“After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. So Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”
John 6:66-68
I am the baby of my family, the youngest of six. And as the youngest, I always felt left behind. I was patted sweetly on the head while being called “itty bitty buddy”- – I can still feel those flashes of anger when my older siblings got to do things I wasn’t allowed to do. They watched movies I couldn’t watch, they stayed out late playing with the neighborhood kids while I had to go to bed while the sun still waxed bright in the summer sky, and they knew all the new music. I was desperate to know and understand what my older siblings were interested in.
So I would sneak, snoop, watch and learn from them. I was like a little mouse in the corner.
My sister Tammy, the oldest, always had something cool going on. Her bedroom in the attic was like entering a hippy-wonderland: She had a rock polishing machine, a neon green lava light, flower-child beads hanging down from her doorway, and a candle maker. And I loved her music: “Bread”; “Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young”; “Jim Croce”; “Peter, Paul and Mary”, “Don McClain” and many other late 60’s to early 70’s folk and rock favorites. Even though I was only 10, I learned how to sing all of those songs by heart and they are still stuck in my brain 40 years later.
My favorite thing to do was to sneak into the living room when Tammy and my dad would be watching some of their favorite movies together. One movie, in particular, I will never forget was “Ben Hur.” It was one of the most successful Charleston Heston movies ever made, a true “Epic”. The story follows the traumatic life of an important Roman citizen, Ben Hur, turned slave, who gets to exact his revenge in a chariot race against the friend who betrayed him. The whole movie was set against the backdrop of the Gospel narratives often referring to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.
I didn’t understand much of Ben Hur’s plot, or the weird Roman names of the main characters, but even as a young boy I sure did understand the person of Jesus. He was compelling! And what was even more fascinating to me was that the movie never showed his face. Everywhere he went people were mesmerized by him, somewhere healed (lepers and blind) and Ben Hur even became a follower of him. One of my favorite movie scenes of all time comes from this story.
Ben Hur the slave was dying of thirst. Roman guards were leading him and a group of other pathetic slaves through a small town in Palestine called Nazareth; there they stopped at a well in the center of town to get some water. Everyone was allowed a drink from the well but Ben Hur. The Roman guard in charge of the slaves was a cold, mean and callous man who wanted to exert his power over Ben Hur – – he enjoyed mentally torturing others. The soldier also carried a quick whip and threatening scowl – he was very intimidating.
Just as the Roman soldier was denying Ben Hur water, the presence of a large muscular man entered the scene. This unknown man stooped down to give Ben Hur some water, but the nasty guard pulled out his whip and told the man to leave Ben Hur alone or else. Without saying a word, the man stood up, turned to the soldier, and looked at him causing him to fall down backward and slink away like a beaten dog.
I was held spellbound. Who was this man? This was Jesus of Nazareth!
This is when I first wondered, “Was there really a man like this walking this earth?” I knew this was only a movie, but what if Jesus was more than a superhero – – what if he was in all actuality the living, breathing Son of God? I wondered, if he cared about a forgotten slave, he would probably care about a 10-year-old boy who was the youngest of six kids living in Cleveland? So I started listening closely when the nuns in Catholic school taught CCD (Catholic Christian Doctrine), or when my dad talked about him around the dinner table – – he talked about him a lot.
I actually can remember one conversation quite well. It was Easter and I was sitting at the kid’s table. My dad was at the adult table and he got into quite a loud and heated argument with his mom, my grandma, about how Jesus was greater than Mary. My grandma didn’t like it so she said, “Don, don’t talk about Mary like that! You are disrespecting the Holy Mother.” And my dad said, “Ma, Jesus made Mary, why do I need to go to her when I can go directly to the Creator himself?” That simple statement set my heart aflame! I wanted to know this man Jesus. Overtime from listening and reading, here is what I learned:
– He was a poor Jewish boy born to a young teenage girl that was a virgin. And this miraculous birth was foretold 700 years before it happened in the book of Isaiah 14:7, Micah 5:2. The virgin birth means that Jesus physically IS both God and man.
– He grew to be an amazing worker of miracles: Healing the blind, the sick, the lame, the cripple and even the dead. Isaiah 29:18 also predicted this. In one story he went to a funeral of a widow’s son, and as the casket came by Jesus told the dead boy to get up, and he did! He truly put the F-U-N into funeral!
– He went head to head with religious leaders who used their positions as a way to have power over others. This made him furious (See Matthew 23). If he came to church today it would be both scary and exhilarating to see him face down bad pastors, pedophile priests and even a Pope who acts holier than other men. The Pope is just a man. Jesus is God!
– He died on the cross…for all who believe.
– He rose up from the grave…to prove he is stronger than death.
– He is alive, right now, sitting at the right hand of God waiting to come back to reclaim the earth.
As one man said, he truly was more than just a carpenter. So as I learned, I also realized I had to make a decision: Do I actually follow him, or keep him at arms distance?For the longest time I decided to keep Jesus as only a Christmas and Easter thing. I claimed to believe, but I acted like I didn’t.
As Malachi 1:6 asks, “If I am your Lord, where is the fear due my name?”
Well for 23 years I exhibited relatively zero fear toward Jesus, only lip service from a worldly distracted and foolishly ignorant man. By the time I graduated college the interest I had for him was only a vague memory, the childlike wonder I once had faded to a fuzzy indifference. Beer and late night parties do that to you. I was more impressed with me and my reflection in the mirror than I was for the man who died on the cross for me.
Well God started to allow my world to collapse. Depression became my bedfellow. And I knew the only person who could help me was Jesus. God was using anguish and dissatisfaction to bring me back to his Son. That is his number one way to get a person’s attention (see Romans 11:32). I remember picking up a number of books about Jesus and they began to rekindle a small spark of wonder. As the camp song says, “It only takes a spark…!” Statements like this from C. S. Lewis started to penetrate my hardened heart:
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. . . . Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God. (Mere Christianity, 55-56)
So who was he? I had to make a choice. Was I ready to fall at his feet? Or should I give up on the miracle worker all together? It was time to live what I believe, “Chris you need to put up or shut up!” But I was stubborn and lazy and I needed one more thing to move me…this will be discussed in Part 4: The Prick!
Before you go any further, ask yourself: “Who is Jesus? First of all, did he really live? If he did, which choice of C. S. Lewis’ tri-lemma do you choose?” Remember, you can only play games with God for so long.
