Water~Spirit~Activism 

Column by Skylar Wilson on 23 September 2021 1 Comments

Earth is 71% water. When we humans are born, we are made of approximately this same percentage. We are made in Earth’s image; created within Earth’s watery imagination. Born into life through a series of cosmic processes of explosive passion and grace.

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Question

How can Christians get a firm foundation with scripture that has been influenced by the spirit of political influence by Kings and Popes and transcriptionists who were influenced by governments? A bit of a crisis of faith here. Can there still be a Divine Jesus without true historical knowledge of Him?

Answer

Dear Reader,

I would substitute for your words “without true historical knowledge of Him” the words “with only partial historical knowledge of him.”  What we know historically about Jesus is not nothing.  Indeed, in our lifetimes many Biblical scholars (along with anthropologists and others) have worked hard to separate the words and teachings we can be certain about from Jesus’ mouth from those that seem to have been added after he died.  The gospel writers did not hesitate to put words into his mouth but that is not entirely a negative thing.  It tells us what he triggered in his followers and it tells us how he lit a fire in them that resulted in a lot of creativity.  Isn’t this how history works even in our day?  A speaker excites people and they tell others about it and invariably misquote and make up things and project their feelings and stories into the picture they are relaying to another?  As a teacher, that is very much my experience.  Often people will quote me but misquote me; or cite someone I cited and get it wrong. But enthusiasm is not always a bad thing.  In fact, it’s a good thing—a sign of life and spirit therefore.  But exactness is not always part of the big picture.

What all this tells me is the truth of what we call the incarnation of divinity in Jesus.  That he was a full and real-life human being with all that entails in terms of limits and making of friends and betrayal by friends and making of enemies and being misquoted while he lived and afterwards.  All these imperfect realities match our life experiences also, they are all part and parcel of the vulnerability Jesus represents: Not only did God become human--God became vulnerable to an imperfect world.  Like us.

So the fact that Scripture is “influenced by Kings and popes and transcriptionists and translators and imperfect and mistaken human beings” is an invitation to look deeper than the literal to the stories and teachings that instruct us in how to live and why.

It is also an invitation to look at some of the contemporary Biblical scholars that are discovering many dimensions to the background surrounding the Scriptures.  For example, just this week I received a new book by New Testament scholar Bruce Chilton on a fellow and dynasty that played a big role in the life and death of Jesus.  The book is called The Herods: Murder, Politics, and the Art of Succession.  As one commentator puts it, “the Herodian policies and intrigue shaped the worlds of early Judaism and Christianity.”  And another, “the relevance for Jesus and the origins of the Christian Church can hardly be exaggerated.”

Keep studying; keep asking good questions; learn to hunt and gather for meaningful answers and interpretations and trustworthy scholars and mentors and ever deeper questions.

~ Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox

 

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