Personally, I think we are missing the years before Jesus' ministry in the Bible to keep us from using them to deny his divinity. I think, generally, the divorce of his mortality from his divinity has done more to attack how Jesus really was (divine AND mortal) than perhaps anything else, and since Christianity generally already has denied his mortality in all practical ways, a record of his early years would complete the process by being used to deny his divinity.
I believe if we saw his entire life, most people would see him as just another guy - exactly as the people did in his own country who saw him growing up and couldn't accept him as the Messiah. I believe the only "perfect" (whole, complete, fully developed) picture of him includes a God as actual man, but admitting the "man" would destroy the conception of "God" held throughout "mainstream" Christianity.
People nit-pick prophets. Can you imagine how we would nit-pick someone who claimed to be the Savior and Redeemer of mankind if we were able to see his childhood, adolescence and all other pre-ministry aspects of his life? I firmly believe most Christians would reject Jesus if he lived now the life I believe he lived then, since their conception of the Savior and Redeemer of the world doesn't match the man I believe he was - and, to be fair, I think that's true of more than a few LDS members, as well, in some ways.
Cries and Dolls
3 weeks ago
4 comments:
I think it would be wonderful if someone could produce some video segments representing occasions from the gospels, and showing Jesus as a man. I suppose his voice would sound like any other man's, rather than the studio-altered and softened voice we sometimes hear -- and he would have spoken loudly so the crowd could hear him. And I suppose his clothes would have been as dusty as his neighbor's, rather than perfectly white. And I also suppose he would have had something wrapped around his hair, like all the other men, rather than free-flowing and tangle-free. I think he would have laughed a little. Some of his teeth might have been crooked. But all our video representations follow the pattern of old paintings, and paint him as something other than a man among men. If we were able to see him while he lived, we would not recognize because of the artistic representations that have shaped our perceptions.
I have often wondered what our view of Jesus would be today if the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas was canon. Christ did not start out as a very nice individual in that account of his youth (e.g. killing another boy because he bumped into Jesus).
The interesting thing is that many Morman writers and scholars have cherry picked parts of the Gnostic writings found at Nag Hamadi to use as proof of our faith. The question then becomes if those parts are true, why are not the sections also valid? A very dangerous conundrumn to find oneself in.
What do you mean Ray? We all know baby Jesus never screamed or threw tantrums.
It would be interesting to know all those details of His life. I think he would be nit-picked.
Post a Comment