Faith Venture

One of the Spiritual Disciplines is study. After I learned how to study (unfortunately that was during my third year of college), it  has come naturally for me. I’m sure for others it’s difficult. Maybe like work. When I teach the Bible, I encourage people to try to come with fresh eyes. Sure you have heard the stories. You’ve memorized passages. How can you read with fresh eyes?

For example, I’m reading the Gospel of John–again. It’s my favorite book. But reading it, I’ve found emphases that I don’t remember. John really emphasized the controversy that surrounded Jesus. He keeps saying that the Jews are divided about him. Is he the Messiah? Is he a prophet? Is he a troublemaker?

What strikes me the most is how controversial Jesus remains. And that’s even among Christians.

I’ve often taken as my guide the passage from Hebrews where Jesus is referred to as the pioneer of our faith. I like that. I can understand it. He was first to exhibit the new way of forming a relationship with God and taught it. There were people in the faith tradition who had a relationship with God. But they did something significant and the deeds were recorded. Jesus taught us that we all should cultivate and deepen that relationship.

If only we worked more toward following Jesus into a deeper God-relationship instead of arguing minute points of law, maybe we’d all be better off.

“The Jews” to whom John refers didn’t figure it out in total. Many followed him even after his death. Some killed him. Today, there’s still a division. I guess Jesus didn’t teach a unity of all humanity? Just a chance to “drink from the water of life.”

This entry was posted on June 30, 2011 at 7:23 am and is filed under Christianity, Relationship. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.