Doubting Doubt
(Table of Contents - Click This Link)
The Process
Step
1 – Are You The One Who Is To Come?
The
Dawn of a Process
How do I lay this
all out? I had no idea it was going to
go this way. I had no idea it was going
to be so important. I guess the best way
to do this is to start at the beginning.
This project originally started as an attempt to examine and explain the
behavior of John the Baptist in prison as recorded in Matthew 11:2-3 and also
in Luke 7:18-19. I knew what the routine
explanation was: John’s prison
experience caused him to second-guess Jesus’ identity.
That perplexed me as it does everyone because of all that we know about
John the Baptist. It appeared to me that
it needed investigating. As I considered
it, another explanation seemed to be more realistic.
I
opened my big mouth about it a time or two in my adult Sunday School class and
people just stared at me like I was an alien who just dropped down from
Mars. They didn’t tell me I was
wrong. They just stared at me. I could see what was going on in their
minds: “What is this guy, nuts?”
But I kept hearing the same thing over and over again, at church, in
sermons I listened to on the radio and on the internet, in books I read. All over the place it was happening like some
kind of advertising campaign:
John the Baptist doubted.
“But how can everyone be so sure?” I thought to myself. “There seems to be such a simpler
explanation.” It was driving me crazy
because I knew that they had to be right.
That John the Baptist doubted is what everyone understands and no one
questions it. In fact no one even acts
like another explanation could possibly exist.
“Well then it must be so,” I thought to myself. After all, it would be a terrible thing for
me to think that I had discovered something that had been missed even by the
finest minds in history throughout 20 centuries. You just don’t do that or else you really are
crazy.
“I
know I’m wrong,” I thought to myself. “I
must be wrong. I have to be wrong!” Of the
fact that I was wrong, I had no doubt in my mind. I was
wrong. I knew it. What I couldn’t
figure out was where I was
wrong. How could it be that everybody
else was so certain about the routine explanation?
And how exactly do they explain John the Baptist’s doubt? We all know how they explain it. They explain it in the only way they ever do explain
it. It goes like this:
John heralded in Jesus’ ministry saying, “Behold the Lamb of God who
takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).
John the Baptist’s designation as herald was by divine appointment with
some exceptionally remarkable background and prophetic prediction behind it.
After that John got himself into hot water with King Herod who threw
John in prison. This is where the
peculiar thing occurs. While in prison,
John sent two messengers to ask Jesus if He was the one they were to expect
(the Messiah) or should they be looking for another (Luke 7:18-19).
It
seems clear enough. Why ask Jesus if He
was the one they had been waiting for if you knew perfectly well that He
was? Obviously John the Baptist had his
doubts. Still, given John’s background
and reinforced with his own self-awareness, it seems odd that he would
doubt. How is that explained?
Well, the routine explanation goes like this: Ever since Old Testament times, the Jews had
been waiting for the Messiah, predicted literally back in the Garden of Eden. They knew that the Messiah was going to be a
king and He was going to save His people.
By
the 1st century, the Jews had had a long history of disaster and
despair. Now they were being dominated
by the Roman Empire. Conditions were
difficult. If ever they wanted their
king to show up it was now. John the
Baptist was telling everyone that the king they had been waiting for had now
arrived. It was Jesus.
And indeed, Jesus was amazing everyone everywhere. But Jesus was not the kind of king they had
in mind. They were thinking something
along the lines of a military king. It
was that sort of king that they thought they needed to throw out the
Romans. But despite all of the amazing
things that Jesus was doing and saying, He didn’t seem to be that sort of king
at all.
So
in spite of John the Baptist’s divine appointment, what he saw was that things
were going from bad to worse. He was in
prison and Jesus wasn’t a general.
That’s a pretty good explanation for John’s doubt.
There is a very practical application that’s made by this explanation
too. Christians do have their periods of
doubt from time to time. Someone at my
church was recently opening up to me about a situation of disharmony in his
family and he told me that it even caused him to question his faith.
It
is during times like that that it is at least a little comforting to know that
when we have our times of doubt, that it is a thing common to just about all of
us and also to know that it can even happen to the best of us.
