Given a God, why Jesus?

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Mendalla

Mendalla

Happy headbanging ape!!
Pronouns
He/Him/His
So, let us say, for the sake of discussion, that I come to believe in an intelligent creative force influencing guiding the universe in diverse ways (but that universe is capable of being studied and described by science even if God is not; I'm not likely to concede on that point). Not necessarily a specific religious understanding of God (ie. I'm not becoming a Christian or Jew or Muslim or some other theistic faith tradition); just a general, personal understanding of God with a somewhat panentheist leaning. So you do not need to convince me that there is a God. Let us assume that I've accepted that to a degree.

Why, then, would I go the next step of accepting the Christian Bible, and specifically the Christian narrative of the New Testament, as a revelation of God's will? What makes Christian ideas about grace, atonement, sin, salvation, incarnation and so on a necessity, or at least a reasonable way of seeing things, in a theistic universe?

Remember, you're convincing someone with a general faith in a God, not someone from a specific other faith, so no criticism (or insulting) of other religions will help here. You need to show a positive reason why I would embrace your religion instead of remaining a kind of non-sectarian, philosophical theist.

And if you're not a Christian but from some other theistic tradition (and I don't think we really have any of those right now), you can convince this hypothetical me of yours, too (but, again, please don't try to do it by criticism or slagging of others faiths).
 
At one time I was essentially at the point you describe. I had come to the conclusion that God existed - as a sentient creative force capable of being known. Although somewhat complicated, I also came to the conclusion that the primary revelation of God I had was one of love. From that point I began researching religions. Islam appealed to me because of its emphasis on the supremacy of God, but the emphasis on God's transcendence in Islam didn't strike a chord with me or on how I had felt myself impacted by God. Christianity - with an emphasis on immanence through incarnation - made sense to me.

Basically, my thinking went: God exists - God created everything else that exists - God loves that which is created - it makes perfect sense that God would want to experience being a part of what had been created - God came in Jesus to do just that - this is the ultimate sign of God's love for the creation. It was incarnation that made me a Christian.
 
As @revsdd suggests, incarnation is key. I would add to that the perichoresis of the Trinity - the idea that God has always existed as a community of love in which each of the persons envelopes the others speaks of his ability to teach us the wonder of community, life, and love. Having said that, in your opening post you ask us to suggest how we would encourage a hypothetical you to accept Christianity. What I would do instead is to share the story of Christ with that you as I feel he is interested in listening. I would tell him about God's love, the incarnation, Christ's death, resurrection, ascension, and second coming, and God's Kingdom. I would share with him not to sell Jesus to him though, but rather to present Christ to him. It would then be his decision to reject what he has heard or not.
 
Could Christ be a wee spark of con science having considered what the Romans eliminated and burned of ancient wise populations? Consider the Apian or the Aryan Way ... dangerous thinker were put down over and over ... 3000 times in one recorded case; unbelievable?
 
Mendalla said:
Why, then, would I go the next step of accepting the Christian Bible, and specifically the Christian narrative of the New Testament, as a revelation of God's will?
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Indeed. Why would you?

For starters you would need to ask some new questions that move beyond the belief in a God.

You would need to ask yourself, "Does this God seek any kind of contact with Creation?" There are a number of ideas about God that don't really require interaction with humanity to be necessary. The clock-maker God just builds Creation, sets it running and then has nothing more to do with it. The vending machine God really isn't interested in a relationship so much as keeping the divine economy going.

You'd need something more than those concepts of God to begin to think that interaction between Creation and Creator would even be a goal of God's.

In the faith perspective that Christianity is born out of there is an apriori assumption that God Created expressly for relationship and that God has been, from the beginning communicating with Creation in ways that Creatures (at least the human variety) struggle to understand.

The first revelation (general revelation) is Creation itself. It is not the most precise pointer to God and the things of God. It leads us to consider the possibility of God and our spiritual impulses suggest that there is a need/longing of some kind seeking to be filled in some way.

The second revelation (special revelation) is Creator communicating with Creature in a more direct and explicit manner. Because Creature doesn't clearly comprehend the Creator communication is basic. Words are used but the Creature has no context in which those words make sense. Ideas are shared and, just as with our own children who grow to understand us and our real meaning we learn about the tone that God uses and what that tone means generally and specifically. Here we tend to see less nuance. God is either happy or angry, we rarely see God perplexed of confused by our slowness to understand.

