This week, I continued reading John Eldredge's "Beautiful Outlaw", which aims to explore the personality of Jesus. As mentioned previously, this whole idea is somewhat new to me. I was raised with a conservative background where Jesus was mainly some dude that read to children and wore a lot of white. Identifying his "personality" was never a topic of discussion- and certainly not in the way that Eldredge discusses it.
This week I read a chapter called "The Most Human Face of All." In it, the author discusses the troubling issue of Jesus being both entirely human but also an extension of God. Eldredge argues that Jesus is a portrayal of what humanity could be like if sin wasn't involved. Similarly, he cites evidence of Jesus suggesting that he is the best representation of what God is like, and that we can know what God is like by evaluating how Jesus was while on earth.
From this, the author begins to suggest that how Jesus acts is much different than the way in which much of religion suggests. He says that "religious fog" has corrupted our view of Jesus and caused a christian faith that is more concerned with rules, regulations, and tradition than it is a reflection of who God really is.
This idea builds upon some of the books I read and discussed here previously, suggesting that religion and Jesus are at odds in mainstream Christianity in the U.S. This once again is somewhat of a troubling thought because it challenges nearly everything that I was raised believing.
Reading Log:
Monday: 9-9:30
Tuesday: 8-9
Friday: 9-9:30
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