It
could have even happened to John the Baptist and none of us would have blamed
him for becoming disillusioned. Who
wouldn’t be disillusioned?
Well, John wouldn’t be, was what I was thinking. If John didn’t doubt – and for now I’m
calling that a big IF – our source of solace might be ill-placed. I knew that John would have been perfectly
justified for thinking, “Hey, I’m not so sure about Jesus after all.” But I felt that there was sufficient reason
to think that maybe we had better make sure about that before we declare it as
an undeniable fact and say, “Case closed.”
The way it seemed to me was that people were going to a great deal more
trouble than necessary to conclude that John the Baptist doubted. It seemed to me that they were disregarding
everything they knew about him up to the point of his imprisonment. Most of all, it seemed to me that they were
looking at what the passage in Luke and Matthew said and drawing a conclusion
from it based upon an assumption.
Sure, the assumption was sensible.
But the conclusion they were making was not actually stated within the
passage. It does not specifically state,
“John doubted.” But it doesn’t have to
specifically state it, necessarily, does it?
When you see what he did and you see that he had good motivation for
doing it, you have good grounds for the conclusion that John doubted.
Yes, that’s quite true – if
there is no other explanation. Look at
it this way: The materialist person,
that is, the secular humanist sort of person, says that there is no God. Stuff just came into being one day and here
we are. There’s no reason for it and one
day we’ll all just go away and that’s the end of the story.
Really, the logic is perfectly good if
there is no other explanation. Their
reasoning is sound if there is no
spiritual aspect that exists. But we
Christians believe that there is a spiritual aspect. “That’s just it,” says the materialist. “If. You can’t prove it’s true and we can’t prove
it’s not true. Stalemate.”
However, we believe that there are perfectly sound reasons to believe in
a spiritual reality and we are prepared to explain what they are. At least we should be prepared to explain
them. The same if principle applies in the case of John the Baptist.
People do all kinds of things for reasons that are not at all what they
appear to be. I heard a story that
illustrates this. This story was told by
someone who was trying to demonstrate how easily people establish traditions
even when they don’t know the original reason for those traditions.
As
the story goes, a man and his wife had a guest over for an Easter meal. The wife was in the process of preparing a
ham and the guest observed that she cut the end off of the ham. (I don’t know much about hams, but I guess
they have an “end.” Anyway, that’s how
this story was told.)
So
the guest asked the husband, “Why does your wife cut the end off of the ham?”
“I
guess it doesn’t taste good,” said the husband.
“It doesn’t taste good?” said
the guest.
The husband said, “I don’t know.
Ask my wife.”
The wife said, “I don’t know.
That’s just the way we’ve always done it. I guess it’s tough or something. I learned it from my mother. Go ask her.”
Well, the guest had never known the end of a ham to be tough or
bad-tasting before. He wanted to find
out why his host cut the end off of the ham so he went to her mother and asked
her.
“The ham doesn’t cook well if you leave the end on it.”
“Really?” asked the guest.
“Well, that’s what I always thought.
We just always did it that way when I was growing up. I learned it from my mother. She’s right over there. Go ask her.”
Sure enough, the very aged matriarch was there and doing quite well,
too. So the guest went up to her.
“Your family tells me that they always cut the end off of the ham before
they cook it but they didn’t exactly know why and they said I should ask you.”
“Back when my husband and I were first married,” she began, “we were
just poor dirt-farmers. We lived in a
little one-room farmhouse and the stove we had was just this tiny little
wood-burning cast-iron stove. The oven
compartment was so small that the ham was too big to fit in it. So I had to cut the end off of it. I decided to do it that way ever since for
good luck.”
There were plenty of good guesses as to why they cooked the ham the way they did. But they were all wrong because they were
based on missing information.
People do things all the time for reasons other than what someone else
might think. I had just such an
experience myself. My wife and I decided
to move from where we were living. We
didn’t know where we were going. We just
decided to pack up the travel trailer and go – somewhere. (That’s a bad idea, by the way. I don’t recommend it.)
When we sold our house we discontinued the phone and internet service
and got some new cell phones and away we went.
No one knew exactly where we were, where we were going or what we were
doing.
