Interactive Gospel
- Take Jesus Seriously -
by Paul Hazelden
1. Summary
We believe that Jesus deserves to be
taken seriously.
It hardly needs to be spelled out, but we believe that when
considering the important questions in life, the message of
Jesus Christ deserves to be taken seriously.
This is actually a far greater claim than it seems at first
sight. Because Jesus was not just an ordinary
religious teacher or leader. Like most religious
leaders, Jesus pointed people to God. But He called
God His 'Father' - 'Daddy' - an unbelievably intimate
term. And He put Himself at the centre of His
message. If you want to get to God, He said, you
have to go through Me.
People used to think that we could ignore Jesus' teaching about
Himself, and just concentrate on the moral
dimension. But the attempt failed - if you take out
the bits we don't like, you are left with a great spiritual
Teacher who had massive crowds following him, but who never said
or did anything worth noting. It doesn't make
sense.
So Jesus is either a great spiritual teacher, someone Who can
direct us to answers to the deepest questions of life, and is
Himself in some sense the answer we are looking for, or He is a
complete fraud - someone who made astounding but false claims
about himself.
- I'll go along with that
- Please explain further
- I object to what you've said
- What are the alternatives?
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2. Further Details
The old 'trichotomy' as formulated by C S Lewis still works:
someone who made such outrageous claims is either insane,
misleading people, or telling the truth. In short, Jesus is
either mad, bad, or God.
But what are these teachings we need to take seriously? The
best option is to go back to the four Gospels - Matthew, Mark,
Luke and John - and read His teachings for yourself. In some
Bibles, the words of Jesus are printed in red ink to make them
stand out and to help you find them more easily. Use a modern
translation - Jesus did not speak in 'thee's and 'thou's to the
people around Him.
My own summary of His teaching is as follows.
He taught that an authentic human life has to be lived in
relationship with God.
He taught that there are two key commandments we need to
understand and to obey:
- Love God with everything you have.
- Love your neighbour as yourself.
Everything else He said and did can be seen as an outworking
of these basic truths.
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3. Objections
I have yet to meet anyone who seriously believes that the
teachings of Jesus should not be taken seriously.
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4. Alternatives
The alternative that many people seek to estblish is a
breaking of the trichotomy I describe above.
People want to keep Jesus as a great teacher, a wonderful
spiritual leader, without accepting His claims to divine
inspiration or recognising His mission to save the world. They
want to maintain that He is not mad, he is not evil, and he is not
God.
Of course, you can do this very easily. Simply re-write the
Gospels. Many people have done this, either as individuals or
in various 'reform' movements. The 'Quest for the Historic Jesus'
was one of the well-known ones.
But the consequence of re-writing the Gospels is always the
same. People claim to be rediscovering the authentic Jesus, but
they are always starting with a set of beliefs, re-writing the
Gospels to fit those beliefs, and then they 'discover' that Jesus
was actually teaching what they have always believed. What a
surprise.
The alternatives are endless. No two people can agree on the
re-imagined Jesus. And, in any case, what is the point? Surely,
if you have a set of beliefs, it is far more honest to argue for
them directly, than to pretend that this is what Jesus was
'really' saying, and - gosh! - you are the first person in
history to correctly understand Him.
The Jesus of the Gospels has been touching and changing the
lives of individuals and communities through the centuries. None
of the alternatives have achieved anything worth speaking of.
It makes sense to go back to the original, and allow Him to
speak. two thousand years later, His words are as relevant and
as challenging as ever.
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