The third revelation (divine revelation) is the Creator giving us as much as we can possibly tolerate. In the Christian context that revelation is Jesus. God in human flesh. A God who can hold and be held in the same way we can hold or be held by anything. A God who is able to communicate to us clearly and concisely on our own level and can teach us through nuances we previously missed.

Belief in that is only possible, or even necessary, when you hold onto a concept of God which has an interest in being part of the lives we live. If all of that is too trivial or too mundane for God to be concerned with then Jesus holds no appeal.
 
I'm trying to put myself in this position. Somehow, somewhere, I've had an experience or revelation to convince me that there is a Supreme Being - something beyond my understanding, something that unites the universe, but that also is very close and very important to me. In other words - I come to believe in 'God'. But I am in a vacuum. I don't know who to talk to about my new-found belief. And I want to know more.
What do other people believe? How did they develop these beliefs? What revelation did they have?
So I begin exploring. I discover that almost all peoples have their stories of 'in the beginning', and their history of a relationship with God. Being that I was born and lived all my life in Western culture, influenced by Christianity, I probably start exploring the beliefs of Christianity and I discover the man named Jesus that is central to their faith. The more I learn of Jesus, the more I am drawn to his life and teachings - his compassion for the poor and disadvantaged, his passion for justice, his love for 'the least of these', his disdain for rituals and temple authorities that do nothing to help their people. I come to see Christianity as a religion of love.
I delve deeper. I find that Jesus didn't exist in a vacuum either. Behind him he had centuries of Hebrew history, legends, laws, wisdom and prophesy. So I study the stories - the patriarcies, the slavery in Egypt, the exodus, the law - the kings and prophets. I see where they went off track; but I also see a progression in belief in a loving God who desires only that we love in return.
Along the way I probably also look into other religions and adopt some of their beliefs and practices.
 
In your case Mendalla, I think your hypothetical self would prefer a song:

Love (Jesus), something/someone even non believers, can believe in:
 
all Good Posts, for me , I was christian by tradition alone, as you Mendalla, I never really believed, i never really honestly knew. Through a series of Spiritual Revelations 11 yrs ago, I began to understand as RevSteven said, the love of God in the Life of Jesus ministry and death, and then the Truth of God in the Resurrection of Christ.

the only thing I would have to offer is my understanding of the Gospel and my personal testimony
 
Hey Mendalla,

For me personally, I might share how intrigued I am by the person of Jesus and the uniqueness of his teachings.

Regarding your specific points, I might refer to the fact that a strong case can be made for the historicity of the events of early Christianity and eyewitness accounts of Jesus' life, as well as the fact that the writings of the New Testament are among the most well-preserved ancient historical documents.

I might try to make a case revealing how the teachings and claims of Christ make the most sense of the world we live in today, and that their uniqueness hints at the fact that they were not "invented" by humans, in many ways turning our classic understanding of given situations on their heads.

I might discuss how the teachings of Jesus differ from those of all other religions on how "salvation" (in its many, often incomparable forms) can be attained. In a Christian world, no amount of "good deeds" can tip the scales in our favour - which leads us to the necessity of embracing the death of Christ for the punishment of our sin, and the resurrection of Christ that we may walk with God through Christ's righteousness. I would also remind them that without the real historical event of the resurrection, that the entire message of Christianity would be eviscerated (1 Cor 15:12-19).

I might remind them that while the teaching of repentance is simple, the "road to life is narrow, and only a few find it." Setting one's own desires aside for the sake of Christ is one of the hardest things we can do. While it is God's will that all are saved, not all will be. We are also challenged to accept ideas that are hard for our post-modern minds to reconcile - ie. that Jesus was who he claimed to be, which is the Son of God. I might remind them that simply acknowledging that Christ was "a good moral teacher" but denying his claims to deity, would lead to incongruities. CS Lewis captured this idea remarkably well:

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."

I might also remind them that Jesus was as opposed to religion as many people are today, and that he made his company among the lowest of the low in society, setting an example for his followers to show love to others while not standing in moral judgment over them. I might not need to remind them of how we so often still fail at this.

Despite all of this, I am convinced that I would not be able to convince anyone based on argument alone that they should accept Jesus, as he claimed, being the only way to God. In fact, these points may cause many folks to put their guard up. And of course, many folks simply don't want it to be true, so they will choose to disbelieve anyway, whether or not it is really true. The only people who will "find" Jesus are those who have eyes to see, and ears to hear.

They would need to meet Jesus themselves and experience his love for them in order to choose to follow him.
 
