GOD SHOWED US JESUS

Quaker theologian Elton Trueblood (1900-1994) wrote, “The historic Christian doctrine of the divinity of Christ does not simply mean that Jesus is like God. It is far more radical than that. It means that God is like Jesus.”

It means that God suffers, God forgives, God fellowships with the poor, God cares for the sick, God loves His enemies. Even as a lifelong Christian, I struggle with doubts about God. I struggle to make sense of the violence in the world, the violence in the Bible, the violence in my own heart. I don’t have all the answers.

“But even when there’s nothing left to my faith but a little seed of hope, that hope is in the incarnation, in the radical teaching that God loved us enough to become like us, and that when God wanted to show us what he was like, God showed us Jesus.” (From Rachel Held Evans)

In my own faith journey I must say that the incarnation and the resurrection were the two things that caused me “to believe” and frankly, were two things I could not wiggle my way out of mentally… though I tried really hard. It is the coming and going of Jesus that got me… when God showed up as Jesus.

“And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to myself.” Jesus