A New Perspective on Jesus and Catastrophe PDF

# Chapter 1 ## A NEW PERSPECTIVE - Many millions have venerated the name of Jesus, but few have understood him and fewer still have tried to put into practice what he wanted to see done. - His words have been twisted and turned to mean everything, anything and nothing. - His name has been used a...

# Chapter 1 ## A NEW PERSPECTIVE - Many millions have venerated the name of Jesus, but few have understood him and fewer still have tried to put into practice what he wanted to see done. - His words have been twisted and turned to mean everything, anything and nothing. - His name has been used and abused to justify crimes, to frighten children and to inspire men and women to heroic foolishness. - Jesus has been more frequently honored and worshipped for what he did not mean than for what he did mean. - The supreme irony is that some of the things he opposed most strongly in the world of his time were resurrected, preached and spread more widely throughout the world-in his name. - Jesus cannot be fully identified with that great religious phenomenon of the Western world known as Christianity. - He was much more than the founder of one of the world’s great religions. - He stands above Christianity as the judge of all it has done in his name. - Nor can historical Christianity claim him as its exclusive possession. - Jesus belongs to all humanity. - Does this mean that all human beings (Christian or non-Christian) are free to interpret Jesus in their own way, to shape Jesus according to their own likes and dislikes? - It is very easy to use Jesus for one's own purposes-good or bad. - But he was an historical person who had some very strong convictions himself-he was willing to die for them. # CATASTROPHE - It is clear that we would have to begin by putting aside all our preconceived ideas about him. - We cannot begin by assuming that he is divine or that he is the Messiah or the Savior of the world. - We cannot even begin with the assumption that he was a good and honest man. - Nor can we begin with the assumption that he was definitely not any of these things. - We must put aside all our images of Jesus, conservative and progressive, devotional and academic, so that we may listen to him with an open mind. - It is possible to approach Jesus without any presuppositions about him, but it is not possible to approach him without any presuppositions at all. - The complete open mind is a blank mind that can understand nothing at all. - We must have some kind of position, some kind of vantage-point or perspective, if we are to see and understand anything. - A work of art, for example, can be seen and appreciated without any presuppositions about what it is supposed to be, but it cannot be seen at all except from a vantagepoint. - It can be viewed from this or that angle, but it cannot be observed from no angle at all. - The same is true of history. - We cannot obtain a view of the past except from the place where we are standing at the moment. - To imagine that one can have historical objectivity without a perspective is an illusion. ## A NEW PERSPECTIVE - Our age is characterized by problems that are a matter of life and death, not only for individuals, not only for whole nations, races and civilizations, but a matter of life and death for the entire human race. - We are aware of problems that threaten the survival of humankind on this planet. - Moreover, our age is further characterized by the fear that these problems may now be insoluble and that no one will be able to stop our headlong plunge toward the total destruction of the human species. - The first real awareness of this came with the bomb. Suddenly we found ourselves in a world capable of destroying itself-at the push of a button. - We were all at the mercy of those persons at the other side of that button. - Could they be trusted? - The growing awareness of what was at stake made us feel more and more uneasy and insecure. - The generation of young people who grew up during the late 1950s and early '60s with this as the only world they had ever known, were profoundly disorientated by it. - Protest, pop, drugs, long hair and hippies were all symptoms of the unease generated by the bomb. # CATASTROPHE - There are various ways of trying to help people understand what the exponential growth of the earth's population really means. - My imagination cannot cope with such large numbers, but when I am told that at present the world's population is increasing at the rate of over 80 million people a year, and I remember that, when I last looked it up, the population of Britain was about 50 million, I begin to appreciate what is happening. - At the same time one hears various estimates of how much longer our supplies of coal, oil, petrol, natural gas and even fresh water will last. - It seems that some of these natural resources will run out within my own lifetime. - In the meantime the deserts are creeping up on us as soil erosion increases and more and more forests are destroyed. - A single Sunday edition of the New York Times eats up 150 acres of forest land. - And much more paper is used for toilet rolls than for writing or printing purposes. ## A NEW PERSPECTIVE - On the other hand it is equally true that the world abounds in women and men of goodwill who appreciate the problems, are deeply concerned and would do anything to help. - But what can they do? - What can any individual or any number of individuals actually do about it all? - What we are up against is not people but the impersonal forces of a system which has its own momentum and its own dynamics. - This indeed is the heart of the problem. - We have built up an all-inclusive political and economic system based upon certain assumptions and values and now we are beginning to realize that this system is not only counter-productive-it has brought us to the brink of disaster-but it has also become our master. - Nobody seems to be able to change it or control it. - The most frightening discovery of all is that there is nobody at the helm and that the impersonal machine that we have so carefully designed will drag us along inexorably to our destruction. # CATASTROPHE - The system was not designed to solve such problems. - It can produce more and more wealth, but it is incapable of ensuring that even the bare necessities of life are evenly distributed. - This is because it is geared to profits rather than to people. - People can only be taken into account in so far as their welfare produces greater profits. - The system is a monster which devours people for the sake of its profits. ## A NEW PERSPECTIVE - The one salutary effect of this moment in our history, its one redeeming feature, is that it can force us to be honest. - What is the use of keeping up the facade or trying to save face when everything threatens to collapse around us? - In this moment of truth who wants to indulge in the ecclesiastical and academic quibbles of the past? - The person who has faced the present world crisis becomes impatient with those who continue to get excited about trivial and irrelevant problems, those who seem to be fiddling while Rome burns. - The prospect of an unparalleled catastrophe can have a very sobering effect upon us.