“Think Different – Accept Uncertainty” Part II

Question:

Why has there only been ONE BEING such as Jesus?  If you say, “human life is evolving into higher and higher levels of consciousness,” why do we always reference ONLY back to Jesus ALONE?  If God is Christ and IS in us, I imagine (in us the same way as he was in Christ), why always the reference back SOLELY to Christ?  In a way it seems exclusive to me.  I see the story of Jesus as an attempt to explain divinity found within the human being.  Why not take that experience to other humans as well.  I imagine Jesus is not a perfect human being.  I have met Jesus-type persons in people like you, Tillich, Bonhoeffer, Aquinas, De Mello, John O’Donohue, my neighbor down the street, a tennis pro.  Barrier breakers opening understandings to us all.  Have we frozen Jesus in the same way as the creeds have frozen the experience we seek?  Thanks for all you are and all you do.

Answer:

Dear Kessy,

What makes you think there has been only one?  We reference Jesus because he is the life in which this God experience has come to us.  It is only institutional religion that interprets this experience as a solitary one.  Jesus is the way to God for me, but I will never say that he is the only way to God.  That would be to claim more than I am competent to claim.  I cannot force the Holy God to live within the boundaries of my limited understanding of the holy.  That would be to claim that I can embrace all that is God inside the finite limits of my human.

A great debate has gone on in Christian history for centuries as to whether Jesus is different from you or me in substance or in degree.  The majority opinion in “orthodox” Christian circles maintains that he is different in substance and creeds and doctrinal statements make that assumption.  There has, however, always been a minority opinion, an undercurrent flowing in Christian history that asserts that this difference is only in degree.  I can locate that in the 14^th century writing of Meister Eckhart, who succeeded Thomas Aquinas in his theological chair.  I find it present in my great mentor, John A. T. Robinson, particularly in his book, The Human Face of God. I find that position persuasive for if God is one, and if God is real, then the God experienced in Jesus has to be the same as the God experienced in everyone else, and if the humanity of Jesus is real, then it has to be the same humanity that you and I possess.  Jesus becomes, thus, the defining life, that is, Jesus is the life through which God has been met and engaged in a full and special way. That is a difference in degree not in kind.

I do meet God in the lives of those you mention and in many others, but I recognize that God because that is the same God I believe I meet in Jesus of Nazareth.

~John Shelby Spong