Jesus, God, the Bible, and all that

By Bobby Neal Winters

I am a teacher.  My style of teaching requires that I learn something myself first through experience and then I pass it on.  There are some things that I can’t pass on in the classroom because (a) I teach math and (b) I teach in a state institution. If you don’t want to learn about religion right now, I recommend our excellent sports page to you. Well, that might be a religion too, but you know what I mean.

Traditional Christian teaching understands God as the Mystic Trinity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.  We believe that Jesus was God.  In particular, we believe he was fully God and fully Human.

This has been a point of contention.  Blood has been shed; ink has been spilled; hot air has been expended.

It’s been a big deal.

All my life I have believed, and I still believe. It was the way I was raised, the way I was educated.  But now as I grow older, grow more dispassionate, I find that the nature of my belief has been odd.

What do I mean?  I mean that I’ve had no difficulty seeing Jesus as God.  My difficulty has been seeing him as a human being.  I think that is something that I need to correct.

We are told in the Gospel of John that no one has seen God.  One might assume that he’s talking about his readers because there are scriptural references to Adam walking with God in the Garden and to Moses seeing God however obscurely.  But it’s safe to assume none of John’s readers were among those selected few.  

John goes on to explain that we see God through Jesus: “No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.”

As I said, I am well aware that there is disagreement on this. There are whole religions of very fine people who disagree with my tradition on this. I am not here to argue about it.  I am a math teacher: I don’t argue, I just explain why you are wrong.  My purpose is to start with this line from John’s gospel and go from there.

Most of the people I’ve met have an idea of God.  And here I will add even the atheists, nay, especially the atheists.  

The atheists have an idea of God. They are definite.  It is clear to them. They have done more study on it than you or me or almost any clergyman that I know. They take their disbelief in God very seriously.

They disbelieve in God, and when I’ve listened to their idea of God, I find I don’t believe in that God either. This is a statement that is by no means unique to me.

But don’t let me wander too far. My point here is not to try to change an atheist’s mind. God forbid. (It’s a joke; lighten up.) My point is that even atheists have some idea of God, and I think most people do.

Whether or not God exists, there is a natural tendency for people to believe. I’ve read articles that have stated that there is a part of the brain that is wired for holy experiences.  I’ve seen that used in arguments for the non-existence of God.  The same people don’t use eyes in arguments for non-existence of the sun, but there I go again wandering off again; it is not my point.

We have a natural tendency to believe in God.  But we have competing notions of what God is.

In the Bible, we have a record of one tradition’s experience of wrestling with God and/or that tradition’s notion of Him. (I’m using the traditional pronouns here. Make a drinking game of it, and let it roll over you.)  

Those in my tradition, use Jesus as a lens on the Bible (“the writings” as the authors of the New Testament referred to their scripture).  Through Jesus, the Human, his life and deeds, they came to an understanding of God.

Through that lens, those who knew him, those who were closest to him, wrote such things as “God is Love.”

We see God in the acts of Jesus: Acts of healing; acts of teaching; acts of expelling demons; acts of feeding the multitude.

Acts of loving kindness. 

Jesus is a lens that magnifies the picture of God that was given in the Old Testament.

So there you go.  There will be those who disagree. 

That’s okay.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube.

 What Do You Know?

By Bobby Neal Winters

I’ve been told in the past, and I pass it along from time to time, that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.

We can only learn something, we can only know something, when we are ready.

What do I know now?  One thing.

I am happy.

Given all that is wrong in the world at this point, that might be a surprising or even a disappointing statement. Be either surprised or disappointed as it gives you pleasure.

But I am happy.

There is scientific research that says--much to the surprise, or perhaps, disappointment of some--older people are happier.  So it could just be that my happiness is a consequence of statistics. I am open to that. 

But I’ve got my own reasons.

I am back in the classroom full time after an absence of many years.  Okay, truth be told, I never quit teaching, but teaching one or two classes a semester is not the same as teaching four classes and the teaching thereof being your raison d’etre. 

It’s not so much the teaching per se as being back at my calling.  I am doing what I was put on this earth to do.

The happiness comes from a combination of that and having become old enough to realize that.

Perhaps at a more basic level happiness comes from wanting to do what you are doing, not doing what you want.  Feel free to go back into that sentence with a compass, a sextant, and a notepad and explore it a while.

As I look back at previous times, I see myself as doing something, but resenting that I wasn’t doing something else. I wasn’t trying to find the joy in the task at hand, but simply wishing it would be over.

I will admit that there are some activities that are objectively unpleasant.  What I am talking about is, lecturing in class, but wishing I was preparing a lesson; preparing a lesson, but wishing I was doing research; doing research but wishing I was spending time with my family; spending time with my family, but wishing I was reading.

And so on.

With the passage of time comes, perhaps, an appreciation of activities for being themselves.

Okay, I don’t like to grade papers.  If I said I did, they would stick me in a straight-jacket and drag me away by my heels.

And rightly so.

But I’ve learned the art of owning the grading of papers as part of my chosen profession.

I think that is part of the happiness that comes with aging: the knowing of oneself.

There are certain mysteries that we are presented with in the course of our lives.  At least there have been for me.  These are things I think about in the night, both as I lay awake, but also in my dreams.

These are mysteries which I am at the boundaries of my intelligence even to think about.  They are mysteries that stretch me.

Recently, I’ve been waking up during the night, and saying, “That’s it. I understand now.  I could explain it to someone.”

The thing to do would be to get up, go to my computer, and write those thoughts down.  Share my pearls with you.

Instead, I roll back over and drift off again.

The answers--and even the questions that evoked the answers--are gone by the morning.  The only thing left is the feeling that I’ve encountered the Transcendent in the night and it has escaped.

An artifact of my happiness, and perhaps the cause of it, is that I am okay with that. I’ve mapped the Abyss; I’ve plumbed its depths; I’ve witnessed the battle of Gog and Magog; and I have let it go.

And I’m okay with having let it go, because I am happy.

Or am I happy because I am now able to let it go.

Perhaps the solution that can only be grasped in the darkness of the wee hours is best left in the darkness of the wee hours.

Knowledge comes to us when we are ready to receive it.  That is something I know from my calling as a teacher.  

The knowledge that has come to be now is that I am happy.

I suppose I was ready for that.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube.