Tag Archives: Jesus

  • holy_family_icon

    Raising Jesus and Original Sin

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    I have this theory about how it was that Jesus came to be born without sin and it is just that – a theory. But I thought I’d share it with y’all because it has real implications for those of us who are or will be parents. Traditionally, it has been taught that Jesus was born without sin because he was conceived without sex. Because somehow it seems, the act of sex by our parents mysteriously implants this dark stain of sin on us at conception. While there is a verse in Psalm 51 which can be read to confirm this view, I personally find the idea that my parents having sex to conceive me made me sinful unreasonable and unconvincing.

    Sex is a good thing. God told Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply. Sex allows the two to become one – to reach past ourselves into another. It brings joy and satisfaction into our lives. It is the means by which we bring forth life and become co-creators with God. It can be misused, to be sure, but how could something which is fundamentally a good also be the thing which stains us before we even have true being? Not to mention that the mechanics of how something my parents did when I wasn’t even there made me bad are problematic.

    I don’t think that Jesus’ lack of sin had its roots in the way he was conceived. Rather, my theory is that his lack of sin came about due to something far less mystical and more practical – from his parents. Mary and Joseph had been told prior to Jesus’ birth that this child would be the messiah. Which means that before he was even born, his parents understood that Jesus was good, holy and anointed. Don’t you suppose that this knowledge influenced the way that they parented?

    Orthodox Christianity teaches that Jesus was both fully man and fully God. But most Christians tend to give short shrift to the idea that Jesus was fully man. Rather, they seem to think of him as just playing at being human. He resided in a human body, sure, but otherwise, he was God. However, I think that unless Jesus had fully entered into the experience of being human – with all of its confusion, limitations and struggles – then he could not have been fully human. If he was born understanding why he was here and what he was supposed to do, he wasn’t fully human. If he arrived not needing to be instructed, not having to struggle with self-mastery, not being shaped by the culture and people around him, then he wasn’t fully human.

    We know nothing about Jesus as a child, but certainly he must have cried as an infant. He probably got frustrated and lost his temper as a toddler. Maybe he showed off his ability to burp the Hebrew alphabet to relatives. Or pulled the goat’s tail. Spilt things. At the wedding in Cana when Mary tells him to help out with the wine situation, Jesus responds, “woman, it is not yet my time.” It makes me wonder if he wasn’t teasing Mary about all the times while growing up that she’d told him not to use his supernatural abilities because “it’s not yet your time.” Then there was the time when Jesus was 12 when he stayed behind in the temple while his family headed back towards home. If I had done that, my parents would have killed me. And telling them that I had to be “in my father’s house” would NOT have gotten me off the hook.

    The reason I say that I think it was Jesus’ parents who were responsible for him being born without sin is because knowing that their son was good, they would have responded to his normal childish behaviors differently than those of us who believe we are parenting children born sinful. Perhaps this allowed them to see immaturity as immaturity rather than as a sign of sin. Perhaps this allowed them to see errors in judgment as simple mistakes rather than rebellion or willfulness. And perhaps this different perspective allowed them to avoid passing on their own brokenness.

    I’m not in the least claiming that Mary and Joseph were perfect parents and that is why Jesus was perfect. Parents don’t actually have that must power over their children anyways. But the older I get and the more I work through my own struggles, the more I realize how damaging the message that there is something wrong with me has been.

    When we reflect back to kids that their immaturity is sinful, we make normal growth and maturing a painful process of being wrong and bad. When we reflect a lack of judgment as rebellion, sin and willfulness, we similarly stunt their ability to grow while also undermining their trust in their own judgment. If we reject manifestations of their personality – playfulness, shyness, curiosity, determination – as sinful rudeness, withdrawal, impertinence or stubbornness, we teach them to reject the very tools God has given them to work with in life. And I do wonder if perhaps, working with the assumption that their son was good, Mary and Joseph avoided falling into these all too common parenting errors.

    Of course, Jesus was God. You and I and our children are not. Yet, it seems to me that as people who have been redeemed from the wages of sin through the work of Christ, we ought to adjust our own parenting accordingly. Our kids are not God, but they are made in the image of God. This and not sin is their true identity. So perhaps if we start where Mary and Joseph started – with the assumption of their child’s goodness – we won’t pass so much of our own brokenness onto our own children. Certainly, we’ll do it imperfectly and our own children, not being God, will no doubt actually sin. But if they in turn parent their own children with the assumption of their goodness and pass on less of their own brokenness, we’ll start to look less and less like what we have been and more and more like Christ.

