In my life I find that my culture is not where I am from but
what I do everyday, what my parents and grandparents do everyday, and what I
most closely relate myself to. For me this means that my culture is
Christianity and inasmuch I would have to say the most influential figure is
Jesus Christ. This choice is not so much because everybody knows who he is or
because he is the obvious choice but because he was real, logical, and
edifying.
When I say that Jesus was "real" I do not mean it
as if i then plan to prove that he physically existed. This is already a known
fact. Rather I mean that he is real in the sense that he is practical. Because
the name Jesus Christ has become so widespread and commonplace it has garnered
a sort of aura, a mysticism that really puts a fog around the actual person of
Jesus and makes Him into a symbol instead. In my life and culture I have found
that in removing that fog there is a very real and practical person; I have
found a person who talked to strangers in awkward situations, worked hard at
his job as a carpenter, and tried to keep a tight-knit group of friends around
him.
Knowing this, but also knowing the great feats that He
accomplished, encourages me in a personal way to try to take the same steps in
hopes of getting as close as possible to the same great results. It is an
impossible goal and I expect it to be a precarious path that leads there but I
can see no better example to try to follow, no better life to emulate, and no
other way that I could reflect on my life, in the end, satisfied.
Jesus was also logical. This seems to me to be a largely overlooked
aspect of Jesus' nature but is one that I find very encouraging and impacting.
No matter what religious beliefs one might have it would be hard to deny the
great arguments that Jesus made and the practical application that these have
even today. As a religious symbol it seems that the majority see the choice
between believing what Jesus had to say and not believing it as a choice
between myth and fact. It seems that many look at science and the sermons Jesus
gave as if they were two different and incompatible things. I read just the
opposite.
It seems to me that when Jesus spoke He did not speak in
contradiction to logic or science at all. In fact, I find the study of physics
and biology to enforce His sublime view of the world and the study of our
effect as people on both of them to enforce His teachings on our nature and
actions.
Lastly, Jesus was (and continues to be) a great teacher. All
throughout his life one can see that he was a very intelligent man starting at
a young who grew up to be a speaker unlike most that we have today. As a child,
it is recorded, that Jesus would spend much of his time discussing philosophy
with the rabbis. It is also noted on multiple occasions that those around him
commented on how much authority and knowledge Jesus spoke with. He also
structured his sermons powerfully and poignantly. One needs look no farther
than the Sermon on the Mount or the Beatitudes to see His exquisite use of
parallel structure and not look much for His use of metaphor, simile,
personification, and most every other tool taught about in English classes.
Beyond this, however, He was also very to-the-point. He cut out much of the
superfluous rhetoric that we find so rampantly in today’s campaign speeches and
cut straight to what he needed to say in the way he knew would be most
effective. Bold statements like "I am the way" show that Jesus did
not shy from difficult concepts or try to hide them behind fancy wording and
this is a concept that I feel could be extremely impacting in today's society
if really implemented correctly.
I sometimes wish that Jesus had a different name. I wish
that I could introduce Him to someone who never had heard of Him. I wonder what
people would think if they learned about Jesus but under an entirely different
name so that all of the iconography surrounding Him was eliminated. I believe
that they would see an extremely logical man who made it his life ambition to
understand truth and explain it to those around Him (and the only person who
actually has succeeded in the prior). They would see a man whose use of
powerful but direct rhetoric is worthy of consideration for teaching from in
schools alongside Martin Luther King Jr. and Shakespeare. They would see a man
whose practical way of life and very real qualities make Him the one person I
can truly say, without any regret, I hold to be the exemplary life liver, the
world's greatest teacher, and the solid core of my culture.
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