We
had been on the road for a month and a half or so when we finally got settled
in a new place. Finally we got
communication with the world up and running again.
When my sister was finally able to reach us she said, “What happened to
you? I’ve been worried about you. I tried to send you e-mails but they kept
coming back saying ‘undeliverable.’ I
tried to call you but your phone was disconnected.”
I
said, “I’m sorry. We didn’t know where
we were going or how long it was going to take.
And we got these new cell phones.”
She said, “Well, you should have called me and told me. I thought you didn’t want to speak to me
anymore.”
I
can’t blame her for thinking that. She
thought I didn’t want to speak to her but that wasn’t it at all, even though I
can understand why she would feel
that way. It was a logical assumption
she was making but it was the wrong assumption because it was based on missing
information.
That’s the way it seemed to me about this incident with John the
Baptist. People were guessing why he did what he did and their guesses
were sensible. Nevertheless, because of
missing information, their guesses were only guesses and they could be wrong.
Well, I was persuaded that they were
wrong because they went against other very convincing information that we had
to the contrary, information found both in the Bible and in what was known
historically about the conditions in that region in those days.
So, as I say, I was becoming more and more convinced that there was
another explanation. I was even able to
propose what that other explanation might be.
This alternative explanation fit both the historical as well as the
biblical accounts to a tee, it spared making assumptions and it was much
simpler and more realistic to how we know people to be as a general rule.
That’s when I had to open my big mouth.
In one of the Sunday School classes, what happened? Sure enough, somebody said, “After all, John
the Baptist doubted.”
I
said, “John the Baptist didn’t doubt.”
There were those blank stares, those blank, “Who is this guy, Starman?”
stares.
I
mentioned a couple of the things that made me think that John the Baptist did
not doubt. The teacher said, “OK. Now, moving on to the next thing …”
In another Sunday School class the teacher,
who happens to be a very competent and experienced Bible teacher, was covering
the incident of John the Baptist in prison and stated that John the Baptist
doubted. I decided that I wasn’t going
to make an issue out of it in front of the whole class this time, so I kept my
mouth shut. But I decided that I would
ask about it in an e-mail.
I
composed the e-mail, put down the basic points as to why I thought that another
explanation could be – could be, mind
you – possible. And I went on to say
that I knew that it was not the traditional explanation, so I knew that I must
be wrong somewhere and I asked for reasons explaining why this alternative
explanation was wrong.
I
never got a response. I thought to
myself, “Oh, no. I’ve really done it
this time. Now this really brilliant
Bible teacher thinks I’m a schizo.” To
me, getting no reply was like getting one of those blank stares, one of those
I-wouldn’t-touch-that-guy-with-a-ten-foot-pole stares.
I
thought, “That’s it. I’m not doing it
anymore. People can think or believe any
kind of goofy thing they want. I don’t
care.”
It’s an interesting thing, too, now that I think about it. I did not get a response from that person and
I wondered to myself, “Why?” I began to
think up several different possible scenarios:
Perhaps that person never received my e-mail. Perhaps that person put it aside and forgot
about it. Perhaps I just seemed to be
too nutty to bother with.
I
don’t really know, do I? Missing
information.
Then I was listening to a set of lectures on the internet. The lectures were based on a book by Darrell
Bock called Who Is Jesus? Linking the Historical Jesus with the Christ
of Faith.[1] Darrell Bock is the Executive Director of
Cultural Engagement and Senior Research Professor of New Testament Studies at
Dallas Theological Seminary.[2] In the description of the book on the
Seminary website, it says,
Darrell Bock tests the authenticity of Jesus’ claims against the
rules of history to find out if He truly is the Christ of faith.[3]
At
some point during the course of the lectures the statement was made that
Professor Bock uses the incident of John’s doubt as a factor in establishing
the historicity of Jesus. I saw a
two-fold problem with this. First, I had
not been able to get anyone to substantiate conclusively that John in fact did doubt. And if he did not doubt then this incident
could not qualify to be used for that purpose.
Second, it was a factor that was being taught in a class-like setting
without it being qualified whether or not the fact of John’s doubt was
conclusive.
