Matters of Faith, Logic, and Meaning

First, I start simply by trusting that the words in the Gospels attributed to Christ represent what he said. This is taken on both faith bolstered by logic. Nothing else written in the New Testment sounds anything likes the words of Christ in the Gospels. Christ sounds only like Christ. Even given the huge difference between the synoptic Gospels and the Gospel of John, the voice of Christ in both has the same sound. Christ seldom says anything directly (like most religious writers). He speaks in parables and contradictions. He has a unique way of using symbols (something we will examine in detail.) Yet, his words offer a consistent logic and a consistent description of reality.

The big division between the Jewish, Christian, and even Moslem worlds was not over Christ's message. It was over the divinity of Christ. Christians alone believed that Christ was the Son of God. This debate is meaningless to me. From reading the words of Christ, I get the sense that the humans debates divinity makes as much sense as cockroaches debating nuclear physics. It isn't that we aren't curious about it. It is just that we aren't equipt to comprehend it. Christ's direction that we just think of God as our Father to simplify things makes as much sense as anything. We must struggle to understand what Christ told us about God and his relationship with God and, if we look at what he said, we can undersand more about the nature of the universe and God role in it and our lives, but that alone takes a lot of work.

This blog takes two ideas on faith. First, that Jesus was speaking to us all when he addressed the people around him during the course of his life. His words were appropriate both for the context he was living in, but also for the context of our lives today. Second, that if we study his words, we can learn a great deal from them.