Journal on Jesus: Model of Faith and Humanity


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Key Idea
The key idea we should have realized from this section is that our own humanity helps us to determine what we believe in. From showing the "This I Believe" segments in class we learned what others believed and how they came to their conclusion through their own experiences in the stories they told. We also should have been reminded of the fact that Jesus was not only fully divine but he was also fully human and that sometimes we lose that truth in the high christology of the Church. We should have realized that Jesus fully understood that he was the Son of God when he went into the desert to reflect on his life and to figure out who he was. Jesus deep reflection on what he was as a human helped him to understand his mission and purpose in life. From Jesus we should find the example of someone who, through deep and quiet reflection, determined who he was and through deep personal reflection we can also find ourselves.

Three Ideas to Remember
#1) One important thing I would like to remember is the reading book's response to Bertrand Russel's belief that religion is a crutch. I found that often throughout my life I felt religion was holding me back from a happy life. I felt that religion was restricting what I was and what I could have been. Slowly through this course I have started to realize some of the good things that religion offers and my final arguement against religion, that it was only a week excuse that some people use to hold themselves up, wasnt necessarilly true. Religion can be a crutch but its a good crutch. Sometimes the world and the people around us bring us down and depress us, but religion can always be there to help us get through it with the promise that there is really something more to look for in life, that there is some sort of supreme being who gave our lives and our realities a meaning and we shouldnt give up on that reality because we never know where it may lead.

#2) Jesus was fully divine, sure, but, he was also fully human. Jesus had a human nature that he accepted when he came into this world as the son of a human mother. He must have accepted the pain that might come from his human nature, and he experienced it in his life as seen in the Gospels. Jesus didnt want to die and he even asked God to "pass this cup" from him and not give him as a sacrifice. The Church often forgets to mention the human side of Jesus and I think that because of it a lot of people are pushed away from religion because they can't bring themselves to believe in the ultimate divineness of a person who seemingly died on two big sticks and therefore they are alowed to be with him forever. That idea seems odd and almost ridiculus, but Jesus human side can make it much easier for people to come to believe that he was the son of God who was willing to sacrifice his own life so that we may be with him in heaven. Doesn't that offer one hope to live a truly good life?

#3) William Paley's analogy of "The Watch and the Watchmaker" was the most influencing of the five arguements for intelligent design in the readings book to me. Paley's analogy was someone walking through the woods and finding a perfectly calibrated watch on the ground would think that the watch had to have been made by some sort of intelligent designer in order for it to run so well. The same holds true for the universe. It doesnt seem possible for nature to just randomly form a universe that seemingly runs so perfectly. There must have been some sort of intelligent creator. I agree with this logic because it doesnt make sense to me that nature can randomly form things like watches. That would imply that nature randomly created a watch right out of nowhere and the person who was credited with creating it meerly copied it and continued to make them for centuries. If that is true, then why havent there been any major flaws in watchmaking and how have we been able to improve the process of making these to the level of mass production and improve upon their quality? It doesnt make any sense to me that nature could randomly create Paley's watch or our universe without some major flaw appearing at some time.

Short Reflection
I believe that while Jesus was God but, he hardly was willing to accept this part of his nature. I believe that he was nire human than any other religious teacher in the world because of the way he taught. He stressed everyday life in his teaching using parables and stories of things that every person had experienced in their life to teach. And his teachings were focused about worldly life. He focused on loving your neighbor. Jesus didnt judge people for their sins and he always seemed to be forgiving of sinners and I think this is probably because he understood the human impulse to sin. Jesus didnt preach any divine mandate of the world coming to an end or God sending him to punish me for their sins. Jesus focused on normal people, humanity, and loving the people around you. Jesus was more human to me than he was divine to me.

Return to Matt's Junior Faith Course 2006