27 Feb 2023 06:49
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Here are a few different views about who Jesus Christ was. Which one(s) do you consider are correct?
1. Jesus Christ was just a mythical figure
Although part of the Bible story, practically all modern scholars studying antiquity say that Jesus did exist historically. A lot of them agree that Jesus was a Galilean, Jewish rabbi who preached his message orally, and was crucified by the order of the Roman Prefect Pontius Pilate.
2. Jesus Christ was founder of some sort of religious tradition
Most people consider him as an eminent religious leader pointing to the importance of spiritual as opposed to material things.
Like in relation to what Buddhism calls attachment, and what the Jewish tradition identifies as coveting, Jesus said:
"For what is a person profited, if he shall gain the world but lose his soul?"
This resembles the teachings of the leaders of other religions:
"You utilize all your vital energy on external things and degrade your spirit" (Chuang Tzu, a Taoist sage)
"It's burdensome for a person laden with riches to climb the steep path that results in bliss." (The Prophet Muhammad, founder of Islam)
Actually, Jesus Christ was a creator of a restoration movement within Judaism. Only after his death, did the community his followers formed eventually became the Christian church.
3. Jesus Christ was a very good man
He has been regarded as a religious ascetic holy man and thus a symbol of perfect goodness and virtue. A part model we could aspire to copy. In washing the feet of others he revealed his humility, he showed look after the sick, and he called for the forgiveness of people who were crucifying him.
"Jesus Christ. I mean, not merely was He the best human being to ever walk our planet, He's anything that I wish to strive for. He's anything that anyone should ever desire to strive for." (Sam Bradford, American football player)
4. Jesus Christ was a great moral teacher
The sayings attributed to Jesus, e.g. those called Sermon on the Mount, are related to forgiveness and compassion. They've been seen to have a healing quality directed not merely for some particular disease or misfortune but to the vital core of the in-patient, focusing while they on love and humility as opposed to demand and penalty.
"We must live our lives as though Christ was coming this afternoon." (Jimmy Carter, ex-President USA)
5. Jesus Christ was God's messenger and prophet
This is the indisputable fact that Jesus was Divinely inspired, differing from the wisdom of other men, not in kind, but only in degree. Like Muslims considered Jesus to be among God's important prophets chosen to spread God's message.
If he indeed was a prophet some of his parables of judgment make uncomfortable reading about our destiny. The wheat was to be stored nevertheless the weeds were to be burned, the foolish virgins were to be excluded from the wedding banquet, the worthless servant who buried his talent was to be thrown outside into the darkness.
"People who meet Jesus always experience either joy or its opposites, either foretastes of Heaven or foretastes of Hell. Not everyone who meets Jesus is pleased, and not everyone is happy, but most people are shocked." (Peter Kreeft, writer of Jesus-Shock)
6. Jesus Christ was magic maker
The chance of supernatural events is accepted by people who believe Jesus, like several other Bible figures such as for example Elisha and Peter, could use what they see as God's omnipotent power. Like he is believed to cause a wide array of fish to be caught, make a storm cease, and turn water into wine at a wedding. Whether seeing these stories as literally true or merely symbolic, Christian authors view them as works of love and mercy, performed to show compassion for sinful and suffering humanity.
7. Jesus Christ was a manifestation of God
Those following Bahá'I faith see Jesus as serving together of several manifestations of God reflecting God's qualities and attributes and possessing simultaneous qualities of humanity and divinity.
Some Hindus consider Jesus to be an appearance or manifestation of the Supreme Being and explain similarities between Krishna and Jesus' teachings. Some Buddhists, including Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, regard Jesus as a bodhisattva (i.e. a being with enlightenment motivated by great compassion) who dedicated his life to the welfare of people.
8. Jesus Christ is the Son of God
In his time the religious authorities in Judea called for his death simply because they didn't rely on his claim to be the Son of God that they saw as a great blasphemy.
Likewise today Muslims don't believe Jesus was the son of God. Islamic texts emphasise a strict notion of monotheism forbidding the association of partners with God which may be idolatry.
Though the cornerstone of the Christian faith is a belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ. At the same time frame Christians ask how could a divine Jesus have now been an ignorant baby who'd to learn slowly by means of experience and instruction, as all children do? How could Jesus have prayed to his Father like to a different?
Today mainstream Christians respond by believing that Jesus was the Son of God. They explain that this was their own claim about himself. They believe of him as another person of the divine trinity alongside God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. Their concept of atonement by the sacrifice of the cross would be impossible apart from the idea of the Son as a person distinct from the Father.
9. Jesus Christ is God himself
This is the view that, although as to his body Jesus Christ was a person like others, nevertheless his inner character was infinite and divine. According to this view, he was the one God himself, in human form, who came at a place in history since the infant child of Mary to cultivate and learn in the world acim, go through the natural side of life, overcome its allurements, and thus cause all evil influences in the world to be curtailed.
Quite simply he wasn't the Son of God in the sense of another Divine person. He saw himself in this manner because unless he felt apart from their own self as God, he couldn't have experienced temptation. And so he wasn't aware of his full identity even if praying in the Garden of Gethsemane before his arrest and trial, and when dying in agony nailed to the cross when he cried out to ask why God had forsaken him.
As a scientific psychologist, Stephen Russell-Lacy has specialised in cognitive-behavioural psychotherapy, working for quite some time with adults suffering distress and disturbance.