That's what an atheist asked once after I pointed out how difficult it was for the disciples to believe that Jesus really was who He said He was. I referred this person to some of the comments of the disciples that indicate that they "knew" He'd risen from the dead even while they couldn't believe it. They couldn't believe it because, well, dead men don't rise from the dead. Yet, here He was, eating, drinking, walking and talking with them. Their comments show that the disciples had a real struggle believing what their senses were telling them.
In fact, it may be easier for us to accept Jesus "as is" than it was for them. Ray Stedman says, "But if we find it difficult, how much more did His own disciples! They, of all people, would be least likely to believe that He was God. I mean Jesus lived with them. He grew up virtually in their neighbourhood. They saw His humanity as none of us ever has or ever will. They must have been confronted again and again with a question that puzzled and troubled them, "Who is this man? How is it that He is doing things that only God can do?"
We just got back from the lake today. At one point, as I was sitting beside the quite, calm waters, I pictured the disciples sleeping out under the stars with our Lord on a summer night by the Sea of Galilee. They had just spent the day, watching Jesus heal the crippled with a word, make the blind see, cast our demons and berate religious leaders like Christopher Hitchens but for very different reasons. I could imagine Peter or John or one of the others waking in the night, rising up on an elbow, and as he looked at the Lord Jesus sleeping beside him, saying to himself, "Is it true? Can this man be the eternal God? Was I correct to quit my day job to follow this guy? Am I a fool for believing Him or am I onto something of eternal proportions?"
Jesus said to those who questioned Him, "You don't have to belief that I Am God because of what I say. But you should believe because of what I do."
Why would He say that? Because healing disease with a word, manipulating the elements and forgiving sins are things that no human can do. We have eyewitness testimony to something totally "other" that has taken place in history. Jesus taught that our eternity will depend on what we do with this information.
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20 comments:
first of all, Christopher Hitchens is not a religious leader.
secondly, the rest of your post actually a good point. it certainly is easier, 2,000 years later, with all the long years of myth and legend and indoctrination to believe in the divinity of Jesus, than to believe in the divinity of a man I know eats and sleeps and sneezes. (I offended a nun half to death when I was 6 by asking if Jesus ever sneezed.)
And yet they did believe. They believed it so strongly they were willing to die for it.
And yet they did believe. They believed it so strongly they were willing to die for it.
Who?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_Mahmudnizhad ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guru_Tegh_Bahadur#Martyrdom ?
Suicide bombers?
Flute - I don't get the connection.
Clicky-type links for some Bahá'í and Sikh martyrs mentioned.
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1
I don't get the connection.
Sorry, just pointing out that people are willing to die for all kinds of beliefs.
first of all, Christopher Hitchens is not a religious leader
He's one of your co-religionists isnt he? And quite a slick-talking spokeman for it as well.
Flute - That's true but they aren't willing to die for a lie that they invented.
Have people been willing to die for believing someone else's lies? Of yes, but the millions I suspect.
Have people been willing to die for their own lies? You could probably count on one hand those who have been willing to endure torture and death for a lie that they invented.
Yet Jesus' followers underwent years, even decades of deprivation, hardship, torture and eventually death for claiming that Jesus the Christ was crucified, died, was buried and rose again from the dead. They weren't believing what someone else had told them. They were preaching what they had seen with their own eyes.
Why do you think they would do that if it wasn't true?
Mak wrote: Yet Jesus' followers underwent years, even decades of deprivation, hardship, torture and eventually death for claiming that Jesus the Christ was crucified, died, was buried and rose again from the dead. They weren't believing what someone else had told them. They were preaching what they had seen with their own eyes.
That is the weakest argumentation I have seen on this site to date. I will ask you one simple question: If I take you out to a lake and from your viewpoint appear to walk across the water, will you accept that I am the second coming of Jesus Christ? I suspect not. You would look for an explanation, any explanation. Why would you apply the reasoning of Hume in Of Miracles to that situation and yet swallow the supposed miracles described in the Bible hook, line and sinker? There is only one answer my friend - because you are gullible and have deluded yourself into believing something that you desperately want to believe. The fact that your delusions are shared by millions of others does not make them any more true.
You think Jesus only did one miracle? You think these people didn't check them out? You think that something is wrong simply because it doesn't fit with your pre selected world-view? Hume is a goof and his work re: miracles has long been put to rest.
Thanks Mak. If I can bamboozle you with enough miracles, you will join the Church of the Atheist Missionary and become my disciple.
