…A human being is not an object to be examined. A human being is a self to be understood. And, as the nineteenth century philosopher Sören Kierkegaard articulated so profoundly, the self is a bundle of relationships. To understand other human beings, both now and historically, it is necessary to enter into their constructs of reality, the way in which they view and understand their own bundles of relationships, and the way in which they order, unify and make sense of the chaos of their own lives. We live in relation to our families, our work, our neighbors, our “in-groups” and our “out-groups.” We live in relation to the weather, to the pain we feel when we touch a hot stove, and to the pleasure we feel when we eat tasty food. But, as Kierkegaard also pointed out, we live as well in relation to that mysterious Power that is responsible for our being in existence and for the particular set of relationships that make up the self that we are. Some may call that mysterious reality “fate,” some “luck,” others “the way life is,” and still others will name it “God.” Such names imply relationship, and the relationship we have with that ultimate reality shapes all our other relationships. Jesus called that reality, Abba. (Page 10)
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....Jesus’ use of Abba for the deity was a scandalous usage in its informality. And there can be no doubt that Jesus’ use of Father was quite intentional. The fact that Jesus used this address for the mighty God of Creation, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, for the God of Moses and the Prophets, is, in a spiritual sense, revolutionary. It was an outward expression of the revolution of the spirit that had transformed his life. His relationship to his own life and to God had been altered radically at the very core of his personality. At the heart of this change was an intimate, direct, intense personal relationship with God, which is symbolized in the word Abba. (Page 30)
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One cannot grasp the reality of Jesus and his relationship with the Father, unless one also understands his relationship with the neighbor. It was the unity of his obedience to God and his responsiveness to the needs of his neighbors that compelled him to leave the isolation of the desert and to expend his life energies among the people of the Galilean oasis. There he ministered to the destitute, the sick, the disabled, the outcasts and the unclean. It was Jesus’ uncompromising commitment to love his neighbor as Abba loved the neighbor that drove Jesus to risk his own life in the mission to which his Father, the God of heaven and earth, had called him. (Page 48)
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When Jesus accused the Pharisees of having evil in their hearts while presenting themselves as exemplars of purity, he was not suggesting that their hearts were more evil than the hearts of others. The Pharisees’ problem was not that they had evil hearts. That was everyone’s human condition, a condition that could only be improved by forgiveness and the spiritually healing power of One greater than the self. The problem with the Pharisees, as Jesus viewed it, was their elaborate and stubborn persistence in the illusion that their hearts were not evil, because they were good people who obeyed the rules. That self-deception was a spiritual blindness that prevented them from recognizing the depth and persistence of sin in their own hearts and the repentance necessary to access the Kingdom that Jesus announced. Just as possessions were a stumbling block for the rich, devoutness was a hindrance for the Pharisees. Before one can truly repent of sin, one has to have an honest and accurate inventory of one’s moral and spiritual failures, of wrongs done to others and the secret crimes of the heart. That is why the tax collector who prayed for mercy in Jesus’ story went away justified and the Pharisee did not. The tax collector had no trouble identifying the harm he had done or the corruption in his spiritual self. The Pharisee was blinded by his religious beliefs and his illusion of moral superiority. Jesus’ verbal attack on the Pharisees was not a condemnation of them as persons. Jesus broke bread with Pharisees as well as outcasts. His words of rebuke were challenges motivated by the desire to call them away from their wrong path to genuine repentance, and, at the same time, warnings to his followers not to be led astray by their ways. (Pages 148-149)
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The crucified Christ, as the judgment of God, had shattered the popular illusion of a superhero who would come and rescue humankind from the dangers, stresses, sufferings and tragedies of existence. No matter how much human beings longed for it, they could not have life on their own terms. The universal hero, the Messiah, God’s anointed, had come in the weakness of a human life, and had endured a human death. The lives human beings were given were the lives they must live. But Jesus as the Messiah also had revealed the mercy of God. Human beings were not alone in their struggles. God had revealed in Jesus how to live an authentic human life in the midst of all difficulties. Through the humiliation and crucifixion of the Christ, God had come in the power of God’s weakness and the wisdom of God’s foolishness among humanity and shown the way to authentic existence in the world as it is. Those in the Jesus movement had come to grasp that they were no longer hapless victims before the circumstances of life that confronted them; for God’s presence was with them, God’s power emboldened them, and God’s wisdom guided them in the midst of their own journeys through the dark valleys of life. (Page 233)
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To live the resurrected life, then, was to be raised to a life in Christ and Christ within, a life in the Spirit. It was to experience spiritual transformation and an ongoing radical spirituality. And it was to know the freedom of those who dwell continuously in this world in the reality of God’s grace. Freedom in Christ was a spiritual relationship to the obligations of existence as viewed through the reality of God’s love for Creation and for humankind. It was the willingness to accept responsibility and, with the help of the Holy Spirit, to seek to know and do the will of God on behalf of the well being of the world and neighbor. It was a willingness to be led by the Spirit in that mission and to trust in the grace of God to make one’s efforts efficacious. It was to be free from the need to “boast,” to be proud of one’s good works. Instead, it was to be free to allow the Shalom of Christ and the fruits of the Spirit to flourish in one’s life and relationships. And it was to live in that free responsibility as one who relied not on one’s deeds, but on the grace of God in Jesus Christ for one’s hope in this world and in the world to come. (Page 339)
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In Jesus’ view of reality, there was no clearer manifestation of spiritual transparency than when a person encountered a neighbor in need. Jesus did not see his neighbors as human objects, but as Abba’s children. Jesus’ relationships with the disabled, the destitute, and the despised disclosed not only a compassionate person, but one who viewed social outcasts and victims of discrimination and ridicule as being in reality spiritual beings, worthy of honor as children of God. Even Jesus’ enemies among the religious leaders and the governing authorities were to be loved and forgiven, for they too were Abba’s children. As we have seen, conventional social and religious beliefs often make a distinction between neighbors and non-neighbors. Non-neighbors may include foreigners, enemies, and unbelievers along with those who are social or religious outcasts. Most people agree that one is certainly to love one’s neighbor, but they also believe that it is perfectly acceptable not to love, or even to hate, one’s non-neighbors. Jesus would have no part in such distinctions. (Page 345)
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To commit one’s life to the Jesus Reality is far more than an intellectual undertaking. While the Reality of Jesus is a perspective, it is not a worldview in the sense of a particular cosmology, or a body of doctrinal knowledge requiring assent. Rather it is a Word that addresses our lives and speaks to our human condition. It demands that we examine our own hearts, take inventory of our human failings, and open our lives to forgiveness and grace. It breaks the illusions of our self-importance and self-reliance, and calls us to recognize the Spirit reality that already exists in our midst and already lives in our hearts. (Page 358)
