Jesus and Representations

1.

I really love the idea

of Jesus.

(from spiritlessons )

If you do a Google search on "pictures of Jesus" it's amazing how many results you can get.  All for a guy who lived during a time when they didn't have cameras. 

This picture was in my grandmother's house, during the 1960s;

it's so soothing and passionate.  

One of the reasons I love the idea of Jesus.

2.

We don't have pictures of Jesus, but we have accounts of how he acted.  We have stories.

Stories give us the pictures

the remembrances

of events where we forgot our camera.

Kind of like the Book of Genesis:

and other Creation Stories -

they're attempts to capture 

the impressions of a really important event

when God forgot his camera.

Stories are really important,

because

each little word

is like a snapshot

of a gesture,

and expression,

an act.

3.

The word - Jesus - is a representation.

I love the idea of Jesus for what he represents: 

peaceful solutions

compassion

forgiveness

a rejection of the 

Old Testament philosophy of 

an eye for an eye:

turning the other cheek.

*

When 9/11 happened, I was in

Ankara, Turkey,

and as I watched the towers tumble,

I thought:

this is the equivalent

of the hole that was blasted

into the side of the 

U.S.S.Cole -

How would my nation

respond to this

provocation?

I was afraid.

*

In March of 2003, when the United States invaded Iraq,

I was in Ankara, Turkey.

On the night of the invasion,

I was sitting in a bar with a couple Turkish friends,

and I was in total despair.

This was the answer I feared the United States would give.

My friends and I were talking about

America;

we were talking about the 

Christian world and the Muslim world.

I said to my friend Onur:

what do you think would have been the best way for America to respond to the attack of 2001?

And he said:

Enact, purely, the teachings of Jesus.

Turn the other cheek.

No self-respecting Muslim could attack

a nation that opted to practice

an act of pure love.

Furthermore,

the radical Islamic sects

would not have the sympathy and/or support

of the Islamic world if they continued to attack after we simply

turned the other cheek.

*

Of course, that's not what we did.

And any arguments about the voracity of my friend's claim

would be purely academic.

*

At the time, 

I agreed with Onur;

today,

I still agree

with what Onur 

proposed.

This is not to say we would have avoided war;

(we were already in a war,

it's just that, 

on 9/11

Americans was made aware of the fact

that we were

at war)

we just would have avoided the kind of war

that we've been having.

4.

A stumbling point

between the world of Islam

and the world of Christianity

is, of course,

Jesus.

We both share him, by the way.

Jesus

is in the Koran,

and Mary his Mother 

is the only woman who is named

in the Koran,

for the very simple reason that

men in the Koran are identified by their father's name --

Ishmael and Iaac, sons of Abraham, for instance --

but Jesus has no father,

so he's identified by

his mother's name.

Which leads us to the rather troubling question

of who his father is.

Christianity teaches

Jesus is the son of God, 

and somehow that blurs into him being

God.

Islam says there's no way

he could be God;

God is God,

and Jesus

was a great prophet.

I've also read and heard the argument

from Muslims that, if God is everything,

why would he want or need a son?

Well, hey, if God is everything,

why the heck

would he have wanted to create

us?

He created us

and everything we occupy

in his own likeness,

and then, well,

we kind of made a mistake.

It's been our job ever since, to correct that mistake.
I tend to believe that
every now and then
some human takes form
who has a really big clue
about how to correct that mistake.

(Please see my earlier contemplations on the creation & the fall; and the second coming)

One thing that is remarkable

about reading the Koran

is that it actually presupposes that its readers

have also read the Old and New Testament.

It talks about the Creation,

and some major figures in the Old and New Testaments

as if the reader already knows about them,

therefore leading one to believe that

the best way to read the Koran

and the Bible

is together.

One of the great sins of each

of the Abrahamic religions

is that we don't read

each others books:

Muslims generally don't read the Bible,

and Jews and Christians

rarely read the Koran.

However, put those books together

and there's a very interesting story that emerges,

and its central idea is this:

Jesus belongs to all of us.

5.

Christ is the population of the world,

and every object as well.  There is no room

for hypocrisy.  Why use bitter soup for healing

when sweet water is everywhere?

(Jelaluddin Rumi)

5.

Late at night, when I've been writing on this blog,

I start looking at other people's blogs.

If I simply move through

blogger, I find

that my neighboring blogs

are often

lovely family blogs

with really lovely pictures

of lovely families,

or 

Christian blogs,

with really lovely pictures

of Christian families,

and I really like seeing them.

Occasionally, though,

I find a nut case like me.

I know that most people

in the United States

would say my ideas about Jesus

are blasphemous,

but they're not,

just like

my ideas about the United States

are not blasphemous:

I deeply love

what both the U.S.A. and Jesus

represent,

and I mourn

what the two, combined,

have become.