Malak
Member
I would like to offer a reflection on the most well-known and influential person in human history, the one whom time has defined as before and after him: Jesus Christ. Regardless of your belief or lack thereof, it is worthwhile to consider his great deeds and wisdom. Reflection by Professor and Doctor Amim Rodor:
"Consider his origins. He chose to be born as a bastard, with the stigma of being born out of wedlock.
If you wanted to be recognized, you wouldn't choose that kind of origin, but millions of people in the world can approach Him, feeling understood and accepted. The revered purity of blood of the Jewish tradition was completely disregarded by him. His ancestral line was compromised by Ruth, a Moabite, and Rahab, a Canaanite of low reputation.
People pride themselves on their important lineage, their pedigree, the genetic strength of their ancestors, but this surprising Jesus discards these human vanities and fantasies, like unnecessary lusts, which would only serve to intimidate most people, who cannot claim to be the end product of a super-race. Observe also his death, abandoned by his friends, betrayed, denied by two of them. He was delivered to scorn, to the abuses of an unjust and irregular court.
Crucified, The worst known form of execution, completely naked and ashamed. He did nothing to escape the predetermined path. "For this hour I came into the world," he said. Nothing surprises him; he seems, in the scenes of the Gospels, in absolute control of the circumstances.
From a human point of view, he possessed no wealth, no power, or prestige.
However, in his childhood, Jesus worried a king, confounded the doctors of the temple. His questions, his teachings, his parables, his metaphors challenged the powerful structures of the social and religious system of Judaism. And he still disturbs us today. His teachings were so impressive that even those who came to arrest him had to admit that no one had ever spoken like this man.
Jesus did not have an office, did not hold any public office, did not write books, did not compose music, but he inspired an infinite number of books, hymns, songs, and compositions. He is the character with the largest literary bibliography in all of history. Jesus is the greatest topic of study in doctoral dissertations at the world's major universities.
He didn't practice medicine or psychiatry in any office, but he alone has healed more hearts than all the doctors, psychiatrists, and psychologists combined. In fact, broken hearts are his specialty. Jesus was an expert in human fragments..
His unsettling personality is surprising even more so because of his methods. We always find him going against our mediocre and paltry methods, always doing the opposite of what we would expect. He never commanded an army, never recruited a soldier, but no other leader ever had so many volunteers under his command.
In fact, as beautifully stated by an anonymous page that circulated in the second half of the 19th century: "All the armies that have ever marched, all the fleets that have ever sailed, all the parliaments that have ever met, all the kings that have ever reigned, commanded and decided, all these forces put together have not affected the lives of men on planet Earth as powerfully as the solitary figure of Jesus." He did not have a home or even a family in conventional terms. His brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, he said, are all those who do his will.
He did not use propaganda or marketing to create favorable public sentiment. He did not organize a party to promote him. He did not establish an army to impose his ideas.
Jesus never sugarcoated things to be accepted or to impress potential followers. He exposed the conditions of discipleship with an almost cruel transparency and realism. "Whoever does not leave everything for my sake and take up their cross and follow me daily cannot be my disciple."
Jesus never lowered the demands to increase the results. His teachings, his ethics are true paradoxes. The last will be first. We live when we die. Whoever abandons everything for him will receive everything back purified and in its fullness. The meek will inherit the earth.
By word and example, Jesus inverted the pyramid of power. Great are those who serve. Trying to be great like those of secular culture is merely paganism covered by ecclesiastical cloaks.
What king would sacrifice himself for his people? Kings generally sacrifice their subjects! What kind of king would wash the feet of his servants and die for them? Freely, this disconcerting Jesus associated himself with the humblest members of society. Powerful figures, celebrities, statesmen, keep their distance, assuming the mystique of leadership as if those who govern and lead should remain separate. For secular culture, a certain notion of greatness seems to impose detachment and distance.
Jesus did not exhibit any of the outward human characteristics of power. External symbols that seem to enchant so many were discarded by him. Perhaps the most extraordinary element in Jesus Christ was his way of treating people.
He spoke to those with whom no one else spoke, the alienated and marginalized of society in his day. He had no throne, no personal guard, accomplished in a short space of time the greatest work of rescue in the universe and, surprisingly, we never find him flustered or hurried. In the Gospel narratives, he moves with impressive majesty and composure, in addition to his freedom.
No one could invent a person like Jesus Christ, because he transcends even our capacity to imagine such behavior. Jesus Christ inaugurated a new era of honesty of conscience. He used only the tools of ideas, but his ideas captivated many who were inspired to change course.
Jesus was a master at taking people from the audience and placing them on the stage to help them think. Everything he said had surgical precision. His thoughts concealed true treatises, powerful blows capable of shaking the human structure and awakening it to another level of existence.
Jesus did not seek social glory, like the people we generally know. He had a dominant purpose. He wanted, through his grace, to produce a revolution within men, a transformative revolution, very difficult to analyze or understand.
He sought to produce in man a revolution capable of breaking with the dictatorship of our fallen nature, our idolatries, illusory paradises, our individual prisons. Jesus managed to implode the rigid foundations of carnal nature and lead us to hate who we are with our flaws and anomalies, to make us fall in love with what we can be in him. Indeed, Jesus awakened in people a thirst for change, and this truth remains.
Those who truly encounter Him after this will never again be satisfied with who they are. The Jews expected a leader to liberate them from Roman rule, but He came to liberate humanity from more serious chains, to free us from our spiritual and moral turmoil. Jesus did not come to reform humanity, but to rebuild it and lead it to a new solidarity, a new loyalty, a new dedication, a new direction, entirely new for life.
