An explanation from a Christian perspective

John 1:1-3 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.”

Men have been debating and looking for the historical Jesus for centuries.  He is confoundingly hard to find.  There were no such thing as “birth certificates” or written records of most ordinary things.  The Jewish Priests and scribes kept very detailed records of genealogies of families and tribes in the temple at Jerusalem, but they were destroyed when the temple was burnt and pillaged by the Romans in 70AD.  Records kept by the Romans themselves lack mention of the comings and goings of ordinary people.  A wandering rabbi ministering to the Jews was of little interest to them.  Even his death at their hands would hold little reason for more than a cursory mention.  Pontis Pilate was quite proficient in crucifying the Jews for almost any reason.

Yet the actions and activities of the horrible Pilates, Herods and Caesars of his time are all too well documented.  Annas and Ciaphas along with many of the scholars, scribes and priests of the time are very well documented.  But the ordinary Josephs and Marys and Simons and Andrews who lived their lives and fished, farmed, built and bought and sold were just not worth the paper and ink.

Jesus was very much in many ways one of the “ordinary” people.  The son of a carpenter and an ordinary Jewish girl, both from very large families of ordinary folk.  He lived most of his life laboring and fellowshipping with the people in a very small village far to the north of the “big city” Jerusalem.  Very few people saw him as “special”, and those people generally kept that knowledge to themselves until after his death.  Even during the 3 years of his ministry, with all of the miracles and teachings, his cousin John the Baptist was better known than he was.  He seldom strayed far from Galilee, Samaria and Judah in all of his travels.  Jesus didn’t “found a religion” like Buddha or Mohammad.  He wasn’t a “great leader” like Moses.  He didn’t fight great battles like David or Joshua (who he was named after FYI).

Continue reading Who is Jesus Christ? →

Life, the Universe, and Everything from the perspective of a silly little puny human being…

When you look around yourself and start to realize mortality, and the seeming insignificance of life, it’s hard to maintain a healthy “get up and go” attitude.  Especially when you have a lot of time on your hands.
But if you look at things with a Christian perspective, you realize that the reason God gives you “time on your hands” is that He expects you to do something with it, and then share it with other equally fallible and insignificant people.  This is my attempt at that.

After knocking around the religious “churchian” world for a while, you come in contact with many different ministries. most of which start out, at least, with a very good hearted, God centered ideology/doctrine.  That of helping people in crisis, and spreading the Gospel.  But we all suffer from a very human condition: we only see things through our eyes and hear with our ears, and only understand things vaguely through a filter of our own understanding.  Even if God himself sends an angel to sit on our head, and deliver a message with thunder, straight to our heart, we will often stray off with our own ego to fulfill our fleshly yearnings and desires.  At least He gives us grace, thank you God.

But there is one thing I have noticed, both in Christians, and seekers who don’t know him: A fundamental lack of understanding about who and what God really is.  Not that there is some special thing about my perspective, there is just as much lack on my part as anyone’s.
But there is this:
People tend to take doctrines and scriptures as fundamental truths, but they don’t ask themselves, or think about the very concept of “God Almighty”, what does it mean exactly, and how does it effect your relationship to that person?
Because that is the fundamental thing about God, He is a PERSON. Continue reading What is God? →