Jesus for President: The challenge to live, think, and act differently
I’m making my way (very slowly) through this amazing book that I will probably end up utilizing for my young adult Discipleship at the church. My revolutionary, anti-Empire cousin recommended it to me and I went out and got it right away. Jesus for President is a very creative presentation that presents and urges readers to think about Jesus differently. The reader is urged to think about Jesus in the way that those in his context are likely to have thought about him. One of the things that I stress repeatedly in the Bible Study at the church is that we must be spiritual archeologist that dig below the words of scripture to explore the context of scripture which will help us to locate MEANING that can be applied in our 21st Century reality. The temptation for Believers today is to read everything in the Bible at face value and embrace a very literal, fundamental interpretation and application of what we read.
Jesus for President is a great way for Believers new to the Faith or even those of us who’ve been in The Way for a while to clear new paths to understanding the historical Jesus and the movement that was formed around him.
I think books and interpretations like this are particularly important for this new generation of Believers who have undeniably different beliefs about Christianity that must be taken into account in relation to worship, evangelism, discipleship, and outreach. As this Barna Group Research reveals, Christianity is losing it’s reputable standing among Americans age 16 - 29 years old. As a result, the proportion of those “outside” Christianity is growing with every generation. One of the statements made by respondents that crystallized the criticism of the young people in this research says, “Christianity no longer looks like Jesus.” Wow.
(That phrase reminds me of a statement that is attributed to Ghandi in which he is believed to have said, “I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”)
Furthermore, recently The Pew Forum on Religious and Public Life released research that also point to a shift in beliefs among Americans. One of the more revealing findings says that in a sample size of over 35,000 religiously affiliated people across the nation, 70% of them believe that many religions can lead to eternal life. (This holds true even among the traditionally conservative subset of those in the Historically Black Church, with nearly 60% holding that belief.)
These are not your Father’s Christians.
What do we do in light of the paradigm shift that is happening in the minds of 21st Century Believers?
As those who are entrusted to promote and defend the Faith; what beliefs do we stand unapologetically on and what beliefs and/or doctrines do we concede?
(Remember that even the Doctrine of the Trinity is a relatively new belief that was born out of a very contentious debate about the nature of Jesus (325 A.D.). Before that, it could hardly be said that the Trinity was a mainline doctrinal belief as many believe it is today.)
Bottom line is: Beliefs change, paradigms shift, even our understanding of Jesus can evolve. So we within the ekklesia are charged to do what my biology teacher from high school - Ms. Cassily - taught us about the unspoken understanding of every living thing in a new environment. We must MOVE, ADAPT, OR DIE.
Either we must MOVE with the new beliefs about Jesus, God, the Holy Spirit, the Bible, etc.
Or we must ADAPT to living, preaching, and teaching the FAITH in this new context
Or if we don’t do either, we will do what Bishop John Shelby Spong warned in his 1998 book - we will DIE.
July 24th, 2008 at 12:18 am
It’s interesting to know that times always change. We all known and otherstand that tridations change,;however, God never changes. I believe that he understands our daily struggles and one of our struggles is to understand him better. Therefore i believe that it is important to preach the Gospel according to the Bible of Jesus Christ; moreover, it’s important to preach Jesus because it’s clear that EVERRYONE wants to meet and see GOd and live with him, but the only way to do so is through Jesus. Lastley I’d like to say that Christianiy must break from tradition and keep up with the times. Youth love to experiecne new things; however, youth need others to lead them and to guide for an example. The youth such as myself need guide and need someone to REALLY talk to about the things we are dealing and fighting with and the triditional church should be there and not the Judge meantal of what maybe said or of whats REALLY going on. Jesus is The Way.
July 24th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Humans have only understood God en parte-
When individuals have been conditioned for years to believe that Constantine’s canon is the inerrant word of God, many of today’s more enlightened ministers who are attempting to place the canon in its proper historical context are experiencing something that is tantamount to moving a mountain.
