Friday, September 16, 2022

From a Discussion about the Vulnerability of Jesus Christ

 

    It is difficult to empathize with or have compassion for someone with no vulnerabilities that we can see. We might respect them, idolize them, worship them even, but empathy and compassion never cross our minds with regards to them.

     There is an image which comes to our minds with the name "Jesus Christ" which implies total invulnerability and perfection, as a result, it can sometimes be difficult to imagine being able to empathize with Him, or for that matter Him being able to empathize with us.

    Jesus, Yeshua, was like everyone's big or little brother, and he had some health issues related to the circumstances of his birth, most notably a congenital heart condition. He engendered trust through not only His teaching, but also His own physical weakness. He had the appearance and "energy" of someone who was generally harmless. There were moments that "energy" from Him shifted into something of great power, but that had nothing to do with His physical disposition or condition. His disciples, who all became family to Him and to each other, sought to protect Him for a reason even as He sought to shield them. He taught them to love each other as well as Him, and they did, everyone seeking to care for one another because of each other's weaknesses, not in spite of them.

    Jesus, as "God with us," was also God made vulnerable, because it is weakness and vulnerability that we, as human beings, are more easily able to relate to, care for, and empathize with; and this facilitates the first and greatest commandment, to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, all of your soul, all of your strength, and all of your mind.

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    He, Jesus, was virgin born with only one set of XX chromosomes and DNA to work with. XX males frequently have congenital conditions. Also, there are clues in the Gospels that He had a condition such as tiring easily, haemotidrosis, and dying within hours instead of days on the cross from heart rupture.

    I’m not sure why this concept needs to be so threatening. It doesn't make Him any less who He is, fully God and fully human, and affirms His virgin birth. I can't see why it would be such a problem.

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    I think God has a different idea of what it means to be perfect than we do.

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    You don't have to agree with my conclusions. The whole purpose of this particular research was to provide an answer as to how it could have happened for those who struggle with the idea of a miraculous virgin birth. There was one gal who had a dad who wouldn't accept the Christian faith because he kept getting hung up on the virgin birth. While she disagreed with my reasoning and conclusions, she showed my blog post to her dad. After reading it, he accepted the possibility and had no further objections to the faith. This is the person for whom this was studied and written.

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    As a matter of fact, no. I have not. I have authored several blog posts, books chapters, and a YouTube video on the neurological nature of hamartia, but no, I have not authored anything more about any other miracle. There is no need. As to your objections, they are yours to have.

    In my view, that human parthenogenesis is physically possible, does not negate the sheer astronomical improbability of it occurring, much less producing a viable male offspring. This was a one in a trillion chance of happening. Does that, in and of itself, not qualify as a miracle? Does God have to bring a Y chromosome out of nothing for it to qualify as a miracle? From everything I've seen, God doesn't have to use what is "possible" in nature to accomplish anything, but that fact alone does not forbid Him from doing so when it suits Him.

    As to your other objection regarding physical perfection of a sacrifice, I think we can agree that Jesus was not a literal lamb, the offspring of a Ram and a Dame sheep. Is it not possible that the need for the sacrifice to be without defect also refer to something else other than physical perfection in His case? Such as being born without a "sin nature"? There is so much about Christ's sacrifice which parallels but does not hold verbatim to the prescription in Leviticus or Deuteronomy regarding sacrifices that there is room to interpret His sinlessness as the required "without defect." Just the fact that His sacrifice was a human sacrifice, something which was clearly frowned upon by God (see His disposition towards those who sacrificed their children to Molech), violates the Torah and could have been considered an abomination.

    For the record, I don't go around trying to find natural explanations for the miracles of Scripture (though I do find Simcha Jacobovici's theories connecting the eruption of Santorini and the Exodus plagues very compelling). I stumbled across the research papers undergirding my theory after I got a hunch about something. Regardless of the theological outrage I get for it, I still haven't heard any genuine evidence against what I wrote, and it has a lot of explanatory power regarding what we see in Scripture, at least in my opinion. About the only arguments I get are theological in nature, and not even Biblical, just theological, and militantly emotional at that.

    I don't believe that such a view of Jesus as an XX male with corresponding health issues denigrates or degrades Him at all. It doesn't change who He actually is in the slightest degree, fully God and fully human. To me, it brings His humanity into a richer and more relatable context, and as a consequence, that union between His humanity and the second person of the Trinity at His conception. It speaks to me of the humility of God, and His willingness to be made vulnerable so as to draw us to Himself. It is well nigh impossible for a human being to really relate to omnipotent perfection. God knows this, and took the form of a vulnerable human being in order to accomplish His goals.

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    With regards to His driving the moneychangers out of the Temple, I envision that scene probably the way you do, except with Jesus being a lot more physically tired afterwards. The question then becomes, was it just Jesus doing it with His own physicality or strength, or was it the Holy Spirit empowering Him to do it in spite of His own strength?

    This is the other thing about this. The Way Jesus taught was to be like Him, to do and live as He did, and He lived in constant submission to the Father, not saying or doing anything which the Father didn't say or do through Him. He said this a couple of times in John, and then used similar language when saying that we couldn't do anything without Him either. The things He did, the Holy Spirit did through Him in the same way that we are to submit to the Holy Spirit acting through us.

    As Paul wrote, "you see your calling brothers, not many strong, not many wise, not many of noble birth, but God has chosen the weak things of this world to put to shame the things which are strong, and the foolish things of this world to put to shame the things which are weak..." Why wouldn't this apply to the human nature of Jesus Himself to make it clear that what was empowering Him was not His own physical strength or charisma?

    I think that by envisioning Jesus as a perfect physical specimen of humanity, we can seriously miss the whole point, and substitute "another Jesus" which is more agreeable to us than who He actually was and is. To "blaspheme" is to "speak evil of," and I don't believe that I am speaking evil of Him at all. From a certain point of view, insisting on the statuesque Adonis version of Jesus, metaphorically speaking, is itself a blasphemy, because it calls Jesus' real humanity evil or at the very least, insufficient.

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