Why - Jesus
Defense of Faith in Jesus
Author: Randy Pritts
The question put before us in this exercise is simply "why Jesus"?
Introduction - Jesus the unexpected key.
Jesus, Christians believe, is the key central figure of the Bible. The Bible is one of the most interesting and complicated writings in human history. It is complicated in the sense that not many people truly understand what they have just read and continue to read; not truly. Even amongst those that believe in it to follow it, there are a vast array of interpretations surrounding it, what it says, what it means and its' purpose. With interpretations there comes strong divisions, there comes opposition, tension, loyal aggressive factions; not at all what one would expect from sacred God inspired scripture. Complicated indeed, but that is precisely where I believe the Bible and the story-line of its' Jesus gets particularly interesting. What most readers of the Bible fail to see is the persistent tracking of the history and statistical probability of what religion is not supposed to be.
Note that in the first book Genesis within the second generation there is already murder in the name of religion. Note that in the time of the Prophets, generations after were propping their own failing religion with tributes to the prophets their own fathers had killed. Note that in the Apostles time and beyond there are many people, even amongst our own, that would turn us in/persecute or kill us, thinking they were doing service to God.
Note that:
throughout the old testament the nation of Israel rarely was obediently in covenant with its' Jehovah.
by the time of its captivity how far the religious life of the "chosen" nation had fallen so as to be pictured as having unspeakable sins much like abominable creeping things crawling within the Temple walls.
in the time of Jesus how many people confronted Messiah on petty hypocritical grounds, many for fear of losing their own power and worthiness utterly dismissed else condemned Him.
Even in the last book Revelations, when lead presumably by the Holy Spirit and the resurrected teachings of Christ, six of the seven Christian churches Jesus inspects have little fidelity to Him, to the point of either Christ removing their candle or threatening to spit them out.
The Bible in other words is a lengthy multi-generational case study in the dangers of human religion. The evidence is consistent and overwhelming: if there is a way for man to screw true religion up, man definitely will. And it is not just most men, it is all men, there is a deficit (shall we say corruption) in everyone of our pious assumptions of righteousness, sincere and devout as many might think them to be.
It is of course the tendency of the reader to place him/her self in the lead character's role. We are the Able. We are the Moses, the Joseph, the weeping prophet, the Baptist. Strange, but the statistical probability is that we are not any of this. There is a slim one in a million chance that we are the Moses in the story. True, no one really wants to be the Moses in the story (not even Moses), so maybe we'd be the Caleb or Joshua. That's equally unlikely, only slightly better two in a million. Not even Aaron amounted to being all that. You see, we really need to get our perspective straight, what is what and who is who.
There is a eleven in twelve chance that we are not the Joseph. A one in 800 that we are the Elijah. A three in how many chance that we are the good king (then we have to really wonder how good did one have to be to be a good king - even David had his very serious issues). I can go on and on. How we want to see ourselves as the upright, the saint or good king, even disciple, making the right choice, standing firm at the right time, answering the right thing. Well then ask yourself, how many people in the Bible were these? Were the ones that we can even identify really all that we think them to be?
This, my friend, is what the story-line of the Bible proves out to be. Not to dissuade us mind you of our heart's better intent, but to warn us of just how deceptive the heart can be in working this innate difficulty out. That is where Jesus comes in. He is the one and only full example of what the true religion is all about. Only Jesus surpassed the measuring stick of the Law and in so doing kept the true relational fidelity to and pureness of image of the Father God. The results in this "oneness" Father to Son effecting the earthly life of Jesus comes as totally unexpected to men (even to His followers) and largely incomprehensible even to this day. It is in no way a problem with what the Bible is projecting, but rather the state of man in what we are able to receive.
There you have my first of several defenses "Why Jesus" - because there is really no other way for true religion to be.
Jesus - A type of messiah beyond what people are wanting to believe.
My second defense for "why Jesus?" is along similar lines. It must now be said that Jesus is Jesus (He is who He is not who we wish or think Him to be). It is obvious, reading in the four Gospels when people approached to encounter Jesus, that no one, not even His own disciples had Jesus pegged completely nor had Him pegged right; they all had invented their own particular notion of who He was and what He was set out to do. We approach Him as we ourselves want Him to be. Rarely, if ever, do we argue Jesus on same or similar "as He is" terms.
