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Needed Wisdom from the Far East (Wed Jul 7, 2004 4:33 pm)
"When I ponder Jesus, I see a man of his time and place,
unafraid of challenging his peers, indeed, anyone who heard
him, to a more mature faith, faith in a nurturing God, not a
despot enforcer. Jesus was not put to death because he was a
nice guy.
Jesus went around telling even the most illiterate
peasants, no one can tell you what is right for you but you.
You must do the choosing. He was surely not afraid of allowing
people to think for themselves. Indeed he fought ideologically
the religious establishment of his day who were in collusion
with the political establishment precisely on this point of
mind and thought control and other kinds of violence to the
human spirit.
Jesus was a master at situating the heart of his Jewish
tradition into the daily lives of his people because he had
done it in his own life as well. He talked of oil and leaven
and lost coins and found sheep and made the tradition live. He
was indeed truly human, another thing the establishments of
his day would not forgive him for.
Jesus criticized twists that were being put onto the
Jewish scriptures which he understood were never intended in
their origins. He stood in the tradition of the Rabbi Hillel
whose approach to Jewish living and the scriptures on which it
was based has been described as "elastic". Jesus did not adopt
the literal approach of the Rabbi Shammai which positions were
tying people up in knots.
Of this we can be sure, Jesus did nothing to reinforce the
status quo of his time. He was constantly among the rank and
file of his people working to change their minds and hearts,
to give them the true freedom that he believed his Abba wanted
for them. Jesus died rather than back down on his belief that
God's nature is loving kindness and God's purpose is a just
and compassionate world, right here, right now, not "pie in
the sky by and by".
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