?"
"Jesus?"
"Yeah, Him. And I think He grasped the complexities and deep ambiguities of life better than anyone in history. I think He was the smartest person who ever lived. And as a result, he was crucified. So, yeah, I think you're right at one level. But on another level, the deepness of His understanding also played a role in the immensity of His love, and the end result of that was definitely not a peachy, blissful existence, but it was a life about which, above all other lives, God was well pleased. It was a life that conquered death. So I guess my point is, are we simply striving for 'bliss,' or is their a higher goal?"
This person then came back at me with this stunning but, sadly, all-too-common response: "Ya, but Jesus was God. He was born in order to do those things. That was His destiny. He knew that after all was said and done He was going home, to ultimate, eternal bliss."
So here's where my question comes in. Yes, Jesus was and is God. I believe that. It's a complex, nuanced version of that doctrine, but I believe it, and it comprises a basic element of my faith.
But it was clear, in this case, that my friend's barrier was not her belief that Jesus was God, even given her clearly surface-level, muddled understanding of what that meant or entailed. Her barrier was clearly that she had so often heard that Jesus was "fully God" that, for all intents and purposes, she had forgotten that Jesus was also "fully man...fully human."
So, my evangelical dilemma...Do I present this person, in this circumstance, at this moment, the entire framework of my understanding of who Jesus was and is? Should I, in other words, be telling her, in some form, "Yes, Jesus was God...But He was also human, and if we look at the story from His human perspective..."?
While that sort of answer would have been more faithful to the whole gospel, to my complete faith, something inside of me screamed out "NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!" This person has heard those words throughout her life, and for some reason or other, she has developed this image of a casual, easy-going Jesus; a Jesus that strode around being God all over the place, living six inches above reality. And in doing so, her mindset had underplayed the significant Gethsemane-shaped struggles that this human being, Jesus of Nazareth, went through. In other words, I don't think she needed to hear about Jesus as God.
She needed to hear about Jesus as human.
So I told her about Jesus the human. I told her that Jesus was a human being, just like you and I are human beings. And that what Jesus did was not easy for Him. That He had to make the risky and dangerous and life-as-bliss-shattering choices He did in order to bring about that Life that we today worship (as God, but I didn't use that word).
She looked at me in a strange way. Like I said, she knows that I take this Jesus thing seriously, and somewhere deep down, she couldn't comprehend how or why I was saying these apparently blasphemous things. She didn't respond, but I saw her eyes fix into a contemplative position for a few, long moments.
Before we could go on, some people came in and the conversation shifted in another direction. That brief Jesus-as-human exposition was, as it turned out, all that I had the chance to say...
For now.
So the question again: When is the whole gospel, the full picture of the revelation of God in Christ, not good news? Does anybody out there think that I was disloyal to my beliefs by focusing, in this case, on one aspect of that fuller picture? If so, why?
Grace and Peace,
Raffi
Raffi,
You sound like a "recovering seminary student." Are you in Seminary?
To answer your question: NO. You have not compromised your faith just because you emphasized Jesus' humanity. The truth is, we Christians have misunderstood what Jesus was really like. That is, this person lady you were talking to probably has the wrong idea about what Jesus was like based on our typical overemphasis on his divinity.
It's more complicated than that, but I would almost have to have a phone convo just to tell you how I feel about your story, and about the tension you are feeling over this. You have your finger on something very important, but I can't explain it in a few words.
Perhaps if you could find some of NT Wright's writings on Jesus humanity, that would help if she read it. There are lectures by NT Wright on Jesus in which he gives a healthy balance to our understanding of what Jesus was like. Perhaps those lectures would help someone who has a hard time understanding the implications of what it means that Jesus was human.
Be assured that she is not all that far-off. For the trials and tribulations that Christ Jesus faced in this world while He walked amongst us as both fully God and fully man were of little consequence unto Him.
It was, however, the matter of the paying of the price for our sins that was {Luke 12:50}. For in order for HIS LAW to be fulfilled: He had to actually spiritually die {Ezekiel 18:4} and be totally separated from our Heavenly Father and His Holy Spirit {Matthew 27:46}; and it was during that time of separation (even as brief as it was) that They experienced more pain and anguish than any of us can even start to naturally comprehend {Luke 22:42-44}.