He taught us that our greatest success is not outside of ourselves, in our attempts to impress others. Our greatest success lies in conquering the inner terrain. The greatest journey, according to Him, is not external, but the walk on the path of liberation from the self."
Dr. Amim Rodor
"Consider his origins. He chose to be born as a bastard, with the stigma of being born out of wedlock.
If you wanted to be recognized, you wouldn't choose that kind of origin, but millions of people in the world can approach Him, feeling understood and accepted. The revered purity of blood of the Jewish tradition was completely disregarded by him. His ancestral line was compromised by Ruth, a Moabite, and Rahab, a Canaanite of low reputation.
People pride themselves on their important lineage, their pedigree, the genetic strength of their ancestors, but this surprising Jesus discards these human vanities and fantasies, like unnecessary lusts, which would only serve to intimidate most people, who cannot claim to be the end product of a super-race. Observe also his death, abandoned by his friends, betrayed, denied by two of them. He was delivered to scorn, to the abuses of an unjust and irregular court.
Crucified, The worst known form of execution, completely naked and ashamed. He did nothing to escape the predetermined path. "For this hour I came into the world," he said. Nothing surprises him; he seems, in the scenes of the Gospels, in absolute control of the circumstances.
From a human point of view, he possessed no wealth, no power, or prestige.
However, in his childhood, Jesus worried a king, confounded the doctors of the temple. His questions, his teachings, his parables, his metaphors challenged the powerful structures of the social and religious system of Judaism. And he still disturbs us today. His teachings were so impressive that even those who came to arrest him had to admit that no one had ever spoken like this man.
Jesus did not have an office, did not hold any public office, did not write books, did not compose music, but he inspired an infinite number of books, hymns, songs, and compositions. He is the character with the largest literary bibliography in all of history. Jesus is the greatest topic of study in doctoral dissertations at the world's major universities.
He didn't practice medicine or psychiatry in any office, but he alone has healed more hearts than all the doctors, psychiatrists, and psychologists combined. In fact, broken hearts are his specialty. Jesus was an expert in human fragments..
His unsettling personality is surprising even more so because of his methods. We always find him going against our mediocre and paltry methods, always doing the opposite of what we would expect. He never commanded an army, never recruited a soldier, but no other leader ever had so many volunteers under his command.
In fact, as beautifully stated by an anonymous page that circulated in the second half of the 19th century: "All the armies that have ever marched, all the fleets that have ever sailed, all the parliaments that have ever met, all the kings that have ever reigned, commanded and decided, all these forces put together have not affected the lives of men on planet Earth as powerfully as the solitary figure of Jesus." He did not have a home or even a family in conventional terms. His brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, he said, are all those who do his will.
He did not use propaganda or marketing to create favorable public sentiment. He did not organize a party to promote him. He did not establish an army to impose his ideas.
Jesus never sugarcoated things to be accepted or to impress potential followers. He exposed the conditions of discipleship with an almost cruel transparency and realism. "Whoever does not leave everything for my sake and take up their cross and follow me daily cannot be my disciple."
Jesus never lowered the demands to increase the results. His teachings, his ethics are true paradoxes. The last will be first. We live when we die. Whoever abandons everything for him will receive everything back purified and in its fullness. The meek will inherit the earth.
By word and example, Jesus inverted the pyramid of power. Great are those who serve. Trying to be great like those of secular culture is merely paganism covered by ecclesiastical cloaks.
What king would sacrifice himself for his people? Kings generally sacrifice their subjects! What kind of king would wash the feet of his servants and die for them? Freely, this disconcerting Jesus associated himself with the humblest members of society. Powerful figures, celebrities, statesmen, keep their distance, assuming the mystique of leadership as if those who govern and lead should remain separate. For secular culture, a certain notion of greatness seems to impose detachment and distance.
Jesus did not exhibit any of the outward human characteristics of power. External symbols that seem to enchant so many were discarded by him. Perhaps the most extraordinary element in Jesus Christ was his way of treating people.
He spoke to those with whom no one else spoke, the alienated and marginalized of society in his day. He had no throne, no personal guard, accomplished in a short space of time the greatest work of rescue in the universe and, surprisingly, we never find him flustered or hurried. In the Gospel narratives, he moves with impressive majesty and composure, in addition to his freedom.
No one could invent a person like Jesus Christ, because he transcends even our capacity to imagine such behavior. Jesus Christ inaugurated a new era of honesty of conscience. He used only the tools of ideas, but his ideas captivated many who were inspired to change course.
Jesus was a master at taking people from the audience and placing them on the stage to help them think. Everything he said had surgical precision. His thoughts concealed true treatises, powerful blows capable of shaking the human structure and awakening it to another level of existence.
Jesus did not seek social glory, like the people we generally know. He had a dominant purpose. He wanted, through his grace, to produce a revolution within men, a transformative revolution, very difficult to analyze or understand.
He sought to produce in man a revolution capable of breaking with the dictatorship of our fallen nature, our idolatries, illusory paradises, our individual prisons. Jesus managed to implode the rigid foundations of carnal nature and lead us to hate who we are with our flaws and anomalies, to make us fall in love with what we can be in him. Indeed, Jesus awakened in people a thirst for change, and this truth remains.
Those who truly encounter Him after this will never again be satisfied with who they are. The Jews expected a leader to liberate them from Roman rule, but He came to liberate humanity from more serious chains, to free us from our spiritual and moral turmoil. Jesus did not come to reform humanity, but to rebuild it and lead it to a new solidarity, a new loyalty, a new dedication, a new direction, entirely new for life.
He taught us that our greatest success is not outside of ourselves, in our attempts to impress others. Our greatest success lies in conquering the inner terrain. The greatest journey, according to Him, is not external, but the walk on the path of liberation from the self."
Dr. Amim Rodor