Are parables unique or ambiguous? Enough to send one for a parabolic loupe or other pilgrimage to figure out what its like beyond wherever we were at prior?

Do overwhelming rules related to morals exclude ethic as related to ET as the logical tree that might get you above the pool to see what's in it? This could hint at the salty piller of the sentinel bean ...
 
Well then definitely don't refer him to the Gospel of Barnabas.....where Jesus claims to be human and it is others that have referred to Him as the son of God....something he curses them for.
 
Waterfall said:
Well then definitely don't refer him to the Gospel of Barnabas.....where Jesus claims to be human and it is others that have referred to Him as the son of God....something he curses them for.
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What are barn ABBa's? ungodly reserved actions as out there with the bairnes ? That's Celtic for birth giving operations ... sometime nailing a hide to the barn door like in the chewing gum song ... barn yard sects? There are sects like that ...
 
paradox3 said:
At the very least, Jesus works as a role model and a moral teacher.

As a believer in the existence of "something more" I say Jesus gives us a human example of a life lived in and with God.
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But Muslims believe Mohammed and Ali do as well, the Hindu's believe Krishna, does as well.
You are not making your case! What makes Jesus more special?
 
Pavlos Maros said:
But Muslims believe Mohammed and Ali do as well, the Hindu's believe Krishna, does as well.
You are not making your case! What makes Jesus more special?
Click to expand...
I am not trying to make any case at all.
What gives you the idea I am trying to make a case for anything?
 
@Pavlos Maros

I see what you are getting at. I don't think it is a matter of what makes Jesus more "special", but rather, unique - in an intriguing, and perhaps salvific way.

Christian tradition has it Jesus was literally (in history) born of a virgin, lived a moral perfect life, claimed to be equal to God, died on the cross for the sins of humankind (for whom attaining salvation on one's own became impossible, since the bar (or law) was raised to an unattainable level according to Christ's teachings), resurrected from the dead in bodily form, and ascended into heaven.

For those of us who live in postmodernity, a life so defined by the miraculous is hard for us to believe. Indeed, the Christian life is not for everybody! But for those who are willing to accept it, Jesus' life and teachings are truly unique compared to all other religious teachers. To cite the old cliche: "Others say 'do'; Jesus says 'done'".
 
Mendalla said:
So, let us say, for the sake of discussion, that I come to believe in an intelligent creative force influencing guiding the universe in diverse ways (but that universe is capable of being studied and described by science even if God is not; I'm not likely to concede on that point). Not necessarily a specific religious understanding of God (ie. I'm not becoming a Christian or Jew or Muslim or some other theistic faith tradition); just a general, personal understanding of God with a somewhat panentheist leaning. So you do not need to convince me that there is a God. Let us assume that I've accepted that to a degree.

Why, then, would I go the next step of accepting the Christian Bible, and specifically the Christian narrative of the New Testament, as a revelation of God's will? What makes Christian ideas about grace, atonement, sin, salvation, incarnation and so on a necessity, or at least a reasonable way of seeing things, in a theistic universe?

Remember, you're convincing someone with a general faith in a God, not someone from a specific other faith, so no criticism (or insulting) of other religions will help here. You need to show a positive reason why I would embrace your religion instead of remaining a kind of non-sectarian, philosophical theist.

And if you're not a Christian but from some other theistic tradition (and I don't think we really have any of those right now), you can convince this hypothetical me of yours, too (but, again, please don't try to do it by criticism or slagging of others faiths).
Click to expand...
Maybe Jesus is...through symbol and humanity, the values he embodies, that voice within us that says "Love your neighbour and your enemy, bless those who curse you, forgive our (human) trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us"... Maybe that is the love, when fully accepted and practiced, leads to real peace on earth and goodwill among people. That is life giving Divinity. I cannot find any fault in it...yet, every time we dispute it in this world we cause more and more problems. people, in Jesus' name even dispute other religions and non-religions practicing those same values - which goes against the values he actually embodies (what he meant when he said he brings not peace but a sword - depending on whether his values are embodied through people or not. The sword is the 'not'. I think that is what he meant). And that is why I think Jesus, living those values, is the way to peace and eternal life (not as a selfish pursuit but corporeal one).
 
By that I mean...universally extended to humanity as a body. I really don't think claiming affiliation with an institution had anything to do with what he taught, but some institutions "get it" a little better than others.
 
If everyone got a little would this be greater institute and reduce the graders ? Everyone would thus have a handle ...
 
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