Jesus - a true story

I found this article through a friends blog. It was written by the #1 columnist at the Chicago Tribune and what a breath of fresh air it is...


No doubt about Easter's true meaning

Published April 16, 2006

It is Easter Sunday for millions of Western Christians. Those of us on the Eastern Orthodox side of Christianity will celebrate next week.

And somehow, whether this week or next, writing about colored eggs and butter lambs and avoiding the Jesus Christ part of it just won't do.

Obviously, I work in the secular media, and we're usually skittish about spiritual matters. But we're quite dogmatic when it comes to some other things. For example, we're almost severe in our collective belief in scientific progress, in the ability of government officials and technology and reason to solve the problems of the modern world. The mention of Christianity, except in an anthropological context, is often avoided. It carries certain risks.

One problem is that you might insult or infuriate those of other faiths, or those who are firm in having no faith, or those who are ambivalent and want to keep it that way. Please, no offense is intended here. I'm no theologian. My sins haunt me, and what they've left behind reminds me that I'm nobody to tell others about what should be in their hearts.

Still this is Easter Sunday for so many of you and the beginning of Holy Week for others like me, and millions upon millions of people are being driven to their knees.

Just think about that. All across the world on Sunday, and again next Sunday, millions of folks will confirm their belief in something that can't be proven by scientific means. That yearning is news, isn't it? Even though it takes place year after year, it's still news.

What drives us to our knees has little to do with cute bunny rabbits and tiny marshmallow chicks. It has little to do with Easter bonnets, or Earth Day. So while reading the papers on Friday, considering this, I glanced at the front page of USA Today.

"Hollywood turns to divine inspiration," said the headline, and above it was a photo of actor Tom Hanks and a French beauty in the new movie "The Da Vinci Code."

I hope the headline about divine inspiration was a pun, since the Hanks film appears to be a response to Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ." But Hollywood wants inspiration to produce movies that make almost $400 million, as Gibson's did, especially since Hollywood refused to help Gibson with his movie.

Most of you know that the Hanks movie was taken from a badly written book, informed perhaps not by the Holy Sprit, but as conservative writer Tom Roeser said the other day, by feminist politics. Also, that the new Hanks movie involves one of those Jesus conspiracies. In this one, Jesus has a child with Mary Magdalene, the first in a line of French nobles, and conservative Roman Catholics dispatch a crazed albino monk to assassinate anyone who may reveal the big secret.

Recently, there was news that trumpeted the discovery of the so-called Judas gospel. This gospel apparently expiates Judas' guilt. He can't be a betrayer if he and Jesus were allegedly in the conspiracy together. Although early Christian bishops ignored that book, it is being offered, again during the Easter season, as an archeological find, as a goad.

I usually skip such news. The incredible lengths to which the anti-Catholic "Da Vinci Code" has been marketed and the coverage of the Judas gospel as if it were a missing companion to the other four prove me right. It's always so relentless and familiar. It always revolves around the same basic premise:

Doubt.

And doubt sells.

A few months ago, a newsweekly ran a portrait of Jesus on the cover. Such magazines give prominent play to Christian themes in winter and spring, and the portrait was from the Renaissance, and he wore a crown of thorns, and there was this headline:

"How Jesus became the Christ"--as if what happened after the Crucifixion was merely a matter of good public relations.

A friend who worked at one of those magazines had a theory about all of the new Jesus news.

"Jesus saves--circulation," he said.

Surely their numbers don't lie. Casting nagging doubts must drive newsstand sales, or they wouldn't do it.

Some hands that reach for such stuff are thrilled, their own positions validated. Others who don't reach are wounded, wondering why there is so much constant effort made to whittle at belief.

This year is no different. Next year there will be something else. That much is certain. It's been that way for almost 2,000 years. It's always the same, and it goes like this:

A group of strong men rolled the rock away from the tomb, the Resurrection didn't happen, and it defies scientific reason, which is the new church to many.

But in countless other churches, in storefronts and cathedrals, there is a response to such doubt. It comes from the Last Supper, when Christ speaks to his disciples and says: "I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by me."

For those of you who celebrate today, happy Easter.

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jskass@tribune.com

moving...

i've been moving. houses that is. i haven't been on the internet. no blogging. no reading blogs. i've been moving. life that is. no tv. no bike. no friends. no nothing. i've been moving. to a new house. we painted. we transported boxes unopened since days in amsterdam. i've moved. a messy house. but it's moved. now i'm back in the real world. i mean i've moved into the matrix. but not really. i just thought it sounded nice. we are in our own house now. our own. but not really. the bank owns it more than we do. we pay interest. and lots of it. one day we won't. we've moved into a new house. we own the deed. one year ago we made the decision. the decision to move. now we've moved.

pictures to come.

whose image...

I was reading the book Holiness, by Henry Blackaby the other day and something struck me. hit me. nailed me. the book itself is good, small but good. nothing spectacular.

But anyway, the idea of image is so powerful. God made man in his own image. not the other way around. the image is His. i am His image. you are His image. we are His image. not the other way around.

so often i make it the other way around. I fit Him into my image. I make Him in my own image. He should be like this. He should act like that. But my image is faulty. My image is imperfect. My image doesn't work. It's funny. Sometimes I wonder why my image fails. The answer is clear. Because it's mine.

The more I try to fit him into my idea of what he should be the worse it gets. I fail. I get turned around. I lose sight of what's important. I fall. I forget. I am lame and incapable of love, slow and lacking grace. I am not such a great image after all. I'm sure glad God is not made in my image, but the other way around.

B...E...A...utiful

It's been awhile since I last posted as I took a break, but I'm back with a few images from my weekend trip to Estes Park. I was thoroughly reminded of why I love this land, this earth, this Creation. It is inspiring and awesome.

1. A view looking east across Sprague Lake towards a dock in Rocky Mountain National Park.



2. A view looking west across Sprague Lake towards Hallett Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park.



3. I was fishing in the Big Thompson River near Estes Park, Colorado, when I looked up to see about 40 Wapiti (or Elk) around me. It was a bit intimidating to say the least, but I would later find out that I posed no threat to them as they are only aggressive in the autumn. Nonetheless, it created opportunity for a magnificent picture. I was fishing. The sun shone bright. Elk in the river. It was cool.



4. Lastly, this is the hotel where Jayla and I were married nearly four years ago now. Nostalgic. Beautiful. Magical. That about sums it up.

sunshine on a cloudy day

each morning i wake to the sweet sounds of my baby's voice. it is a soothing and wonderful symphony of coos and oos and awes and squeaks and gaggles. i love it. i love walking into the sunshine and lifting him above my head and kissing his belly. even on the cloudiest day, he is a sunshine in my life.

i wonder if that's what the Creator thinks when a new life is changed, a new life is given to him. am i sunshine to him...? i wonder. i'd like to think so, though i'm not always sure.

still, there are time when i remember his love and could not have been more real last saturday afternoon when an thuderstorm rolled through the plains of colorado, as they so often do. two beautiful rainbows presented themselves in their glorious spendor right before my eyes. astounded, i practically had to pinch myself at how the colors popped against the gray sky behind.

then i remembered the covenant, God's covenant with man. he will never forsake us or leave us. he will lift us up in the morning with sunshine sparkling in his eyes.

thank goodness.

a big purchase....

that's the house we just signed a contract on... it's in Stapleton, a new urban development in denver, colorado. it will be ours on April 27th. finally, it feels like Jayla and i are beginning to settle. we have a job, a family and house. things couldn't be more beautiful. it only took almost 8 months for it to fall into place but i finally feel like it has. thank you. thank you. thank YOU.