First, I want to mention that I originated this Forum with an intentionally “provocative” title: What to do with an errant Jesus? Actually, that’s not as provocative as it might sound, for it has been a major concern of New Testament scholars ever since Schweitzer’s Quest challenged the world with the argument that we can no longer dismiss Jesus’ apocalyptic-eschatological sayings as mistaken assumptions added on by his followers. Most scholars now feel that Jesus did have those expectations and that they were not fulfilled when and how he thought they would be, and that is of course a somewhat difficult matter that must be dealt with, especially by those who still value Jesus.
I have struggled with that much of my life and, having spent much time studying the subject, the novel I wrote is my latest attempt to deal with it in a way that I would like to think is more positive than negative, and more helpful than hurtful. That is of course open to debate. But now I want to go back to my earlier years and talk about some other, non-eschatological struggles I went through.
And I really do wish I could encounter some sympathy at this point.
Why should anyone sympathise with you? You've launched on to this forum without finding out much about it and posted screeds of text about your book - 125 posts out of 126 in 5 days and counting. That's not how this forum works.
While you are waiting, rather than twiddle your thumbs, you might go to [link redacted] and look on the MORE/DISCUSSIONS page for the Dialogue With a Conservative Pastor to get some idea of what may be coming.
(Hope the hosts don't mind me saying that.)
Nothing that hasn't been said for centuries and can't be said in a one line proposition. Let me know when you post that.
As a young teenager, I was not involved in church at all. Then one Easter I saw a couple of TV films about Jesus’ resurrection and was so intrigued that I decided I would look into that. I began attending church and studying the gospels and was absolutely blown away by Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount and many other things concerning Jesus. I studied the gospels very carefully and closely and took everything quite literally. When I read that Jesus went to John to be baptized, and John told him “I need to be baptized by you,” I assumed that was the gospel truth. I also learned that Luke presented the Baptizer as a cousin of Jesus who once leapt in the womb when his mother heard the voice of Jesus’ mother. I saw too that Luke indicated that both the family of John and the family of Jesus knew exactly who and what both Jesus and John were, by angelic revelations.
For that reason, after the Baptizer had been imprisoned, I was a bit surprised to read in both Matthew and Luke that he sent followers of his to Jesus to ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or must we wait for someone else?” I thought about that, and came to the conclusion that Jesus must not be doing what John had expected, so John had begun to question or even lose his earlier faith. But Jesus gave him an answer that would surely have helped him.
"I have struggled with that much of my life and, having spent much time studying the subject, the novel I wrote is my latest attempt to deal with it in a way that I would like to think is more positive than negative, and more helpful than hurtful. That is of course open to debate. But now I want to go back to my earlier years and talk about some other, non-eschatological struggles I went through.
And I really do wish I could encounter some sympathy at this point."
The forum that harbors support threads is All Saints. If you are willing to embrace dialogue and not monologue, perhaps you could discuss with others the struggles people have maintaining, losing, and developing faith.
As time went on, I continued to read everything in the gospels quite literally, but I was somewhat surprised to learn that many scholars now consider The Gospel of Mark to have been the first gospel to have been written, and yet that gospel begins with no birth stories of either Jesus or John. Also, it seemed surprising that when Jesus began his ministry and the people of Nazareth learned that he and his followers were being kept so busy in Capernaum that they could not find time to eat, his own family thought that he had lost his mind and his mother and brothers went over to Capernum to try to seize him and bring him home with them. But Jesus refused, indicating that his family now consisted of those who sat listening to him teach and who, he said, "do God's will."
Later, when Jesus came to Nazareth, he met with such rejection by almost everyone that, Mark says, he was unable to do any mighty work there except that he did lay his hands on a few sick people and healed them. He was amazed at so much unbelief, and said that a prophet receives honor "except in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house." (Note also Luke 11:27-28 and John 7:5.)
Well, quite. His latest post doesn't exactly address my question!
I appreciate that one's views/beliefs etc. can change over time, possibly leading to perplexity, and ISTM that that was perhaps why James Boswell II started this thread.
I'm not seeking sympathy in the sense of some deep struggle I am currently having. Just a little empathy (perhaps a better word?) for a young teenager and young man who went through these struggles.
Bishops Finger, thanks so much for that delightful video of Drunken Sailor.
