Jesus: An Alternate Point of View
Whenever I get ready to write about Jesus, I feel myself tiptoeing through a potential minefield. There are so many defined opinions of Jesus that I struggle to find open hearts. If you are one of those open hearts, I want to present an alternate point of view that just might open in you a deeper appreciation for this incredible man who became one with God.
And, if this post stirs something in you, I invite you to join me in tonight’s (2/9/2017) Metaphysical Bible Hangout for a deeper conversation. We will be working with the 2nd chapter in Eric Butterworth’s Discover the Power Within You, The Great Discovery.
So, what is this alternate point of view. How different is it?
The Miraculous Birth May Be a Minor Detail
Butterworth writes: “Much has been made over the manner of His birth. The Bible seems to indicate that His fellow townspeople knew nothing unusual about the incident.”
What do you make of that?
The nature of Jesus’ birth never comes up in conversation ever with the people of his time. He never heals based on the belief in his miraculous birth. In fact, he never speaks about the nature of his birth. And, the people who follow him do so because of their experience with him not because he was born in a special way.
Essentially, outside of the birth narratives that appear only in Matthew and Luke, Jesus’ birth is never mentioned again.
Why, then, do we make the nature of Jesus a tenet of our faith?
Perhaps, as Butterworth suggests, “the great event was not the birth of Jesus, but a kind of awakening that took place within Him during the years of His growth “in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men” (Luke 2:52).
Jesus’ Personal Discovery Next Levels Our Understanding of God
I always marvel that Jesus studied the same Scriptures that everyone else in his world studied. Yet, he saw something different. Often when I sit with the Hebrew Scriptures, I wonder how he might have thought about a particular passage of Scripture.
Until Jesus came along, man existed largely “in the consciousness of separation from God. He could pray to God, he could talk to God, and receive help and guidance from Him. But God was always ‘out there’ and man was ‘down here’” (Butterworth).
Jesus, on the other hand, saw himself as a son of God. Later generations came to believe that Jesus spoke solely of himself. But, the first words of the Lord’s Prayer prove he saw his connection to God and everyone else differently: Our Father…
Jesus’ Theme Was the Divinity of Man
The real good news is that you are victor, not victim. Circumstances do not have you; when you wake up to who you really are, you know that you have mastery over circumstances.
When you do away with the theological embellishments on Jesus’ teaching, you find that he gave us “a simple outline of techniques by which we can release our own innate potential and be transformed by the power of our own divinity” (Butterworth).
Butterworth goes on to say that “the message of the Gospels has been misunderstood. They have been made to appear to say that Jesus was really God taking the form of man, standing astride the world like a great Colossus, with the bolts of heaven in His hands. All this fails to take into account His great discovery. It fails to catch the real theme of His teaching: the Truth of the Divinity of man.”
Jesus’ Discovery is Your Discovery
Once Roger Bannister broke through the 4-minute mile, everyone who could run that fast broke through the 4-minute mile. That which one man accomplished now became available for all people to accomplish.
What you accomplish in your life becomes a possibility for all humankind. It is as if, when you cross the threshold of that which has never been, you simultaneously dissolve the mental barrier that kept that which has never been from becoming. Your personal accomplishment opens the door of possibility for every person for all time.
Jesus’ discovery of His own divinity opens the door of possibility for every person for all time. What he discovers through faith becomes a potential reality for everyone else.
Should We Worship Jesus?
To worship means to honor or reverence as a divine being or supernatural power. For many people, worshiping Jesus means putting yourself in an inferior position and Jesus in a superior position.
Just for a moment… can you entertain the idea that you can be divine without it impinging upon the divinity of Jesus?
As an object of our worship, Jesus stops being the “way-shower for our own self-realization and self-unfoldment.” When I make Jesus the object of my worship, I stop trying to do what he did. My goal instead is simply to sit in wonder at what he accomplished.
I believe Jesus’ called us to do more. His charge was to follow him. Follow him where? Into the great within. “He is referring to our acceptance of the level of consciousness that He achieved” (Butterworth).
A Master Teacher Always Points the Way
No true teacher makes himself or herself the object of veneration. Teachers — when they’re doing their jobs — equip us to do what do not yet believe we can do.
I like the way Butterworth expresses this equipping that Jesus does:
Jesus’ discovery created a breach in the wall, “the middle wall of partition.” In a way, He created a window in the wall, a great picture window through which man can view the vast and beautiful panorama of the spiritual dimension of life. When He said, “Come unto me,” He was inviting His disciples of all times to come and sit with Him and view the infinite reality of things from the perspective that He had found. His finger is pointing out through the window, not at Himself. “Don’t look at me,” He is saying, “but look to the Spirit as I am looking to the Spirit. See yourself in the light of the Christ as I have seen myself in this light. Believe on me and the actual demonstrations of the Divinity of Man which I have made, and realize what this means: that you have this same potential within you. What I have done, you can do. I have created the window — let us look through it together. Never forget this window, for it is your ‘inlet and outlet to all there is in God.’
The window was something to be seen through, not to be looked at…Generations passed…Oh, people still came to the window, for in time it was a ritual of worship. A few still looked through the window, but the majority simply stared at the window in all its austerity. In time, the window became old, dusty, and opaque. Now almost no one sees through the window…Millions upon millions of devotees through the ages have come and knelt before this window, but only occasionally does a clear-minded thinker clean the darkened glass and see throughthe window.
And, so I ask you, are you looking through the window that Jesus discovered? Or, are you merely looking at it?
My Call to Action
Revisit Jesus. See if you can throw off the theological embellishments put on him for the last 2,000 years. Who is this extraordinary man you are looking at with the tremendous PR job that’s been done on his life? I think when you really look at him, you find someone who accomplished something far more mind-blowing than we’ve been led to believe.