However, mountains are literally and figuratively being moved every day, consider where the Hoover Dam is today as an example. I am trying this syllogism out on individuals in order to get them to realize that I am not apostate.
1). The canon is supposed to be the inerrant word of God.
2). The Pentateuch, which is a portion of the canon, purportedly represents the writings of Moses, and is replete with principles that he received or were inspired by God (all 613 precepts). Contained in the Pentateuch are numerous writings on divorce, marriage (including monogamy and the sanctioning at times of polygamy).
3). Jesus said, that with respect to divorce and marriage, some of what was provisioned in Moses’s writing came from Moses and not God). Therefore, here is one example that shows that everything that written in the canon is not inerrant and did not originate with God.
There are hundreds, if not thousands of other examples; including Jesus’ having placed much of ‘what you have heard by them of old times’, in a proper historical context’, many of these sayings were apparently not divinely attributed or dispensational truths. We have discussed letters that the Apostle Paul wrote, that someone turned into scriptures, Paul was apparently dictating well-intended letters, not divinely inspired scriptures.
The Apostle also apparently erred in some respects with his conclusions on the rapture, and he confessed that on occasion that what he wrote did not come from God, he spake only by permission. He never explained who gave him the permission. I am concerned about the willingness of my own race to simply accept wholesale what another culture has adapted without doing some research of their own!
My Thrust: It is time for all of us to move beyond 2 to 4,000 year old paradigms, and instead we ought to pursue what is actual, truthful and factual, including the canon as a book of historical reference among many others. We are living in the 21st century, we are far more advanced than our predecessors were, and they relied a lot on borrowed ideas, visions, poetical writings and myths. Even dispensational theology is an invention that was used to explain away the different contradictions that are contained in our most sacred text!
Our predecessors never entered the Heavens as post-modern man has done, they never saw microbial organisms, they did not understand, thermodynamics (entropy)…, factually, and they never considered, apparently, such a thing as theistic evolution. I like this book and what you are attempting to do Reverend Brown. And with that, I asked a Christian brother to consider whether or not God evolved? He was stunned that I believed in any aspect of evolution at all. I asked, and isn’t the next stage in the divine evolutionary cycle, what most Christians are waiting for is to be metamorphosed/transitioned into the next stage of the divine evolutionary life cycle?\
We should all remember that Jesus was considered a radical and apostate when he tried to move the ancient Hebrews, beyond their version of the canon and into truth!
July 24th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
I was speaking with an astrophysicist and I asked him, given your training and line of work do you believe in God? He answered, of course I believe in God and he went on to explain why. I attended a conference where a scientist turned believer conducted a workshop on how he came to believe in God. I read some of Dr. Collin’s writings, the former head of the Human Genome Project. All 3 of these individuals have something in common. They believe in what we call God, but with respect to what the church refers to as God, they believe is something that is even bigger than what the church believes in – I do too!
Much of what the former have arrived at is based on evidence and proof, not myth, poetry or someone else’s spin or beliefs. Today’s thinker needs more than rudimentary believers needed, in order to establish belief or to experience what is! What we refer to as God, others are referring to as a Sovereignty, a God Equivalent a Unifying principle. I have come across secularists who even believe in the latter, which means that many of them are not non-believers.
Dr. Collins wrote about his original dilemma with respect to believing in God, and here is what we ought to give thought to in consideration of today’s empirical thinkers or the ones that we consider to be skeptics: why faith can be a reasonable perspective for a thinking person?
One writer wrote that we would be better off to anchor our faith in the love and grace of God than in some narrow interpretation of a small part of the Holy Scriptures that we are fortunate enough to have in front of us!
Again, we should keep in mind again that the ancient Hebrews were stuck just as modern Jews are apparently still stuck today in what we refer to as the Law, or dispensational truth. We must ask ourselves, are we stuck as well i nour version of The Law? Does God ever change? That writing must be considered in its proper context. What was the writer referring to when he wrote it? Was he referring to the nature or essence of God? Whatever the case, one thing that I am sure of, humans need not ever stop growing. In other words, we often need to change, to grow, to evolve, to adapt and to learn - for we are apparently still only at the beginning of knowledge!