Thanks also (I think) for what sounds like at least some stab at appreciation (is that too strong a word?) for what I am trying to do here. But I am talking about struggles of a long time ago, not recent ones. I will keep building my case and eventually draw some conclusions. (That will necessitate, meanwhile, not responding to every comment others may be making here.)
I will keep building my case and eventually draw some conclusions. (That will necessitate, meanwhile, not responding to every comment others may be making here.)
I think perhaps this is the fundamental problem that has plagued this thread, and has led to a perception of lack of empathy/sympathy or appreciation for what you’re trying to do. This is a forum for discussion—for the give and take and the challenging and re-thinking of ideas. As the description for the forum says, it’s a “debate space.” It is not designed to be a place for one person to “build a case” over multiple posts (and multiple days) and then draw conclusions for the rest of us. That’s what blogs (or your website) are for. Blogs and personal websites have their place and their value, but they serve a different purpose from a forum like this.
I fear your frustration may be rooted in expecting this forum to be something it is not, in attempting to fit the square peg of what you’re trying to do into the round hole of how this forum operates.
There are some things that are so complicated they cannot be dealt with in a brief sermon or in a few brief statements. I will build a case and then there will be plenty of time and space for that case to be discussed, attacked, or supported.
As time went on, I continued to read everything in the gospels quite literally, but I was somewhat surprised to learn that many scholars now consider The Gospel of Mark to have been the first gospel to have been written, and yet that gospel begins with no birth stories of either Jesus or John. Also, it seemed surprising that when Jesus began his ministry and the people of Nazareth learned that he and his followers were being kept so busy in Capernaum that they could not find time to eat, his own family thought that he had lost his mind and his mother and brothers went over to Capernum to try to seize him and bring him home with them. But Jesus refused, indicating that his family now consisted of those who sat listening to him teach and who, he said, "do God's will."
Later, when Jesus came to Nazareth, he met with such rejection by almost everyone that, Mark says, he was unable to do any mighty work there except that he did lay his hands on a few sick people and healed them. He was amazed at so much unbelief, and said that a prophet receives honor "except in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house." (Note also Luke 11:27-28 and John 7:5.)
There are some things that are so complicated they cannot be dealt with in a brief sermon or in a few brief statements. I will build a case and then there will be plenty of time and space for that case to be discussed, attacked, or supported.
It is not for you to dictate when and how people on this forum will challenge your opinions.
There are some things that are so complicated they cannot be dealt with in a brief sermon or in a few brief statements. I will build a case and then there will be plenty of time and space for that case to be discussed, attacked, or supported.
That's fine dear. You start, we'll finish. You post the one line proposition, three words should do it.
There are some things that are so complicated they cannot be dealt with in a brief sermon or in a few brief statements. I will build a case and then there will be plenty of time and space for that case to be discussed, attacked, or supported.
I am trying to be helpful here.
People here manage discussions on complicated and controversial subjects all the time, without waiting for someone to lay out their complete thesis. We are now 6 days and 7 pages into this thread (with 130+ posts from you), and you still haven’t “built your case”—we just keep being told to wait, there’s more coming (including a question we may all find difficult to answer).
People have tried to explain to you how this forum operates, but you’ve ignored all of that. You can certainly choose to do this your way, but please don’t be surprised if most people lose patience and interest while waiting for you to build your case.
Any of you can question what I am doing here at any time, find faults in what I am saying as I say it. Some of you have been saying that I constantly say nothing, but what I am saying now is not without significance. And when I finish making the case (I hope soon!), and ask, not a question, but a few questions, Martin seems confident that it will all just boil down to something easily refuted.
__________
May I continue?
As I, a young man, thought about all the previous, I may have tried to assume that Jesus' own family, and that of John the Baptizer, must have undergone some kind of a crisis of faith. I say I may have tried to assume that because it just seems too difficult to think that both families could have received direct angelic revelations, and yet have come to doubt them! That just does not seem possible.
I will return to that, but there were some other things that I also found difficult to assimilate. In Mark, the disciples of Jesus have considerable difficulty figuring out just what to think of him -- who or what he is. It is not until the eighth chapter of Mark that they finally get it through their thick skulls that he is the Messiah, and Peter -- speaking for the twelve -- says so: "You are the Christ!" whereupon Jesus strictly tells them to keep that to themselves.
