What Did Jesus Teach? | PART 1: INTRODUCTION

 

As you’ll know if you’ve spent any time on my Blogger profile, I have many interests outside anime and video games. I’m also deeply interested in philosophy, psychology, and religion. In particular, I’m absolutely fascinated by the Bible and church history, as I’m a devoted Christian myself.

Today, I was trying to compare Calvinism and Arminianism—the two major branches of theology in the Protestant churches.

My own pastor is a hardcore Reformed Christian (which I’ve learned is the nice way of saying “Calvinist”). Meanwhile, I’m more of a Wesleyan in my thinking, so I identify as an Arminian. We had butted heads during a recent luncheon together. Not to say we were evenly matched—my pastor is a powerful intellectual, and it was quite clear the entire time that I was well out of my depth. Fortunately for me, he is also quite gracious, and doesn’t require that I share his theological position, despite my being on the church’s payroll as a musician.

Ever since our stimulating talk, my mind has been churning with responses to his words, which lingered like echos in my memory for some time. It’s always deeply disturbing to face a strong belief system so radically different from my own, because it threatens to throw the foundations of my entire life into question. Still, I see it as a profoundly important exercise, as it’s good to be made uncomfortable once in a while.

But as I was reading encyclopedia articles on Arminian and Reformed theology, I happened to find a list of prominent Arminian authors. It was reassuring to see that most of the Christian writers I knew and respected were on that list. This got me curious about some specific authors I’ve read and what their theological positions are. So I decided to try and find out if George MacDonald, my favorite Christian author, identified as an Arminian.

In the information I found, I read that MacDonald had a very strict Calvinist upbringing and took issue with many of Calvinism’s statements and implications. I knew this already, of course. But I couldn’t find anything suggesting MacDonald knew what Arminianism was, or that he followed it as an alternative to Calvinism.

But then, that does make sense—overall, MacDonald had only slightly more in common with figures like Wesley and Moody than with Reformed Christians. He seems to be in a category of his own, as his more radical beliefs suggest.

At this point, I had forgotten my search for insight into Calvinism and Arminianism. Instead, as I read quotations from MacDonald’s writings and the grateful remarks other Christians have made about him, I found myself experiencing the serene feeling I always get from reading MacDonald’s works myself.

His conviction of God’s infinite love notwithstanding, MacDonald is not always an easy person to learn from. He holds followers of Christ to a radically high standard of love and moral conduct. He even taught that to have more money or possessions than you need should be looked upon as suspect (as someone who likes to collect books, toys, and anything else I find beautiful, that’s not a fun rule!).

But there’s one thing that sets MacDonald apart—one beautiful difference—from such dark, moralistic writers as A. W. Tozer and Charles Finney: his profound explorations and descriptions of the goodness and beauty of God.

Other conservative Christians portray God as something truly awful—not so much forgiving as vindictive. Even salvation, from their points of view, seems less like a gift than an obligation; not a blessing so much as a necessary evil.

MacDonald has no more tolerance for sin than these other authors. But unlike them, he matches this strictness with divine awe at God’s love and glory. In MacDonald’s books, God is undeniably good—undeniably merciful—undeniably fatherlike. On the other hand, most Christians seem to see God as a phantom monster, eager to devour the world before too many escape His righteous wrath into the reluctant arms of Christ.

As I thought of all this—as I was once again focusing on the Christ that I loved, and not the theologies that I quite frankly hated—I realized with some sadness that I don’t feel like I’m all that Christ would want me to be. Of course, salvation is by grace through faith, as dear old Luther taught us. Still, when you love someone, you naturally want to please him if you can. And when you believe that someone taught the truth, it’s undeniably in your best interests to do as he said.

And that gave me an idea: why not study the words of Christ themselves, for myself, and try to identify His specific instructions for life? Of course, not knowing ancient Greek or Hebrew would be a handicap. But I could still study breakdowns and direct translations of the texts from qualified scholars to help me grasp their nuance.

I suspect that the feelings of inadequacy I experience when I think of Christ are merely the remains of my harsh evangelical upbringing. As a child and young adult, nothing I ever did seemed sufficient—I seemed incapable of doing enough good and avoiding sin completely. My parents were firm Wesleyans and members of the Nazarene Church, so they believed in the idea of Christian perfection—basically, that Christians can and must live literally sinless lives, or risk falling from grace. My brothers didn’t seem to mind this strict environment as much (they seemed to do as they pleased, no matter what our parents wanted of them). But I was a sensitive and anxious child who desperately wanted to please his parents, and my inability to do so has left me with a feeling of abject sadness that’s never really gone away.

However, my thinking (and my sense of morality) has changed considerably since then. Although I still believe a Christian should live without sin, I now see sin not as something pleasurable, but as that which kills—that which causes evident harm. As such, I no longer impose the arbitrary rules evangelicals typically hold despite their arguable absence from the Bible. So even today, though I’m a very progressive and laid-back person compared to my family, I still hold myself to a high standard in that I don’t tolerate selfish or unkind thoughts or behavior from myself. I simply hold a slightly different definition of right and wrong.

Although I’ve been very pragmatic in determining right from wrong for myself, I’ve also been careful to compare my conclusions with what the scriptures say—if not what they say outright, what they seem to say between the lines—and so my conclusions, I think, are both biblical and practical. And that’s precisely what we should expect if we have found the truth about something. If the Bible is true, then what is says ought to be effective and practical; a fair, orderly God wouldn’t create unreasonable or arbitrary rules.

Still, there’s always the possibility that I could be wrong. People believe what they want to believe, and I am certainly no exception. So perhaps I’ve drawn my conclusions, not based on what is truly right and honest, but based on what I’m unwilling to sacrifice.

In any case, it can’t hurt to rigorously reinvestigate the teachings of the founder of my faith. After all, studying the Bible is—to my mind—less about “finding out” things and more about listening for God’s voice, which speaks to us through the scriptures, and never says exactly the same thing twice or to different people. (That’s one reason I dispensed with theology long ago—there can be no exact science in the realm of mysticism, symbolism, and the infinite, and all attempts to weave a precise model of reality regarding transcendent truths using mortal words and reason seems laughably futile to me.)

So my first religious series on this blog will be about the specific, practical teachings of Jesus. Like everything else I publish here, I’ll be writing this series more for my own sake than for any intended readers. But I do hope that anyone who stumbles upon my blog will find it interesting, and maybe even helpful.

As always, thank you for reading, stranger on the internet. I’ll probably get back to talking about anime and video games in my next post. :p

With gratitude,

Adrien

Get notified about future posts in this series by joining my mailing list