I
did not have at that time, and still do not have to this day, any objection to
the teaching that John the Baptist doubted save for that one qualification,
namely, that it has not been established conclusively. Or if it has been established conclusively, I
am keenly interested to know how it has been done.
I
thought, “I must write to a few people and say that there might possibly be
another explanation for the statements in Matthew 11 and Luke 7 if any other
explanation indeed cannot be ruled out.”
I
had already tested my proposal on two different Bible teachers with disastrous
results, even if they didn’t tell me that I was wrong and where it was that I
was wrong. So I decided on three other
people to whom I could totally humiliate myself.
One person I decided to write to was Professor Bock himself. Another was the pastor of my own church. The third was a pastor I had learned about by
sheer chance (providence). I will call
him Pastor X.
I
learned of Pastor X a few years ago when I was researching the Doctrine of
Salvation. On the internet, I came
across a paper he had written on the subject.
I thought it was a very fine paper too.
Subsequently I learned that Pastor X had written several books and gave
lectures and radio interviews. I have
listened to his sermons on the internet on numerous occasions. I have learned a great deal from him. He is intelligent and strikes me as a very
gentle, kind and caring pastor. I have
even corresponded with him on a couple of other occasions. I decided that I would like to have his
feedback on my topic.
By
now the reader must be thinking, “What is this alternative explanation he keeps
talking about?” For all I know, my
reader is thinking, “I didn’t think there was
an alternative explanation. How could
there be?”
Well I thought there was one anyway.
Here is the message that I e-mailed to the three people. Printed out in the formatting I used, it’s
about a page and a half long. I titled
it “Doubting John’s Doubt”:
Dear ______,
I am writing to request aid in determining
where I have gone wrong in my understanding of the account given in Matthew
11:2-3 and Luke 7:18-20. Twice in recent
weeks I have spoken of my understanding of this event to people who are Bible
teachers and in neither case did they say to me, “No, Monty, you are wrong, and
here is why …” Neither did they affirm
my claim.
Yet I know that my view on this story is in
opposition to what the church traditionally and universally teaches. The last thing I want to do is to claim that
I have seen something in the Bible which no one else has ever seen before. So I must be in error somehow. I would like to know where I have gone wrong.
I recognize that what is described in these
two passages is a secondary issue in the sense that one’s salvation does not
hang upon how it is interpreted. Still,
that does not mean that it is not important to understand it correctly.
Resolving this question may seem important to
me personally, but I believe it is important for another reason. I have seen this portion of scripture used in
a variety of ways ranging from being used as an example to provide assurance to
believers at times when they are feeling doubts about their own faith, to being
used as a factor in support of the very historicity of Jesus. Yet if my understanding as it stands
presently is right, this passage does not qualify to be used in those ways.
The traditional teaching regarding the event
described in these passages is that John the Baptist had his doubts about the
identity of Christ. Indeed, that’s the
way it looks:
Luke 7 – 18 John’s disciples told him
about all these things. Calling two of
them, 19 he sent them to the Lord to ask, “Are you the one who was
to come, or should we expect someone else?” (NIV)
It certainly sounds like John had his
doubts. After all, we can understand how
someone could have doubts. John was the herald saying “Prepare the way
for the Lord, make straight paths for him.”
But now, in prison, things weren’t looking too good for him. Yes, we can understand how some people – most
people – would have been disillusioned in such a situation.
At the same time, I see no reason to think
that for John to send disciples to ask Jesus if He “is the one who was to
come,” is telling us that John the Baptist was disillusioned and that he
doubted.
Look at who John was. It seems probable to me that when he was
growing up he heard time and time again the stories of how his father was
struck dumb when John’s birth was foretold and how he was able to speak again
after he was born.
Surely, countless times, John heard the
stories of how Mary came to visit his pregnant mother and the baby leaped in
her womb.
In fact, it was foretold that John would be
filled with the Holy Spirit from birth. (Lk. 1:15)
Look at John’s boldness in the face of the
most formidable adversaries. See how he
confronted the Pharisees and Sadducees and, most formidable of all, Herod.
After considering all of that, now, when John
the Baptist is in prison, can we be confident to claim that he was
disillusioned, that his confidence was sagging?
