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| 5 Year Old God?If you think about things, if Jesus was fully human and fully divine from his birth, then for a time we had a five year old kid with the powers of God. Anybody with children or who has spent considerable time around young children, already understands the dilemma that this must have presented. In the Gnostic Infancy Gospel of Thomas, people explored what this must have been like. The stories in this Gospel while in many ways silly all really make sense from the standpoint of a "5 Year Old God."
There is a story where the young Jesus is again "working" on the Sabbath. Jesus had made clay sparrows on the Sabbath. When confronted, the young Jesus makes the clay sparrows come to life so that people will understand. Jesus like any precocious 5 year old, has a tendency to get into trouble. In one story, he is accused of causing the death of a playmate by pushing him off a roof. In order to prove his innocence, Jesus raises the child from the dead to show that he didn't do it. (Can you see the little 5 year old saying "see, I told you I didn't do it?) In another story, some disagreeable customer of Joseph's carpenter shop is struck blind by the young Jesus for his misbehavior.
Now for those who don't automatically stick their fingers in their ears and go "la, la, la, la" when they hear something contrary to the "canon" as they understand it, the story of the 5 year old God has some interesting insight into our nature. Over time, the young Jesus learns that his power is not all about him. He learns that he can yield those powers to help or to hurt. When Joseph is upset at having cut two boards to different lengths, Jesus helps him by "growing" the shorter board to the same length as the other board.
The moral of the story is that each of us has some power. We can use that power for our own selfish means, or we can use our power in furtherance of the "kingdom of God." Just as a "5 year old God" must learn how to wield his power, each of us must learn to use whatever personal power we have not for our own glorification but for furtherance of God's kingdom.
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| Sons of GodIn the book of Job, Satan appears not as the ruler of some hellish realm, but as a member of God's "royal court." Now what is particularly intriguing about this particular passage is that Satan presents himself with the other "ben 'elohim" or more properly translated "sons of God."
Now what is very intriguing is that despite the John usage of Jesus as the "only son of God" (which would probably be better translated as the "unique" son of God), it appears that the Bible refers to others as sons of God rather than just Jesus.
So, the passage in Job seems to say that Satan is a son of God. This is a whole different perspective on Satan than what most people would have. I'm certain some theologians have come up with rather elaborate explainations for this rather odd passage that preserves the lens of orthodoxy. As for me, I'm just pondering the impact of it.
Satan the son of God?
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| Heretics - Then and NowIn 1945 when the Nag Hammadi was found, Christian heretics finally had a voice. For nearly two centuries, "orthodox" Christians had suppressed and sometimes forcibly eliminated those voices. Now if you had to summarize the ideas in the Nag Hammadi, what would be the most prevalent theme? The idea of finding access to God for oneself.
Now, if you think about this, the idea that one could find God without a church, a bishop, or an elder was a threat to the powers that be. This is why the early church went so far out of its way to suppress or forcibly eliminate this material. However, the idea of finding God for oneself no doubt greatly appealed to the often solitary monks. This is why the Nag Hammadi was found buried in an earthen jar. Some monks thought they had great value while some Bishop wanted them suppressed.
Do we need a church, a prophet, an Internet apologist, or some other figure to tell us about God? What makes these people better able to discern about God? There is no doubt that the people who call this site heretical do it for the same reasons that the earliest "orthodox" Christians called the Gnostics heretics. It is a need to control. It is a need to define God. They don't want people to be able to seek and find God on their own. They want you to be dependent on them.
Christ calls us into a relationship with God. He rejected his religious leaders. Isn't it time to do the same?
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| IronyReceived via email to the Thinking Christian about the wisdom and Sophia post:
"Dear Brother,
I am a prophet of the Living God and Father of my Lord Jesus Christ.
I have a word from the Lord for you recited by your own hand
in your previous post:
"Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?"
"Redaction"! Wisdom not female but a metaphor!
The Welhausen hypothesis is Satan's handiwork
and yet you use it to put forth unbelief among the sheep.
The Father says for you to consider the following:
[1 Corinthians 3: 18f (Liv)]:
(18) "Stop fooling yourself!. If you count yourself above average
in intelligence, as judged by this world's standard, you had better
put this all aside and be a fool rather than let it hold you back
from the true wisdom from above.
(19) "For the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God. As it says
in the book of JOB, God uses man's own brilliance to trap him;
he stumbles over his own 'wisdom' and falls.
(20) "And again, in the book of PSALMS, we are told
that the Lord knows full well how the human mind reasons
and how FOOLISH and FUTILE it is."
Now the irony of this is that this person thinks that they are wise. They think they know what God means. Now I wonder who appointed this person a prophet? Should I ask for some sign or wonder?
Now if this person had read carefully, they would have understood that the post was only a comment. It was not a statement of belief. It was just a pondering about what was really meant. Is wisdom Sophia? Beats the heck out of me. Just another thing to ponder in the mysteries of God.
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| Jesus the MamzerLeaving aside the whole "virgin birth" concept, let's put Jesus' birth in the context of ancient Israel. We know that Mary was pregnant before she married Joseph. Whoever the father was, Jesus would have been a person of suspect paternity. This would have made Jesus a mamzer. Not a bastard or illegitimate per se, but a person who was suspect of not being fully Jewish.
Imagine the feelings that one would have growing up this way. Jesus would have been born an outcast. You have to wonder if people are mocking him in John 8:41 when they say "we are not illegitimate children." Similarly, in Mark 6:3, it was an insult to call Jesus "Mary's son." Jewish men at that time took their identity from their fathers.
When you look at Jesus this way, it is easy to see why he spent so much time with the outcasts of society. It is easy to see how he saw God as his father.
For me, reading the gospels without the lens of orthodoxy brings a whole new richness and meaning to them.
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