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YahwehMonday, April 5, 2004
John 8:51-59 No wonder John's first chapter is full of cosmology that places Jesus at the beginning, "with God." No wonder even that he writes that Jesus "was God." Jesus said so, and the events of his life did not disprove his assertion. In Jesus' time every Jew had to decide whether or not he believed Jesus. In our time every Christian has to decide the same thing. For me, growing up in the Lutheran church, the questions came in my 20's. After a two-year introduction to Rev. Moon's Unification Church theology, I was convinced that Christians had it wrong, that I had been wrong all my life. Jesus was not God. The Bible begs to differ, in John, in Hebrews ... but then, it takes an act of faith to accept the Bible as truth. As Rev. Moon said, the Bible is a "textbook" of truth, not truth itself. Jesus himself said (according to the Bible), "I am the truth" (John 14:6). And what about the stories of the sun going backward, and the men who lived nearly a thousand years, and the earth being created in seven days. And so on. What about Jesus calling himself God? I left Rev. Moon's community, but I didn't leave my beliefs. On a snowy January Friday I drove north for a Kogudus retreat, a Christian renewal weekend near Ottawa, Illinois. My father, mother, brother, sister had all attended one of these retreats and asked me to go too, now that I was home again. The group met back in the woods in a cabin, and as the music started the snow began to fall. It fell all night. The next day we were snowed in. After more music and talks about God, I went for an afternoon walk. My decision was made in the winter woods. It wasn't simply logical, it wasn't simply emotional, but it was simple. I walked into the woods convinced that Jesus was not God, and I walked out of the woods certain that he was. In the twenty-two years since, nothing has shaken that conviction. I'm glad to have a "foundational moment" like that; I know not everyone does. I also know that kind of personal encounter with Jesus is something to pray for, to ask for. It can happen to a five year old, a fifty year old, a hundred year old...we are all children. And it changes everything.
Search me, O God, and know my heart; |
What's with the bad grammar? Jesus calls himself by the name Yahweh, translated "I am," which God called himself in a conversation with Moses (see Exodus 3:14). To the Jews, who try to stone him because they are offended by what they think is blasphemy, Jesus is saying that he is God.