This is a question for our times, and we need to ask Jesus: “Do you think you’re what they say you are?” We are discussing N.T. Wright’s book, Simply Jesus, and he points out the questions made by the 70s rock opera, Jesus Christ Superstar,[1] are “right and proper” questions. We’ve asked the questions of Jesus: Who are you? and What Have You Sacrificed? in earlier studies. This leaves: Jesus Christ! Superstar! Do You Think You’re What They Say You Are? which I interpret to mean: “Okay, we’ve asked and answered what the texts tell us who Jesus claims he is, and we’ve asked and answered what the texts conclude Jesus sacrificed. Now we’re asking if the texts, themselves, can be trusted. ‘Jesus, are you who they say you are?’”
What’s at stake is this. Jesus’ presence within a person’s heart (Luke 17:21) has many implications for the believer. Jesus is “disturbing but also healing, confronting but also comforting,” but in the final analysis is this experience real or is it a figment of my imagination? In other words, can the texts be trusted, or is it as Freud claimed: “just a projection of our inner desires?” Or, as Marx said, vis-à-vis “just a way of keeping the hungry masses quiet?” Or, finally, “Was Nietzsche right to say that Jesus taught a wimpish religion that has sapped the energy of humankind ever since?” Moreover, since these men are held in such high regard by many in our culture, are our modern atheists correct to say God is a delusion?
Who would have believed that a rock opera out of the early 70s could have created such a stir, or perhaps, more correctly stated, would have added so much fuel to the stir that has always been with us, but more in the periphery? Whatever the reason for the stir, and whoever is responsible for asking the questions, Tim Rice, Andrew Lloyd Webber or Richard Dawkins,[2] Christians are faced with a choice, stick one’s head in the sand and carry on as though the questions challenge nothing, or we can listen to what is asked of us and get busy hallowing the Lord in our hearts and earnestly provide an answer for any and every man who seeks a reason for the hope we have in our hearts (1Peter 3:15).
To be sure, not every brother and sister in Christ is able to answer such questions. There is a place for simple faith. Even the most educated among us, from time to time gets puzzled over questions asked about Jesus, but ignorance of a proper reply for a hard question about our faith, doesn’t mean one’s faith has been overthrown. I am able to trust in the innocence of a friend, who is accused of a terrible act, even if I have no proof of my friend’s innocence. I’m not compelled to say my friend is guilty, simply because I can’t prove he’s not. If I know my friend, and in that knowledge, I understand the act doesn’t fit, what I believe him capable of doing, then my faith is justified, personally. Similarly, so is my faith in Christ. Answers will not always be readily available, despite 1Peter 3:15. So, a hard and difficult question, which can’t be adequately addressed doesn’t necessarily mean my faith is a delusion. All that may be required is a little more investigation.
Jesus, himself, offered men a challenge, not simply believers, but his enemies, as well. He claimed, “If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. But, if I do, although you don’t believe me, believe the works, that you may know and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in him” (John 10:37-38). In other words, the works would speak for themselves, if Jesus is telling the truth. The context of his remarks to the Jewish authorities had to do with his miracles. As a man, he couldn’t do such great works, but that fact that he did perform miracles was evidence that God worked through him.
In the context of what this means for us today, Jesus told his disciples that he wouldn’t leave them comfortless; he would come to them and dwell with them (John 14:18-20; cp. Luke 17:21). If God dwells within me, then this should have an effect upon my life, especially how I behave. If this seems logical and true, consider what Paul claimed in his second letter to the Corinthians. He is speaking of the unbelief of the Jews, and likens their unbelief to a veil upon their hearts, so they’re unable to see, spiritually. However, if they turn to the Lord to seek him, the veil is removed, and they are led by the Spirit of the Lord, and with an open face beholding him like in a mirror, they are changed into that same image of the Christ they see, and this is done by the Spirit of Christ within them (2Corinthians 3:15-18).
Therefore, if I’ve done this, vis-à-vis if I’ve proved Jesus is working in my life, then I can trust the word of God, even the difficult things therein that are hard to accept. The reason I can trust God’s word, even the things hard to accept, which I’m unable to prove, is because I’m able to understand from the works of Christ in my life that he is telling the truth, according to his challenge directed to mankind in John 10:37-38. Past experience tells me that light eventually shines upon the difficult, veiled matters I don’t understand.