If so, then that quality of confidence would have spared a great deal of
discomfort to martyrs like Nicholas Ridley and Hugh Latimer. How is it possible to assert that John the
Baptist had less confidence than they?
Well then, how are we to explain why John
would have his disciples ask Jesus the question that he sent them to ask? We can base the answer to that question on
what we know from the Bible itself.
We know that up to and subsequent to Jesus’
baptism, John was proclaiming the one “whose sandals I am not worthy to
untie.” We know that John had disciples. It follows that John taught his disciples of
the identity of Jesus.
Then John was thrown into prison. His disciples were out there to fend for
themselves. Look at what they faced: They faced a population, probably mostly
Jewish, who were led by the Sanhedrin, largely Pharisees and Sadducees.
Worse than that, they were in a place
occupied by Roman soldiers. John’s
disciples’ very lives were in danger. It
would be expected that they faced the severest persecution every day.
It would also be expected that, for those
reasons, they went to visit John in prison (Mt. 11:2, Lk. 7:18), and they said
to John, “Look, John, things aren’t so easy on the outside either. Yes, that Jesus is doing some amazing things
(Mt. 11:2, Lk. 7:18), but life is still devastatingly tough for us. We’re getting pulverized out here! Are you 100% positive He’s the Messiah? Are you sure this Jesus is for real?”
John said, “Am I sure?! Do you
think I would be in here if I wasn’t sure?
Sure I’m sure! You go ask Him
yourselves. I’m telling you, He’s the
real thing. Ask Him. Say, ‘Are you the one who was to come, or
should we expect someone else?’ Go
ahead. Go ask Him!” (Mt. 11:2, Lk. 7:19)
That’s just what they did (Mt. 11:3, Lk.
7:19).
John did not doubt.
Until I learn in what way I am in error, I
must say that, despite what is taught in the whole of Christendom, I am
strongly inclined to think that John did not doubt.
Perhaps there is a place elsewhere within
scripture where it says that John doubted.
For the present, I know of no such occurrence. Perhaps there is a Greek or Hebrew
translation that sheds the light that John doubted. I have yet to learn of it.
Am I wrong?
I would love to know. I do not
want to say anything in opposition to what is taught in all of Christianity. I must be wrong somewhere.
Thank you for your help,
Monty Dicksion
What reaction did I get to this e-mail?
The first person, Professor Bock did not reply. Do you know what I did? I wondered “Why?” Had he not received my e-mail? Had he forgotten about it? Was he too busy to answer? Did he feel it did not deserve a response? I can’t say for certain, can I? Missing information.
Second, my own pastor very promptly gave me a very good and a very
thoughtful reply, and by phone, no less.
I am unable to quote his exact words, but to my recollection, he said,
I think that God has so designed us such that
there will be those times when we just don’t know.
I
like that answer. I really do. And for all I know, it is the correct and
valid and true answer. I think it’s very
good. I want to believe it, too, because
if it is right then it takes a whole lot of pressure off of me during times
when I am one of “the poor in spirit” (Matt. 5:3).
What a great answer! And
succinct, too. I wish I had his gift for
brevity. Yes, that answer is a good one
and it may very well be the right one but, unfortunately, I didn’t see that
there was anything to substantiate it.
I’m left with nothing to support John’s doubt and I have nothing with
which to support this explanation either.
I
also got a very prompt and courteous reply from Pastor X:
Hi Monty,
I understand your concern, and your position, which is certainly
possible. I doubt, from the limited information we are given in the
Gospels, that we can be dogmatic either way. But for your considerable (sp?) about the possibility that
John did go through a period of doubt, I offer an even more perplexing
situation found in the New Testament. I just completed preparing a sermon
from Mark 3, in which we find Jesus’ brothers and mother coming to take Him
home because they thought He was out of His mind (see vv. 21, 32). How
could it be possible that Mary, who gave birth to Jesus through the
supernatural power of the Holy Spirit, who had spoken to angels, and
experienced the worship of Jesus by shepherds and wise men, as well as having
raised a truly perfect and sinless Son, have any possible doubt of who He
was. And yet the evidence is there that at least to some degree she did
not understand fully until after the resurrection. So, to me, if
Mary could struggle with the identity of Jesus, I suppose John could too.