  • transfiguration

    The Transfiguration and Being Known

    June 24, 2012

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    One of the things I have become fascinated with over the last few years is the experience of Jesus. Hebrews 2:17-18 says:

    For this reason [Jesus] had to be made like his brothers in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

    I don’t think many Christians understand the full implications of this. Too many of us have this idea of Jesus as super-human. A Jesus who just knew everything – never had to figure anything out, never struggled with doubt, never had to work to forgive, never wondered what his purpose was - in other words a Jesus who doesn’t actually share in our struggles. Continue reading »

  • jesusthomasdoubt[1]

    The Sacrifice of Jesus and the Prodigal Son

    May 24, 2012

    11 Comments

    So, a couple of days ago I laid out my argument as to why the idea that God demanded the blood sacrifice of his son for the forgiveness of sins is an error. (If you missed it, you should go read that post before continuing with this one: Did God Really Demand the Death of His Son for the Forgiveness of Sin?) Today I further elaborate my explanation/argument for a better understanding of what happened and why.

    The writings of the New Testament draw a very clear line from the animal sacrifices used to atone for sins practiced by the Jews and the death of Jesus on the cross. For example, Ephesians 1:7 says that we have “redemption by his blood”. Revelation 7:11 says of the saints “they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” However, in a rather complicated passage from Hebrews explaining why the death of Jesus was more perfect and more complete than the sacrifices which were offered by the priests in the temple for the forgiveness of sins, Paul refers back to Psalm 40 which makes the reality of sacrifice clear: “Sacrifice and offering you do not want; but ears open to obedience you gave me. Holocausts and sin-offerings you do not require; so I said, ‘Here I am . . . To do your will is my delight.’” And at the risk of offending my Catholic friends who hold the doctrine of transubstantiation*, Jesus further distances the will of God from the desire for blood by declaring that the wine and bread of the Passover and communion meals were metaphorically his blood and body. Since none of the disciples commented on the strange, metallic taste of the drink he gave them or the sweet, porky taste of the bread, I think we can assume that the wine and bread remained wine and bread and the need for actual blood is done. Again, the need for the human ritual portion of the relationship between God and man was complete and the God-given portion now emerges cleaner and clearer than before. Continue reading »

  • XIR71742

    Did God Really Demand the Death of His Son as a Sacrifice for Sin?

    May 22, 2012

    20 Comments

    One of the more poignant arguments against Christianity is that the Christian God demanded that his son be offered up as a human blood sacrifice in order for justice to be satisfied and forgiveness offered. In this view the Christian God is an angry, blood thirsty tyrant who must be sated before he becomes a loving father. Christians will of course argue that people who view the crucifixion this way are missing the point, don’t understand God’s righteous anger, are minimizing the need for justice, etc. However, I think that the real truth is that many Christians misunderstand the reasons for the crucifixion and our critics are simply making some pretty obvious observations about our own teachings regarding the propitiation of sins and the death of Jesus. I know that I’m treading on some pretty hallowed theological ground here, but if you’ll stick with me, I think you may find that my upside down world understanding of this issue is a better fit with reality than what many of us have been taught.

    Let’s start our discussion with the issue of blood sacrifice itself. The first thing to be noted is that blood sacrifice is not something which originated with the Hebrew God. It had been practiced for millennia prior and has occurred all over the world. It is a human invention. In his excellent book Ideas That Changed the World, Felipe Fernandez-Armesto offers the anthropological explanation for the pervasiveness of the practice of blood or animal sacrifice: Continue reading »

  • keep calm

    What to do when you wake up in hell

    October 31, 2011

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    Today, I want to share a bit more about a short story from my book The Upside Down World – A Book of Wisdom in Progress.  In the story, I imagine a conversation between the resurrected Jesus and one of his disciples when the question, “what was it like being dead?” gets asked.  From the story:

    As he stared into the fire in front of him, Jesus couldn’t help but wish he could  tell this disciple the whole story.  That he had woken up dead and not in paradise as he’d promised the thief who had hung next to him.  How instead of the joyous return home to his father that he had been expecting, he found himself in Sheol.  Just like everybody else. And God was nowhere to be seen.  This was what the people following him weren’t ready to understand – how very human Jesus’ experience was.  How for moments that felt like eternity he had despaired at finding himself dead with all the other souls that had come before him.  This was not the reward he had suffered so much for.

