"Come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men."-------|-------
"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness."-------|-------
"You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men."-------|-------
"You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. either do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven."-------|-------
"The eye is the lamp of the body."-------|-------
"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?"-------|-------
"Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and then turn and tear you to pieces."-------|-------
"Knock and the door will be opened to you."-------|-------
"Enter through the narrow gate."-------|-------
"Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves."-------|-------
"Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash."
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
The Way Jesus Talked
The other night it occurred to me that Jesus used a ton of metaphors. So I started reading in Matthew, with my handy red-letter edition NIV bible on my iPaq (I use PocketBible from Laridian Publishing). Starting in Matthew 4, here is how He described things:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Inasmuch as we are introducing complexity ("explanation"), we are being rebellious. In doing so, we are making it less possible for some to grasp the kingdom, namely, children and the simple minded.
ReplyDeleteThe ironic thing is, the harder we try to reduce it to the simplest explanation, the harder it is to express it at all. We struggle to contain the message of the kingdom in any other container than what God himself created.
He created eyes, and mustard, and light, and corn. And these make the best deliverers of the truth about the kingdom.
Come to think of it, I can't explain why it works. It just does.
My dad and I were talking about this insatiable desire modern people have for conclusion. We must know. We must wrap things up with a "final answer" so we can move on. And it has to be the right answer.
ReplyDeleteThere must be a reason why God allows a hurricane or an earthquake to wipe out so many. Because of see-un? (That's the way you have to say sin if you want fundamentalists in Texas to understand you).
This is part of our problem. Our demand for one explanation, one right word of judgment on a situation or a person. We assert that the singular truth is out there, and that the failure of it's being known is in the seeker. We assume that if we were flawless in our methods and perhaps even pure in our hearts, then we would corner our one elusive answer.
But metaphors and parables don't do that. They leave room for mystery.
At one point my dad said that people have done the same thing throughout history—attributed either catastrophes or good fortune to their gods out of a craving for explanation. I don't know if that's true.
A tidal wave roars up out of the sea, the sea god swallowing the people because they didn't make their sacrifices. God in heaven
hears that two cities are utterly vile, so he goes down to see for himself. Once he finds out that it is true, he zaps both of them, with burning sulfer from the sky, killing everyone and everything.
A modern man looks at both of those accounts and sees tall tales—tall tales he attributes to an insatiable desire that the ancients had to know.
But I wonder if that is a projection. I wonder if we are so trapped in this way of thinking, this demand that there is an explanation for everything, that we overlay our own bias onto people of ages past.
I wonder if the ancients believed that science (as they had it) was true, but so was poetry. I wonder if the ancients had a problem with God claiming that the morning stars all sang when He laid the foundations of the earth. My guess is that they just listened to that and were happy enough with the mystery in the poetry, rather than trying to figure out if technically there could have been some celestial bodies close enough to Earth as it was created that may have emitted sounds, even ultrasonic waves so that the Bible could still be "true".
I say the stars sang, and I leave it at that. That's where Jesus left it, too.
Miroslav,
ReplyDeleteIt's a bit paradoxical to speak of the mystery of life in terms of "accepting" or "knowing."
In a world where nothing is as it seems, where things are going somewhere, where we find ourselves part of a story that's bigger than us with a real plot--in a world like that, wondering might be as close as we will get to accepting, this side of the face-to-face with Jesus.
"Faith" isn't a body of beliefs, or a system. It isn't an abundance of confidence, it isn't strong conviction. It isn't even "trust" that things will work out for the better.
It's embracing the mystery, and this frees you to do something irrational. It gives substance (not proof) to the things we only hope for. It's as good as evidence for the things we've never seen.
It's whatever made Abraham head out of town. It allowed Rahab to turn on her people to save her family. It made some people refuse to be released from prison but instead be hacked to pieces, simply because they figured that it might gain them a better resurrection.
It lets us say, "Hmmm. I don't really know. So let's go this way!"
I've stood in the library you're standing in--the library of ideas. But the crazy thing is, all the books are so high up on the shelves that the little children can't reach them. And Jesus said somehow I have to be like them in order to be able to see the kingdom.
I recommend that you go rent "Rapunzel" as soon as possible. It's put out by "Barbie." If you have a young daughter, watch it with her. Do it soon, and watch her closely. Mimic her. Get excited about the things she gets excited about. Light up when she lights up.
If you don't have a daughter, just put on some pajamas, pour yourself a bowl of Cocoa Puffs, and watch it by yourself. I'm not kidding.
It will be a good way to start our dialogue. Let me know how it goes.
I've got my pj's on, but we're fresh out of cocoa puffs.
ReplyDeleteThis morning my six year old daughter said, "When I get to heaven, I'm gonna be a bible character."
ReplyDelete"Which one?" I asked.
"A new one!" she said.
That's what I'm talking about.
That is AWESOME. Talk about a day at the improv.
ReplyDelete