--Yet when I later turned to the Gospel of John, I saw that Jesus' disciples and the Baptizer begin calling him the Messiah already in chapter one(!), and Jesusnever admonishes them to keep that to themselves! Rather, he and they are repeatedly calling him the Messiah throughout that gospel, openly and in public. Not only that, but already in chapter one the Baptizer points Jesus out to the disciples as "the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world" and goes on to say that God once spoke to him (the Baptizer) directly, telling him that Jesus is the Messiah, God's own son (John 1:29-34).
At this point I began to experience something of a little crisis of faith myself: How could this possibly be? How could the Baptizer receive so direct a divine revelation from God himself and later doubt it so much that, after he was imprisoned, he sent followers of his to ask Jesus, "Are you the one who is to come (i.e., the expected one, the Messiah?)" And how could Jesus' disciples, after being directly told by the Baptizer that he is the Messiah, and after constantly calling him the Messiah, as portrayed in the Gospel of John, be portrayed in Mark as never calling him that until far along in his ministry, and that only in response to a direct question from Jesus?
Look, James. You are making assumptions about human nature that are not borne out by experience. I can say this because we have just such a miracle story in our family, and find it still entirely possible (and human!) to doubt.
The miracle story in question involves my husband's escape from imprisonment and scheduled execution, while wearing chains, feet in the stocks, in a locked metal box cell, in the midst of a prison camp. And there are a number of other highly unlikely circumstances (such as coming face to face with the commander of the camp, while dressed in an absurd outfit partly composed of prison clothes--and not being recognized) which IMHO add up to a combination of the story of St. Peter's escape from prison crossed with the Three Stooges. (no, my family does NOTHING in a dignified manner, including miracles)
And yet.
Those who've been on Ship for years will recall some of our struggles, which are wholly human, embarrassing, and "little faithed" at times, in spite of the miracle. Because miracles do not create faith. They just don't. At most they can serve as signposts to the object and giver of faith, the Lord. But it is entirely comprehensible to me how whole families and John the Baptist himself might have lost sight, for a moment or for years, of the miraculous events they were once a part of. Because it has happened to us.
What Nick and others have said is true. ISTM your approach is that of an encyclopedia salesman who's carjacked a bus full of strangers. You cling tightly to the steering wheel, tell everyone to buckle up, start talking about the wonders of your encyclopedias, and periodically toss volumes
back to your "passengers".
People keep trying to have an actual discussion with you, but you keep hitting them in the head with encyclopedia missiles. They let you know that this isn't good, and you're welcome to discuss with them, but you need to turn the bus back over to the driver, and stop throwing encyclopedias.
But you don't listen.
How would you feel if someone did all that to *you*?
And, believe me, everybody here has their own story of figuring out what they believe; or is currently coming to some belief; or is currently leaving a belief behind. We do definitely share our stories, whether in bits and pieces over the years, or relevant comments on a thread, or in All Saints.
You're welcome to share your story, but NOT in the way you've been doing it. I'm not an H/A; but IMHO you're doing a great job of driving people away, and edging towards getting either suspended or banned from the Ship.
If you want/need to believe that no one listens to or understands you, then (on this thread) you're driving people in that direction.
If you really want to discuss your journey, start a thread in All Saints, as someone else said. It's NOT a place for arguing, but it can be a place to get support.
If you want to discuss Jesus, then (respectfully) the thread shouldn't be all about you and your ideas. Discussion goes back and forth here, and everyone can post their ideas and reactions, and that works pretty well.
If you want to be here, then please let go of the steering wheel, and give the Ship a chance.
But if you start a support thread in All Saints, you are going to have to post a succinct opening post that is a quarter of the length of the posts you are making here. You need to post short clear posts with a starter for a discussion.
Everyone is put off by walls of text. We use the acronym tl:dr for long posts, it means too long: didn't read. Often someone posting a longer post will give a brief summary at the end as TL:DR.
This is all board etiquette, the polite ways to engage here. What you are trying to engage with is a discussion board: threads start with an introductory post and a question or a suggested line of discussion.. Having posted something, the opening poster (OP) waits for someone else to join in, or not. If people don't join in, then that topic is not of interest. Should the opening post (OP) get replies, then you discuss the posts from other people, see where their thoughts take the discussion thread.
Although you may start a thread, that discussion may wander off in unexpected directions, which is fine. It's not your thread, it's a thread for others to engage in.
This not a blog site where you post a complete argument and expect comments, or not. People who want to develop arguments or ideas as complete answers and invite comments, write blogs.