July 26th, 2008 at 12:53 am
You say that “scientist believe in something that is bigger than what the church believes in.”
That prompts me to ask what church is that, for my bible and I hope yours too says the God the Christian believes in is the Triune God of the Father, the Son and the Hol Spirit in community, soverign in all creation. The Father initiated creation, Jesus the Son brought it into existence (for without Him was not nything made) and the Holy Spirit hovered over the face of the waters. There is nothing that is biggr than what the church believes for creation in all of its glactic glory is a creation of my Saviour, Jesus Christ the Lord. There are those scientist and philosophers in the New Age movements who reject the biblical God prefereing to claim a “universal source” rather than acknowledging Jehovah God. Science and religion are two sides of the same coin of God’s revelation; God’s special revelation through the Word made flesh in Jesus Christ plus the written word of God: and God’s revelation in nature to all of mankind. Whatever ones concept of divine being or mode of worship, nature’s God gives witness day after day and night asfter night as to the existence of a power beyond the imagination of mankind to conieve, yet it must be acknowledge that Jesus id the sourcr of that power.
July 29th, 2008 at 9:25 pm
Where does the Bible speak of a “Trinity” or anything being “Triune?” Stop quoting Nicene Council dogma. Stop presenting the people with Constantine and give them the truth. Please don’t give me the end of Matthew 28, because the oldest Bibles do not contain these Scriptures. Furthermore, I question the veracity of the so-called New Testament gospels, which contain at least 50 contradictions. If you do not believe it, I will debate any of you so-called theologians on it (let’s make it public). Yeshua and his disciples spoke Hebrew and Aramaic, but the New Testament that we have was translated from Greek. It was originally written in Hebrew and Aramaic - not Greek. Will someone please give me a primary source? You speak of Jehovah God, but if you knew anything you would know that the Hebrew language does not contain “J.” He is YAHWEH, and His son is Yeshua. The letter “J” is a 16th century addition to the English language. The way that you speak of Jesus being Lord is very Pauline. The so-called apostle Paul has corrupted THE WAY in such a way that it has never recovered. Christians quote Paul more than they quote Yeshua. Revelations 21:14 clearly speaks of there being 12 apostles to judge the 12 tribes of Israel. Paul was not an apostle, and met none of the qualifications. Revelations speaks of a false apostle at Ephesus. I wonder who that was. The book of James is excellent rebuttal of Paul by the brother of our Lord. Paul quotes pagan sources on at least 5 occasions (I will demonstrate this publicly if needed). The pronoun “I” is used in more in the Pauline letters than anywhere else in the put together Nicene Council Bible. Paul transformed the religion of Yeshua that began with the Proclamation of the Jubilee in Luke 4:18 to a slaves be obedient to your master religion (where else in Scripture can you find this?). The Roman Cointelpro agent Paul infiltrated Christianity to make it weak and tell them it was their godly duty to obey their pagan masters in Roman 13 (where else in Scripture can you find this?) Yeshua died as an enemy of the State. This philosophical religion that you describe is completely unrelated to what was demonstrated by Yeshua. He lived and spoke amongst the common people. He gave parables that related mainly to fishing, farming, and analogies that common folk could relate to. He did not theorize; he healed and fed people physically and spiritually. He united a disjointed people; he showed them a better way to live and the way towards unity. If people truly followed this WAY, there would not be a 34.6% dropout rate. If people followed this WAY, there would not be a 1 in 100 incarceration rate. If people followed this WAY, people would not give Yahweh 3 hours a week and the television set and its Satanic values 30 hours+ a week. Please read “Jesus for President” by Shane Claiborne. Please continue to search for the truth after that. What is popularized as truth in the Christian community is PROPAGANDA!