Does anyone want Jesus to be God? This is big stuff for me. (Main Forum)

by Oh Yet We Trust, Brisbane, Friday, February 05, 2010, 18:25 (1230 days ago) @ vynette

This is going to be more of questioning, too much probably.

Thanks, Vynette. When I read it I thought, "well der, Stephen". But life is full of many of those 'der' moments at present. Things I have mentally sort of understood for years are now making sense in that they are giving way to a more lived reality kind of way.

I was just discussing your previous post to me with Billy and I said, as I often do after much discussion: so often, all of a sudden I just say "I don't care', it's all just words, it doesn't mean anything in the reality sense" and I am so sick of being that kind of Christian/Catholic. When I read your last post I thought, "well, yes, without realising it or expressing it the way you did, that's what I was actually saying in my big post below - I am working out my own salvation and by God it is in fear and trembling." So, as such I get what you're saying and I appreciate it.

You see, I so often am saying things which were part and parcel of my upbringing theology but then I say "yes, but is this really happening, is this how it really happens? Look closer and be more bloody honest. Where can I )or anyone) point to in my life where Jesus was real in a trans-natural resurrected kind of way?" And I can't think of any except what the charismatics call the Baptism in the Holy Spirit - and that was a one off after which I knew I was loved by God (can I say Jesus) and it is what still underpins my now life long thirst for realising my salvation, what is behind my close to obsessive desire, need, to know what is truth, and to keep going, to keep seeking out this Jesus who I believe planted this longing in me when I was 15, to keep digging for that treasure hidden in the field of life.

But, other than that one experience (which was/is almost a permanent everlasting one, if that makes any sense) it does seem to have always been me working it out on my own so to speak, no direct intervention or voices from God/Jesus, no miraculous escaping my pain and damage (and believe me I've tried, what with prayers and being prayed over to the point where I gave up because nothing changed in the way I was told it should and would - and my conclusion, it just doesn't work that way. So I had to find a new understanding and I suppose it is more akin to what you just wrote - it makes more sense in a real way.

But see, now I am left with nothing much except myself and a church, a Christianity, which, according to what you say has been under deception about Jesus being God, for almost its entire history. I am left with the concept that what the saints described as such deep love for Jesus and Him for them, as being unreal or what I could see now as completely psychological, within the brain and life of the here on earth reality - nothing more. Jesus, therefore, does not exist any more than Buddha does today.

Well, that's a pretty big claim, and one I am not about to just accept. And one reason is that there seems to be little place in all this for be-lief (be-love) as Karen Armstrong describes it), unless, I have not got the whole picture, which is more than likely.

Did the apostles and disciples love Jesus? Did Mary Magdalen? Did he love them? Was there any 'feeling' involved, I mean real feeling, like the apostle John resting on the chest of Jesus at the last supper kind of feeling. How was all this love expressed? How is it expressed today? What did/does it all bloodywell mean? Was it more important than anything else? What was/is most important? That we understand or that we feel? Which converts the most and the most deeply? Why did people follow Jesus? Did he want them to? Why did they become a community held together in that love?

Why don't people want Jesus to be God? Why? So as to be acceptable by modern scientific society? Is that it? Is that all?

What is the meaning of "In the beginning was the Word.....and the Word was made flesh?" What is 'the Word'? Why is it, can it not be seen and accepted as the most incredible act of Love and therefore, most logical that God who made us and wants us to know Him/Her should not manifest Himself in the flesh (and flesh that suffered so much) so as to give us something more tangible with whom to relate - to make it more 'earthy' for want of a better word. Why, if we can believe in God can we not, or do we not want to believe this?

Having said all this, if somehow then it became very clear that what I am saying goes against what Jesus taught, then I would have to change my thinking and perceptions and decisions and I am open to that. But I won't go easily. What does it mean to say Jesus is Lord? Lord! What then does that mean? Was that a Pauline construct which went against what Jesus taught and who he was. Perhaps it was for Jesus the man but did it all change after he rose from the dead? Is that it? Are we talking about two different ways of relating to Jesus, the historical one as in the ministering, teaching man, and another, the a-historical one as the risen Lord, Lord because he had completed his purpose, conquered mortality (and invited us to be one with him in that), and now could assume His full role and being. How can a mere man promise us eternal life?

But I will stop with perhaps the one question (again) that, until it is answered, I will not be able to fully go along with such as St Mary's and the like, and even many here on Catholica, and Catholica itself as a ministry. I cannot give myself fully to it all, this new way of being Catholic until I can be at peace with an answer to this question. Here is the question again:

Why don't people want Jesus to be God? Also, can any of us ever really know anyway whether he was or not?

Stephen

Oh yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill