The Form of Words: Defining Mankind’s Elevation and Unity with God
Did Jesus intend for his followers to worship him or just worship the Father in Heaven? Putting such a question to the Church of Rome today would be considered absurd and borderline heretical I have no doubt, and yet it is this point of Christ’s divinity that has troubled me. Can it be that a flesh and blood man be the offspring of God? Or was Christ ordained God’s ‘chosen’ son, in as much as the People of Israel were declared God’s chosen people?
Was Christ King of the Jews? He certainly could have been with his lineage, he was descended from Jewish kings we are told.
Did Jesus ever say, or more to the point, was it ever recorded that he said: “I am God’s son”? I’ve read the Gospels as a requirement for my Humanities courses in college; I do not recall Jesus being that specific. He did talk to “his” Father in Heaven, but do we not all at one point or another have the need to talk to Our Father in Heaven. Did Jesus straddle that middle ground between the unseen, brilliant Light of God and the base, grimy human mass of hopeful suffering folk? Did Jesus, for that instance, unite the worldly and the heavenly for a brief flickering instant? Or was he just a learned teacher and revolutionary who recognized the need for reform within the Jewish religious establishment and sacrificed himself to the cause as so many revolutionaries have in our own time sacrificed for their own cause?
I put these questions to all of you to ponder, consider, ask your own questions, research and try to find an answer that satisfies that which is in you which prompts you to ask, which I can only describe as ‘God’s divine breath’ that resides in every human being.
Through this discussion I also wish to bring down barriers that have long divided people who essentially believe in the same God but who choose different paths to reach Him, who pray in a different tongue, who call Him by different names. The primary disagreement in theology between the mainstream Christian view of Jesus Christ and that espoused by Muslims is the divinity of Jesus as ‘son of God’. In Islam God cannot procreate nor does he have any children, in the physical sense. In fact it is a disagreement that does not challenge any of the teachings of Christ per se but challenges the form of words used to describe him by the Apostles and most modern day Christians.
We forget that in Jesus’ time the descriptive ‘son of God’ did not refer to the offspring of the divine Lord in the physical sense, but was used to describe a righteous man and teacher blessed by God and preferred from among all ‘His children’. Let us not forget that all of us are God’s children. God loves sinners, as we all are (God only knows the extent of my sin, His love and patience sustains me) because sinners need more care and attention from Him and yes sometimes correction to follow the path of righteousness. God is love and God loves us all equally, but when He loves one more than the rest, and elevates that One, that One is described then as ‘son of God,’ as ‘the One’, but not God the Father because there can only be one heavenly Father, or so I deduce.
So in essence all the Prophets and Saints are ‘sons of God’. It is only a human requirement that there should be a hierarchy in heaven as there is on Earth, The Father as Chairman of the Board, Jesus Christ as CEO, the Virgin Mary as Assistant General Manager, and all the saints and apostles as middle managers with the Pope as Earthly branch manager.
If you look at Christ’s teachings, he always wished to elevate mankind to meet God, in this world and the next. Are we in the Kingdom of Heaven? I have no doubt that some good sons and daughters already are, even as they are still on Earth. In heaven’s corporation there are two distinctions, those close to the Lord who become one with the Lord and those who have strayed from His path and will be judged upon the last day.
“But Jesus remained silent. And the high priest said to him, ‘I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.’ Jesus said to him, ‘You have said so. But I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven’,” from the Gospel of Mathew, 26:63 – 64.
How clear does the One have to be: the Son of Man will be elevated, will become divine, kings and paupers becoming One with God the Father. All barriers and fetters of Earthly matter will dissolve, and mankind will take its place in Heaven, led out of darkness and misery by the One, Jesus Christ, whose birth in winter is not a birth of a child as much as it is the rebirth of mankind into the Light.
In this blessed season, talking too much of Kings creates an image in our minds of golden, bejeweled crowns and fluffy cotton candy clouds crowded with saints and apostles worshiping the divine. In truth, ‘we shall all be changed, in an instant.’ At that point, all the vanity of our mortal selves will appear so irrelevant, prideful, and even pompous that the vainest among us will seek in futility a heavenly fig leaf to cover our spiritual nakedness.
Life on Earth is a journey, a test, but also an enjoyment, a tour of pleasures and that is meant for us to enjoy. But, we must never forget the divine in us, our better half. Satan will tempt us and we will stumble and fall, but we should never loose sight of God and never doubt His capacity to forgive us and we must lift ourselves up again.
So in conclusion, we are children of light, of a merciful loving Almighty God, let us live up to that in our daily lives. We may fail at first, but let us keep trying, we are mortal and imperfect, but our struggle to reach perfection is what ennobles us.
Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night, may the New Year be filled with God’s blessings and mercy for all His children. Amen
Was Christ King of the Jews? He certainly could have been with his lineage, he was descended from Jewish kings we are told.
Did Jesus ever say, or more to the point, was it ever recorded that he said: “I am God’s son”? I’ve read the Gospels as a requirement for my Humanities courses in college; I do not recall Jesus being that specific. He did talk to “his” Father in Heaven, but do we not all at one point or another have the need to talk to Our Father in Heaven. Did Jesus straddle that middle ground between the unseen, brilliant Light of God and the base, grimy human mass of hopeful suffering folk? Did Jesus, for that instance, unite the worldly and the heavenly for a brief flickering instant? Or was he just a learned teacher and revolutionary who recognized the need for reform within the Jewish religious establishment and sacrificed himself to the cause as so many revolutionaries have in our own time sacrificed for their own cause?
I put these questions to all of you to ponder, consider, ask your own questions, research and try to find an answer that satisfies that which is in you which prompts you to ask, which I can only describe as ‘God’s divine breath’ that resides in every human being.
Through this discussion I also wish to bring down barriers that have long divided people who essentially believe in the same God but who choose different paths to reach Him, who pray in a different tongue, who call Him by different names. The primary disagreement in theology between the mainstream Christian view of Jesus Christ and that espoused by Muslims is the divinity of Jesus as ‘son of God’. In Islam God cannot procreate nor does he have any children, in the physical sense. In fact it is a disagreement that does not challenge any of the teachings of Christ per se but challenges the form of words used to describe him by the Apostles and most modern day Christians.
We forget that in Jesus’ time the descriptive ‘son of God’ did not refer to the offspring of the divine Lord in the physical sense, but was used to describe a righteous man and teacher blessed by God and preferred from among all ‘His children’. Let us not forget that all of us are God’s children. God loves sinners, as we all are (God only knows the extent of my sin, His love and patience sustains me) because sinners need more care and attention from Him and yes sometimes correction to follow the path of righteousness. God is love and God loves us all equally, but when He loves one more than the rest, and elevates that One, that One is described then as ‘son of God,’ as ‘the One’, but not God the Father because there can only be one heavenly Father, or so I deduce.
So in essence all the Prophets and Saints are ‘sons of God’. It is only a human requirement that there should be a hierarchy in heaven as there is on Earth, The Father as Chairman of the Board, Jesus Christ as CEO, the Virgin Mary as Assistant General Manager, and all the saints and apostles as middle managers with the Pope as Earthly branch manager.
If you look at Christ’s teachings, he always wished to elevate mankind to meet God, in this world and the next. Are we in the Kingdom of Heaven? I have no doubt that some good sons and daughters already are, even as they are still on Earth. In heaven’s corporation there are two distinctions, those close to the Lord who become one with the Lord and those who have strayed from His path and will be judged upon the last day.
“But Jesus remained silent. And the high priest said to him, ‘I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.’ Jesus said to him, ‘You have said so. But I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven’,” from the Gospel of Mathew, 26:63 – 64.
How clear does the One have to be: the Son of Man will be elevated, will become divine, kings and paupers becoming One with God the Father. All barriers and fetters of Earthly matter will dissolve, and mankind will take its place in Heaven, led out of darkness and misery by the One, Jesus Christ, whose birth in winter is not a birth of a child as much as it is the rebirth of mankind into the Light.
In this blessed season, talking too much of Kings creates an image in our minds of golden, bejeweled crowns and fluffy cotton candy clouds crowded with saints and apostles worshiping the divine. In truth, ‘we shall all be changed, in an instant.’ At that point, all the vanity of our mortal selves will appear so irrelevant, prideful, and even pompous that the vainest among us will seek in futility a heavenly fig leaf to cover our spiritual nakedness.
Life on Earth is a journey, a test, but also an enjoyment, a tour of pleasures and that is meant for us to enjoy. But, we must never forget the divine in us, our better half. Satan will tempt us and we will stumble and fall, but we should never loose sight of God and never doubt His capacity to forgive us and we must lift ourselves up again.
So in conclusion, we are children of light, of a merciful loving Almighty God, let us live up to that in our daily lives. We may fail at first, but let us keep trying, we are mortal and imperfect, but our struggle to reach perfection is what ennobles us.
Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night, may the New Year be filled with God’s blessings and mercy for all His children. Amen
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