JESUS LOVES ME?
Jesus said, "Follow me." I asked, "Why?"
My
circuitous journey following Jesus began at age 19. Over 44 years later
the
question remains the same for the vast majority of people I interact
with on
any given day – “Why do you follow Jesus?” If you’ve ever asked that
question, or had that question
asked of you, I hope this series will help you to either begin to find
honest answers or be conversation starters to aid you in helping someone
else with their questions. I don’t have all the answers…but I’ve had a
multitude
of questions. Each section will contain a very short story regarding my
journey in
seeking to answer 'why?' - along with an image and a song or video clip
that helps
flesh out what my thought processes were along the way. You'll see the
roadblocks I encountered and the times when the clouds parted to give me
clarity.
JESUS LOVES ME?
Those words intermittently flowed through my head for nineteen years before they made inroads to my heart - “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” The church, the Bible, and Jesus were an irrelevant trinity for the world I inhabited. Hell, fire, and brimstone weren’t huge draws for me. It’s not that I had investigated the Bible and found it lacking. Rather, the majority of black-robed representatives of God I knew, and the message they preached, didn’t give me any reason to consider if the lyrics were true. From there, I unthinkingly fell sway to claims like this: “The Bible is a product of man…not of God. The Bible did not fall magically from the clouds. Man created it as a historical record of tumultuous times, and it has evolved through countless translations, additions, and revisions. History has never had a definitive version of the book.”
All that began to slowly change when I was introduced to the Gospel of Luke. At the time of Luke’s writing, there were many religions competing for the hearts and minds of people in the Roman Empire. These people were searching for trustworthy knowledge to guide them in their journeys through life – much like me. Into this fray came Luke seeking to dispel some of the rumors swirling around Christianity. “But why should I trust what he wrote?” I asked the friend who sought to acquaint me with Luke’s writing in the Bible.
The answer? Luke showed the extreme care he took in researching his work. He CAREFULLY investigated EVERYTHING FROM THE BEGINNING so he might write an ORDERLY account; a term used by writers of his day who sought to convince their hearers of the meticulous research and careful organization of their material. “Okay, I’m still listening,” I thought to myself. He also made it clear that he was writing this Gospel SO THAT his reader would KNOW THE CERTAINTY of what he had been taught regarding Jesus. Luke’s goal was that his reader would know that the faith which he had embraced had an impregnable historical foundation. “Really? How do I know what he wrote is historically accurate?”
Luke was writing at a
time in history when eyewitnesses were still orally transmitting the Gospel
traditions. Because of these eyewitnesses and his readers’ knowledge of the
oral traditions, Luke could not radically restructure the truth without his
veracity being challenged. And so my journey began – “Jesus Loves Me”? Maybe.
Missionary Man (Eurythmics) https://www.youtube.com/watch?
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