Why Can't We Just Let Jesus Be Jesus? - An Easter Sermon (Audio)
Last month I came across an article in the Washington Post by Martha Woodruff —the title caught my interest:
Why can't we just let Jesus be Jesus? I'm not close to being a Christian, but I am a person of faith who is quite the Jesus fan. Why? Because this guy, more than anyone I've ever known or heard of, fearlessly lived his relationship with God, the great Whatever….
She continues…
….So back to this Jesus, a knowable figure in history. Personally, I admire and wish to emulate him, without having any urge to deify him. It does seem to me Christianity's insistence that Jesus be god repels people who might otherwise happily trot along in his path. And that path trotting is, I would suggest, what Jesus, himself, calls us to do.”
Her bottom line is clear: why do you Christians have to mess up a perfectly good example of spirituality for the rest of us by making Jesus out to be God? Why can’t we just try to follow his example and leave it at that? (more from article)
And then you have people like Richard Dawkins—probably the most famous atheist in the world today—claiming that:
“There is no good historical evidence that he [Jesus] thought he was divine.”
Is that true?
And then there is the bizarre trend today that people think they get to recreate history according to their preferences or desires. But that is not the way history works, that is not the way truth works. And truth is what we are after because at the end of the day, it is the only solid foundation on which to build a life.
Everyone is entitled to their own beliefs, but everyone is not entitled to their own truth. What we are after this is the truth. Who was Jesus? Was he the Son of God? Was Jesus divine? On Easter sunday I preached a message addressing this very important question (click here to listen). I also make the case here.
Labels: Apologetics, historical jesus, Resurrection, Truth
posted by Jonathan Morrow at
12:12 AM
1 Comments:
I hear in Ms Woodruff's comments echoes of Kierkegaard's declaration that faith comes only through the possibility of offense in Jesus.
He writes, "It is either in relation to the loftiness that one is offended, that an individual human being claims to be God, acts or speaks in a manner that manifests God...or the offense is in relation to lowliness, that the one who is God is this lowly human being, suffering as a lowly human being...." "Practice in Christianity" (81).
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