JESUS, Part 2

When I envision Jesus, I picture something different than the blonde haired, piercing blue eyed figure I see in many of the Jesus movies. I picture Jesus to be much more—how should I put this--Middle Eastern than Eastern European. And I’m pretty sure he probably didn’t have blue eyes. Why do I believe all of this? If you read the Bible, you will see that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. And 2000 years ago, I would venture to guess that you didn’t find an awful lot of Caucasians living in the Middle East.

So who do I see Jesus as? Take a seat, grab a cup (or two) of coffee or tea (and none of this decaffeinated garbage), because it may take a while to show you who I see Jesus to be.

I’m going to be a typical Christian and say that one of my favorite authors has got to be C.S. Lewis. And more specifically, his novels, The Chronicles of Narnia, are my favorite.

In one of these books Lewis infers through the Christ figure of Aslan, that Jesus is not tame. In case you haven’t ever read these books, Aslan is a lion and although he talks and allows the children to pet him from time to time, he is definitely not tame. And that seems about par for the course. Granted, my experience with lions is pretty much non-existent, but I don’t see lions as being very tame, so I will just agree with him on this point. No matter how much we think Jesus is tame, the fact remains that he is not. On the contrary, He is probably quite the opposite. (Continuing with the lion analogy) He is not like your typical house cat. He doesn’t sit on your lap. He isn’t—to my knowledge—litter-box trained. He does not wear a collar with a tag identifying who his owners are.  Jesus is not tame!

To fully understand what C.S. Lewis meant by that, I have to admit that I decided to look up the word tame in my handy dictionary. It means “reduced from a state of native wildness especially so as to be tractable and useful to humans.” Another definition offered is: “to be made docile or submissive (yeah, I had to look up a couple words in those definitions too).

Jesus cannot be reduced. Jesus is not docile or submissive--except to the Father.  You can try all you want to make Him conform and fit in these tidy, neat boxes, but you may have some trouble. We will never fully comprehend Him. We cannot always understand what He does and why He does it. In other words Jesus is not under our control. He defies many of our notions and beliefs about who He really is. Although He may be difficult to understand, that is no excuse to not try.