by Sandy » Fri Oct 20, 2017 11:18 pm
It's interesting, isn't it, that all we know about Jesus comes from the New Testament, and most of the content that involves eyewitness accounts comes from three of the four gospels that are, when put together, a really thin book of about 100 pages, and the rest of it is found in the commentary left by a few other authors, John and Peter, James, Paul, one not known. We are taught in church how to follow the standard interpretations in order to develop a perspective of Jesus through our pastors and professors and their commentary. We're two thousand years plus away from the time when Jesus walked the earth, and I'm pretty sure that the image we have of him is a cultural distortion. There are some authors, Phillip Yancey comes to mind, Robert Funk, Marcus Borg, who do a good job of filtering out the cultural overlay, and make an honest attempt to identify Jesus through the scripture. But they all admit that it's not an easy job given what's been written, and that the Jesus we think we understand is not the one that you find if you simply put the scriptures together without the cultural baggage that comes with it. So if you accept the premises of an inerrant, infallible Bible, then you have to accept the thought that what's there is all we need to know and if that's the conclusion, then he is the criterion by which the rest of scripture is interpreted.
That changes everything. For starters, it means that the "Kingdom of God" includes a whole lot more people than the modern church thinks it does, and the definition of knowing and following Jesus is much broader, and wider, and more accepting than we make it out to be.