@James Boswell II how could I refute your idiosyncratic stumbling block? I have mine and no one* here or anywhere else can remove it. No one will be able move yours either. I understand that articulating it might help you to (I hope not). Get others' perspectives. But all that's done for me is define it better. I have a finely chiselled, polished, minimal, elegant stumbling block. Yours isn't remotely mine. How could it be? Apart from being in the same rational universe. The Jesus story is all but impossible to connect to our experience, to integrate in to our thinking. You are not alone.
Moving on, how are you going to live in the light of taking the bet that it's fundamentally true? That you have extrinsic transcendent purpose?
*One man's miracle is another man's cognitive bias.
One of my clients does this sort of stuff, but with different sorts of obsessions. My client has a particular need to control his environment and problems managing conflict and transitions. He's much better with conflict a few years down the track. I think that's about the guy becoming more familiar with the house and our ways, and just more comfortable in his skin. He suffered a substantial trauma before he came to us.
I'm going to try to be more patient and take less offence and see how that goes.
Actually, my mental state has not been so good lately, beginning yesterday and today. I came here just now expecting the worst, and got it to a degree. Deservedly.
The more I argued the above, the more I sought to delineate my earlier struggles, the less good I felt about it. It was as if I were living through those struggles again.
I guess what I was trying to say all along, and not saying it very well, is that despite all the difficulties, I have taken some delight in what for me has been the realization that the scholarly rigamarole (Q etc.) can to some degree help us in solving some of those difficulties and winning through to something worth having.
I think that is a statement we can all grasp, that for some people the grappling with the intellectual is where they can connect with God. Just remember that for many of us examining intellectual details are just part of our spiritual tool box.
James--
If you want to discuss Jesus, then (respectfully) the thread shouldn't be all about you and your ideas. Discussion goes back and forth here, and everyone can post their ideas and reactions, and that works pretty well.
If you want to be here, then please let go of the steering wheel, and give the Ship a chance.
FWIW.
Trying to let go of the steering wheel, I will next discuss Jesus in a few brief words, and hope for reaction from some of you.
The Jesus I love most is the Markan Jesus -- human, limited, neither all knowing nor all powerful, subordinated to the Father, uncertain about some things, sometimes surprised, sometimes even weak, often struggling.
I especially love him when I see him still trying, though unable, to help the people of Nazareth even after most of them have emphatically rejected him, or when I hear him comparing himself to a mother hen who, risking her own life, offers her protective wings to her endangered chicks.* And I love him even more when I see him in Gethsemane, struggling with that very task.
Do any of you resonate with any of that?
What do you love most about him?
The Jesus I love most is the Markan Jesus -- human, limited, neither all knowing nor all powerful, subordinated to the Father, uncertain about some things, sometimes surprised, sometimes even weak, often struggling.
I especially love him when I see him still trying, though unable, to help the people of Nazareth even after most of them have emphatically rejected him, or when I hear him comparing himself to a mother hen who, risking her own life, offers her protective wings to her endangered chicks.* And I love him even more when I see him in Gethsemane, struggling with that very task.
Do any of you resonate with any of that?
What do you love most about him?
*actually, in Q.
Now, that I understand and relate to. Very much the ‘human’ Jesus. I love his inclusiveness, his acceptance / understanding of people’s frailties. The Sermon on the Mount is sublime.
How do you see his ‘divinity’ affecting his ministry?
Yes, the Jesus in Mark is very human. He heals, he deals with people in a straight forward way. And Mark's Gospel is graspable as a whole. I can imagine early Christians sitting down to a complete reading of Mark and being well-fed spiritually. I find that reading and then thinking about what community memories each of the Gospel writers want to share helps me understand him. Mark swings to Jesus's humanity; John swings to his "Wordness". Matthew to his Jewishness; Luke...um. I just like Luke.
I've long given up thinking much about the "errancies" of Jesus and the discrepancies between the books. The writers were human, Jesus was human and for me worrying about it all doesn't work. Comparing their points of view however they came about does.
One time earlier when I was pontificating about how Jesus could have taken a saying from Daniel and turned on its head, Martin answered with just one word:
"Isaiah."
I agree. I think one of the most intriguing things about the historical Jesus is that he saw Isaiah 53 as no one else ever before had seen it.
