Complexity

On the Jesus Bus, we take scripture at face value. There is no attempt to read into the text what isn't there, and there's no attempt to hide what is. That's not to say that there is no complexity to the text. Just that the first level of complexity is to take it at face value.


Jesus said unless we become as little children,we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. What did he mean by that?


Mt 18:2 And he took a little child, and put him
in the middle of them,


3 And said, Truly, I say to you, If you do not
have a change of heart and become like little
children, you will not go into the kingdom of
heaven.


4 Whoever, then, will make himself as low as
this little child, the same is the greatest in
the kingdom of heaven.


As nearly as I can tell, Jesus asks for our trust and confidence, the same as a child is able to have trust and confidence in the care of their parents. We don't want to come to him with the idea that we already know all that there is to know about him. And we don't want to come to him with demands over what we need for our selfish purposes. We come to him with a desire to accept whatever it is that he has to offer us, assuming that he knows what's best for us. Maybe
you could even go so far as to say we go to Jesus to experience his love and to love him in return. That's what small children are really looking for, isn't it?


Jesus tells us that the way to approach him is different from the way we've learned to approach other situations in life. Just yesterday, I wrote about the passage that's called the beatitudes. In that passage Jesus taught that his way of looking at things is different from our experience with the world. And that's what makes the christian life a constant challenge. The way of Christ, is against the flow of this world's currents. It takes a level of trust and faith to believe that. As Jesus puts it:


Mt 22:36 Master, which is the chief rule in the
law?


37 And he said to him, Have love for the Lord
your G-d with all your heart, and with all your
soul, and with all your mind.


Jesus says that we not only need to believe him and to trust him and obey him, but we need to LOVE him with all our being. That means he has to be our number one priority. That's really not so hard to understand. It's just hard to accept, since we have a tendency to love ourselves oh so much.


In the end, it's not that Jesus is so complex that puts people off. Jesus puts people off because he says flat out that there is no room for serving self while serving him. There is only one G-d.