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[1] Jesus Christ Superstar a rock opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice (1970), played on Broadway in 1971, elsewhere in later years.
[2] Richard Dawkins is one of our more modern atheists, an evolutionary biologist and ethologist, who wrote: The God Delusion in 2006, in which he offers alternative explanations for the origins of both religion and morality.
Smoodock's Blog 
3 responses to “Are You Who They Say You Are?”
Hey Smoodock, it’s been a while, hope things are going well, I was
attempting to post this response to your latest post, but had some
difficulty logging into my old account. I’ll try again later, but I also
wanted to get this in this morning so I’m saving it into email…
How’s it going Smoodock, great question you posted here, methinks so?
I’ve always errored on the side of biblical infallibility, but recently realized that it’s a fallacy not worth the trouble to prove, so I stopped doing that. God promised that the original texts “were” perfectly written and given to mankind, but they no longer exist in this world; anyone insisting that they do are simply wrong about that, and that is easily proven.
I believe that Mark 16:9-20 should be sent to the burn heap and should never have been written anywhere near the words of God. Anyone that disagrees with me proves that OUR version of the Bible does contain ERRORS. A perfect bible cannot include this text and a perfect bible must contain this same text. A Bible that contains one error is not perfect and, using western logic, must contain many errors, no matter how small.
Selah. We all tried, IMHO, the Jewish scholars did very well at maintaining the integrity of the text [ that was their main job, and God delivered it directly to them ]. The New Testament came so suddenly, so unexpectedly, upon us that the message burst out in a much more fragmented and diversified way, it contains much more “noise” than the Old Testament does, in my humble opinion.
However, the “main message” is so boldly proclaimed in so many myriads of ways that a little noise simply does not matter, and is certainly not worth arguing so much about. Honestly, does anyone believe that a perfectly written bible would lead us to thousands of Christian organizations [ strictly a human concept ] arguing, many times beyond blood feud levels, literally killing each other over Theology, the study of God’s Word? I do not believe that. We frequently have fought tooth and nail about mouse nuts details that God cannot care about. I do not believe this is what God intended; we simply did what we always do, we messed it all up. Nonetheless, God delivered the message, whether we asked for, wanted it, or needed it, He did deliver it.
Us engineer types understand that our ability to measure and attempt to comprehend our world and everything in it, is quite limited by our current state of consciousness and our physical cameras, microphones, and speakers. Any record that is created or maintained by worldly means does contain “noise”, which we routinely accept and ignore in all of our calculations [ even our little robots are constrained by these hard limits ]. Even our Cloud of Babel will not last forever, but the original Word will, as promised.
In my opinion, the Bible needs to be read as a set of themes, abstract concepts, that shine through quite clearly to anyone that reads, or even just hears about them, hears about a God who has a Son and a Spirit that touches us all the time. For example, I recently meet a Thai Buddhist, raised in Thailand, has practiced Buddhism for a lifetime, but gets a lot of pressure to convert to some form of Christianity, from the local community. Who will win this hometown favorite, the Roman Catholics, the JW crew [ once a week they are the most outpouring ], not the protestants, those anti-catholics?
So, I asked the question, is Buddha alive today? Of course, Buddhism is alive and well and we are all happy with it. OK, but I asked, is Buddha, the person alive right now? No, he is dead, of course. Now you know the difference between these two great religions, Jesus is alive right now, and is sitting right here right now, with us. In my opinion, this is the ABC’s of God’s message to us. The Atheist can use reason to advance to a Buddhist mentality, there must be something out there let’s use our own intelligence to understand and control it. And the Buddhist can easily realize that it just won’t work, I’m going to die, maybe by tomorrow this may be my last day, they are so easily saved once they give up trying to outsmart God by saving themselves, and accept his Son, in exchange for eternal life; not so bad a deal, an easy yoke no less, for any Christian to have. A gift that must be accepted to be validated.
Asian culture is much more focused on calculating everything. I Ching is the perfect example of this, as is Japanese Steel and the Art of War by Sun Tzu; Buddha was the king of this attempt to build a tower to the heavens and perhaps to the gods themselves. He was not a bad guy at that time and I compare him to Nimrod in the west, also one of God’s favorites. Some folks insist that Christianity came through China, and in an abstract way it most certainly did. We all start out as Atheists, and most advance to some form of Buddhism; a personal study of the universe I was born into and will exit from some gloomy day. The Atheists and the Buddhist both believe that they will be dead someday, like dead dead.