    The story then goes on to describe the harrowing of hell from Jesus’ perspective with this pivotal moment:

    “This cannot be.  It just can’t.  Not any longer.”  He could hardly explain where it came from.  He just knew that after many long years of learning to love God and live God while walking the earth, even in hell, his heart could not let go of the hope that was his in God.

    So Jesus did just what he had promised the Pharisees that the rocks would do if no one else would – he began to shout out  worship to God.

    In the end, what he tells his disciple is this:

    Jesus looked towards him and spoke quietly but firmly, “I descended into the world of the dead and preached the good news of my Father there.  Those souls that would follow were rescued from the darkness and lead to their reward in God’s kingdom.”

    The disciple nodded slowly, trying to process all that this meant.  He got the jist of it – that Jesus could save even the dead.  Jesus knew that although his disciple didn’t understand it in full, the seed had been planted.  It was what he and every other follower who would come after him would need to know in order to survive: if you find yourself in hell, keep going.

    This story is pretty special to me.  I wrote it specifically for the book after the manuscript was pretty much done.  It just came to me and I felt compelled to put it in.  And in the months that have followed, I have thought of its message more than once.  Which is true of many of the things I write.  When I write something, I would love for other people to find some sort of comfort, inspiration, or thought provoking idea in it.  But its not completely alturistic.  I often find myself depending on things I write during difficult times as well.

    As I have mentioned before, I have a toddler named Olivia.  Olivia has always approached sleep the way most people approach death; they aren’t exactly sure why, but they are going to fight with all their might to avoid it for as long as they can.  For most of her life, we had to put her to sleep by holding her down, while also holding her hands (she pinches!) and keeping her from moving her head (she also bites!).  But in the last few months, I have been able to get her to go to sleep at night by holding her and singing to her.  I have a few hymns that I usually sing to her to put her to sleep, but there have been times when I have been so discouraged that singing a hymn was the last thing I wanted to do.  I remember one night I tried to think of other songs to sing her and was alarmed to discover that for some reason I couldn’t seem to remember the words to any non-Christian song I know.  So, some nights I think of this story and think of Jesus overcoming his despair to praise God – even in hell – and I sing the hymns that put my baby to sleep for the night.  Some nights, the words would barely come out and I just croaked them the best that I could and hoped that maybe just repeating them in the middle of my despair would count for something.  Jesus’ example gives me hope that they do.

    If you like the things I write here or found this story interesting or intriguing in any way, I hope you will consider purchasing a copy of my book, The Upside Down World.  It’s an ecclectic collection of essays, short stories, poetry, ideas, spiritual memoir and more.  In it are many of the things I have written that I personally go back to for inspiration and comfort when I need it.  The book can be purchased on Amazon.  I am also offering a buy-one-give-one deal on full price copies of the book ($12 plus $2 shipping) ordered directly from me.  For each copy of the book purchased directly from me, I will donate a copy to Transport for Christ or Freedom Works Prison Fellowship.  These are two local groups who have agreed to give copies of the book free of charge to people they minister to.  If you are interested in the buy-one-give-one offer, please email me at ratrotter73@yahoo.com with “b1g1″ in the message.

  • beautifuloutlaw

    Beautiful Outlaw by John Eldredge

    September 14, 2011

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    This may sound odd coming from someone who writes and thinks about Christianity as much as I do, but I rarely read Christian books.  I don’t even visit Christian sights and blogs anymore.   Most of what’s out there is just the same thing over and over or people arguing with each other.  So its not usually worth my time.  The one current author who is, in my opinion, a huge exception to this is John Eldredge.  It’s not because I agree with everything he writes or think he’s the best writer ever (I don’t and he’s good, but not that good).  It’s because he has this compelling view of Christianity and God and humanity and what is going on and what it’s all about that really resonates with my own understanding.

    Because of this perspective, Eldredge is one of the few writers out there who can see and communicate how all of those things: Christianity, God, humanity, meaning and purpose – all work together.  I think that the key is that his perspective is so firmly embedded in both the physical and the spiritual worlds and he doesn’t try to twist one to make it fit the other as most writers do.  So he comfortably and un-apologetically uses movies and music and all the things we love to illustrate what love and faith and courage and struggle actually look like.  He’s not afraid to tangle with the messy reality of the real world like so many Christian leaders are and he takes flack for that.  And he does it without ever compromising the spiritual truths he is trying to explain.  At any rate, I really enjoy most of his work.  (If I could get every person to read one Christian book in their lives it would be his book Waking the Dead.)

