Week 11 -- Heightening Christology: Jesus Model of Living to Lord and Savior

According to the recent lectures and knowledge amassed from my Catholic high school education; Jesus’ persona became more and more divine as the years after his death progressed.

This conjecture (ooh big word) makes all the more sense to me as I contemplate it. Automatically I think of other various religions I have studied in my comparative religions courses. During those classes I noticed often that the originators of many religions began as normal people surrounded by extraordinary circumstances. Yet as the literature that surrounds their deeds grows more distant the deeds and the person them self seem all the more extraordinary.

 I’ve read of many examples of this phenomena, for example the Siddhartha Buddha, he never claimed to be anything more than human, neither did his followers although they considered him in the highest regards and an enlightened human being. Yet in the years following his death subsequent followers became accustomed only with the oral tradition of his incredible wisdom and slowly his identity became detached from humanity and placed slightly above. This occurred in Buddhism to a slight degree but not so far as to place him on the level of a deity, something not condoned by the religion.

I certainly feel that this could apply to Jesus while I am not bringing into question his divine nature nor his noble mission or self sacrifice, I do feel that the tendency of people to elevate leader to uber-human levels still applies. The evidence lies (as discussed in class) within the Gospels, as we look back at the Chronology of the four Gospels, the Christology of Jesus certainly rises reaching the utmost height in John’s Post and even Pre- Easter Jesus.

In the case of Christianity the elevation of Christ come with a purpose, a purpose that grows as the religion of Christianity developed out of the “Jews For Jesus” movement as one of my high school teachers affectionately called the Jewish sect that held growing popularity of the disciples teachings.

Ultimately my point is simply that even if Jesus were a mere mortal, to put it in a cliché manner, I find that the development of his divinity make sense and does not come to a surprise that as years passed Jesus became viewed more God-like than the humble teacher that is described in Mark.

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Week 10 Perceptions of God

            Considering a Majority of my wiki group project focused on the various images of God throughout time, I thought it was interesting that in “The Color Purple” by Alice Walker, the Character Celie has trouble with her image of God. Celie can’t seem to get the “White Folk’s” God out of her mind. In most churches from the time they depict a very classic depiction of Jesus as the Aryan man with dark blonde hair and soft blue eyes. Only Celie has trouble with this interpretation, because she can’t identify with God or Jesus. In fact due to hard ship she feels the need to turn away from hardship because of like any other man Jesus and God weren’t there in her mind to help her through the sorrow filled years of her life. She humanizes God to the point of him being absolutely unreliable.

            I can identify with her struggle to view God as more than human and feel the frustration that nearly every person experiences when hardship rears its head; whether its sorrow, loss, anger, or despair. Many of us feel abandoned by God. We lose hope. I know I have. However the excerpt provides a message of hope. In fact I recall the infamous “Footprints” prayer, where God assures the person that in during all the hard times when they only “saw one set of prints” as opposed to both the person’s and God’s, that God carried them. The prayer like the passage inspires hope, it lets us know that we are not alone; in the worst of times God is there to carry us through.

            The passage has a more symbolic and colorful meaning behind it than simply God’s accompaniment, Shug contrasts Celia’s pessimistic view of God with her words. She describes a God who is always present (whether we choose to notice it or not), one that is ageless, genderless, fearless.  She assigns God as an IT. An IT that doesn’t care if people don’t try to please IT. An IT that appreciates all the things people do to try and please IT. But most importantly an IT that just like everyone else wants to love and be loved.

            The Core of Shug’s message being that people should stop trying to criticize all the prayers that go unanswered and things that go wrong, but simply stop and notice all the little thing that IT has already done for them. She provides the example of the color purple of the wildflowers that brighten the day as she walks past.

             I find Shugs message to be an affirmation of my own beliefs and even more eloquent and hopefull description about God she claims that she “couldn’t find God in a Church” and I couldn’t agree more. Not to discount the mass however but to acknowledge that God’s presence exists in everyday life and that God is not a vengeful God but rather the loving IT that may have even had “hair like sheep’s wool”, an IT that just wants to be LOVED.