The image of God or of Jesus has always in scripture past been an identifiable problem. How much of that image we hold is a true reflection of HIM and how much is a projection by us?
kjv@Leviticus:26:1 "Ye shall make you no idols nor graven image, neither rear you up a standing image, neither shall ye set up any image of stone in your land, to bow down unto it: for I am the LORD your God".
So perhaps our image of God/Jesus is not graven in stone. What difference shall there be with a similar graven image in our hearts and minds? It is more than likely a false image just the same? It is the image to which we either repulsively object or reverently obey?
Many critics have built their image of God based upon what they observe in world all around them, especially their derogatory opinions of church abiding Christians or religion in general; not anything particular about Jesus (at least not at first). For some, the image they have built is made of straw, made to be burnt back down. For some, it is an image that too closely resembles the difficulties else pleasures of this world. For all of us the difficulty, having been so long and so far apart from God, is the problem of the human spirit remaining outside, famished, raised by disconnected instinct feral.
The popular trend nowadays is to base our image of God on some nebulous idea we have about compassion, God/Jesus being "all compassionate", meaning nothing but compassion, meaning being without judgment (which effectually very closely resembles in entity being nothing at all). This is interesting coming from people that in their own lives have very little practical implementation of "all compassionate", as judged by their parenting, their neighborliness, their lazy uncommitted charity, their anger, their vengeance, their slanders, their scorn... It is as if the uncompassionate are pronouncing judgment upon the one figure that is overwhelmingly compassionate for what they misidentify as not being "all", an "all" they insist upon judgmentally which in essence amounts to Him being nothing at all.
It is interesting that the Gospel of John records that the opposition to Jesus really began to flame over when He declared that "all judgment" had been given Him of the Father, that the judgment was properly against their judgment of whom the Father had sent, that it would be the Law of Moses which they purportedly adhered to that would finally put them in their place. Here you can see that it is not just judgment for judgment's sake, there is a traceable wisdom and measurable patience and lengthy deliberation to it. Had this been reactionary on God's part, it would have ended for these image destroying hypocrites generations before. It is after all only a promise God made to their forefathers to see as many souls as is possible back out through this that has kept us all from complete and utter separation thus far.
People today also tend to see the Old Testament God as an always angry God. It is not until one seeks to find out just what it is Angry God is so angry about; the constant and increasing corruption of HIS good image. What they are failing to see is that this anger primarily is guided towards one nation: Israel, who is supposed to represent HIM to the other surrounding nations. They are also compressing two and a half millennium of dealings with this rebellious people into one inconsiderate thought. These mostly are "all compassionate" "non-judgmental" people making these non-compassionate unrealistic judgments.
Go back to the era prior to the Law and Moses, approximately around the time of Isaac and Jacob to the time of Job. Amidst his tremendous pain and suffering the consoling friends of righteous Job reveal to us the common perception of God in that age. Much different from the configuration of our age, their's was that God was the moral center of this universe, if something was amiss like this it was because God was judging it. To them it was right that God judges, given the state of evil in this world, given all the theft/murder/incest/rape/opression/wickedness of it. At times it seemed the thought of God doing something to punish or not allow it was the only hope of fairness this world held. To them judgment was not only righteous of God, it was a tangible observation of compassion toward a greater good. Perhaps this long ago view went a little overboard, but so is our view of non-judgmental all compassion. Rather, judgment is as much a part of compassion as compassion should be of judgment.
Image then is the chief cause to the soul's present ill condition. You'll remember one of the first things God said about it after the fall was "gods in their own eyes". This surely was not an over statement by God, nor was descriptive of just certain people, it was made as a blanket statement. Image is also said to remain a problem until one heavenly day future when we will "see HIM as HE is", meaning that it is not yet fully possible to have been fully corrected.
For the time being, it is best to think of this time as a test sandbox where what has to be done is allowed to play out and be corrected interactively or a quarantine where the sickness is controlled and isolated, the inoculation has been injected and the immune system is slowly and combatively reacting to it. Time has been laid flat serially step by step so that the soul can be shown its' disease and impending consequence, be given the hope for remedy future and consent/engage in active participation. Perception is step by step in this sandbox, the full image mostly and purposely detached with the one exception revealed in Jesus. This laid flat sandbox is temporary, it is not meant to be the final outcome, it is meant to produce a tangible output towards what forever more will/compassionately has to be.
Jesus - in regards to sin.
