Yesterday I spoke about my belief in the existence of God, in today's blog I was explaining to my children my belief in Christ.
Previously I told you that growing up, Jesus was very real to me. With the help of the movies, I could clearly visualize Jesus going from place to place performing miracles. It was years later; when I had "educated" myself, that doubts crept in. I never had any doubt that Jesus was an "historical" figure. According to Wikipedia, the on-line encyclopedia, historians "generally agree on these basic points: Jesus was a Jewish teacher who attracted a small following of Galileans and, after a period of ministry, was crucified by the Romans in the Judaea Province during the governorship of Pontius Pilate." However, was Jesus the son of God?
In Mark 10:15, Jesus preaches, "I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it." Sometimes it seems the older, and more sophisticated we get; the dumber we get. Just as I quit wasting my time on trying to figure out if God existed, I have quit wasting my time on if I believed in Jesus. I have reverted to my childhood and just accepted that Jesus is the Son of God. In the previous chapter, I told you that believing in God is not something you can put off until you are ready to die; and then hope to make peace with God at the last minute. Technically it can be done; but why put yourself in a risky position on where you will reside next? Having faith that God exists, calls for you to model your life after the examples we have before us.
If you have had so little going on in your life ( speaking to my children), that you have actually sat down and read this; then you know I have constantly been looking for "proof" of God's existence throughout my life. I thought I had found that proof in the Shroud of Turin. For those of you unfamiliar with the Shroud, many faithful believe it to be the cloth Christ was wrapped in when He was placed in the tomb. What is fascinating is the Shroud contains an image of man within the cloth that had been crucified.
Scientists have spent countless years studying this burial cloth trying to determine if was a hoax created back in the Middle Ages. Scientists have not been able to determine how the image came to be on the cloth. They have determined that the image was not painted on, nor was the cloth dyed. Believers in Christ, think it is the image is Jesus, and was the result of a burst of energy at the moment Christ was resurrected. The image actually has sort of a three dimensional appearance to it.
Anyway, back in the late 1980's the church in Turin allowed scientists to remove a bit of the cloth to do carbon testing to determine the age of the cloth. What they found was the cloth was from around the 1500's...which would clearly make it a hoax. However, in doing further research on the history on the Shroud, the experts discovered that the Shroud had been partially destroyed by a fire at the church around the 1500's. Nuns, at the time, had been allowed to weave new fabric in the Shroud in an attempt to repair the damage from the fire.
So...the debate continued...was the sample of cloth removed for carbon testing from this new material, or was it from the original cloth? Scientists did find pollen attached to the fabric; which did come from the area where Jesus was thought to buried; and the pollen was old enough to be from around the time of the death of Jesus. Back and forth it went in the papers...was it real, or was it a fake? I remember thinking...the answer is so close, and yet so far away!
This was all swimming around in my head one Sunday when I sat down in the pew for mass. Father Norm Douglas devoted his whole homily to this controversy, and he brought up one of the most profound things I have ever heard. He said that if you needed proof that Jesus was real, don't look to the Shroud...look to His Disciples.
Father Douglas went on to explain that these twelve men, after witnessing Jesus suffer a horrible death, continued with His ministry. Who would have blamed them if they had just blended back into crowd, kept their heads down, and their mouths shut? Keep in mind, we are talking about crucifixion...not the relative tame lethal injection we have today. Crucifixion was meant to send a message to the masses. The Romans did not want a rebellion to their authority in this dusty outer region of their empire.
Father Norm then recapped what happened to each of the Disciples after Good Friday. We all know that Judas went out and hung himself after he had betrayed Jesus, here's what happened to the rest...
Andrew...crucified
Bartholomew...crucified
James, son of Alphaeus...stoned to death
James, son of Zebedee...beheaded
John...natural causes
Matthew...natural causes
Philip...crucified
Simon, later renamed Peter...crucified
Simon the Zealot...natural causes
Thaddaeus...natural causes
Thomas...executed by spears
All of the Disciples went out and spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and for their efforts; seven were executed...four of them crucified! What is unique to Christ is He transferred His faith on to the Disciples; and the Disciples have been followed by generation after generation willing to pay the ultimate price for their faith. Think about how powerful this message is. It, once and for all, ended the debate in me about Jesus being the Son of God.
To be continued...
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