There’s Just Something About that Name
It’s Lent, the time when our family spends 40 days traveling with Jesus. Reading stories about him. Remembering the stories he told.
It’s also the time I start asking “what if” questions.
What if Jesus was not God, but a man, closely connected to God but not in and of himself divine? Would I honor his words any less?
What if Jesus had been in love, had married, maybe even have had children? Would I love him less or more?
What if Jesus had a message about how to live that the church spent decades misinterpreting? Could the most basic meaning be re-discovered?
What if Jesus’ death on the cross was a tragedy, but not atonement? What if it was more important that he followed the path that was his, than that he be some sort of substitute lamb? Could I mourn in way that was more meaningful to me?
What if I really believed the good news, that the kingdom of God is here? What would that mean about how I live and what I do with this one beautiful life?
Here’s to embracing the questions.
Rachelle, you have just echoed my own questions. I couldn’t have said it better myself!
I believe with all my heart that Jesus’ message about how to live is the essential thing to carry with us. That message is the same, and is as valid and “relevant,” regardless of whether he was married and had children - or not.
Joyce
Hi Rachelle,
I don’t envy you having to wrestle with those questions. I don’t envy the pain of wrestling with the angel like Jacob did, and having your hip injured in the process. Wrestling with faith hurts us, doesn’t it? But I also know that this time of wrestling will expand your faith, too.
Hey, read The Secret Message of Jesus by Brian McLaren during Lent; GREAT writing on the meaning of the Kingdom and its message.
And for more Lenten fun, check out this link: www.shipoffools.com/lent
Peace, blessings, and namaste,
Ray
This are very valuable questions. We (Christians) have color so well inside the lines of a story that is so fragmented.
Peace.
eliacin,
what a great way of putting it!
I like your questions.
But I don’t really see myself as “loving Jesus” in much of any sense. That’s not really something I think about much. too busy trying to love myself well(*very* difficult!), love my wife and children well (not *as* difficult), and … love other people well (which is slightly more nebulous, but not nearly as nebulous as “loving Jesus”)
“decades”, or “millenia”?
Again, hard for me to mourn Jesus death. I find it much easier to mourn, say, ending of the ceasefire in Northern Uganda.
I *want* to find and believe good news. but good news on a universal scale is hard to imagine.
Ben,
Sometimes I love Jesus like a pre-teen who has her first crush on a high school senior. I just adore looking at his picture (icons) and he makes me melt.
But when my reasoned mind takes over I start to love him more like a spouse of twenty years. Yes there is much to love, but there are wrinkles here and there too. (Like, what was with the killing the poor barren fig tree…?)
I sometimes feel sorry for men because I think it’s harder for them to fall in love with a male God, or a male person like Jesus. Also I feel sorry for non-mystics. Oh, and rationalists. I guess this is one of those cases where if someone called me an “irrational emotional woman who’s too woowoo”I’d have to heartily agree! Jesus ‘works’ for me beyond reason and practicality.
When I mourn Jesus I am mourning the fact that his much longed for kingdom has not, in fact, come. Yesterday I was walking on the tredmill and watching epidsodes of West Wing (season II, Shibboleth and the one before it) and I started crying. On the tredmill. Because of West Wing! It’s just that I was watching these people who wanted to build a peaceable, shalomy kingdom and they just kept getting blocked — and they were the top dogs in the nation. It broke my heart.
Here’s hoping that the dream world of Jesus may transcend rationality somehow, someday, someway. And even if it doesn’t, here’s hoping that we’ll live like it might if we just try.
Why don’t you try to replace the “loving” bit in my initial post questions with the concept of “following his teachings”? What is minimum base requirement for you to be, in any way shape or form, a follower of Jesus?
Just random thoughts…
R
Wow. Great questions. Wonderfully put. Beautiful, Rachelle!
I’m thankful that I have something of the mystic in me. I “get it” - that’s why I love hanging around you.
It’s weird, as a man, but I do have the same “melting”, butterfly feelings about Jesus - even still, even now that I have given myself freedom to question, reinterpret, and/or disagree with him.
Here’s hoping that the dream world of Jesus may transcend rationality somehow, someday, someway. And even if it doesn’t, here’s hoping that we’ll live like it might if we just try.
I’m joining with you in imagining that.