Blessings,
Pastor X
By
golly, I had never thought of that before!
Seriously, I mean that. I am not
being sarcastic. I really hadn’t thought
to compare John’s doubt to Mary’s.
However, I can’t see that there is an answer here anywhere. Why did John doubt? Why did Mary doubt? Why this?
Why that? Why do we breathe? Why does the coyote howl at the moon?
When it comes to dealing with Mary’s doubt, that matter occupies a
significant portion of this essay project, because I saw Pastor X’s reply as a
research assignment. So I sent him this
reply:
Dear Pastor X,
Thank you
for your prompt and courteous reply. By golly if you have not given me an
assignment to find an explanation for Mark 3:21, 32! A possible
explanation does come to mind but it is so replete with speculation that I'll
not even intrude on your time with it. You have been more
than generous with your time already.
Thanks
again,
Monty
Yes, I did have an inkling of an idea for a possible explanation for
Mary’s doubt, and, yes, I suspected that the possible explanation for it was
“replete with speculation.” As it turns
out, however, after having put a great deal of work into researching it, there
is a very good possible explanation for it, more than one, even, and they do
not depend on much, if any, speculation at all.
But I had pressing personal matters to attend to at the time and I was
not able to turn my attention to doing any research for a while. The fact of the matter was, in the midst of
the other things I needed to do, this whole subject seemed like a lost cause.
I’m an absolute nobody; no one was going to listen to me. The notion that John, and now Mary, had their
doubts is just too pervasive throughout all of Christianity. It was total insanity for me to think that
anyone was even going to give me a fair hearing. My own pastor gave me a very nice answer but
even he did not offer to show me where my alternative had failed.
Plus, it seemed to me by this time that with the personal matters I
needed to deal with on my plate, this subject was too minor. They are only secondary issues, after all. No one’s salvation depends on if you think
these people doubted or if they didn’t.
Sure, it made me shake my head just ever so slightly now, every time I
heard someone say, “John doubted.” But I
just had to let it go and forget the whole thing.
Three or four weeks went by. I
remembered that Pastor X’s e-mail had said that he was working on a sermon on
Mark 3 with the section that tells about Mary and Jesus’ brothers saying that
Jesus was out of His mind. I decided to
listen to it. Here is an excerpt from
that sermon. Pastor X speaking:
In verses 20 and 21, He
could be a lunatic. It says this:
20
He came home, and the crowd gathered again, to such an extent that they could
not even eat a meal. 21 When
His own people heard of this, they went out to take custody of Him; for they
were saying, “He has lost His senses.” (NASB)
Now Jesus has been on the mountain, He comes
down in verse 19. He’s been up there
with His disciples, He’s been choosing twelve apostles; we looked at that last
time. As He comes home, now He’s back at
Capernaum. And it says He comes to a
house, here, later, and that’s probably the home of Simon Peter. That’s where He seemed to headquarter Himself
during this stay in Capernaum.
And so as He comes, as usual, a crowd
gathers. There’s always a large crowd at
this time gathering around Jesus. They
want to have demons cast out. They want
to have their bodies healed. They want
to have all these miraculous things. So
they want to hear what He has to say.
And so a large crowd, as usual, comes.
And such a crowd, it says here in verse 20, He doesn’t even have time to
eat. He can’t even set aside a few
moments to get a bite of food. This is
how busy He was at this time.
But some, verse 21, in His family, hearing
about all of this, have drawn an interesting conclusion. They look at Jesus, and they hear about His
miracles and His dealings, and perhaps His messianic claims, and they hear that
crowds are so big He doesn’t even have time to get a meal, and they talk
together. And they come up with a
conclusion. Jesus, their brother, Jesus,
their son, is nuts. He has lost His
mind. He is out of His senses. He’s a lunatic.
Now, that seems to be harsh, but that’s
exactly what it says in verse 21, when His own people, we’re going to find out
later in the text, verse 34, that’s His mother and brothers, when they hear
about this, they go to take control of Him.
