At the height of the craze, the Beatles boasted they were more popular than Jesus Christ. More recently, Earl Woods, father of the renowned golfer Tiger Woods, noted that his son was more famous than Jesus Christ. Christians are piqued when such claims are made from time to time. I wonder if we should not marvel that this simple Galilean carpenter who lived two millennia ago should, without his asking, become the frame of reference for fame. The choice of theme for Dan Brown's novel The DaVinci Code evinces a similar interest in the person of Jesus Christ.
Although it may be an unusual way of approaching the controversies that Brown and others have raised about the person of Jesus, it is helpful to see how these develop from an inadequate understanding of God. It is also a lesson for those of us who claim to be Christians that without our knowledge, we may be harboring a similar lack in our theology. In today's pragmatic climate of "how-to-get-something-out-of–God" and "how-to-do-something-for-God" Christianity, it is quite possible that we have left the huge gap of "Who-is-God" theology in the middle! Who Jesus claimed to be has immense implications for our understanding of who God is.
I am, therefore, grateful that God permits periodic shock treatments on his church through the likes of Hollywood or the Gnostic gospels, the Beatles or Dan Brown, for they alert us to the serious shortcomings in our own understandings of Him. The DaVinci Code tells us that Jesus was someone most of us believe he was not, and yet many of us would have a difficult time explaining who we believe he really is.
When facing any error or counterfeit, it is good for us to train ourselves to ask the question, "What is the original truth of which this is the counterfeit?" An error bears important and interesting relationships to the truth. The former is arrived at by adding to or subtracting something from the latter. Thus, an error always contains something of the truth whereas the truth has nothing of the error in it. Moreover, the opposite of a truth is always an error, but the opposite of an error is rarely the truth--it is often another error!
Dan Brown, I believe, has done a singular service to the Christian Church in helping us to discern the original within the counterfeit that he has presented to us in the form of this novel. The Gospel of Judas offers a similar opportunity. Yet, we could easily be tempted to react against such errors by looking at their opposites, only to find ourselves landing in other errors. Instead, we should try to look at the biblical originals to which these insinuations point.
For instance, there is nothing wrong with sexuality and marriage. But was Jesus married? He was not. In the most ancient accounts of his life, there is no indication that he was married or widowed, although there is abundant evidence that he had a great number of women-disciples, Mary of Magdala being one of them. It can be quite clearly concluded that Jesus limited himself by the discipline of celibacy for the sake of the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 19:12) so that he could win for himself the bride of the Church (Ephesians 5:27; II Corinthians 11:2).
We should be grateful to those who in caricaturing Christ drive us to reflect on issues to which we have paid scant attention. We, as the Church of Christ, need to move beyond the purely pragmatic, individualized understanding of our faith to the glorious sweep of the canvas that the Scripture paints for us. It is thus that we would be enabled to truly worship our amazing God and to lovingly relate to our savior Jesus Christ through his ever-living Spirit.
L.T. Jeyachandran is executive director of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Singapore.
do you also sell insurance? the following passage makes me wonder!When facing any error or counterfeit, it is good for us to train ourselves to ask the question, "What is the original truth of which this is the counterfeit?" An error bears important and interesting relationships to the truth. The former is arrived at by adding to or subtracting something from the latter. Thus, an error always contains something of the truth whereas the truth has nothing of the error in it. Moreover, the opposite of a truth is always an error, but the opposite of an error is rarely the truth--it is often another error! look im not saying christ didnt exist, but when i was young and at school and we had religous education, i started to question the validaty and more to the point, the shear audacity of the so called life and miracles of jesus. artificial insemination? ie pregnancy without sex? bet the child support agency would find that one hard to swallow.walking on water?why couldnt jesus have been married, there are enough pointers towards just such a fact. in fact it is more likely that jesus was a rabbi, and as such would have been obligated to marry. after all was he not king of the jews? it was the church of christianty that made jesus their own and then preached good will to all men.no women? lets not go there.many many years ago i came to the conclusion that jesus lived, he was a visionary and ahead of his time, not the son of god. then again arrording to religion are we not all the children of god?also why is the bible taken so literally when even the gospels dont allways agree with one another.look at the likes of galilaeo in history. he said the world wasnt flat or the center of the universe and was put under house arrest by the inquisition. if you take a child from birth and tell him that the sky is red, with no other outside influence, that child will always beleive the sky is red. only through questions and knowledge can he realise that his beleife may be wrong. unfortunaly this is what the church does, get then young and force feed them one variation of history only.oh their is a probable scientific explanation for the star of bethlehem, the sabbath day comes from the pagan god of the sun and xmas is taken from a pagan ritual.if science asks a question gives an answer and gets it wrong, it says opps we got it wrong. if religion gets it wrong it just puffs its chest out and says` well the bible says.`well done dan brown, not for getting it right but giving people the ability to question centuries of unfounded blind faith.thank you for your timedave smith
ReplyDelete"many many years ago i came to the conclusion that jesus lived, he was a visionary and ahead of his time, not the son of god."Dave,CS Lewis wrote half a century ago that the one thing that we cannot say about Jesus is that he was a "good man". He doens't give us that option.Jesus' claim to be the "Son of God" was of a different order than we are all "sons of God." He cliamed to be of the nature of God. It's that claim that makes it impossible to say he was a good man.Either Jesus was right or he was wrong. If he was wrong then he was either deluded (as Lewis says, "like a man who believes he is a poached egg") or he knew he was wrong but made the cliam anyay, knowing that those who followed him were being condemned to God's judgment.We can say Jesus was mad. We can say he was bad. Or we can agree with his claim that he is God.The one thing that Jesus will not aloow us to say aobut him was that he was a good man."if science asks a question gives an answer and gets it wrong, it says opps we got it wrong"Well actually there have been more cover ups and lies in the name of science than you could ever point to in the history of christianity. Just to point out a couple: the recent claims in Korea of cloning of humans, the thalidomide bungle in the 1970s, the "Piltdown Man" hoax... it just goes on and on.Wherever you have people you will have abuses of power, including in the church. But in faith as in science- just because a few people stuff it up does not deny the validity of the endeavour.BlessingsKeith
ReplyDelete