God chooses the ones that will find the Son as the easiest and quickest way back to a cool relationship with our Father who Art in Heaven, they find Christianity. The ABCs of the religions. If you hear that one message, I can be alive forever, all I have to do is accept Christ, you are going to stop to ‘think” about it. And, if you did understand that very simple message, God did send it to you, individually, and it was meant for you, saved and on your way to Heaven, whatever that is? But alive is the part I heard about, I can learn more about Heaven later, when I need to, and I really don’t need to learn any more about Hell, so I just stopped studying those themes, I JUST DON’T CARE, you can hardly convert a Buddhist into a Christian by telling them about Hell, they already don’t believe in Hell [ dead is dead to an Atheist, right? ].
As a bonified Christian, I don’t really get to comment so much on the other religions. In my opinion, the original Catholic churches no longer exist today and the Roman Catholic Church is not Biblical in their Theology; as demonstrated by the thousands of Protestant churches that have protested against them; it all started with us Lutherans, the original anti-catholics. Jesus is absolutely, exactly, Whom He said He Was. Maybe he wasn’t who someone told you he was… Just sayin’ it happens in the heart, not within our old minds, a chance to trade our Buddhist mind for the Mind of Christ. That is a good trade and it is very Good News.
Have a great day Smoodock and please keep up the great work that you do,
-Samm
Greetings Gary (or is it Samm)? You had been using “Gary” in the past. The question is actually N.T. Wright’s from his book, Simply Jesus. I agree it is a good question.
My approach is to believe the text as it is. Copy errors are fairly easily found out, so, at least for me, it isn’t difficult to accept what’s there as a faithful copy of the original. Like I said, though, there are copy errors and those errors aren’t so difficult to find out. As for the ending of Mark, I accept it. No one has been able to show me a good reason to reject it.
I’m uncertain that I understand all your metaphors. That said, I believe we all did a decent job of accurately copying the text, whether Jews or Christians. A fairly accurate Bible has nothing to do with denominations within Christianity. Men erred and divided Christ. The word of God is God’s word; how we react to that is our own doing. You’re still hung up on all these denominations. You’ve been this way for years. Think of it this way. You don’t agree with some doctrines that are preached where you worship. Yet, you seem to be permitted to believe as you wish. That’s a good thing, right? Would you return the favor by demanding someone else believe exactly like you? Some folks believe a thing was so important that they separated and decided to organize their own club. That was wrong to do, but it’s done. The question remains: are we friendly or not? Are we brethren or not?
You’re all over the place, my friend. I’ll tell you what. I reply generally to this stuff, but if you wish me to reply to a specific point, make the point know and clear, okay?
I read the Bible and pray for direction, as that applies to what it all means. It’s a physical book, but it’s meaning is spiritual. I’m flesh and blood. I’m inclined to think like any other man, but the Spirit of God needs to direct my thinking for me to get it right. As for your Buddhist friend, peer pressure is there for all to face. If one knows what he believes and is able to defend it to his own satisfaction, that one will probably go on believing as always. Sometimes a good challenge offers a different perspective on a particular subject, but all challenges don’t end in a complete makeover.
If grown to see evangelism in a different light. I’m not concerned with who or how many reject Christ, they’re in the Lord’s hands, and I’m fine with that. Evangelism is more than preaching the Gospel. It has more to do with what one does than what one says. So, preaching Christ is one thing, and living Christ before men is quite another (WWJD). The one without the other is not Christianity. As for the Buddhist who rejects Christ, did you ever read Matthew 25:31 to the end? Those folks don’t know Christ and aren’t aware of any of his commands. Think about that for a while, and let me know what you come up with.
There is no church today, Catholic or Protestant who acts, evangelizes or worships like the original churches of the first century AD. What would that look like? Do you know? That said, I try not to judge what others do or say in the name of the Lord. To their own Master they’ll stand or fall, and the Lord is able to make them stand. If I don’t do exactly like the original churches, how can I judge other folks for not doing exactly like the original churches?
Good to hear from you once again, Gary/Samm. Lord bless you.