I know what you are suggesting is wrong (or, more accurately described, extremely improbable) because your pre-selected world view is based on a collection of ancient myths.
Thank-you for describing Hume as a goof. It sums up perfectly your idiotic, simplistic and ultimately childish approach to supporting your convictions.
Over and OUT.
"Thank-you for describing Hume as a goof."
All I mean is that like most atheists he is dull of mind and slow of thought. If you recall, the last time we discussed Hume, you tucked your tail between your legs and slunk away, leaving my questions unanswered.
Yet Jesus' followers underwent years, even decades of deprivation, hardship, torture and eventually death for claiming that Jesus the Christ was crucified, died, was buried and rose again from the dead. They weren't believing what someone else had told them. They were preaching what they had seen with their own eyes.
Prove it. Their stories of martyrdom may not be true.
Witness the early Mormons, whose ideology is obviously a bunch of hooey, but who managed to rack up sizeable numbers of martyrs anyway.
You maybe weren't around when I posted an answer to someone else making the same nutty comments as you, Glen. So I've posted an answer called, "Gimme Proof". As to Mormons, two thoughts:
1) What do you think would have happened to Christianity if, as happened with Joe Smith`s little band of followers, seven of the eleven original disciples recanted and said that Jesus never rose from the dead.
2) Saying that A is false, therefore B is also false does not make sense.
Mak, in the case of supposed Jesus there are no recorded recantations. That's only because noone wrote about it at all.
Your claim much more controversial than you let on.
The fact is that there is no known historical record of Jesus written at the time of Jesus, in spite of all of these historians being alive in the region and purported time of JC:
Apollonius
Persius
Appian
Petronius
Arrian
Phaedrus
Aulus Gellius
Philo-Judaeus
Columella
Phlegon
Damis
Pliny the Elder
Dio Chrysostom
Pliny the Younger
Dion Pruseus
Plutarch
Epictetus
Pompon Mela
Favorinus
Ptolemy
Florus Lucius
Quintilian
Hermogones
Quintius Curtius
Josephus
Seneca
Justus of Tiberius
Silius Italicus
Juvenal
Statius
Lucanus
Suetonius
Lucian
Tacitus
Lysias
Theon of Smyran
Martial
Valerius Flaccus
Paterculus
Valerius Maximus
Pausanias
Jesus was certainly the best kept secret in history. That is, until the third- and fourth-hand accounts began surfacing well after his death. Very strange---considering all of the miraculous things Jesus did. You would think that someone would have noticed him. And no-one made a peep about his crucifixion--no slander, no praise...nothing.
Does it really seem logical to you to:
. a priori discard documents from antiquity that talk about Jesus,
. point to documents that don't talk about Jesus and then
. question why there is no mention of Jesus?
Mak, please list all the contemporaneous accounts that you are aware of regarding the supposed life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth so that I can deconstruct it. I know it won't take you long to list them. Please don't provide references to accounts prepared decades after the supposed events.
Matthew, Mark, John, The Epistle of Barnabas. Each of these also had independent corroborating testimony. There may have been others, 100's of others that have simply been lost.
As well, it seems to me that you are over-playing the importance of written records in an age of oral transmission of history. That fact that we have four excellent biographies whose "paper trail" of authorship and authenticity is of highest quality speaks very strongly as historically valid and trustworthy.
Oh, about the secret Jesus? The amount of evidence that we have concerning Jesus is actually very impressive. Let me make a comparison. Perhaps He's not so secretive after all.
Julius Caesar, was one of Rome’s most prominent figures. Caesar is well known for his military conquests. After his Gallic Wars, he made the famous statement, “I came, I saw, I conquered.”
Only FIVE sources report his military conquests: writings by Caesar himself, Cicero, Livy, the Salona Decree and Appian.
If he made such a great impact on Roman society why didn’t more writers of antiquity mention his great accomplishments? Yet no one questions whether Julius made a tremendous impact on the Roman Empire.
Yet within 150 years of his death, MORE non-Christian authors alone comment on Jesus than all of the sources who mentions Julius Caesar’s great military conquests within 150 years after his death.
JD Curtis doing his impression of TAM
Yes Mak but you see, the accounts of Julius Ceasar do not affect my life in a eternal sort of way so I would be much better off putting my fingers in my ears and chanting la-la-la-la-la-la-la than considering any sort of evidence that you put forth. Because you see, if you're right, then I must reconsider my entire point of view and how I live and what I believe. Far easier to dismiss such things out of hand than attempt to check their veracity, because I am lazy and would rather wallow in my little atheistic world and lead a life unexamined.
la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la
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