The next thing in regards to Jesus that must be properly considered is on the topic of sin. Not only does man universally have the propensity to build for himself and worship corrupted self satisfactory images of God, he has the proclivity for reducing else excusing himself from the full profundity and impact of sin. How God defines sin then man are two different things. What man judges to be punishable and suitable remedy compared to how God with eternal foresight thus judges are nearly opposite. Why is there such a difference between our estimation of it and HIS? Because that is typically the case between those who commit the offense and those to whom their offense is inflicted.
Part of the problem with our estimation of sin and rightful judgment against it is the short sighted vision imposed by this earthly life. This life is all we really know. We have not seen the life beyond. We don't know what is like not to sin, be in a world that neither sins nor is there death. It is hard for us even to imagine how different such an untarnished beyond lives and feels and tastes and conducts itself. Just as hard to imagine is eternal time, where the minutes are not laid out flat, where all being just is and is in righteousness. This temporal world has little to nothing in common with the kingdom beyond, yet our assessment of sin and judgment is only made to fit this present world. As nice as this world sometimes is (for some people) (in our estimation), it is not the type of world that we would want to carry over to corrupt time everlasting. Not to mention the difference between the two worlds in their relationship to our holy God.
Men you see choose to view their sins in comparison to each other. My sin is no greater than the rest, in fact I feel it might be slightly better/not as bad as it could be, therefore I conclude that it is not sin and deserving just consequence. Sin to us is merely the harm we do to each other. If one keeps control of his/her self one will rarely harm another, keep themselves from sinning. This can be achieved with or without God by mutually agreed upon moral clarity and the determination of free will. God's view of the issue however is strikingly different.
Men will also judge this matter by placing their conduct on a ledger sheet dividing good and bad. If the columns totaled favor good the person sees himself upright. If the summation leans toward bad (which by our own math rarely occurs) one can easily blame it upon their upbringing or environment to write it off or simply not care to keep the ledger anymore. At God's final judgement throne I guess the defense will be to present to the court this self compiled and numerically weighted ledger sheet, try to prove to God that anything less than HIS eternal blessing would be wrong. Again, God's view of the issue is strikingly different.
The tendency nowadays is for us to think of sin as individual actions instead of as a overall general condition. Individual actions are merely the evidence or the produce of the pervading condition. The pervading condition need not always act, it can seemingly lay dormant, it also can infect even the actions that seem to us good just as well. There is also the possibility that two well intending people doing the exact same good and religious act, that one of them is sinning because of the false image of God the action is intended to serve. And like I will continue to claim throughout, we all all have a false image with which we must contend.
Sin, you see, is a truly sticky business, so sticky that all we are really doing by our own efforts to rub it off is smudge it around. We can forgive each other (we need to forgive each other). We can over look or look past each other's, we can help each other survive and minimize the ill effects, having complete empathy with the sinner being a self acknowledged sinner ourselves. What we tend to do however is hide it, cover it up, act as if it doesn't exist, place the guilt of it on someone/something other. Sin might better be thought of as a stain that despite our toughest abstergents and or malaise and neglect doesn't come off.
These tendencies I've just outlined are part of what makes our understanding of sin (and therefore judgment against it) vastly different from that of God. We would all do well to more thoroughly consider.
First, let me say, the Bible claims that the original sin was the sin of disobeying a rather simple and singular verbal command for the sake going their own way/making more of themselves/taking control of their own lives. How many of us are not of the same exact insistence? Certainly all of us. It wasn't based upon any desire to cause harm upon one another, though harm came, then was handed down to us and comes from us now as a result.
Second, let's consider that the immediate consequence of the original sin was death, just as originally promised. Not just the death of Eve and Adam, death to all that would descend from them. Again that gives indication of just how serious to God this change of will and obedience was. Some would say "how mean of God". I would say "if God is indeed nothing but righteous, there must be something we don't know or refuse to accept regarding the deepest nature of sin leading God to enforcing that".
Throughout the Old Testament, sin was serious enough to God that it required the blood of innocent sacrifices to atone for and cleanse. A bloody mess to be sure of, depicting the severity of sin upon the individual and the group, including those of the chief priest. The sight and stench and personal cost of this daily and annual horror did not halt sin. Far from, it seems to have had very little effect on sin at all, became accepted by most people, a price of living day to day. In some respects sacrifice became for them license. Neither did the Law and all the ritual stop them. The only thing these sacrifices seemed to effect was God's immediate judgment. This is how serious sin and sin nature are biblically to God.
Ask yourself, what is it about sin that so serious as to require the blood of sacrifice to atone for it?
