Sunday 21 August 2011

WHAT SHOULD JESUS HAVE DONE ?

I find it helpful in life to ask, "What should Jesus have done?".  In Luke 4v1-3 I think Jesus was a bit hasty to turn down the devilishly good idea of turning the deserts stones/sand into fertile grade 1 arable land with a good crop of wheat growing to feed the hungry. Maybe he realised irrigation would be a limiting factor and just couldn't think of a way to alter the rainfall pattern.Maybe he thought that there wasn't much point since the world population would just increase all the faster and quickly get to the point where again there wasn't enough food.
   To be fair the devil only suggested turning a stone into bread, but you would have thought that Jesus would have been able to think outside the box and see the germ of a good idea in what initially didn't seem too promising.
    If  Jesus had turned the worlds deserts into fertile fields with swaying wheat as a one off magic trick then he could have said John 4v35,'look the fields are ripe for harvest'. Also if he had turned the deserts into fertile arable fields then you would have clear historical proof that a God visited the planet and undid the curse that had been on Adam, in fact this should have been the sign that Jesus had won the victory over the power of sin- a much more fertile planet and no more pain in child birth for woman. The power of sin defeated.
      If you read Isaiah 35v1-10 The wilderness will rejoice and bloom v7 grass & bubbling springs. v8 The way of holiness, v10 the ransomed will return andn enter Zion. The N.T. authors missed a trick by not writing a story about Jesus turning the desert into fields of wheat. That would have tied in well with Isaiah 35.
   Not to worry I'll just write it into the Bible margin and the next time the scribes do a reprint they can to a copy & paste into the main passage.
    Actually contrast to Matthew 7v9 "Which of you,if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone". Jesus gives himself stone in Luke 4v3. This verse hints at humanity's cry for more fertile ground & better yields and Jesus response is actually, 'No, you'll just have to make do with fantasy fiction'. No practical help, no insight into health or crop production or contraception, nothing to make the lot of humanity any better, just pie in the sky when you die and make the priests rich.
    So anyway, if Jesus was fine about turning water into wine, what did he have against turning stone into bread? You are supposed to care for your body, which means that you should feed yourself regularly- not too much, not too little. Maybe it was actually the voice of God recommending to turn the stones into bread? It's not as if the desert would miss a stone? Plants turn earth / minerals into food. Maybe the real reason was that Jesus couldn't have turned stone into bread even if he had wanted to. Maybe Jesus retort should have been, "Don't make such stupid suggestions, who do you think I am, God or something?"

  In John 8 Jesus did well to say, "Stop, don't stone her" [ps if Jesus had turned all the stones into bread then he wouldn't kneaded to worry about it] He should have added,"Such a punishment for this behaviour is not appropriate" He could have also have asked her why she did it. Had her marriage gone sour? Had her husband been very abusive toward her ? Had she been nagging and verbally abusive to him and then he had been physically abusive to her? Was her husband ill, depressed, out of work & out of money, impotent. Was she just bored of him ? Were they sick and tired of each other ? Or was she hoping to just be with someone richer, younger, cleverer, more funny, ticked more of her boxes, tickled her fancy ? At any rate what was she hoping for when she returned to her husband ? Would he have allowed her back in the house? Should he have welcomed her back? He could have said, 'Well you've made your choice, go and be with that man if you want to' or he could have said, "I enjoy your company, I think you are beautiful, please don't do that again"
   What if the woman had become pregnant. Who was going to bring up the child. The husband could refuse or could agree but only if the father paid for the upkeep of the child-ongoing finance until the child was 16. What about access agreements, would the father just have to agree to disappear, keep out of it.
   You can try for a better relationship with someone else but there is always the risk that you might end up worse off or with no one. If you lose access to your child then you might probably regret that very much. Sometimes you could be better off with a dull dependable person than a temperamental, temporary superstar lover. Maybe you just need technology, bright ideas to aid communication, to stimulate intelligent investigation and growth in the relationship. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence but when you get there is it any different? You can run away from one relationship and its problems but maybe the next relationship will just have a new set of problems. Admittedly it could turn out alot better.

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