by Christ Alone 18 Replies latest jw friends
Let's not get into an argument over if Jesus was historical or not.
I'd just like to know how you think the Jesus of the 4 gospels would act and do things in our modern world. Who would He talk to? Where would He go? What sorts of miracles would He perform? What would He condmen? What would He praise? Would He teach in churches? He probably wouldn't be invited into a Kingdom Hall to teach...but...
More importantly, would he use facebook and twitter?
Hey everyone, Jesus just friended me!!!
Did you read Jesus' latest tweet?!?
Christ Alone - He probably wouldn't be invited into a Kingdom Hall to teach...but...
Not with that rebellious beard he wouldn't!
Splash
They would make sure he gets the brochure on how to properly dress. "Jesus, you need a suit and tie. Oh, and would you please stop asking everyone if you can wash their feet"
Jesus was known for associating with who the Jews viewed as serious sinners. I think Jesus would be commonly fond on bars, on street corners with prostitutes, in casinos, and would attempt to even teach in Kingdom Halls or district conventions.
Jesus would not associate with anyone who doubted the GB, or associate with DF'd family.
On a day trip to earth, he would be in incognito, taking notes and observations.
Shalom
I'd just like to know how you think the Jesus of the 4 gospels would act and do things in our modern world. Who would He talk to?
anyone and everyone. i always thought it was cool he ate with what was considered the cast offs of society.
Where would He go? What sorts of miracles would He perform?
purple irises to purple haze. marijuana is so much better than alcohol without the awful vomitting when you've had too much.
i'd like to think he'd start fixing some 3rd world countries that could use some help.
What would He condmen?
every major religion out there. catholic bank money laundering, cults swindling believers, suicide bombers...i'd like to think he'd burn down westboro baptist and make an example out of terry whatshisface
What would He praise?
people who take a stand for what's right. thinking of girls in pakistan who have to worry about having acid thrown in their face on the way to school, or doctors who risk everything to help ebola patients in the middle of the jungle.
Would He teach in churches?
dudeism
Here is an interesting article that was published in Newsweek about Jesus and how He would've responded to today's culture. It's written from a Catholic perspective, and is very well done.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/04/01/andrew-sullivan-christianity-in-crisis.html
Andrew Sullivan makes some fantastic observations of both church and state in this article. I think everyone will enjoy reading it. Here's some excerpts that I thought were profound:
"Jesus’ doctrines were the practical commandments, the truly radical ideas that immediately leap out in the simple stories he told and which he exemplified in everything he did. Not simply love one another, but love your enemy and forgive those who harm you; give up all material wealth; love the ineffable Being behind all things, and know that this Being is actually your truest Father, in whose image you were made. Above all: give up power over others, because power, if it is to be effective, ultimately requires the threat of violence, and violence is incompatible with the total acceptance and love of all other human beings that is at the sacred heart of Jesus’ teaching. That’s why, in his final apolitical act, Jesus never defended his innocence at trial, never resisted his crucifixion, and even turned to those nailing his hands to the wood on the cross and forgave them, and loved them."
" Whether or not you believe, as I do, in Jesus’ divinity and resurrection—and in the importance of celebrating both on Easter Sunday—Jefferson’s point is crucially important. Because it was Jesus’ point. What does it matter how strictly you proclaim your belief in various doctrines if you do not live as these doctrines demand? What is politics if not a dangerous temptation toward controlling others rather than reforming oneself? If we return to what Jesus actually asked us to do and to be—rather than the unknowable intricacies of what we believe he was—he actually emerges more powerfully and more purely."
"Jefferson’s vision of a simpler, purer, apolitical Christianity couldn’t be further from the 21st-century American reality. We inhabit a polity now saturated with religion. On one side, the Republican base is made up of evangelical Protestants who believe that religion must consume and influence every aspect of public life. On the other side, the last Democratic primary had candidates profess their faith in public forums, and more recently President Obama appeared at the National Prayer Breakfast, invoking Jesus to defend his plan for universal health care. The crisis of Christianity is perhaps best captured in the new meaning of the word “secular.” It once meant belief in separating the spheres of faith and politics; it now means, for many, simply atheism. The ability to be faithful in a religious space and reasonable in a political one has atrophied before our eyes."
" All of which is to say something so obvious it is almost taboo: Christianity itself is in crisis. It seems no accident to me that so many Christians now embrace materialist self-help rather than ascetic self-denial—or that most Catholics, even regular churchgoers, have tuned out the hierarchy in embarrassment or disgust. Given this crisis, it is no surprise that the fastest-growing segment of belief among the young is atheism, which has leapt in popularity in the new millennium. Nor is it a shock that so many have turned away from organized Christianity and toward “spirituality,” co-opting or adapting the practices of meditation or yoga, or wandering as lapsed Catholics in an inquisitive spiritual desert. The thirst for God is still there. How could it not be, when the profoundest human questions— Why does the universe exist rather than nothing? How did humanity come to be on this remote blue speck of a planet? What happens to us after death? —remain as pressing and mysterious as they’ve always been?"
" Jefferson feared that the alternative to a Christianity founded on “internal persuasion” was a revival of the brutal, bloody wars of religion that America was founded to escape. And what he grasped in his sacrilegious mutilation of a sacred text was the core simplicity of Jesus’ message of renunciation. He believed that stripped of the doctrines of the Incarnation, Resurrection, and the various miracles, the message of Jesus was the deepest miracle. And that it was radically simple. It was explained in stories, parables, and metaphors—not theological doctrines of immense complexity. It was proven by his willingness to submit himself to an unjustified execution. The cross itself was not the point; nor was the intense physical suffering he endured. The point was how he conducted himself through it all—calm, loving, accepting, radically surrendering even the basic control of his own body and telling us that this was what it means to truly transcend our world and be with God. Jesus, like Francis, was a homeless person, as were his closest followers. He possessed nothing—and thereby everything."
" I have no concrete idea how Christianity will wrestle free of its current crisis, of its distractions and temptations, and above all its enmeshment with the things of this world. But I do know it won’t happen by even more furious denunciations of others, by focusing on politics rather than prayer, by concerning ourselves with the sex lives and heretical thoughts of others rather than with the constant struggle to liberate ourselves from what keeps us from God. What Jefferson saw in Jesus of Nazareth was utterly compatible with reason and with the future; what Saint Francis trusted in was the simple, terrifying love of God for Creation itself. That never ends.
This Christianity comes not from the head or the gut, but from the soul. It is as meek as it is quietly liberating. It does not seize the moment; it lets it be. It doesn’t seek worldly recognition, or success, and it flees from power and wealth. It is the religion of unachievement. And it is not afraid. In the anxious, crammed lives of our modern twittering souls, in the materialist obsessions we cling to for security in recession, in a world where sectarian extremism threatens to unleash mass destruction, this sheer Christianity, seeking truth without the expectation of resolution, simply living each day doing what we can to fulfill God’s will, is more vital than ever. It may, in fact, be the only spiritual transformation that can in the end transcend the nagging emptiness of our late-capitalist lives, or the cult of distracting contemporaneity, or the threat of apocalyptic war where Jesus once walked. You see attempts to find this everywhere—from experimental spirituality to resurgent fundamentalism. Something inside is telling us we need radical spiritual change.
But the essence of this change has been with us, and defining our own civilization, for two millennia. And one day soon, when politics and doctrine and pride recede, it will rise again."