    The reason I am bringing this up is because Mr. Eldredge has a new book coming out called Beautiful Outlaw.  From the product description:

    Reading the Gospels without knowing the personality of Jesus is like watching television with the sound turned off. The result is a dry, two dimensional person doing strange, undecipherable things.

    In BEAUTIFUL OUTLAW, John Eldredge removes the religious varnish to help readers discover stunning new insights into the humanity of Jesus. He was accused of breaking the law, keeping bad company, heavy drinking. Of being the devil himself. He was so compelling and dangerous they had to kill him. But others loved him passionately. He had a sense of humor. His generosity was scandalous. His anger made enemies tremble. He’d say the most outrageous things. He was definitely not the Jesus of the stained glass.

    The book is due out October 12 and can be pre-ordered on Amazon.

    Now, I am a fan of Eldredge and normally that would be enough for me to be happy to see the book coming out but it wouldn’t be enough for me to write a blog post about it.  The reason I am particularly interested in this book and I hope it does very well is because of an odd connection that came up between my book, The Upside Down World and Beautiful Outlaw.  For those who haven’t read it, The Upside Down World is an ecclectic (read odd) assortment of essays, poems, art, notes, spiritual memoir, stories and what not.  It contains a couple of essays from this blog, but mostly the material in it had been written over the course of many years.  I did have to clean up and finish a lot of what went into the book, but the basic material was created before the book was even an idea.  However, when I was nearly done preparing the book for print publication, I felt strongly lead to write a short story called “What to Do When You Wake Up In Hell” to include in the book.  It’s one of the things in the book that I’m most pleased with, actually.

    “What to Do When You Wake Up In Hell” is the imaginative telling of a disciple asking the resurrected Jesus what it was like to be dead.  In it, I describe what I imagine might be the internal dialogue of both the disciple and Jesus to illuminate what each person’s experience has been and how each of them thinks about what has happened.  (You will have to buy the book and read it to get the detail; I can’t begin to do the story justice here.)  So, the day after I finished writing this section and had just re-read it and decided that I was pleased with how it came out, I happened to find a months old, unopened newsletter from Ransomed Heart, Eldredge’s ministry.  I opened it up and read about this upcoming book Beautiful Outlaw which I had not heard about before.  The letter contained an excerpt from the book and in that excerpt, I could see that Eldredge was doing exactly what I had just done with my short story.  He’s putting flesh and bones and reality back into stories that we all know, but which have lost much of their power to over-use, shallow reading, the bible’s oddly flat descriptions and so on.  And even better, the person of Jesus he’s describing is very familiar to me.  It fits with what I know and have experienced and best of all its real.  I’m mean, there’s a chapter in the book that’s called “Jesus had poopie dieapers” or something like that.  The Jesus he is talking about and which I also had in mind when I wrote that story is not some sanitized, Sunday-school approved two dimensional character, but a real personality.

    Those of you who know me personally know what a difficult summer this has been for me.  But all along the way, God has been dropping little hints like pebbles left to mark the trail He wants me to follow, telling me that I’m going the right way and that He hasn’t abandoned me – no matter what it looks like from the outside.  Reading that newsletter about the book Beautiful Outlaw was one of those pebbles for me.  I don’t think it’s a co-incidence that Eldredge has a vision and an understanding of the person of Jesus that is so close to my own.  I think it is God moving to reclaim the reality of who He is and what he and his son are about in a world which desperately needs something much more real than anything the church has had to offer for a long time.  And as much as I’d like to have my book be a financial success, seeing that God is moving and there are people like Mr. Eldredge listening and responding is even better.

    So, that’s why I’m excited enough about a book I haven’t even read yet to write about it here.  I hope that even if you aren’t the sort of person who normally reads Christian books, I’ve piqued your interest enough for you to consider putting your order in for Beautiful Outlaw.  And I most certainly hope you will order a copy of my book, The Upside Down World as well.  Come on, people – for every two copies of the book I sell, a 20 month old Trotter child will receive a week’s worth of diapers from Walmart.  It’s for a good cause!  lol.

    Here’s a trailer for the book Beautiful Outlaw.