JESUS, SON OF MARY;CHRIST, SON OF GOD by jonahA study of our Christian tradition discloses that Jesus, the son of Mary, experienced God as Abba. What Abba meant to him is evident in his teaching. For him Abba was a loving, compassionate, provident parent. The focus of his preaching, however, was Abba’s kingdom on earth. His image of the kingdom evolved out of his experience of God as a loving, compassionate, and provident parent. This kingdom was not ruled by a despot or a monarch but by a benevolent parent. His was not a kingdom of domination but of cooperation. Those who exercised leadership in his kingdom were servants and not rulers. The focus of his disciples’ religion became Jesus himself. With the passing of time, as the community of believers increased, many who joined their ranks, such as Paul, had never known Jesus, the son of Mary. They began to see Jesus with the eyes of faith. Their image of him grew from Christ, to Savior, to the Word, to God the second person of the Blessed Trinity. Their perceptions of Jesus penetrated deeper than the flesh. They started to see into his soul and Spirit. And even further, through their reflections they became more deeply aware of their own inner realities and started to project these onto Jesus as the Christ. Thus, Jesus became more than the son of Mary. He became not only a revelation of the Divine reality of Abba, but he also became a revelation—a reflecting mirror of their own humanity. And so within their own humanity, they discovered the Christ, the Word, the presence of God. The very nature of projection is that it is unconscious. When we project, we are not aware that we are projecting. The question of whether Jesus was human or divine was widely debated throughout the first centuries of Christianity. The debate concluded that he was both divine and human. How this could be was difficult to understand and was considered simply one of the mysteries of Christianity. To deny either his divinity or his humanity was considered heresy. At a subconscious level, however, the debated centered on not only the meaning of Divinity, but also on the meaning of humanity. The question was not only how can God become man, but also how can man become God. What does it mean to be God? What does it mean to be human? This debate continues; it has never been concluded. At the devotional level, the humanity of Jesus is generally repressed. Devotionally, Jesus is God. Period. End of discussion. Thus, for many Christians and perhaps even for most Christians, Jesus is their image of God. Implicitly his humanity is denied. A few crude examples will illustrate this point. That Jesus ate and slept; that he experienced anger, sadness and fear are evident from the New Testament. In the past, theologians were often hard pressed to explain these things. Moreover, practicing Christians generally would be greatly upset if they were asked whether Jesus had to defecate or urinate. They would be even more disturbed if they were asked whether the man Jesus could experience passion for a woman. Could he have an erection? There is a very old legend that Jesus married and fathered a daughter, that to this very day, he has direct descendents in southern France. For most Christians, this is unthinkable. Why? It’s only a legend but is there here, in these objections of the pious, an implicit denial that Jesus was human? Are defecating and urinating inhuman acts? Is the attraction between the sexes inhuman? Is the act of intercourse inhuman? The present teaching is that Jesus was human in all ways, but without sin. Are these human acts sinful? On the other hand, enlightened and sophisticated men and women of the world are often amused by the Christians’ insistence that Jesus was God. He may have been a prophet, a faith-healer, a holy man but God….? This is pure and simple superstition. So they would say. They find it difficult to understand how an educated person could give any credence to such fairy tales. Perhaps now is the time to recognize and acknowledge what really is going on here. Are we asking whether it’s possible for God to be man? Or are we asking whether it is possible for man to be God? Is it possible that God is at the very core of our human nature? Is it possible that from the very moment of our conception we are children of God? Have we been projecting onto Jesus the God Reality at the very core of our humanity? Is it because we are both human and divine, flesh and Spirit, that we have come to recognize divinity in Jesus’ humanity? When we deny that Jesus was human are we denying the divine reality at the core of our own being? The Apostles and Jewish disciples of Jesus reflected upon Jesus in terms of the Jewish Scriptures. The Greeks reflected upon Jesus in terms of their philosophy. Philosophically, they struggled to explain how he could be both human and divine. Both the Jewish and the Greek points of view were truthful but limited. To reflect upon Jesus in terms of psychology also produces insights that are truthful from that limited point of view. Such reflections advance us not only in our understanding of who Jesus was but also in our understanding of who we are, namely, God’s children. You must see what great love the Father has lavished on us by letting us be called God’s children—which is what we are! [1 John 3: 1] posted by Jonah 3:14 PM . . .
