July (Web-only) 2005

ARTICLE TOOLS

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Jesus' parables are Hebrew, not Greek. The Hebrews had no concept of intellectual belief separate from participation with the whole of life. The Greeks did. The Greeks—so philosophical, so removed, so proud of their lofty ideas—cleverly batted around concepts from a distance, untouched, unscathed, uninvolved. Jesus was not like the Greeks. His teachings were Hebrew: they demanded participation, action, anger—anything!—on the part of the listener.

Jesus knew the nature of truth. That mere ideas are not truth. That reality is truth. And getting humans to step into this realm of reality with their minds and thoughts and hearts and fears and hopes and joys was the real path to truth. This is why he sowed seeds of reality, not mere ideas or concepts. This is why Jesus ended a teaching with the simple but crucial phrase: "Go and do likewise."

Remember Jesus' response to the lawyer who wanted to debate, discuss the law, and talk theory (Luke 10:25-37)? Instead of playing that man's sophisticated game, Jesus answered him with a kindergarten lesson about the law, a seemingly simple story and that one, chilling, brilliant phrase: "Go and do likewise."

The difficulty of submission

We often claim to "wrestle" with a passage of Scripture. But doesn't our wrestling usually end with us claiming victory over the text? We "pin" a passage, getting it to stroke our preexisting assumptions. Why not just lay down our assumptions and submit ourselves again and again to Jesus' words? And let them pin us.

Let us major in Jesus' teachings, then. And submit all to them.

Sounds great, right? So why don't we study Jesus and submit to his words more often? If Jesus really is so brilliant, then why do we hesitate to submit to his teachings? ...