Actually, my mental state has not been so good lately, beginning yesterday and today. I came here just now expecting the worst, and got it to a degree. Deservedly.
The more I argued the above, the more I sought to delineate my earlier struggles, the less good I felt about it. It was as if I were living through those struggles again.
James. Nobody deserves that. I apologize for my part in it. Unfortunately Purgatory is a place for propositions to be tested. Potentially tested to destruction that causes loss. Or worse. They pass the test when you don't want them to. One's fears - of loss - are realised.
It's difficult to separate the issues, the thinking.
@Doone
Yes, the Sermon on the Mount is indeed sublime.
(In his song Democracy, Leonard Cohen refers to "the staggering account of the Sermon on the Mount that I don't pretend to understand at all."
You asked, "How do you see Jesus' ‘divinity’ affecting his ministry?"
I'll try not to get too long winded here, but my answer will fit in with something you just said.
I myself don't think the historical man Jesus would have wanted any one to call him God or even divine. (He once had a Jewish "hissy fit" when a young man merely called him "good" -- Mark 10:18).
I am convinced, however, that he did believe himself to be God's Son, and if the Hebrew prophets could speak God's divine word, surely the Son must be that divine word.
Let me just add this:
If we could have interviewed the historical Jesus in his time, and we were to ask him, "Jesus, are you in any sense divine?" I think he might have said something like this:
"Among my people, divine is as divine does. And just yesterday I did divinity by sitting at table with tax collectors, sinners, and outcasts, eating with them, associating with them, accepting, loving them. And when I did that, the Father himself was doing it."
@Doone
Yes, the Sermon on the Mount is indeed sublime.
(In his song Democracy, Leonard Cohen refers to "the staggering account of the Sermon on the Mount that I don't pretend to understand at all."
You asked, "How do you see Jesus' ‘divinity’ affecting his ministry?"
I'll try not to get too long winded here, but my answer will fit in with something you just said.
I myself don't think the historical man Jesus would have wanted any one to call him God or even divine. (He once had a Jewish "hissy fit" when a young man merely called him "good" -- Mark 10:18).
I am convinced, however, that he did believe himself to be God's Son, and if the Hebrew prophets could speak God's divine word, surely the Son must be that divine word.
Let me just add this:
If we could have interviewed the historical Jesus in his time, and we were to ask him, "Jesus, are you in any sense divine?" I think he might have said something like this:
"Among my people, divine is as divine does. And just yesterday I did divinity by sitting at table with tax collectors, sinners, and outcasts, eating with them, associating with them, accepting, loving them. And when I did that, the Father himself was doing it."
Just to say I will reply tomorrow - it’s too near my bedtime for anything like rational thought 😴!
Nevertheless, I remain embarrassed and ashamed and apologize again for going on and on the way I did. I thought I was sharing wonderful scholarly information for which everyone would ultimately be supremely grateful. How foolishly presumptuous of me.
Steady James. You're among friends. We're all equally naked here. With the scholars. All at the same level, on the bleeding edge. Where nobody knows nuthin'. But we all yearn and we're all shit and writhe and that's all all right. We can relax.
Anyway, in all our nakedness, let me propose a new topic for discussion:
.
What to do with an atoning/non atoning Jesus?
__________
There are numerous historical scholars today who agree on quite a lot.
Many, I think most of them, are convinced that there is overwhelming historical evidence that John the Baptizer, Jesus and all his earliest followers, held to the prevailing "erroneous" apocalyptic expectations of their time, believing. among other things that Daniel 2:44; 7:13-14; and 12:1-3 would be fulfilled in their lifetime.
There is, however, one thing which sharply divides even the best historical Jesus scholars of our time:
Did Jesus believe that he was going to have to die an atoning death?
Many, perhaps most of them, think that idea was not part of Jesus' original message -- it's not part of the Sermon on the Mount, after all -- but was added on later by the church to try to explain the embarrassment of his crucifixion.
Added thought: And Jesus' crucifixion was an embarrassment. Paul lamented that Greeks considered the message of the cross to be foolishness and Jews considered it to be scandalous.
Comments
I have struggled with that much of my life and, having spent much time studying the subject, the novel I wrote is my latest attempt to deal with it in a way that I would like to think is more positive than negative, and more helpful than hurtful. That is of course open to debate. But now I want to go back to my earlier years and talk about some other, non-eschatological struggles I went through.
