breakinglight11 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
breakinglight11) wrote2008-03-16 03:50 pm
breakinglight11) wrote2008-03-16 03:50 pm
*Warning* Religiony ramble...
I don't mean this as a polemic or criticism, but I was thinking about religious discussion recently...
Was thinking about what it’s like for Christians and Jews to discuss religion. The stumbling block, it seems to be, is Christ. Christ is so hard to discuss when he is everything to one side and nothing to the other. By this I mean Christ is SO MUCH to a Christian that he can’t imagine life without Him, and Christ is so little to a Jew that he can’t imagine what difference He makes.
To non-Christians, Christ is at best an abstraction, a theory, perhaps a decent and valid theory, but not one to which you personally subscribe. To a Christian… there isn’t time or space here to get into exactly what Christ is, but simply put, Christ is God, Christ is everything. And it makes all the difference. It makes life different. If you don’t feel that way… how can you know what it’s like to feel that way?
An example of where things break down, I think, is the two faith’s respective interpretations of the prophecy that the coming of the Messiah would usher in the next world. The Jewish argument against the divinity of Jesus is that the next world didn’t come. But see, there’s where the issue of beyond-the-personal-experience comes in. Christians believe yes, he did fulfill the prophecy— that when the world knew Christ, EVERYTHING CHANGED. We changed, life changed, all the world changed. Christ is SO MUCH that He makes all the difference. But a Jew doesn’t see a new world, because the new world is in Christ. Christ makes up the world in which a Christian lives, as much as the air and the light do. How can you imagine a world without air and light? How can you conceive of that, unless you feel it? How can you know, unless you know?
No wonder it’s so damn hard to understand one another.
To non-Christians, Christ is at best an abstraction, a theory, perhaps a decent and valid theory, but not one to which you personally subscribe. To a Christian… there isn’t time or space here to get into exactly what Christ is, but simply put, Christ is God, Christ is everything. And it makes all the difference. It makes life different. If you don’t feel that way… how can you know what it’s like to feel that way?
An example of where things break down, I think, is the two faith’s respective interpretations of the prophecy that the coming of the Messiah would usher in the next world. The Jewish argument against the divinity of Jesus is that the next world didn’t come. But see, there’s where the issue of beyond-the-personal-experience comes in. Christians believe yes, he did fulfill the prophecy— that when the world knew Christ, EVERYTHING CHANGED. We changed, life changed, all the world changed. Christ is SO MUCH that He makes all the difference. But a Jew doesn’t see a new world, because the new world is in Christ. Christ makes up the world in which a Christian lives, as much as the air and the light do. How can you imagine a world without air and light? How can you conceive of that, unless you feel it? How can you know, unless you know?
No wonder it’s so damn hard to understand one another.
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