Now, you need to keep in mind, this is
something that you’ll miss easily, they weren’t living next door. They didn’t walk out their back door and walk
over to where Jesus was and start to take Him home. They’re in Nazareth 25 miles away. They’re going to have to walk for a full day
to get down to where Jesus is. And so
they take off on foot. They don’t have
donkeys and camels. We think of some
strange things in our traditions and our imaginations about Jesus and His
family. For example, where in the world
do we get the idea that Mary rode a donkey to Bethlehem? If anybody can find a donkey going to
Bethlehem with Mary in the Bible, let me know; I’ll buy you lunch. This was a poor, poor people. They walked a hundred miles, pregnant, to
Bethlehem. That’s what we have here, a
25-mile walk from Nazareth down to take Jesus home.
It’s amazing isn’t it? This was His own family. If anybody should have known that Jesus was
different than anybody else, it should be them.
His brothers had grown up with Him.
We find on other occasions He has sisters. They grew up with Him. He was perfect. Why didn’t they see that He was perfect?
Well we do know today, often the better
child, the more compliant child, is often not recognized as that by their
siblings, are they? And some of you can
argue about that at lunch. You siblings
can get together and decide who’s the good kid and who was the bad kid. Most of you already know the answer to
that. But we don’t always see how
wonderful somebody is.
But Mary, what about Mary? Doesn’t this confuse you? I mean, I got an e-mail a couple of weeks ago
from a student of scripture, who I don’t know, but he wrote me a long e-mail
challenging the common view that John the Baptist, when he was put in prison,
we’ll find that story in a couple of months, when John the Baptist was put in
prison, he seemed to get confused about who Jesus was. And he sends a messenger to ask Jesus if He
was the one they’re looking for.
And this guy is challenging the common view
that John the Baptist was confused. It
just doesn’t seem possible that John, who had baptized Jesus, who called Jesus
the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, the one who heard the
voice of God from heaven, could possibly question that Jesus is the Son of
God. But it seems like he’s done so, and
this guy was really troubled by that, built a whole case as to why it couldn’t
be.
And I wrote back and defended what I believe
is the position a little bit. But I
said, “Look, I’ve got a bigger problem for you.
If you think that’s tough, what about Mary?” Why would Mary be confused? Mary knew that she conceived supernaturally
through the power of the Holy Spirit, that she’s the virgin who gave birth to
the Son of God. She had spoken to
angels. She had seen shepherds and magi
come and bow before Him and worship Him.
And yet here, thirty years later, Mary seems to be at least confused
about who He is. And hearing about His
claims and hearing about all that He’s doing and saying, they decide that He
has lost it, and He needs to be taken home.
He’s crazy. He’s deluded. And so they come down to take Him home.
(end of excerpt)
When I listened to that I felt I had been characterized a little
negatively. He told his congregation
that he got this “long e-mail” from “some guy” he “didn’t know” who was “really
troubled” and “challenging the common view.”
I
didn’t think my e-mail was all that long - a page and a half. I didn’t realize I was coming across as being
really troubled. And I thought I made it
clear that I was asking a question. I
guess maybe it’s not what he read, it’s how he read it. As I re-read what I sent to him I read that
there was nothing I was more unsure about than my own certainty. But I wasn’t there to defend myself.
Yes, I felt Pastor X negatively biased his congregation and portrayed me
as some way-out stranger. But there were
two things that he said that I really do think should be protested. First, he did not give his congregation even
a hint as to what my case was so they could judge for themselves. Second, he told them that he gave me an
answer and then put to me the
question, “What about Mary?” Reader, I
have provided you with Pastor X’s exact e-mail reply to me. I see no answer to my question in it at all.
I
protest.
In
fact, I must confess that my first reaction was that I wanted to protest to
Pastor X tout de suite, may God
forgive me.
[1] Darrell Bock, Who Is Jesus? Linking the Historical Jesus with the Christ
of Faith (New York, NY, Howard Books, 2012) (See pp. 29-30, no alternative
to doubt is even offered)
[2] DTS faculty,
Darrell Bock, http://www.dts.edu/about/faculty/dbock/, site accessed
04/10/2013
[3] DTS Book Center
website, Who Is Jesus?, http://bookcenter.dts.edu/who-is-jesus, site accessed
04/10/2013
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