And I really do wish I could encounter some sympathy at this point.
"Now I'm not racist, but..."
Nothing that hasn't been said for centuries and can't be said in a one line proposition. Let me know when you post that.
For that reason, after the Baptizer had been imprisoned, I was a bit surprised to read in both Matthew and Luke that he sent followers of his to Jesus to ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or must we wait for someone else?” I thought about that, and came to the conclusion that Jesus must not be doing what John had expected, so John had begun to question or even lose his earlier faith. But Jesus gave him an answer that would surely have helped him.
"I have struggled with that much of my life and, having spent much time studying the subject, the novel I wrote is my latest attempt to deal with it in a way that I would like to think is more positive than negative, and more helpful than hurtful. That is of course open to debate. But now I want to go back to my earlier years and talk about some other, non-eschatological struggles I went through.
And I really do wish I could encounter some sympathy at this point."
The forum that harbors support threads is All Saints. If you are willing to embrace dialogue and not monologue, perhaps you could discuss with others the struggles people have maintaining, losing, and developing faith.
BTW, @James Boswell II, when was your novel first published?
Google seems to suggest that it's not particularly recent, so why the current angst?
Later, when Jesus came to Nazareth, he met with such rejection by almost everyone that, Mark says, he was unable to do any mighty work there except that he did lay his hands on a few sick people and healed them. He was amazed at so much unbelief, and said that a prophet receives honor "except in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house." (Note also Luke 11:27-28 and John 7:5.)
I appreciate that one's views/beliefs etc. can change over time, possibly leading to perplexity, and ISTM that that was perhaps why James Boswell II started this thread.
I'm not seeking sympathy in the sense of some deep struggle I am currently having. Just a little empathy (perhaps a better word?) for a young teenager and young man who went through these struggles.
@Bishops Finger
"Ear-ligh in the morning..."
Bishops Finger, thanks so much for that delightful video of Drunken Sailor.
Thanks also (I think) for what sounds like at least some stab at appreciation (is that too strong a word?) for what I am trying to do here. But I am talking about struggles of a long time ago, not recent ones. I will keep building my case and eventually draw some conclusions. (That will necessitate, meanwhile, not responding to every comment others may be making here.)
I fear your frustration may be rooted in expecting this forum to be something it is not, in attempting to fit the square peg of what you’re trying to do into the round hole of how this forum operates.
And?
It is not for you to dictate when and how people on this forum will challenge your opinions.
That's fine dear. You start, we'll finish. You post the one line proposition, three words should do it.
People here manage discussions on complicated and controversial subjects all the time, without waiting for someone to lay out their complete thesis. We are now 6 days and 7 pages into this thread (with 130+ posts from you), and you still haven’t “built your case”—we just keep being told to wait, there’s more coming (including a question we may all find difficult to answer).
People have tried to explain to you how this forum operates, but you’ve ignored all of that. You can certainly choose to do this your way, but please don’t be surprised if most people lose patience and interest while waiting for you to build your case.
@Martin54
@Nick Tamen
Any of you can question what I am doing here at any time, find faults in what I am saying as I say it. Some of you have been saying that I constantly say nothing, but what I am saying now is not without significance. And when I finish making the case (I hope soon!), and ask, not a question, but a few questions, Martin seems confident that it will all just boil down to something easily refuted.
__________
May I continue?
As I, a young man, thought about all the previous, I may have tried to assume that Jesus' own family, and that of John the Baptizer, must have undergone some kind of a crisis of faith. I say I may have tried to assume that because it just seems too difficult to think that both families could have received direct angelic revelations, and yet have come to doubt them! That just does not seem possible.
I will return to that, but there were some other things that I also found difficult to assimilate. In Mark, the disciples of Jesus have considerable difficulty figuring out just what to think of him -- who or what he is. It is not until the eighth chapter of Mark that they finally get it through their thick skulls that he is the Messiah, and Peter -- speaking for the twelve -- says so: "You are the Christ!" whereupon Jesus strictly tells them to keep that to themselves.
--Yet when I later turned to the Gospel of John, I saw that Jesus' disciples and the Baptizer begin calling him the Messiah already in chapter one(!), and Jesus never admonishes them to keep that to themselves! Rather, he and they are repeatedly calling him the Messiah throughout that gospel, openly and in public. Not only that, but already in chapter one the Baptizer points Jesus out to the disciples as "the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world" and goes on to say that God once spoke to him (the Baptizer) directly, telling him that Jesus is the Messiah, God's own son (John 1:29-34).
