“Now if Jesus were still on earth he would not be a priest at all, since there are already priests who present gifts according to the Law; offering worship in a sanctuary that is but a shadowy sketch of the true heavenly abode. For Moses, when he was about to erect the Tabernacle, was warned to make everything according to the pattern he was shown on the mountain. And yet Jesus obtained a more excellent ministry thereafter, and thus is the mediator of a far better covenant. For if that first covenant had been faultless there would have been no need to look for and establish a second one. And so it is that the Father finds fault with those of old when he says: ‘The days are surely coming when I will establish a new covenant with the houses of Israel and Judah; not at all like the one that I made with their ancestors on the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt … And this is the covenant that I will make with them: I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall not teach one another the Law, nor say to each other, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. And I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.’ Indeed, in speaking of a new covenant God has made His first one obsolete. And what is obsolete has grown old, and will soon be replaced and disappear.”~ via Hebrews 8:4-13

 

“What I am attempting herein is to prevent others from repeating the inanely foolish falsehood that so many so often utter about Jesus Christ – namely, that he was somehow more than he himself said he was; that he was somehow more than a great & noble teacher of ethics; that he was instead the one & only Son of God. For these are the raving zealots who claim that any man who was ‘merely a man’ and said the things Jesus said in the Gospels would not be a great moral teacher at all, but rather must be considered to be either a diabolical liar or a raving lunatic. And yet – quite ironically – what these same modern-day Pharisees fail to hear or heed are the very words of Jesus himself; words that provide a bold alternative to the common faux-conundrum of ‘Lord, liar, or lunatic.’ And that alternative is quite the obvious one: namely, the alternative of leader … Yes, while it is true that Jesus’ message was and remains exceptionally bold – and thus that every hearer thereof must indeed ultimately choose how he or she perceives &/or adopts the same, the choice to do so is a fourfold one, not a mere trinity. Yes, we can very well choose to worship Jesus as the one & only progeny of a celestial tyrant, and we can just as readily choose to chastise him as an insidious liar or condemn him as a delusional lunatic. And yet the fourth alternative – the alternative of leader – is the one Jesus himself offers in the ancient texts; the alternative of seeing Jesus as a pure representation of moral guidance – a holy illuminator of the selfless Way that is to be walked; a brilliant beacon of the loving Truth that is to be followed; an amorous ambassador of the caring Life that is to be lived. For while Jesus does indeed at times intimate that he is a manifestation of the Divine – a glowing ember of the essence that he called ‘the Son of God‘, he also reminds his listeners over & over & over again that all sentient beings harbor that same caring perfection within, just as he ever summons us all to boldly embody the same. Indeed, to say anything else is to rebuke his own teachings, and thus to say anything else is to reject our own summons to serve him by enlivening the same.” ~ inspired by C. S. Lewis

 

Filed under: Jesus Christ, a most Holy Heretic by Scaughdt