When it comes to the New Testament sin is just as sinful, just as prevalent, its' tentacles especially made an example of amongst the religious. It is concluded "all have sinned", not only at the letter of the Law, but as Jesus claims at the spiritual intent and full implementation. So then, by one man (Adam) death entered/dominated the world. By one other man (Jesus) so too comes the opportunity and hope and vehicle towards life. This time it is not by the atoning blood of goats and bulls and rams and doves by the bloody millions, it is by the blood one time of one specific person - the only beloved/only begotten Son of God.
Think about it. That is how serious the entire issue of sin has been all along to God, that HIS judgment upon sin only be satisfied in the sacrifice of HIS own Son. Where we look at sin as a banking account, a credit and debt ledger, something we have gotten very accustomed to, something ho-hum and largely meaningless by good works we can repay; God looks at as being vile, being filthy, being non stop, done against HIM and HIS good image willfully. Where it be proven that man could do nothing thorough and consistent about it, God stepped in and did the only thing that properly could be done. Yet another defense for "why Jesus".
Jesus and the great reward.
The next defense for "why Jesus" is the consideration of the end gains involved in allowing us to muddle through this earthly process. The final reward is not this life - just more of it. The final great reward is an entirely different type of life ever lasting, before this unknown and entirely unimaginable, built upon eternal DNA and structures. At its' core, this reward from the beginning has been built upon a solemn promise from God, it is the utter fulfillment of that single handed promise. It is not the fulfillment of what man can do if we just got along and got it all together. This is not about man's intellect, or emotion, or inventiveness, or working as one together.
Even when I say "reward" I have to be careful. It is not reward for us from God as much as it is reward given from God to Jesus. We are merely graced by His divine mercy to share in His received portion; we are graced by acquaintance, by relation, as one brought by Him into His household. The reward is not ours per se, it is what He shares with those He selects to partake.
If you think about it, could it have been any other way? Jesus, the Son of God, is the person in whom the Father is well pleased that all fullness should dwell. Jesus, the Son of God, is the person through whom and by whom and for whom all things created exist. What more can be said than creation is but a love gift from Father to Son for HIS Son's good keeping?
Creation as we presently know it is but a temporary planting pot where the seed has been sown and is sprouting. It is not the seed that is intended, it is the plant that can be transplanted that is the sowers final goal. That goal having been given time to germinate and crack its shell, grow root and sprout to reach the the sun and air above, that is what is carefully lifted out of the pot transplanted in eternal soils and watered to blossom and branch.
Again, it will not be this life as we've come to know it. Neither will we be just as us as we currently are. Imagine how different each one of us will be when we finally see "HIM" as HE truly is. How different will we be when cleansed of our sin and guilt and shame, set free from our chains, our scars healed and consciences purged? Today the thought of such brings a warm glow into my heart and a guiding hope as it does in so many other Christians. In that day however it will be much more than that, we will not only love ourselves and others in a much different way, we will finally have that love for God based upon HIS most essential image in and upon us. That is only what our human and as of yet mortal words can attempt to say about this "great final reward".
Why Jesus - Conclusions
Only so much can be said in such limited space as this. There comes a point of diminishing returns. We live in an age of such short attention spans and easily distracted concentrations. Gone are the days of true public square/of want for discourse and entertainment, there is a steady barrage of shiny sparkly bite sized easily digestible objects to lure the public's attention; just as the enemies of Christ would want it. Such an environment is a perfect breading ground for the simple minded, ever searching for everything other but never coming to the fundamental core of knowledge. In part, this can be blamed upon the Christian world as well, not giving them the inspiration and witness to seek something better in the first place. But, as I said, the Bible itself is pretty much a testimony of the failings of people who thought they walked the walk and talked the talk but really didn't anyway. It should not surprise us that Christians often act in most contradictory and hypocritical ways. This however should not reflect negatively upon Christ the person (though in a certain unfortunate way it still does) given that He has gone out of His way all along to warn us of this.
Don't get me wrong, I love my Christian brothers and sisters more dearly than myself. It is with the love of Christ though as I try best to understand it. I can not excuse them, just as I can not place my own piety above theirs. Neither can I blame them now knowing what the Bible tells me about the difficulties of living an unstained godly faith. That the Bible calls all the brethren its' "saints" is not a testament to our power and self determination, it is a testament to the hopeful inspiration of His.
And that in a small tidy nutshell is the main conclusion of my humble effort to answer the question that you might be asking: Why Jesus?
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