was jesus killed because of a personality conflict?
at the past immersion we watched a video from a man named john macarthur on the larry king show. here is that clip (i have also put the clip in the 'vids' section of this page) and you will need to spend 5 mins. to watch it for the rest of this to make sense (if you attended immersion you can skip to the next part)
so, after the clip (which has to deal with whether or not christians should support the war in iraq, but ends up being an interesting debate on the nature of salvation and other religions) we began discussing what we had just watched.
most people seemed to side with the more moderate methodist minister when he spoke about the need for christians to worry less about who is going to heaven and concentrate more on living like christ in the here and now. a point i support 100%.
however, what caused me to think as i reflect over a very good discussion was how many people were put off by macarthur's personality and had little to say good about the man. he was accused of arrogance, narrow-mindedness and acting like he had all the answers. now, i have been listening to this guy for a while and these seem like fairly accurate assessments (judgy, wudgy was a bear) but should this man's personality foibles dictate whether or not what he says is true?
the simple answer: no. but it is hard to get past the messenger to understand the message isn't it? but, as followers of jesus 2000 years later, should we not be concerned that we, too, can miss what god's message is because we don't like a messenger that he may have chosen?
is macarthur wrong, or is he simply a jerk?
was jesus insensitive to the culture of the day? was his message so exclusive and his personality so offensive that it got him killed? yes.
therein lies my concern. let us look deeper than the messenger and really hear the message. i am not saying that macarthur is correct in his ideology of what the gospel message truly says and i find myself more in the methodist mininster's camp, but i do not want to dismiss him out of hand because i don't like the guy. after all, if the story of jesus (and indeed the bible) has taught us anything, it is that god speaks through the strangest people.
and the ones who put jesus on a cross did so because they didn't like the message OR the messenger, so they killed him. theologically speaking i benefit from that, but i would not want that on my conscience!
other points to consider? fire away...just don't kill the messenger!
3 comments:
Are you saying that Jesus was carrying a perfect message but was not a perfect messenger? Very, very interesting. I think that would bug a lot of people because it brings Jesus' divinity into question. Any talk of Christ's 'personality' is a nod towards his humanity and flaws.
i think it is hard to separate jesus as the messenger from the message he was carrying. i am all for looking into the humanity of this person called jesus but i would not know how to tell his message without including him or, put another way, i don't think there is a message without him. i do think it is to our advantage to question what exactly the humanity of jesus means and i think we miss something when we forget that he did not look like much to the people around him and the the holy people of the day genuinely hated him. and i also think it needs to be shown that these holy people were not "bad guys" but were just trying to serve god the best way possible...so much so that they forgot the character of the One they were professing to serve. i think that can ring true for many of us in the faith community!
but i do like your idea that it is important to dig into the personality of jesus...and i think it helps us see that the message "evolved" during jesus' time on earth. therein lies an idea that does make people uneasy: what kind of message did jesus turn himself in to? did he always know or did he change his mind? i think the latter and that makes some very uneasy.
thanks for the comment...it has given me some thing to think about.
Oh, by the way... it's Heather.
Glad I made you think. Jesus as a personality is a heady concept. It makes me think too.
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