At this point I began to experience something of a little crisis of faith myself: How could this possibly be? How could the Baptizer receive so direct a divine revelation from God himself and later doubt it so much that, after he was imprisoned, he sent followers of his to ask Jesus, "Are you the one who is to come (i.e., the expected one, the Messiah?)" And how could Jesus' disciples, after being directly told by the Baptizer that he is the Messiah, and after constantly calling him the Messiah, as portrayed in the Gospel of John, be portrayed in Mark as never calling him that until far along in his ministry, and that only in response to a direct question from Jesus?
I found all this troublingly puzzling.
The miracle story in question involves my husband's escape from imprisonment and scheduled execution, while wearing chains, feet in the stocks, in a locked metal box cell, in the midst of a prison camp. And there are a number of other highly unlikely circumstances (such as coming face to face with the commander of the camp, while dressed in an absurd outfit partly composed of prison clothes--and not being recognized) which IMHO add up to a combination of the story of St. Peter's escape from prison crossed with the Three Stooges. (no, my family does NOTHING in a dignified manner, including miracles)
And yet.
Those who've been on Ship for years will recall some of our struggles, which are wholly human, embarrassing, and "little faithed" at times, in spite of the miracle. Because miracles do not create faith. They just don't. At most they can serve as signposts to the object and giver of faith, the Lord. But it is entirely comprehensible to me how whole families and John the Baptist himself might have lost sight, for a moment or for years, of the miraculous events they were once a part of. Because it has happened to us.
What Nick and others have said is true. ISTM your approach is that of an encyclopedia salesman who's carjacked a bus full of strangers. You cling tightly to the steering wheel, tell everyone to buckle up, start talking about the wonders of your encyclopedias, and periodically toss volumes
back to your "passengers".
People keep trying to have an actual discussion with you, but you keep hitting them in the head with encyclopedia missiles. They let you know that this isn't good, and you're welcome to discuss with them, but you need to turn the bus back over to the driver, and stop throwing encyclopedias.
But you don't listen.
How would you feel if someone did all that to *you*?
And, believe me, everybody here has their own story of figuring out what they believe; or is currently coming to some belief; or is currently leaving a belief behind. We do definitely share our stories, whether in bits and pieces over the years, or relevant comments on a thread, or in All Saints.
You're welcome to share your story, but NOT in the way you've been doing it. I'm not an H/A; but IMHO you're doing a great job of driving people away, and edging towards getting either suspended or banned from the Ship.
If you want/need to believe that no one listens to or understands you, then (on this thread) you're driving people in that direction.
If you really want to discuss your journey, start a thread in All Saints, as someone else said. It's NOT a place for arguing, but it can be a place to get support.
If you want to discuss Jesus, then (respectfully) the thread shouldn't be all about you and your ideas. Discussion goes back and forth here, and everyone can post their ideas and reactions, and that works pretty well.
If you want to be here, then please let go of the steering wheel, and give the Ship a chance.
FWIW.
Everyone is put off by walls of text. We use the acronym tl:dr for long posts, it means too long: didn't read. Often someone posting a longer post will give a brief summary at the end as TL:DR.
This is all board etiquette, the polite ways to engage here. What you are trying to engage with is a discussion board: threads start with an introductory post and a question or a suggested line of discussion.. Having posted something, the opening poster (OP) waits for someone else to join in, or not. If people don't join in, then that topic is not of interest. Should the opening post (OP) get replies, then you discuss the posts from other people, see where their thoughts take the discussion thread.
Although you may start a thread, that discussion may wander off in unexpected directions, which is fine. It's not your thread, it's a thread for others to engage in.
This not a blog site where you post a complete argument and expect comments, or not. People who want to develop arguments or ideas as complete answers and invite comments, write blogs.
Seriously. Discussion around here goes something like this:
I've thought about this and this is what I've come up with. What do you think?
Okay, I understand you, but have you considered this?
I did consider it but the source I have been looking at has more weight for me because...
I can see that but this other explanation seems more likely to me because...
Okay I get your point. You might have something there if you include this bit...
And so on.
No encyclopedias thrown
Moving on, how are you going to live in the light of taking the bet that it's fundamentally true? That you have extrinsic transcendent purpose?
