Jesus, savior from post # 3

Ok, let's break down Jesus' life into a basic outline.
1)Birth (incarnation)
2)A childhood of which only a few days are reported.
3)Yada, yada, yada he's somewhere in the range of 30 years old and has mysteriously become a wandering, homeless preacher.
4)He does a bunch of miracles
5)He pisses off some religious leaders who get him killed
6)After burial, he comes back to life and hangs out with his friends and select aquaintences for 40 days before vanishing into the sky.

Maybe, I should include other important events, but I didn't, so get over it. It's a story that is controversial, and ultimately crazy. People can argue and argue that it's made up, but that argument in my mind requires the same amount of "blind" faith that believing the story is true does. I realize I'm being subjective, but if this story is made up, we should hold the writers up as the most ingenious men who have ever lived. The achievements of Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar pale in significance to the achievements of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. And, now that I've angered all the historians I'll move on.

In my last post I talked about the greatness of God, and how from a human standpoint that is a terrifying thing. It is something that inevitably leaves us with the gut feeling that we are screwed. That is why every culture (at minimum the overwhelming majority of them) creates a religion to "protect" themselves from that God. Every religion, including Christianity (Catholic and Protestant) does what it can to distance it's people from God. Whether by doctrines, demigods, philosophies, ancestors, saints, priests, or simple distractions like drugs or television, people will inevitably find ways to avoid the presence that is. We all hate to be sober. Yet, it is only when we comprehend what we are saying in declaring God to be holy and great that Christianity really becomes what it is meant to be.

We say God is somehow, in some mysterious way incarnated in Christ (1). This basically means the most terrifying of all ideas allows himself to be DEFINED!! If that statement doesn't evoke a sense of amazement, it should. I will be the first to tell you, I don't understand the Trinity, and it truly irritates me when other people say they do. They give some formula or creed as if that says the final word on the idea. To me that is idolatry and arrogance. The NT lets us know that Jesus is how God himself sums up his very nature to us. It is silent as to how. The writers are too filled with awe and reverence to assume they could ever explain such things (2). They just know this is God working on earth. They partially know this by the miracles he performed, but I will get to this later.

The ultimate fact we know about Jesus is that he was cricified (5). This is historically unquestioned. And, the one thing that everyone who's heard of Christianity knows about it is that it is symbolized by the cross. Dallas Willard (one of my top three favorite authors) points out though, that the cross didn't become a symbol of Christianity until the fourth or fifth century. One book I'm reading right now said this, "[The cross] is no mere ornament depicting Christianity in general. Rather, it is a vigorous commentary on what gives the gospel its universal appeal." Basically what is implied is this: the cross is not the symbol of Christian faith, but is representative of the most appealing aspect of it.

We embrace the cross, not because that's a cute phrase, but because we don't fear the cross. The cross is a symbol of every intimidation the world holds: loss, humiliation & shame, isolation & abandonment, full justice for every evil and wrong, pain and torture, and most of all death. Embracing the cross is fearlessly accepting the worst horrors that are known in human experience. But, like I said before, this is an understanding that emerged. Christians could only accept the cross as a symbol because they were already characterized by the greatest and most appealing aspect of Christianity: LIFE.

Jesus' miracles (4) were evidence that the life within him was altogether different from any other person. Most of all, he was the first who embraced the cross. He proved that his life had no reason to fear. His life stemmed directly from God (how I do not know), and even dying can't end it (6).

So, now that I've delved into systematic theology (wretched modernist that I am), what does it matter? The point I really want to make is that Jesus is all that stands between me and being a hopeless, cynical agnostic. I am a Christian because somehow I trust the guys who wrote about him. The more I understand the Bible, the more I can see this group of laymen fully in awe of the event they spent four years witnessing. I think it's the type of awe characteristic of those who have come to an understanding of God.