I'm finishing up the last couple of days of vacation, a week's worth of staying up late, sleeping in too long and making poor decisions about what I've been eating. My husband and I have worked around the house, I've been checking in on Facebook a little more than usual and have been thinking about what my recent retirement from the Avenue Theatre after 20 years might mean as far as how I spend my "spare" time. I have determined I don't enjoy too much sleep and bad food, so I think I will look for another use of my time. I have a couple of things in mind.
My anti-social tendencies often lead me to think I might be happiest if I ditched the wired world and real-world social interaction entirely and spent the majority of my free time working on turning our property into the homestead farm Allen and I sometimes discuss. But I also want to be a part of what's best about society and want to do my part to not just complain about what's wrong but attempt to do something about it. I think making small progressive steps toward a more self-sufficient lifestyle while remaining connected to the what's going on around me will be my choice. Striking a balance in all areas of life has long been a goal of mine.
Speaking of balance, during my time off I have had an opportunity to follow the recent flap over “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth," and the question of balance in thinking about the life of Jesus has been on my mind. I have not had an opportunity to read the book, so I can't claim to know all that the author, who is either incidentally or importantly a Muslim depending on who is expressing an opinion, is trying to convey, but I have seen/read some interviews with Aslan, with the one in the following link being especially enlightening to me:
IDEAS: How does your book change our understanding of Jesus or Christianity itself?
ASLAN: I don’t think it does. The core belief of
Christianity is that he was both God and man. And if he was also a man,
then he must be seen in the context of his time. That doesn’t make him
any less a divine figure if you’re a person of faith.
I have no idea if Aslan's views as a (now) Muslim impact his views of Jesus, but his statement here does not present any red flags which I think should be of concern to Christians.
As for the author's conclusion (from the above referenced interview) that, "We will instead look at Jesus in the world as a deeply political
revolutionary figure, radically so, who took on the powers of his time
and lost," he is not the first to make such a claim, with Christians numbering among those who have also come to this conclusion. (That statement of his does present a bit more of red flag for me, personally, but it is a concept I have struggled with over the years.)
What I find fascinating is that some -- I'm thinking especially of fundamentalist Christians who are on the right, politically -- who are objecting to Aslan's observations merely because he is a Muslim must surely have arrived, on their own, at the same conclusion he has: Jesus was a deeply political, revolutionary man. What else could explain the use of the name of Jesus to push a political agenda and claim that America is a Christian nation? I think they have some explaining to do if they say don't agree with Aslan on this issue. If they disagree, is it because he is a Muslim and has no "right" to comment on Jesus or is it because they believe Jesus is a peace-loving Savior who cares more about loving others and helping the down-trodden than he does about power and wealth?
Just some thoughts for a Sunday evening....
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