*One man's miracle is another man's cognitive bias.
One of my clients does this sort of stuff, but with different sorts of obsessions. My client has a particular need to control his environment and problems managing conflict and transitions. He's much better with conflict a few years down the track. I think that's about the guy becoming more familiar with the house and our ways, and just more comfortable in his skin. He suffered a substantial trauma before he came to us.
I'm going to try to be more patient and take less offence and see how that goes.
@Simon Toad online diagnoses of Shipmates’ mental states not a direction we want to take I think.
Firenze
/Hosting
The more I argued the above, the more I sought to delineate my earlier struggles, the less good I felt about it. It was as if I were living through those struggles again.
Trying to let go of the steering wheel, I will next discuss Jesus in a few brief words, and hope for reaction from some of you.
The Jesus I love most is the Markan Jesus -- human, limited, neither all knowing nor all powerful, subordinated to the Father, uncertain about some things, sometimes surprised, sometimes even weak, often struggling.
I especially love him when I see him still trying, though unable, to help the people of Nazareth even after most of them have emphatically rejected him, or when I hear him comparing himself to a mother hen who, risking her own life, offers her protective wings to her endangered chicks.* And I love him even more when I see him in Gethsemane, struggling with that very task.
Do any of you resonate with any of that?
What do you love most about him?
*actually, in Q.
Now, that I understand and relate to. Very much the ‘human’ Jesus. I love his inclusiveness, his acceptance / understanding of people’s frailties. The Sermon on the Mount is sublime.
How do you see his ‘divinity’ affecting his ministry?
I've long given up thinking much about the "errancies" of Jesus and the discrepancies between the books. The writers were human, Jesus was human and for me worrying about it all doesn't work. Comparing their points of view however they came about does.
One time earlier when I was pontificating about how Jesus could have taken a saying from Daniel and turned on its head, Martin answered with just one word:
"Isaiah."
I agree. I think one of the most intriguing things about the historical Jesus is that he saw Isaiah 53 as no one else ever before had seen it.
James. Nobody deserves that. I apologize for my part in it. Unfortunately Purgatory is a place for propositions to be tested. Potentially tested to destruction that causes loss. Or worse. They pass the test when you don't want them to. One's fears - of loss - are realised.
It's difficult to separate the issues, the thinking.
Yes, the Sermon on the Mount is indeed sublime.
(In his song Democracy, Leonard Cohen refers to "the staggering account of the Sermon on the Mount that I don't pretend to understand at all."
You asked, "How do you see Jesus' ‘divinity’ affecting his ministry?"
I'll try not to get too long winded here, but my answer will fit in with something you just said.
I myself don't think the historical man Jesus would have wanted any one to call him God or even divine. (He once had a Jewish "hissy fit" when a young man merely called him "good" -- Mark 10:18).
I am convinced, however, that he did believe himself to be God's Son, and if the Hebrew prophets could speak God's divine word, surely the Son must be that divine word.
Let me just add this:
If we could have interviewed the historical Jesus in his time, and we were to ask him, "Jesus, are you in any sense divine?" I think he might have said something like this:
"Among my people, divine is as divine does. And just yesterday I did divinity by sitting at table with tax collectors, sinners, and outcasts, eating with them, associating with them, accepting, loving them. And when I did that, the Father himself was doing it."
Thanks.
Just to say I will reply tomorrow - it’s too near my bedtime for anything like rational thought 😴!
In that case, you star - id it!
What unites us is looking for reason to believe. When there is no reason but our longing mirrored in the sublime of the stories.
.
What to do with an atoning/non atoning Jesus?
__________
There are numerous historical scholars today who agree on quite a lot.
Many, I think most of them, are convinced that there is overwhelming historical evidence that John the Baptizer, Jesus and all his earliest followers, held to the prevailing "erroneous" apocalyptic expectations of their time, believing. among other things that Daniel 2:44; 7:13-14; and 12:1-3 would be fulfilled in their lifetime.
There is, however, one thing which sharply divides even the best historical Jesus scholars of our time:
Did Jesus believe that he was going to have to die an atoning death?
Many, perhaps most of them, think that idea was not part of Jesus' original message -- it's not part of the Sermon on the Mount, after all -- but was added on later by the church to try to explain the embarrassment of his crucifixion.
What do y'all think, and why?
I'm afraid my rather depleted brain cells can only cope with one thing at a time!